by Sandra Lee
“Well, that’s fine. I’m sure you’ll be a help.” She turned to Jonathan. “I left a platter of meatballs and a salad on the counter. I’ll bring more tomorrow.”
Jonathan simply nodded as he disappeared into the embrace of a large, white-haired woman, leaving Grace and Lorraine to continue the conversation on their own.
No matter how old she got, Grace felt like a girl around her mother. There were so many unspoken things between them. Where or how to start? Now certainly wasn’t the time.
“Well, I guess I’ll see you at the funeral, then,” Lorraine said politely, breaking the silence and reaching into her purse for her car keys.
It was late when the last person left. Emma and Sara had gone to bed hours ago. Von had gone to his hotel, and his mother had gone up to the guest room. Claire and David left with the last friends, leaving Grace and Jonathan alone. It was strange being in Leeza’s house late at night without her. Grace had always liked Jonathan, but she realized just then that she’d never actually spent time alone with him. Leeza had always been present. He was clearly exhausted, so Grace offered him a mug of warm milk and added, “I’ll clean up. Why don’t you get some rest.”
“Thanks, Grace. I’m so grateful you, Emma, and Ken are here.” And with that he shuffled off to bed.
After Jonathan went upstairs, Grace wiped down the kitchen, put the food containers away, then washed and dried the dishes. The final dishes to be put away were the two mugs Leeza and Grace thought of as their talking mugs. Grace’s mug was red with pink dots and Leeza’s was pink with red stripes. Grace held one in each hand and felt a deep sadness wash over her. Leeza and Grace had only just drunk from them a day ago, but that would be the last time. Grace sighed and placed their favorite mugs gently back into the cupboard. The house fell quiet.
The morning of the funeral started with a Midwestern downpour that would last the day. “What a cliché,” Ken said under his breath as they joined the mourners at the graveside. The only nice thing about the rain was the bright bouquet of umbrellas hovering over the somber crowd. The cemetery had erected a large canopy, but it offered little protection against the blowing wind. It was Leeza’s wish that the funeral be held as soon as possible so that, she had said to Jonathan, everyone, especially Sara, could get on with life. As if life would ever be the same. Leeza had been the glue in so many people’s lives.
Leeza’s funeral. The words just didn’t make sense. Leeza, who had always been there, was just gone. How was it possible that Leeza, so full of life, of love, was in this white coffin? She doesn’t belong in there! Grace wanted to scream. There’s been a terrible mistake! Grace didn’t know how she would make it through the day. She gripped her umbrella so tightly her hand fell asleep. She had to pull herself together. She remembered what Leeza had said during their last talk about doing difficult things for Emma and Sara, and this was a doozy, but she tried to find strength now for Emma. Thank God Ken was there, holding her other arm.
The group bowed their heads for the final prayers, and Grace, Emma, and Ken joined the others in placing a single pink rose on Leeza’s casket. Jonathan held Sara in his arms, as she placed a tiny stuffed bear among the roses.
The burial site was beautiful, even in the rain, Grace thought. She would enjoy coming to visit here, to feel close to Leeza again. It made her wish that her father had a grave she could visit. Instead, she and Lorraine had stood, hand in hand, and scattered his ashes over his beloved Wolf River. She’d been thirteen when he died in a snowmobile accident. Grace wondered if Lorraine was remembering, too, as she looked at her across the circle of mourners and felt a pang of—what was it? Regret? Anger? Sadness? There were so many complicated feelings where her mother was concerned.
Directly next to Lorraine stood Von and his mother. David and Claire were nearby. And Brian, Grace’s ex, stood next to Emma. Brian had driven up from Chicago for the day. Once Brian, Grace, Leeza, Jonathan, and Ken had been nearly inseparable. Now everything was different. Their friendship had splintered into a million pieces. Grace glanced down and smiled to see Brian’s shoes. Even at the funeral he was sporting red laces. About ten years ago, he’d won a roulette jackpot while betting on red and wearing red shoelaces, and they’d been his lucky laces ever since. She looked at him. Brian’s olive skin, dark curly hair, and dark eyes were a stark contrast to Von’s pale and tall, angular looks. They had always been polar opposites, and neither had ever had much use for the other. However, Grace couldn’t help but thinking, they ironically had one thing in common—both men had bitterly disappointed her. In the end, she had ended up with Ken. Good old, trustworthy, always-there-for-her Ken. He held the umbrella over both of them steadily, as always. Funny how things had turned out.
