Kathy nodded in sympathy.
After several quiet moments, Corrina spoke again. “What made you stop by today?”
It took Kathy a few seconds to refocus. “I was wondering if the ornament store was going to be having their open house this year.”
Corrina tried her best to avoid rolling her eyes. “Yes, on the twelfth.”
Kathy smiled broadly. “That’s great. It came up during book club last night and I told everyone I’d check. I’m so glad they’re going to do it again this year.”
Kathy was a year older than Corrina and, like Corrina, she was an Oldham “lifer,” only leaving town to go to college. The ornament store had been holding its open house for more than twenty years, so there was little reason for Kathy or any of the members of her book club to doubt that it would happen again this year. In all likelihood, the topic hadn’t come up last night, or if it had, it came up in a completely different context.
Kathy wasn’t the first person to have done this since Monday. Several people Corrina had known for years had stopped by the bureau with questions that most Oldham residents could answer or simply didn’t need to ask. Corrina didn’t mind. While some of those who visited were simply being nosy, most of them genuinely cared. The majority of them, including Kathy, had been at the Halloween party and had seen Corrina paying one last tribute to her family before they sold the inn. Several of them had watched Corrina celebrate meeting Gardner, become engaged, get married, and experience the other highlights of their time together and they wanted to make sure she was going to get through this painful transition okay. It was the kind of thing you did when you lived in a town like this. While it felt the tiniest bit intrusive, it was also a reminder to Corrina that she had a place in Oldham, something she couldn’t necessarily say of her own home right now.
Corrina and Kathy talked for a few more minutes and then Kathy left, reaching across the counter to hug Corrina before she did. After she was gone, traffic picked up for nearly an hour, all of it actual visitors or locals with genuine questions that benefitted from the help of the bureau.
Not long after things quieted again, Maria entered. Corrina knew that her sister wasn’t going to pretend to be here for any reason other than checking in on her. They spoke nearly every day anyway, so there was no need for pretense.
“How are things going here?” Maria said, unzipping her jacket. Unlike Kathy, she was wearing something far more suited to November in Connecticut than February in Nome.
“Fine. Busy.”
“And how are you doing here?”
“I’m doing fine. The busy times are the best.”
Maria looked around. Other than George, the man sharing Corrina’s shift, there was no one in the office. “Want to grab a cup of coffee?”
Corrina got George’s okay and then left with Maria. They went down the block to an espresso bar that had opened in the last month. Corrina knew that the quality would be lost on Maria – for someone with generally good taste, she had no appreciation for fine coffee at all – but she was in the mood for a well-made cappuccino.
“So you’re really okay going back to work?” Maria said when they sat down.
“I’m really okay. It’s an adjustment, of course, but it’s not a bad adjustment. What’s the alternative, really? I’m not just going to sit in the house. I’ve heard that some people go on long trips after a spouse dies suddenly, but that just feels wrong.”
Maria seemed to consider this for a moment. “I guess you have a point. Everything just has to be feeling a little, I don’t know, tender right now, I would think.”
Corrina sipped her coffee and tried to put what she was experiencing into words. “I feel dislocated. It’s like someone came in the middle of the night and moved me to another country. That’s what it feels like at home, at least. At the bureau, everything is where it has always been. That’s kinda comforting.”
“That makes sense. Any progress with Ryan?”
“He grabbed a twenty-dollar bill out of my hand this morning. We had a millisecond of physical contact and exchanged a couple of sentences. I think we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”
Maria chuckled at Corrina’s sarcasm and warmed her hands over her cup.
Corrina continued. “To be honest, as hard as it is to deal with the suddenness of losing Gardner, I think the thing with Ryan might be worse. He’s a junior in high school. That means we’re going to be under the same roof for two more years. I’m not sure I can take two more years of this. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how he’s taken to just blowing me off.”
“Maybe things will get better as a little more time passes. It’s gotta be pretty tender for him, too.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself, but it feels like something more than that. I made the huge mistake of mentioning our doing something together for his birthday this morning. He couldn’t have been more dismissive.”
Maria took a moment with her coffee and then said, “That was always a big thing with him and Gardner, right?”
“Huge. Out of proportion to everything else in their relationship, really. It’s so tough to know how to play this. I didn’t want to simply ignore it, though Ryan essentially told me to do exactly that this morning. I also know that if I make too much of a big deal about this, he’s going to feel like I’m trying to buy his affection or replace his father, or any number of other things that could make things worse between us – if that’s even possible.”
“You should keep trying.”
Corrina found the swiftness of Maria’s response surprising. “Do you think so? I have to tell you, that wasn’t where I was going with it. I feel like he’s just going to keep batting me away.”
Maria shrugged. “Maybe he will, but maybe he needs you to do this. Like you said, the two of you are going to be living together for at least the next two years. If you don’t make every effort and things turn out badly, you’re going to wind up blaming yourself.”
