Dreams for Stones

by Ann Warner

  He picked up a smooth stone, enjoying the warmth and heft of it in his hand before he threw it. It skipped, touching the lake three times, like a bird taking sips of water. Circles formed on the surface of the lake, slowly expanding and intersecting before dissipating.

  Cormac came up to him carrying a stick. Alan tossed it, and the dog bounded after it with a happy bark.

  “Mom told me Kathy called you the other day.”

  Hearing Elaine say Kathy’s name was as unexpected as a dash of cold water in the face. “Did she.” He worked to keep his expression disinterested as he wrestled the stick from Cormac and threw it again.

  Of course, it should be no surprise that Elaine knew about Kathy. His mother had no doubt provided a full report.

  “Mom and Dad liked her,” Elaine said, verifying his assumption.

  He focused his gaze on the middle of the lake, struggling to keep his tone light. “You’re fishing.”

  “They said she came out to ride last fall and this spring. Almost every week.”

  “They also report she came with another woman? And a child?”

  Cormac was back with the stick. When Alan didn’t move to pick it up, the dog nudged his leg. Alan threw the stick as hard as he could, remembering, suddenly, the day he’d watched Delia pet a foal and realized the child he and Meg had been expecting would have been nearly the same age as Delia if Meg hadn’t died. The thought clamped tight around his chest.

  “You didn’t fool them.”

  He swallowed, but there was no easing the tightness. “Wasn’t trying to.”

  “They don’t come anymore.”

  “They have other things to do.” Like fight for life in an ICU.

  Cormac was back. Alan bent over and buried his hands in the thick ruff of Cormac’s neck while the dog wiggled with delight.

  “Alan, why haven’t you gone to visit that little girl?”

  In confusion, he stared at Elaine, unable to answer. It had been only a few days since Kathy accused him of the same thing. But Elaine didn’t even know Kathy. Besides, after Kathy’s phone call, he had visited Delia. She’d been sleeping. He’d spoken to Frank, and they’d left it that Frank would call to let him know when Delia was home and ready for visitors.

  Cormac squirmed and, whining softly, reached up and swiped a tongue at Alan’s face, catching him on the nose. He sucked in a breath, then stood up.

  Elaine stepped closer and laid a hand on his arm. “I love you, Alan, and I can’t stand by watching you continue this way.”

  Cormac stuck his head between them, demanding Alan continue to play with him. Rubbing Cormac’s head, Alan moved away from Elaine’s touch.

  “Alan. . . Please. There are things that can help you.”

  “Don’t.” He bit off the word, took a breath, and tried to speak calmly. “You can stop worrying. I’m fine.”

  “Fine? You think you’re fine? How can you think that? You abandoned that child, Alan. Where’s the ‘fine’ in that?”

  Not Delia. He hadn’t abandoned her. But he had abandoned Kathy. He dragged in a ragged breath.

  When did it end? Being half alive.

  “I know you loved Meg,” Elaine said, a catch in her voice. “But you can’t spend your life mourning her. You do that, you might as well have died too.”

  Yeah. Without Meg he was as good as dead anyway. He stared blindly at the lake.

  “You’re dishonoring Meg’s memory.”

  He turned abruptly and walked away.

  “And you’re turning into a sour, disgruntled, ugly person no one is going to want to be around.” Elaine began to cry. “You have to stop it, Alan. Please stop it.”

  Why couldn’t she understand? He would stop it, if he could figure out how. He took a quick hitch on the girth, swung into the saddle, and kicked Sonoro into a lope.

  Running away. From Elaine. From the meadow and its tiny lake. And from the memory of a cool, bright morning that had dawned so hopefully and ended so hopelessly.

  ~ ~ ~

  “This weekend’s supposed to be beautiful,” Charles said, slowing to a walk as he and Kathy finished their run. “We could go to the zoo, if that isn’t too dorky a suggestion for you.”

  “I love the zoo. But I already have a date to go there.” She didn’t know why, but sometimes an urge to tease Charles just came over her. “You could join us if you like.”

