He was surprised to hear the shower turn off. She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said a quick shower.
“Jake?”
She was calling him from the bathroom. “Yeah?”
“I forgot I have no bath towels, either. But I did buy some of those today. There should be a shopping bag near the front door. Any chance you can bring it here?”
He retrieved the bag. The bathroom door was open a crack. Her hand snaked out. “I’m so disorganized with this move, I got in the shower without the new towels or any fresh clothing on hand. I had this one gross threadbare towel in here that I’ve been using since I got here, but I threw it in the laundry today, so now I’m stuck.”
She had only opened the door an inch, but there was a mirror behind her. Her shower had been so fast, there wasn’t any steam. The mirror was not fogged.
He could only see a slice of her, but it was a nice slice. The back of her body, from shoulder dipping down to lower back, then rounding out again to a small, pert ass fit for a pixie. Dr. Pixie.
He was going to hell. He averted his eyes and handed her the bag.
Five minutes later, she reappeared barefoot. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a Detroit Tigers T-shirt. Not the same one she had worn the day of the emergency birth.
He nodded at it. “You weren’t kidding about being a Tigers fan.”
“Nope. My grandma went to medical school at the University of Windsor, and she became a fan. I guess I got it from her. In fact, when I decided to leave Toronto and do a stint practicing somewhere else, one of the things that appealed about here is that it’s two hours from Detroit.” She snorted in a way that seemed self-deprecating. “I say that like I’m actually going to go to games.”
“Too busy?”
She started to answer but paused with a contemplative look on her face. “I was going to say yes, I’m kind of a workaholic, but I don’t actually know. This is supposed to be a new chapter.”
“You should make this a chapter that includes Tigers games.”
She smiled—really big, in a way that almost caused a hitch in his breath. Smiles like that also helped unravel the air of otherworldliness she sometimes had about her. They made her seem fully, viscerally human. “Yeah. I should.”
He handed her a glass of bourbon.
“Thanks. I hope you don’t like it on the rocks, because I don’t have any ice.” She spun slowly in place. “I don’t have anything, actually. As you have probably observed.” She was still smiling in a way that seemed at odds with her pronouncement.
He thought back to what she’d said at the salon, about looking at your life and all the crap in it and not recognizing it. He lifted his glass. “To new chapters.”
She clinked her glass against his and strolled over to the door and peered out. “But now, thanks to you, I do have a deck. Honestly, I can’t believe Harold was advertising that pile of junk as a deck.”
“Yeah, Harold Burgess isn’t known for…” He wasn’t sure how to put it.
“Being house-proud?”
He chuckled.
“I was really bummed about the deck situation. Like more bummed than was probably called for. But then you fixed it. But…” She did a slow pivot. “This place is a dump, isn’t it?” She kept turning. “I rented a dump.”
She had. It appeared Harold hadn’t treated his own home any better than his rental properties. The paint on the walls was peeling, and the cracked linoleum in the kitchen had to be forty years old if it was a day. To be fair, the house would probably look better if it wasn’t empty. But there was a general air of shabbiness everywhere.
“Did you not come to look at it?” Toronto was over a three-hour drive, which wasn’t nothing, but when it came to where you were going to live, he personally would have come to check things out.
“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “I just looked at the ad. It seemed fine in the little thumbnail pictures. And I was busy quitting my job and tearing through a moving to-do list.” She sighed and slid open the door. “But really, I took this place because Harold said you could hear the waves from the yard, and you can.” She cocked her head. “Almost.” She stuck her whole torso out the door. “Sometimes.”
“The lake is calm today.” He motioned for her to go out the rest of the way. “You want to go sit on your new deck?”
“I sure do.” The deck was a platform without a railing, so she sat on the edge of it like you’d sit on a step. “Sorry, I don’t have any chairs, either.” She laughed. “I’m such a loser.”
“Oh, come on.” He was pretty sure losers didn’t go to medical school.
“You should have seen me trying to paint my front desk at the clinic today.”
“I did see the aftermath. Did any of that paint actually get on the desk?” He stepped off the deck and leaned against a post in the yard that had probably once anchored a clothesline.
She snorted. “Not enough of it. It looks worse than when I started.”
He almost offered to stop in and take a look at it next week, but he stopped himself. Because why would he do that?
They sipped their drinks. It was a hot evening. Still, too. Not a trace of wind—that was why they couldn’t hear the lake at the moment. The wind was supposed to pick up after sunset, but until then, conditions were ideal for canoeing, which was what he would normally be doing right now. He would go when he got home and just make it a shorter outing.
“What would Jude be doing if he were here right now?”
He was startled by the question. Shocked, really. It made him physically jerk a little, and he sloshed some of his drink over the edge of his glass.
But when he sat with the question for a moment, he found he didn’t mind it. He didn’t mind it at all, which was not a familiar sensation, when it came to questions about Jude.
The difference, he was pretty sure, was that it was another good question, another about who Jude had been rather than what had happened to him.
