She tossed cold water at her face. It splashed the thought away, yet failed to make her more alert. Fortunately, the drive would be only fifteen minutes from here in Wilsonville to her job in Sherwood. Ten minutes shorter than her commute from home.
She had no obligation to work today—after all, she had taken vacation time for the trip—but the clinic remained her sanctuary. There was no better place to regain confidence from something at which she excelled. Of all days, Mondays offered ample opportunity, packed with pet mishaps from the weekend. Meanwhile for Jack, with no classes on a teacher in-service day, an afternoon with the grandparents would be a nice treat.
Patting her face with a hand towel, Audra winced at the tenderness of her forehead. A knot left from the plane. She smoothed her hair to cover the bruise, hoping to hide her emotions as easily, and headed for the backyard. On the way, she averted her eyes from the photos of Devon. They dappled the bookcases and end tables and walls, artifacts in a museum of memories.
She focused instead on her path through the house. Design wise, the English colonial was the perfect balance of luxury and practicality, as would be expected from the owner of a construction company. Robert had built the place for his wife, Meredith, soon after Devon was born. A good cure for the baby blues, Robert would say, explaining his motive behind the elaborate kitchen and elegant bathrooms. The walk-in closet off the master bedroom was half the size of Audra’s apartment.
Years ago, during a late night of holiday baking, after their spiked eggnog and laughter had dwindled, only then did Meredith tell Audra about her bout with depression. Though the comments were brief and slightly slurred, Audra gathered it was a much darker period than the family let on. She always wanted to find out more but chose not to pry. And now, with the widening gap in their relationship, she would probably never know.
“Well, I’d better get going,” she announced on the back deck, where a hammering noise drowned her out. Robert was on his knees, repairing a wobbly rail. She spoke louder: “I thought you were close to retirement. Don’t you have people to do that for you?”
He smiled, his silver-gray mustache trimmed as neatly as his hair. “Yeah, but then I’d have to pay them. And I’m way too cheap for that.”
“Ah, yes. I forgot that part.”
Robert rose in his carpenter pants and boots. Aside from a solid build, his rounded face and widened middle resembled a teddy bear from the county fair. “I imagine you’re looking for those two culprits.” He used his hammer to indicate the far corner of the yard.
Audra should have guessed where Meredith would take Jack on a sunny day. Already, just minutes after his arrival, his grandmother had him crouched down for a chat in her enormous garden. Lessons about nature—from roots and leaves to caterpillars and bees—were always appreciated. But inevitably she would move on to all the varieties of lilies Devon had given her, and the memories attached to each Mother’s Day on which he had planted them.
While the sentiment was a sweet one, Audra wished the woman would center on the future, rather than the past. At least where Jack was concerned.
“Hey, buddy!” Audra intervened. “Come on over and tell me good-bye.”
Jack came to his feet. He treaded over with his shoulders up and the bill of his baseball cap lowered. Raising his eyes, he said in a tight voice, “When’ll you be back?”
She recognized the true question, one she hadn’t detected in over a year: Would she ever be coming back?
The crushing doubts in his face tempted her to stay. Yet she heard the echo of a teacher’s voice, back when Jack started to cry during his first preschool drop-off: By proving that when you leave it’s not forever, you’ll build your child’s trust.
Audra knelt on the deck and cupped his baby-soft cheek. “I’ll just be gone for a few hours, then we’ll go get pizza together. Sound good?”
After a beat, he nodded sharply in a show of bravery. But when she leaned in for a hug, his tentative hold confirmed that the boy she missed—the ever-beaming Jack who found wonderment in a potato bug and made drum sets out of Cool Whip tubs—was a thousand miles away.
She smiled at him. “You’re going to have so much fun today. I want to hear all about it when I pick you up.”
He didn’t respond, and it was plain to see that his summary of the day would be no different, regardless of her efforts.
“You know what, Beanstalk?” Robert said. It was a nickname from Jack’s first growth spurt. “Just remembered, I got a surprise for ya. Picked up a full-bird colonel for your collection.”
“Wow,” Audra said, “that’s amazing.” Then she whispered to Jack, “I have no clue what a full-bird colonel is, but it sounds very cool. And twice as good as a half bird, for sure.”
Jack’s mouth lifted, a shadow of a smile.
Meredith removed her garden gloves while joining them. “Dear,” she said to Robert, “why don’t you take Jack inside to play, and I’ll throw some snacks together?”
“As you wish, milady.” He winked at Audra and ushered Jack in the direction of the “music room,” a space that produced no music. The piano there, passed down through generations, apparently hadn’t been played since Meredith’s years as a music teacher. Now it sat in a tomb of canvas, retired—like Meredith—and being edged out by a battlefield. Spanning the room, more than a hundred tiny army men held positions behind Tupperware bunkers and bushes of packaged moss, soon to be joined by a full-bird colonel.
“Thanks again for watching him,” Audra told her by way of parting.
But Meredith cleared her throat, expression pulled taut over high cheekbones. Her hair was sleek and short in the fashion of an eagle, with eyes just as penetrating. “Audra, before you go ...”