  “Wouldn’t want to horn in.” His tone was stilted.

  “No. Really. I mean it. It’s time you met Delia.”

  “Delia?”

  “The person I promised my Saturday to. She’s almost six going on sixteen.”

  He wiped a hand across his mouth. “You have a daughter?” Did his voice sound odd or was that her imagination?

  “She’s the daughter of a friend. But Delia and I are best buddies. Why don’t you come with us?”

  He hesitated another moment before he answered. “Sure. Okay.”

  Kathy glanced sideways at him, but Charles was taking a drink from his water bottle, so she couldn’t see if he looked as uncertain as he sounded.

  “There’s something you need to know. Delia just got out of the hospital. She was terribly sick, and she’s still pretty weak.” Then Kathy took a breath and said the hard part. “And it left her deaf.”

  He was momentarily silent. “I, uh, don’t know any sign language.”

  “That’s okay. We’re all just learning. Can you be at my place at ten thirty?”

  “Sure.”

  When they parted, Kathy watched Charles walk to his car, thinking how odd it had been—Charles sounding unsure about spending time with a little girl versus a big girl.

  ~ ~ ~

  Saturday at the Garibaldis’, Kathy introduced Charles to Grace.

  “Mira. Come on in. Frank’s getting Delia dressed.”

  They stepped inside as Delia came down the hall with her father. Delia’s eyes lit up, and she rushed up to Kathy, giving her a fierce hug.

  After introducing Charles to Frank, Kathy turned to Delia and, using gestures, spoke slowly. “This is my friend, Charles.”

  Delia gave Charles a solemn look, then extended her hand and said, “Hello.”

  Charles looked startled, but he recovered quickly and took her tiny hand in his large one. Kathy’s heart squeezed with pain at the memory that evoked of the way Delia and Alan always greeted each other. She pushed the thought away. It belonged to the past.

  Later, as they wandered around the zoo, Delia and Kathy practiced signs, and Charles joined in. Watching Delia make a sign, Kathy was amazed, as she had been from the first, at how quickly Delia was adapting to the loss of her hearing. Much more quickly than the adults. Delia was learning to read lips when people spoke slowly and, while Kathy’s signs felt awkward and slow, Delia’s were already quick and fluid in spite of her shortened fingers.

  “Grace Garibaldi,” Charles said, as Delia watched the polar bear swim. “I’m trying to think where I’ve seen her before.”

  “Grace wrote a children’s book. The Post had an article about it recently with her picture.”

  “Umm. That could be it.”

  Kathy glanced at him and saw that he had a preoccupied look. But when he turned and saw her staring, he smiled. “Can you teach me how to ask Delia if she’s hungry?”

  They took a ride on the miniature train. After that, it was obvious Delia was tired. Charles gave her a piggy-back ride to the car. He set her down and moved his hands the way Kathy had shown him.

  Delia laughed in delight at his clumsy signs, then nodded an emphatic yes.

  Charles turned to Kathy. “I don’t know how to ask her what she’d like to eat.”

  “Not necessary. We always go the same place. The café at the Tattered Cover Book Store. Then if she’s not too tired, we look at books.”

  ~ ~ ~

  “You didn’t mind having Delia with us, did you?” Kathy asked Charles after they’d dropped Delia at home after lunch.

  “She’s a cute kid.
I enjoyed it. . . a lot.” He sounded surprised.

  Kathy was relieved Charles and Delia had gotten along. Given the way he’d reacted to her first mention of the little girl, she had wondered if he didn’t like children. But he’d treated Delia with the same care and affection Alan did.

  Alan. She was through thinking about him. Wasn’t she?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The phone rang at Calico. The caller, a woman, asked to speak to Kathy.

  “My name is Elaine Francini-Galt. I believe. . . that is I think you know my brother, Alan?”

  Surprise, quickly followed by dread and a mélange of awful images, almost cut off Kathy’s breath. “Is he. . . all right?”

  “Oh. Yes. Of course. Sorry. I-I hope it’s okay I called. I need to see you. To talk to you.”

  Kathy loosened her grip on the phone. “I don’t understand.”