Back at Leeza’s house, Grace and Ken had barely taken off their coats when Brian approached. “I have to get back to Chicago,” he said. “But I think Emma should come with me.”
“Well, that’s not happening,” Grace said, calmly hanging her coat on the makeshift coatrack Jonathan had set up on the porch. Inside, however, Grace was seething. She couldn’t believe Brian was bringing this up now, of all times. “Emma is going back to LA with me, where she has school.”
“I think she needs to be with her father for a while, and Emma agrees.”
Grace had no patience for this discussion right now. “Well, you should have thought about that when we were a family. You had plenty of chances to be with her then, but where were you? Don’t answer that, because we both know.” She banged her umbrella down. There was no point in recounting their years in Chicago now, nor was this the place. It angered her that Brian always did this—made her the bad one.
“You have so much on your plate right now,” Brian said. “And Emma wants to see her Chicago friends. Besides, it sounds like she could use a change from the LA scene, what with the accident and all.”
“Today is about Leeza; we’ll discuss this later.” Grace’s heart was pounding. But she wasn’t feeling so secure, not at all. What if Brian decided to take legal action, sued for custody? Worse, what if he was right? What if Emma was better off with him?
“Let me send her a ticket,” said Brian. “Once things are resolved with the school, it just makes sense for her to come to me for the summer.”
“Well, we’ll look into it,” Grace said, trying, for Leeza’s sake, to not escalate the situation.
Brian put his hand on her arm. “I don’t want to argue, Grace. Emma needs both of her parents.” He paused. “I’ve been thinking—why don’t you both come stay for the summer?”
He had to be kidding. “Brian, we can’t go backwards,” Grace said. And you blew it! she wanted to add, but she knew he knew exactly what she was thinking. If nothing else, after four years of dating and twelve years of marriage, Brian D’Angelo knew Grace Holm.
When Brian finally left, she found Ken talking to a man she didn’t recognize. Ken waved her over. “Grace, this is Tim Westerly from the bookstore in town.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Tim said, shaking her hand. “Leeza held her book club meetings at my shop, the Book Nook. We’ll miss her terribly.”
“Thank you,” Grace said, but she wasn’t paying attention. In a corner of the family room, Emma was in a large wing chair, with Sara asleep on her lap. Von was perched on the arm of the chair, leaning over and talking to Emma. She was showing him pictures, probably of Halo, on her phone. It was nice seeing Emma getting along with another adult, but that it was Von made Grace uneasy. She excused herself from Ken and Tim and made her way over to Emma and Von. “Emma, would you like to put Sara down for her nap?”
Emma looked like she might argue, but for once she actually agreed with one of Grace’s suggestions. She shut her phone and tenderly carried her goddaughter through the crowd and up the staircase. The sweet, loving Emma was indeed still inside the Goth Girl, and this gave Grace hope.
“Von, I’ve been wondering, did Leeza tell you to come when I was here?”
“Well, she
mentioned it.” Von looked at her.
“But not to me.”
“I think she meant for us to see each other again. Just not the way it happened. She knew you would leave, I think, if you knew I was coming. But Grace, high school was a long time ago. I am not that boy.”
“We’re different people now, Von. I know I am.” Von was gazing at her, and it was making her uneasy.
“I’d like to get to know this Grace,” Von said, caressing her arm. “And her daughter, Emma. I must leave tomorrow to go back to the factory. But why don’t you both come spend some time on my boat this summer? I am planning on a trip around the Greek Islands. I invited Leeza and Jonathan, but maybe now he will come with Sara.”
