“Of course, I thought of you immediately. There isn’t much that hasn’t made me think of you for the last two days. But tonight I realized it’s more than just a resemblance I see. That’s you when you were a little girl. Isn’t it?”
Flo’s answer was slow in coming. “No. That’s ridiculous.”
“And it wasn’t a classmate of Adrian’s Milton Weisman saw in his dream, running away from his funeral. It was you, running away from your father’s.”
Flo had only told Allison the whole story once, so painful was it for her to relate, but as Allison had reflected upon it at the motel tonight, she had seen how open to interpretation Flo’s telling had actually been.
“You told me you how you stayed in the car while he was being laid to rest. I always thought it meant you refused to attend the gravesite. But you did attend it. You went and then ran away.”
“Stop it, Ally.”
“Didn’t you?”
“It doesn’t matter. This isn’t me,” Flo said. “It can’t be.” She tried to hand the portrait back, but Allison wouldn’t take it.
“I knew how hard it would be to convince you. I knew you’d refuse to believe it. But you’re a practical woman, babe. You don’t put much stock in coincidence. Do what you always do and do the math. Put everything I’ve just told you together with that drawing and ask yourself what it means. What it can only mean.”
“I don’t want to hear any more of this. . . .”
“All these years you’ve been thinking God betrayed you, that your father died in spite of all your prayers because no one was listening. But He was listening. He did hear you. Adrian Edwards is the miracle your faith made possible, Flo, not his mother’s. The faith you used to have and can have again. Nothing else matters now.”
“You can’t be serious. You’re trying to say this is all about me? That I have the power to bring him back?”
“Yes.”
“Ally. . . .”
“I can’t explain it. I’m not even going to try. But what the hell difference should it make, whether we understand it or not? Adrian will be back with his parents. An old man won’t have the death of a child on his conscience. Who gives a damn if it makes any sense?”
“I do. What you’re talking about is impossible.”
“Impossible or not, I know it to be true. I know it with all my heart, Flo. I’ve never been so certain of anything in my life.”
“That’s enough, Ally.”
“You can’t believe it. All right, fine.” Allison got down on her knees at Flo’s feet. “Then believe me.” Tears began to fill her eyes but she wouldn’t give in to them. Not yet. “Just one more time.”
“No,” Flo shook her head. “No.” She tried to rush off but Allison took hold of her wrist, held it firm.
“Please. You’ve got to try. Try to remember how my word used to mean something to you. The trust you had in my judgment. All I had to do was say it and you believed it, simply because I believed it.”
Flo had loved her that much once, before doubt and failure had seeped in to drive them apart, and if Allison could still recall such a time, Flo could, too.
“I know that’s all gone now. I do. But you have to get it back. Just long enough to do this one last thing for me. Please, baby.”
“Let go of me, Ally.”
Allison held on.
“I can’t do what you’re asking me to do!” Flo wrenched her arm free.
“Yes. You can.” Allison held her hand out for Flo to take. “You must. He’s gone forever if you don’t.”
Flo didn’t move. Allison could see she couldn’t, caught between two disparate worlds: the one she’d found comfort in for the last twenty-five years and the one that had torn her to pieces before that. One demanded nothing of her, and the other everything she had.
Flo stood there, peering down on Allison, one foot rooted to the floor and the other turned to run, until Allison finally lowered her hand and began to pray.
Knowing her voice alone would not be enough.
SATURDAY
THIRTY-NINE
IT RAINED ALL the next day. Hard enough to loosen the shingles on roofs and make wading pools out of intersections. It came down at a sharp angle that pounded windows and rendered the sighted blind.
In the morning, for a fleeting moment, Milton Weisman thought about going out. But he knew better than to try. His daughters were babysitting him again and they would have pounced at his first move toward the door. They loved him so it was difficult to complain, but the two watched over him as if terrified of what he might do. For the life of him, Milton couldn’t figure out why.
He had his occasional mishap, certainly. What sixty-eight-year-old didn’t? He nicked a finger with a knife while making dinner. He bruised a knee, banging it on that damn table in the hall. But he’d never seriously injured himself, nor had a single accident in the car. The only person he had ever really hurt was their mother. His children had no reason to worry about him.
Milton Weisman was good.
Laura Carrillo spent the afternoon at home. Her fiancé Elliott Jeffries had built a fire in the fireplace and they snuggled on the living room couch before it, she working on her lesson plan for the week while he read a book, their legs occasionally intertwined. At moments like this, Laura’s mind always turned to her children—the ones she taught and those she planned to have someday—and she couldn’t help but smile. If someone had asked her, she would have said she was happy, though she still wasn’t sure what the word was supposed to mean.
Shortly after four p.m., Allison Hope was driving for her third Uber rider of the day. She needed the money. The motel room she would have to call home until she could make other arrangements was nowhere for a lovesick, unemployed writer to be sitting, drinking red wine and listening to the rain crash down to earth. Out on the road, the relentless downpour making her windshield a watercolor wash of gray, she had too much to think about to shed more than a few tears at a time over her estranged partner, Flo Davenport. Avoiding an accident, for one, and absorbing the wild stories her passengers seemed compelled to tell, for another. She still had the idea she could make a career out of her writing someday, Flo’s skepticism notwithstanding, but she needed a story worth telling. If she listened to the world closely enough, eventually one would find her and she would write it. That was what she prayed for every day, and that was what would happen. She was sure of it.
While Allison was driving her third Uber passenger of the day to his desired destination, Flo Davenport lay in the bedroom of the home they used to share, leafing through a book she hadn’t picked up in years. The house felt empty without Allison and Flo was restless in her absence. The book was one that had once belonged to Flo’s father, a reminder of his death to cancer she was constantly tempted to throw out but, for some reason, never could. As a child, she had possessed a copy of her own, and had loved it, but she’d had no use for the book since her father’s passing, which in her mind had made a lie of its every word. But today her father’s dog-eared copy had called her to its place in storage, and now it was in her hands, waiting to be read. Afraid and excited at the same time, she turned the pages, seeking a random place to start, and landed on a parable she remembered as one of her favorites: Luke 15:11.
And he said, a certain man had two sons. . . .
That evening, a melancholy Diane Edwards labored in her kitchen, fashioning a simple dinner for two. She never missed her son Adrian more than when she was cooking for only herself and her husband Michael, every course something Adrian would have likely rejected. If Michael felt the same, she wouldn’t know it. He had learned to put Adrian out of mind whenever necessary. He and Diane were trying to hold their marriage together, and on nights like this one, he insisted they behave and speak as they had in the beginning, like a childless couple in love who needed only each other to feel complete.
&nb
sp; Still, dicing up asparagus stalks that would have moved Adrian to groan, Diane thought about her son and smiled. He would be home tomorrow, after his sleepover at his Aunt Vicky’s was complete, and if the rain saw fit to stop, they would all go together as a family to Lakeridge Park.
It was Adrian’s favorite place in the world.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to express his deepest gratitude to the following people, whose generous contribution of time and expertise made this book possible:
Rabbi Zoe Klein
Temple Isaiah
Doselle Young
Honey DeRoy
This book was set in Adobe Jenson Pro, named after the fifteenth-
century French engraver, printer, and type designer, Nicholas Jenson.
His typefaces were strongly influenced by scripts employed by the Renaissance humanists, who were in turn inspired by what they had discovered on ancient Roman monuments.
This book was designed by Shannon Carter, Ian Creeger,
and Gregory Wolfe. It was published in hardcover, paperback,
and electronic formats by Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, Oregon.
In Things Unseen Page 28