  “Please. Meet with me and I’ll explain.”

  After she hung up, Kathy sat for a time, her heart still beating too fast, thinking about it. The strangeness of Elaine wanting to see her, and her own panic in that first moment when she thought Elaine was calling to tell her something had happened to Alan.

  ~ ~ ~

  When she arrived at the restaurant Elaine had chosen for the meeting, Kathy knew immediately the woman sitting in the corner had to be Elaine. Her resemblance to Alan was unmistakable.

  Clamping down on the flight of butterflies taking off in her stomach, Kathy greeted Elaine as she slid into the seat across from her. Seeing the other woman had a glass of wine, Kathy ordered one as well.

  Close up, Elaine’s resemblance to Alan was even more startling, and it made Kathy feel like crying. Ridiculous, of course. She was over Alan. Still, if that were true, why had she agreed to this meeting, and why did she still wake up at night, her chest tight with the memory of weeping?

  “Sorry I’m late.” Kathy said. “A phone call ran long, but I didn’t know how to reach you, to let you know.”

  “Here, let me give you my card.” Elaine pulled a holder out of her purse as the waitress set a glass of white wine in front of Kathy.

  Kathy paid for her drink then accepted the card from Elaine.

  Elaine Francini-Galt, PhD

  Clinical Psychologist

  The busyness of getting out the card had camouflaged Elaine’s nervousness, but now it hit Kathy in waves—the lip biting, the flickering glances, the fidgety hands. Not that Kathy was feeling all that calm and cool herself.

  “Thank you for coming.” Elaine’s voice was jerky. After a quick glance at Kathy, she stared at her wineglass as if it were a teleprompter that had just failed.

  Kathy waited. Finally, Elaine took a breath and looked up, her eyes full of distress. “I wanted to see you. To ask why. . . why you’re no longer coming to the ranch.”

  Kathy drew in a quick, surprised breath, but because of the misery in Elaine’s eyes, she spoke gently. “You need to ask Alan that.”

  “He won’t talk to me.” Elaine looked down at her wine, blinking rapidly. “Please. I don’t usually do this sort of thing, but I really need to know. Was it your choice? To stop seeing him.”

  Kathy looked away from Elaine, struggling with a mix of feelings. There was no easy answer. She may have chosen, but only after Alan made it impossible for her to choose otherwise.

  “It’s just. You’re the first woman he’s spent time with since—” Elaine stopped speaking and swiped at her eyes while Kathy tried to figure out the missing part of that statement. The first woman he’d spent time with since. . . what?

  “Did he ever mention Meg to you?”

  “Meg?” The single syllable took all Kathy’s effort.

  “His wife.”

  Kathy stared at Elaine, letting the words sink in and take on weight and substance. Alan married. An answer of sorts. Not that it should matter any longer. But it did somehow.

  “So he’s married.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.

  “No. You don’t understand—”

  “Why?” Kathy’s voice caught, and the word came out as a whisper. But after that one word, she had no idea what came next, what was left to know.

  Feeling dizzy, she closed her eyes, but it only made the vertigo intensify. Why was Elaine asking questions? She’d done her job. Told Kathy Alan was off limits. But since Elaine also knew they were no longer seeing each other, what was the point?

  “She died. Meg did.”

  Kathy’s eyes snapped open, and she stared at Elaine, feeling whipsawed, trying desperately to fit it all together.

  “Five years ago. We thought when you started coming to the ranch. . . We all thought, maybe. . . ” Elaine focused on her wineglass as she rolled it back and forth between her hands.

  Kathy took a breath to steady her voice. “Why are you telling me?” And why hadn’t Alan told her? They’d been friends, after all. He could have just said it, that night in the garden, or the time they went to the lake, or the day in the barn. But maybe he’d tried...You don’t understand...

  Elaine’s eyes glittered with tears. “We used to be so close. I miss him so much. Last fall and this spring were. . . better.” She stifled a sob, then sat clutching her arms. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. . . ” She stopped, her lips trembling. Then she loosened her arms and leaned her elbows on the table, her hands covering her face as she sobbed.