Corrina hadn’t considered that. Was this one of those things that she would have understood instinctually if she’d been Ryan’s natural mother?
“You’re right, I guess.”
“I am. And it’s good for you, too.”
That was another thing that Corrina hadn’t considered. Was it important for her to continue to make an effort because doing so was part of her own recovery? So far, it hadn’t felt like much of a recovery at all, but maybe it was like having a really bad headache – you don’t know you are at the end of it until it is over.
Maybe continuing to pursue this would in fact be good for her.
Chapter Four
Corrina considered it a sign when she got an e-mail message that night listing upcoming concerts in the area. It turned out that Amazaque, an acoustic band that both she and Ryan admired, were going to be playing at a small hall in Providence the night of Ryan’s birthday. Tickets were available, and Corrina began to imagine a day that would pay homage to the birthday celebrations Ryan and Gardner had shared while being something they never would have done together. Gardner didn’t spend much time listening to music, and his interests began and ended with a narrow range of classic rock.
Corrina figured that she and Ryan could drive up to Providence mid-morning, maybe have lunch with Maria’s daughter Olivia, who was attending Brown, go to a museum or two, and then see the show. It was a Thursday night, and they’d probably get back to Oldham fairly late, but if Ryan wanted to sleep in on Friday, she’d be okay with that. Through everything that had been happening, Ryan had continued to get excellent grades, so she was sure his teachers would cut him a little slack.
Ryan didn’t come home that night until after she went to bed, and he ran out the door the next morning before she could catch up with him. That afternoon when she got back from the bureau, she brought her laptop into the living room so she could do some work and still be near the door
when Ryan arrived. He showed up around five thirty.
“Hey,” she said when he closed the door behind him.
Ryan pivoted quickly in her direction, obviously not expecting her to be there. “Hey. Why are you in here?”
“Change of scenery. How was your day?”
The question seemed to baffle him. He seemed thrown off by even the simplest conversational gambits. “Um, fine.”
Corrina tried to act casually, but she found herself getting nervous. “Guess who’s coming to the Fête Ballroom in Providence.”
“I don’t know . . . Michael Jackson?”
“Okay, that would be incredibly cool if a little creepy.” She added some brightness to her voice. “Amazaque is going to be there.”
Ryan’s posture relaxed a bit. “You like them, right?”
Corrina sat forward in her seat. “And you like them too, don’t you?”
Ryan shrugged. “Yeah, they’re pretty good. Nice harmonies.”
“So here’s the most interesting thing about this – they’re playing there next Thursday.”
It seemed to take Ryan a second to register this. Then he just nodded slowly.
Corrina decided to press forward. “Do you want to go see them?”
Again, Ryan was slow to respond. “I don’t think so. I hear they’re not that good live. I’m pretty sure I read that on a blog recently.”
“Really? They sound so good on their records.”
Ryan shrugged. “Computers. Listen, I’ve gotta get to my homework.”
With that, he turned and took the stairs two at a time.
Corrina found the experience deflating. She’d convinced herself that Ryan would respond to this positively. It seemed destined that they would do this together since the show was happening on his birthday and they were both fans of the band. What were the odds of something this perfect coming up on this specific date? If a concert like this wasn’t going to engage him, what would?
She spent the rest of the night feeling miserable about how things had turned out. Still, she resolved to try at least one more time. Maybe she was taking the wrong tack. Maybe the concert idea was too on the nose, too right, if such a thing were possible. Maybe she needed to surprise him with something completely out of character.
It took her a day to come up with an idea, inspired by a promotional e-mail sent to the bureau. It was Friday by this point, less than a week before Ryan’s birthday. Again, she stopped her stepson as he came home in the late afternoon.
“We’re going on a sleigh ride,” she said brightly.
“Huh?”
“We’re going on a sleigh ride. There’s a place in the Berkshires that organizes old-fashioned sleigh rides and I called them and set one up for us. Isn’t that cool?”
Ryan looked around the room as though he were searching for an escape route, and Corrina could feel herself getting tense.
“I kinda have plans tonight,” he said.
Corrina interpreted this as an opening. “I’m not talking about tonight. It’s for your birthday. It’s early in the season, so the place won’t be too crowded, especially on a Thursday.”
Ryan’s eyes narrowed, and then he looked down at the floor. When he looked back up at Corrina, it appeared as though he was going to take a swing at her. “Give it up, will you? I told you that I’m not celebrating this birthday. Why do you have this obsessive need to keep going on about this? Do you really think this is helping?”
“Ryan, this will help. It will help both of us to –”
“– It’s not going to help both of us do anything. Dad’s dead and you’re not making anything better by making this pathetic effort to fill in for him. Give it up, Corrina. I mean it.”
This time, he didn’t run up the stairs. Instead, he walked out of the house again.