What was going on? First Brian, now Von. This was crazy. Grace felt like she might be the butt of some great joke. She collected herself. “What an amazing invitation, Von, but Emma needs to be grounded this summer,” she said. “And I have to work. Thank you, I’m sure it’s lovely, and I’d love to meet your fiancée,” she added pointedly.
“Of course you wouldn’t have heard. I was going to tell Leeza. I’ve broken off my engagement.”
Grace was so taken aback that she had not noticed Emma’s return. “Mom! Mom!” Emma tugged at her arm. “Mr. Vasser invited us on his boat! Can you believe?”
“I can believe we’re not going.”
“What! We’re not going? Well, I want to go. It sounds like fun.” Emma crossed her arms in exasperation and turned to Von. “You see what this is? Total irrationality. Well, I’m beggin’ you, don’t take no for an answer.”
Von laughed, and Grace felt flutters in her stomach as she looked at Von and her daughter standing together.
“I am not going back to that school. Ever. I hate it! I hate you!” Emma screamed, slamming the car door in Grace’s face.
“Emma, come back here this minute!” Grace yelled before slumping in the front seat next to Ken. “I spent an hour on the phone to get the school to lift the suspension due to emotional hardship, and now she won’t even go back. All she wants to do is go on Von’s yacht.”
“Let’s see,” said Ken. “Algebra class or a yacht in the Mediterranean, which would you choose? Duh! I seem to remember you skipping school to go bowling. At least Emma’s got some taste. You know what? After the past month, a trip would do the two of you good. Maybe you should go.”
“We’re not going.”
“Von’s not so bad. You used to like him. And how many single guys with yachts are floating around out there anyhow? Why not have some fun? Leeza would have been the first to agree.”
That much was true. Leeza had asked Von to come back when she’d thought Grace was going to be there. Leeza was the only person, aside from Grace, who knew she had unfinished business with Von. With Brian out of the picture, had Leeza thought Grace would fall for Von all over again and that Von, Grace, and Emma could become a happy family? Perhaps it was a good thing Von’s trip to New London had been short and there wasn’t time for anything other than family before he left again.
“Gracie,” Ken interrupted her thoughts, “Earth to Gracie—I know you are in the thrall of higher education, but the fact is, we have to deal with some logistics. Jonathan has asked me if you and I could stay on for a few weeks to help sort out Leeza’s things. And, of course, we must.”
“But Emma has school,” Grace said.
“Darling girl, we all know, nothing happens the last two weeks. Can’t she do it from here?”
“From New London? How?”
“Well, people telecommute. Even to school. Say, she lived in Alaska, and a glacier kept her from attending class.”
“Except she doesn’t.”
“Skype?”
“She’s one cut class away from being expelled. They’re not going to go for it.”
“Let’s think positive, Grace.”
An hour later, Grace and Ken were huddled over mugs of hot tea at the Book Nook, a cozy shop in a gently used Dutch Colonial style house that faced the town square. At the turn of the last century, a prominent family had probably lived there; now the building had been converted to a commercial space, with a small studio upstairs. Behind cheery blue-and-yellow checkerboard cotton curtains, the ground floor was occupied by rows of books, some comfy couches and chairs where customers were encouraged to flop down for a good read, and small tables and chairs scattered about in the children’s section. A wooden staircase, painted fire-engine red, led upstairs to the apartment of the proprietor, Tim Westerly. Ken and Tim had been seeing quite a bit of each other since meeting at the funeral. “You remember Tim from the wake. Leeza’s book club met here,” Ken said. “Trust me, Tim knows how to handle these academic issues—he has a PhD. He’ll help us brainstorm.”
Tim descended a ladder, balancing a box of books. A huge smile broke out across his face when he noticed that Ken was there. “I don’t suppose either of you is into fishing?” he said. “This stock isn’t moving. I might as well give it away.”
Tim certainly didn’t look like an academic, Grace thought, or like a typical resident of New London—at least not from her day. He looked more like an intellectual refugee from a punk rock band—skinny, pale, with spiky dark hair, skinny black jeans, horn-rimmed glasses, and tattoos of vines climbing down his arms from under the sleeves of his T-shirt to his wrists. “Ah, yes,” Grace thought, “Ken is right. Emma would indeed listen to Tim.”