“There’s a broken-down old lawn chair in the corner of the yard there.” She pointed to a chair that was more rust than metal. “You’re welcome to drag it over if you’re brave enough. Is your tetanus shot up to date? I can tell you that I did order some furniture today. So I’m not a total heathen. I just have this weird aversion to cluttering up my new life too fast, you know?”
He knew what she was doing. She thought he didn’t want to answer her question. But instead of asking it again, or making it into a big deal by apologizing for asking it in the first place—that was another thing people often did when he didn’t immediately answer their intrusive questions—she was changing the subject. Letting him off the hook.
He looked out at the yard. Paradoxically, the fact that she wasn’t demanding an answer made him want to give one. “Jude would be lying on the grass on his tummy, babbling. You know how they give you all these lectures about how tummy time is important for babies?” He turned to her, and she nodded. “They make it seem like it’s going to be this terrible thing you’re going to have to force on your kid, but not him. He loved it. I would stick him on his belly and crank up the music, and he’d lie there laughing and kicking his legs and rocking out.”
He huffed a shaky exhalation. That was the longest thing he’d said aloud about Jude in four years.
“What kind of music did he like?”
Another good question. A great question, actually. “Any kind. He wasn’t picky. Music instantly made him happy. His mom used to play him kid music, like Raffi and stuff?” She nodded. “Which was fine. Nothing against Raffi. Raffi’s a cool dude. But I was on this secret mission to get Jude to like the Beatles.”
“The Beatles are much better than Raffi.”
“Right? And I think it was working. His mom went back to work when he was three months old. I was doing the rest of the parental-leave year, so he spent more time with me than with her. I’d stick Sgt. Pepper on, and he’d get all squealy.”
“Ha! Suck it, Raffi!”
He broug
ht his glass to his lips only to find it empty. She noticed. “Let me get you a refill.”
He should decline. He should go home. He had canoeing plans.
But he didn’t want to go home. Because, to his utter shock, he wanted to keep talking about Jude. He headed for the door. “I’ll do it.”
“Bring the bottle out,” she called after him.
He stood in the kitchen for a moment, contemplating what was about to happen. Taking stock of the physical sensations in his body. He had words inside him, words where there were usually none, and they were lapping against the edges of his physical self, like waves against the shore at the cove.
The interesting thing was these weren’t the waves he was used to. In his experience, when the waves overtook him, they didn’t lap. They weren’t gentle. And they always won.
This was not that.
He was clumsy as he fumbled with the bourbon bottle, and he had to concentrate on his steps as he went back outside. This time, he sat down—next to her on the edge of the deck. His hand shook as he topped up her drink.
He waited for the waves—the bad ones—to crash over him. They did not. They just kept rhythmically but not punishingly lapping against his insides, seeking a way out. So he opened his mouth and said it.
“Jude died of the flu.”
She did not react with over-the-top dismay as most people did. She nodded grimly and took a sip of her drink. Then she hit him with another of those questions that were apparently peeling him back like the lid of a sardine tin. “Did you name him after the song ‘Hey Jude’?”
“Yeah,” he rasped. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. He was starting to get a headache. It had been threatening all day. He’d gotten a lot of sun and hadn’t drunk enough water. But a headache wasn’t the waves. A headache was endurable.
“It’s too bad life can’t be like that, huh?” she said. “Taking a sad song and making it better? It’s a nice thought.”
It turned out that not asking the nosy, entitled, salacious questions worked like truth serum. Before he could even process what he was doing, more words tumbled out of him. “It was November. I was planning to take him to get his flu shot. Dr. Baker had closed his practice that past summer. We were planning a trip to London to get Jude a fishing pole. He was old enough that he could sit up and sort of pay attention, and I wanted to take him out fishing before winter really hit. He was way too young to actually fish, of course, but I was going to get him one of those kid fishing poles and sort of hold it for him. So I thought I’d get the shot done when we went to London. We’d do the shot, and the shopping would be the reward. We were gonna go on the weekend, so my ex could come, too, make a day of it, and—” Fuck. His voice was cracking. “I shouldn’t have waited. I should have gotten it done in October.”
“You mentioned still being on the parental leave year.” Her voice was calm. “So this would have been his first flu shot, right?” He nodded. “Children between six months and five years who have never had a flu vaccine require a second dose, four weeks later, for the body to mount a proper immune response.”
He knew that. And he knew what she was actually saying: it wasn’t his fault. How many times had he heard that, in the early days? It wasn’t your fault. Everywhere he turned, someone was saying that. They’d said it preemptively, too, like they assumed he was twisted up with guilt. That was what he hated, the presumption. The gall of these people who thought they knew his mind. Who thought they knew God’s mind with their “Everything happens for a reason”s and their “It was his time”s.
It wasn’t your fault. Kerrie had said it, too. Said it so often that he’d started to wonder if she was talking to him or to herself.
“Right. But he got sick on November tenth and died on the thirteenth. If I’d gotten him the first dose right when the shot was available, there might have been time for a second dose.” He had done the macabre math in his head so many times.
“We never got our vaccines in at the hospital I worked at until late October,” she said quietly.
So, what? It probably wasn’t his fault? That didn’t help. It wasn’t even about fault. The fact was, he had been the adult. The parent. He had failed at the most basic of tasks: keeping his kid alive.