  “It’s okay.” It wasn’t though. Nothing was okay about any of this. And watching Elaine weep, Kathy wanted to weep as well. But her tears seemed to be as frozen as her emotions.

  “I’m sorry.” She reached out and laid a hand on Elaine’s arm, waiting while the other woman took deep steadying breaths.

  Elaine raised her head and, again, her resemblance to Alan took Kathy’s breath away. Only this time, the resemblance was to Alan as he’d looked that last day, with haunted eyes and sharp lines of pain etched in his face.

  It hurt to look at Elaine, and it hurt to breathe. “I’m sorry,” Kathy said again.

  “No. I am. I had no right.” Elaine’s mouth quivered, and she took a careful breath. “Grabbing at straws. Stupid. I know better. I just thought, or didn’t think. Not your fault.” She scrubbed at her eyes.

  Kathy wondered how Meg had died, but it wasn’t something she could ask. She sat waiting until Elaine stopped crying, then she stood, trying to come up with something more to say, but there was nothing. Nothing that could lift the sorrow that filled both their hearts. She reached out to touch Elaine, but pulled her hand back and spoke brief, conventional words of farewell instead.

  Outside the restaurant, she took a deep breath and looked toward the mountains. As she watched, the sun slid behind the clouds piled on top of purple peaks. When it reached a small gap and blazed through, it dazzled her, startling her back into motion.

  Getting into her car, she glanced at the clock. Only six thirty. And yet it seemed as if hours had passed since she sat down across from Elaine.

  She started the car and waited for a break in traffic to turn onto Colorado Boulevard, trying to push away the conversation with Elaine and focus on her driving, telling herself to stop when lights turned red, to start again on green.

  By the time she arrived back at the Costellos’, she knew there was no way she could walk into the kitchen and answer cheerful questions about her day while Mrs. C bustled about reheating her dinner.

  Instead, she parked the car, got out, and turned in the opposite direction, toward Cheesman Park, to the white pavilion on the eastern edge that looked like a Greek temple. She picked a spot on the steps well away from the scattering of people and sat down, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

  The clouds had thinned, and the sun cast a golden sheen over trees, grass, and people. She watched a man playing Frisbee with his dog as the sounds of cars, an occasional burst of music from a radio, the yelp of the dog, and fragments of conversation blurred together, into silence.

  So that was why Alan shied away from closeness,
why he’d said they could be only friends.

  Someone essential. He’d been talking about Meg.

  Sorrow that only death could ease. And his reaction when she’d brought that up. She hadn’t understood it then, but she did now.

  And the look he sometimes had. That day they’d ridden to the lake, and she’d recited the poem was the first time. But that had been a mostly happy day as he teased her about semi-misanthropy and a trout’s fishy viewpoint. The light shining on his hair—gold, sorrel, and brown—and her hand, arrested from touching. His eyes, usually so serious, but glinting with humor as he looked up at her after drying her feet.

  Without that one day. . .

  But maybe she had already loved him.

  And now she could no longer deny it.

  ~ ~ ~

  The conversation with Elaine had ripped open the wound left in Kathy’s heart by the loss of Alan. Gone in an instant the careful stitching of weeks of busyness, of progress towards. . . closure. She shuddered. How she hated that word. Implying, as it did, that one could walk through a door, close it, and forget everything on the other side.

  Hemingway was right. True sorrow never went away. But maybe that was a good thing. Because denying her sadness over Alan, would be a denial of her best self.

  Before meeting Elaine, anger had overlaid Kathy’s memories of Alan. And that anger had worked, as it had with Greg, as an antidote to pain. But now, learning about Meg had stripped away anger, leaving a sadness that limned even her brightest days with darkness and sudden, unexpected sorrow. More than anything, she wanted to help Alan. But if his family had been unable to do anything for him, what could she do?

  In spite of its hopelessness, the question churned endlessly until she felt like an astronaut in orbit, twisting, floating, turning, always ending in the same place. With no answers.

  It was such an effort, acting normal.