Corrina sat on the couch and covered her face with her hands, feeling both humiliated and defeated. For several minutes, she couldn’t think of anything other than the furious look on Ryan’s face when he’d thrown those words at her.
She couldn’t keep putting herself through this. She’d absorbed too many blows over the past month. If she and Ryan were meant to be nothing more than roommates until he moved out, then she was just going to have to accept that. The fact that they had shared a household for the past few years and that they now shared a huge loss didn’t mean that they shared anything else. They’d been brought together by circumstance, and maybe circumstance was pulling them apart now.
Feeling a deep wave of melancholy, Corrina projected her thoughts forward. She imagined Ryan at twenty-five, fully engaged in his life. She could picture him in business casual clothing impressing clients or chatting up fascinated women. She could picture him surrounded by good friends during a night out or enjoying a beach weekend.
What she couldn’t see when she imagined Ryan’s future was how she fit anywhere into the picture.
Chapter Five
The gift was as neutral as she could make it without seeming thoughtless. The ironic thing was that it easily took her four times as long to find a present for Ryan’s birthday that seemed casual than it would have taken her to find one that would have seemed very personal. She decided to go with tech, choosing a case for his cellphone that doubled as a signal booster, which would be helpful because cell service in this area could be inconsistent. She’d never actually heard Ryan complain about it, but he spent enough time on his phone that he was likely to have faced the problem a few times, especially when he got close to the river. Corrina realized there was a good chance that Ryan would never use the case – for any number of reasons – but at least she’d tried . . . without seeming to have tried too much.
She had the present wrapped and waiting on the kitchen counter while she made coffee. Given their sharp exchange a few days earlier and the complete lack of communication since, Ryan was likely to race out the door without coming anywhere near the kitchen, but if she could hear his footsteps coming down the stairs, she might be able to intercept him and give it to him, even if it meant subjecting herself to more of his dismissiveness.
Corrina wasn’t entirely sure why she was so concerned with breaking through to her stepson. There had never been any constants in their relationship. Even when they were doing things together, like making dinner, the conversation would veer from effortless to clipped. There had always been long bouts of silence between them. If you’d have asked her about the state of her relationship with Ryan before Gardner’s death, she would have told you that she thought everything was fine. That’s all it ever really was though. Fine. As in one’s relationship with one’s dentist or dry cleaner. It was rarely more or less than that, so maybe it was unrealistic to think it would change now.
The stakes were higher now, though. They’d experienced a major loss, and how they dealt with that loss could very well dictate whatever future they had together and, for whatever reason, that future mattered to Corrina. If she let the silence run its course this time – a strategy that had proven successful in the past when they’d gone through periods where they weren’t communicating – it could conceivably last forever.
Fifteen minutes later, Ryan still hadn’t come down the stairs. This was unusual for him. He might come home unpredictably, but he never left unpredictably. He was out the door by 7:20 every morning, and it was now nearly 7:30. Was it possible that he’d snuck down the stairs and out the door, knowing that Corrina might want to acknowledge his birthday and going out of his way to avoid it? Corrina wouldn’t have put that past him, but her hearing was very good and she’d been listening for him. She would have heard him on the steps, even if he’d been tiptoeing. Of course, he could have gone out his window, but that would truly have been over the top.
Corrina gave it five more minutes and then decided to check in on him. She felt a little nervous going up the stairs, as though she were attempting to scale the
gate at a well-guarded mansion or talk her way into an exclusive nightclub. When she got to Ryan’s door, she stopped and listened. She couldn’t hear any movement. The window seemed increasingly like a possibility.
After standing in front of the door for thirty or so seconds, she knocked. Ten seconds later, she knocked again.
“Yeah?”
Ryan’s voice sounded thin.
“Are you okay in there? You’re late for school.”
Several seconds passed before he answered.
“I’m not so good. I think I have a fever.”
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah, that’s okay.”
Corrina opened the door and stepped into the room. It was like walking into someone else’s house; she’d been in here so infrequently that she could barely recognize it as part of her own home. Ryan was laying on his back, looking at her through partially open eyes, his face flushed. She stepped over to his bed and felt his forehead, surprising herself with the familiarity of the gesture; he was definitely warm.
“I’ll be right back with the thermometer.”
It turned out that he had a temperature of one hundred and two. Not dangerous, but enough to make him uncomfortable. No wonder he sounded so weak.
She put down the thermometer. “What are you feeling?”
“Achy everywhere. My head really hurts.”
“Nauseous?”
Ryan considered this for a moment. “Not really. Though I’m definitely not hungry, either.”
“I’ll go make you some tea.”
As she turned to leave the room, she realized she was still walking around with Ryan’s wrapped present. She turned back to his bed. “Hey, I got this for you.”
She put the box on his nightstand.
“Mind if I open it a little later?” he said.
“Open it whenever you want. I’d wish you a happy birthday, but maybe I’ll do that after your fever drops.”
Recovery Page 2