The waves were starting. The bad kind. How had he been foolish enough to think they wouldn’t get him in the end? They always did. He stood, took the elastic out of his hair, and dragged his fingers along his scalp. His headache was intensifying. “I should go. Thanks for the drink.” He congratulated himself on his calm delivery. Speech hadn’t deserted him yet, but he could tell by the thickening in his throat that it would soon. Usually he chose not to speak. This, this inability to speak that was part of what happened to him when the waves came, was different. It was a symptom of a kind of helplessness, though helplessness seemed way too benign a word. Paralysis was a better one, maybe.
“No problem,” she said, apparently oblivious to the storm that was winding up inside him. “Thanks for the deck. If you don’t mind seeing yourself out, I’m just going to stay out here on my amazing new deck and try to hear the waves.”
A sliver of something, something like satisfaction, worked its way into his chest, even as the white-noise cacophony of the waves started to overtake him. To think of her here listening to the lake on the deck he’d built, while he surrendered to the waves, brought him a certain kind of unfamiliar gratification.
“The wind’s going to pick up later.” He managed to get the words out. They were quiet but still audible. He gathered his hair back in a loose ponytail as he crossed the deck. “You’ll hear the lake tonight.” He wasn’t sure that last bit had come out loudly enough for her to hear. He was being overtaken. He might not make it all the way home. He might have to stop at Sandcastle Beach, and he hated it when he had to endure the waves in public. He hadn’t had to do that for at least a year. He had gotten good enough at recognizing the signs that usually he could get a head start, make it home so he could sit by the lake and let the actual waves deafen him. Wait for them to drown out the waves inside him.
He had one foot back in the house when she called after him. “I like your hair, Jake Ramsey.”
It was a silly thing to say, a throwaway line meant to echo their first meeting at the salon. But it startled him enough that it paused his descent sufficiently to allow him to say, “I like your hair, too, Doc.”
Chapter Five
Late Tuesday morning, Jake showed up at the clinic. Wynd had put some wind chimes—Wynd chimes?—on the door, and they heralded his arrival. Nora looked up from the computer at the reception desk, which she and Amber and Wynd were huddled around as they worked through a sample patient’s entry with the new charting and scheduling software.
Jake took a step back. Like maybe he hadn’t expected a crowd. And another step back when Parsnip, who a moment ago had been happily playing with a set of wooden blocks, started power-crawling in his direction.
But then, seeming to realize she was trying to make a break for it through the door he was holding open, he stepped all the way in and shut it behind him.
He looked at Nora. “I thought I would drop by and take a look at your painting situation.”
Parsnip, belatedly realizing that Jake had blocked her path to the open road, let out a wail and started pounding his legs. Jake’s eyes darted back and forth like he wasn’t sure what to do.
Nora stifled a laugh. As Wynd got up to peel her daughter off Jake’s lower extremities, she said, “Jake, I suspect you know Amber from the bar, but do you know Wynd Lewisohn?”
He nodded, and Wynd murmured greetings at Jake and soothing words at Parsnip.
“And this”—Nora got up—“is Wynd’s daughter.” Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. “Parsnip.”
Jake laughed. Or coughed. Or did some kind of combination of the two. Wynd didn’t hear it, though, because she was singing “The Calm Song” to Parsnip. As far as Nora could tell from her week of acquaintance wi
th Parsnip, “The Calm Song” did not work on her. Neither did “The Clean Up Song” or “The I’m Sorry Song.”
Parsnip had a mind of her own.
Nora liked Parsnip. She felt like at the ripe old age of one, Parsnip was already not the kind of girl who would grow up to let anyone tell her it was time to clean up if she wasn’t ready to clean up.
“Hey, Jake. Long time no see,” Amber said. She didn’t seem to expect Jake to answer, because she turned immediately to Nora. “Maybe this is a good time to run out for some lunch?”
“Yeah, why don’t you and Parsnip take a break, too, Wynd?”
When everyone was gone, she pointed to the front desk. “This is the painting situation.” Jake crouched and examined the botched paint job. “Which is not your job to fix, by the way. I’m going to take another run at it later this week.”
Ignoring her, he ran a hand over the vertical surface of the front of the desk, which was mottled because the paint had only selectively stuck. Little bits of the fake wood were showing through black blobs of paint. “What kind of primer did you use?”
“The kind the guy at Lakeside Hardware told me to use for wood laminate.”
“Ah. This is vinyl, though. You need a bonding primer.”
“I need what?”
He straightened. “I can do it. But maybe I should come back tonight. The fumes probably won’t be good for…Did you say her name was Parsnip?”
“Yep. And her sister is named Cicada.”
He snorted.
“Seriously, though, Jake, you can’t paint my front desk.” But why? Why couldn’t he? Who else was going to do it? Nora didn’t even know what bonding primer was.
He shrugged. “It’ll hardly take any time at all.”
“Okay, but I’ll help. And I’ll bring dinner. And you have to charge me.”
He didn’t agree to any of her conditions, but he didn’t reject them, either. He just said, “Five thirty?”
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