“Well, it’s a matter of marketing, clearly,” said Ken, getting up to give Tim a kiss hello. “New London is one of the biggest fishing centers in the Midwest. Who’s going to see those fishing books tucked away in the middle of the F’s? Put them right in the window! Now, in exchange for that sage advice, let’s talk school.”
Two hours and one fisherman later, a plan was in place, and Ken was walking through the shop with Tim. They were talking and laughing as Ken made suggestions on how to spruce the place up. “Budget Bibliotheque,” as Ken called it. They worked well together, and Tim was taking avid notes on his iPad. Grace was going to see if the New London Middle School would agree to supervise Emma’s final exams. If only Emma could stay in New London, she would hopefully stay out of trouble, while Grace and Ken went back to LA and wrapped up the season on The Lost Ones. The school might refuse, Grace realized, but it was worth a try. A change might be good for Emma, Grace thought. And as many issues as she had with her mother, she knew from experience that Lorraine would keep an eagle eye on her granddaughter. Brian was begging for her to come to Chicago, but the social scene there, with all Emma’s old friends, was bound to be so distracting she would probably never make up all the work she needed to pass into high school. And Brian had certainly not proved himself to be reliable, at least not in Grace’s mind. His intentions were always good, but intentions weren’t enough when it came to Emma. In New London, she’d be able to focus, and she’d have her grandmother to watch over her. No matter what Grace felt toward Lorraine, this option made sense for now.
“Is the end of this couch taken?” Grace looked up to see a muscular, thirty-something man with curly brown hair and deep gray eyes dropping into the couch beside her. He was smudged with red paint and had sawdust in his hair. A tool belt hung around his waist and he chugged from a bottle of water.
“Storage units,” he said. “I’ve been installing storage units in the basement, in case you’re wondering. We’re moving the back stock down there.”
“I wasn’t, but thanks,” Grace said.
“Ken, you remember Mike from the other day, and Grace, I see you’ve met our resident carpenter, plumber, painter, and jack-of-all-trades,” said Tim. “Mike Lund, this is Grace Holm-D’Angelo.”
“I’ve been meaning to tell you, the red stairs are a stroke of genius,” said Ken.
Mike shrugged and wiped his hands on his shirt. “Thanks, leftover paint from the firehouse. The price was right. And, hey, Tim, when was the last time you checked the batteries on your smoke detectors? They were dead. I changed them, but you sh
ould get the hardwired kind.”
“The wiring in this place is so old, it’s from the Ice Age,” Tim shrugged. “It’s impossible to wire anything. Grace, can’t you tell?—Mike’s a volunteer fireman. Among other things. Lucky for me, he loves books. We made a deal.”
“One paint job for twenty copies of Last of the Mohicans.”
“What on earth would you do with twenty copies of Last of the Mohicans?” Grace asked.
“Give them to my class at the school.”
“Mike’s day job is teaching.”
“English. Eighth grade.”
“My daughter Emma is in eighth grade,” said Grace. “English, well—I can’t even go there. We’ve had some family issues, but if all goes well, she’ll be finishing up the year here. I’m hoping her school will send her final exams and let her take them here. But she’s cut classes and skipped school, and I’m not doing a good job of handling it…”
“Emma is Leeza’s goddaughter,” said Tim.
“Really? I gave a talk to her book club once. Lovely lady, I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
“Maybe there was,” thought Grace. She found herself asking Mike Lund if he could possibly find time to meet Emma and just talk to her.
“You know what?” Mike said. “I run a study group after school. The eighth-grade curriculum is pretty standard. If you meet with the head of the middle school and ask, maybe Emma could join us. And we can set up a proctor situation if they’d let her take her exams here. Sometimes, when there’s a family emergency, that’s allowed.”
Ken stood behind Mike, miming a big thumbs-up.
“Maybe we could discuss this over coffee sometime soon? If you’re free…”