“Yes?”
“I was hoping we could talk for a minute.”
The intensity of her tone told Audra to sprint for the car. What usually followed were strong “suggestions” of putting Jack in a contact sport, or signing him up for an outdoors camp, or sending him to the Sunday school where Meredith volunteered. However well-intentioned, none of those ideas would keep Jack safe in a world that refused to be controlled.
“I really do need to head out,” Audra said, but Meredith persisted.
“How’s Jack been doing in school lately?”
The detour was surprising.
Then again, Meredith and her husband would soon be watching Jack on Audra’s workdays, same as they did last summer. The status of his academics would be helpful to his progress.
“He’s good overall. His reading’s still amazing, but he could use more practice in math. When school ends in a few weeks, I’ll drop him off with workbooks, so you can quiz him if you don’t mind.”
“That’s all fine. But how’s he doing with everything else? With other kids, I mean?”
“He’s great,” Audra lied. “Everything’s great.”
“The reason I ask is—well, I couldn’t help but wonder. Have kids at school been playing rough with him?”
Audra blinked. He had never mentioned it to her.
Not that he necessarily would these days.
“Why? Did he say something?”
“He didn’t. I just noticed, over in the garden ... I know he tends to bruise easily. But there are quite a few marks on his arms.”
The bruises. From the plane.
Audra had informed Meredith of the basics—that Jack’s “disruption” from anxiety had caused the pilots to turn back; that in the wake of 9-11, it didn’t take much to shake up the crew. Had it been up to Audra, she wouldn’t have shared even that much with her in-laws. But a Port of Portland authority had warned her that if the media pounced, local relatives were rarely spared.
She had little choice now but to elaborate.
“The plane ride might have been more ... involved than I mentioned. When Jack panicked, he actually tried to get off the plane, and some passengers had to hold him down.”
A crease divided Meredith’s brow. “But—that doesn�
�t fit him. He’s always been so agreeable.” Audra couldn’t argue with this. “Did you explain to him what to expect? About traveling on airplanes? Maybe that would’ve helped.”
With Meredith, every moment offered a teaching opportunity.
“He never seemed worried,” Audra said, “until it came time to board. You know how fascinated he’s always been with those model planes Robert gives him. I thought he’d love it.”
“Mmm,” Meredith said simply.
The woman was problem solving, but her remarks only magnified Audra’s insecurities of parenting without Devon. She felt her defenses rise.
“Doesn’t matter now anyway. They’re not going to let him fly for a long time.”
“Ooh. I suppose they wouldn’t.” Meredith tilted her head, thin eyebrow lifted. “So, does this mean you won’t be moving to Philadelphia? Since you missed your interview?” She didn’t do much to hide her enthusiasm.
“I’m still in the running,” Audra contended. “The owner was willing to set up a videoconference with me later this week.”
There were three other candidates being considered. Audra didn’t have to be told she’d lost her top rank, viewed now as a single mother whose “family emergencies” already interfered with her work. But she wasn’t up for dwelling on that.
“You know, Audra ...” Meredith blindly scraped dirt from the tips of her gloves. “I could be wrong, but maybe it wasn’t the flying part that Jack was anxious about.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just saying. Moving him cross-country could actually be the core of the problem. A new school, a new city with nobody he knows. He’s already changed homes once this year.”
Yes, and Meredith had made it abundantly clear how she felt about that too.
“After everything he’s been through,” she went on, “I would think some consistency would be good for him. Maybe he’d prefer to stay where he’s grown up, close to where his dad is.”
“His dad?” Audra was astonished by the tactic. She understood why Meredith would want her grandchild nearby, but that didn’t justify using Devon as an excuse. And what about Audra’s needs? Every restaurant, every street here contained a memory dense enough to smother her. How could she possibly be a good mother until she could breathe?
Meredith clarified, “Oh, of course, wherever Jack is, I know Devon’s there, watching over him. I just meant it might be important for Jack, especially as he gets older, to visit Devon’s grave, to feel closer—”
Audra couldn’t take anymore.
“Devon is gone. In every way. Gone.” Her voice trembled, gaining momentum. “He’s not hiding behind a headstone. Not floating around like fairy dust. And he sure isn’t sitting on a cloud somewhere with harps and wings.”
When Audra stopped, silence burned the air. The heat of it crawled up her arms, her neck. In contrast, utter shock blanched Meredith’s face, triggering Audra’s mind to replay her own words.
Though formed in truth, the outburst wasn’t meant for Meredith. It was for the doctor who had given Devon a clean bill of health. It was for herself, for chalking up Devon’s headaches to caffeine withdrawal and his increased forgetfulness to being “a typical guy.” It was for every condolence card that insisted she cling to her faith, because goodness knows that her husband—at barely thirty-four, with a family he loved and a great consultant job from home—wouldn’t die in a blink without reason. It had to be part of a “bigger plan.”
A plan that didn’t exist.
Vision clouded by tears, Audra swiped at her eyes. Meredith’s gaze had fallen to the garden. From the pain in her features, an inescapable truth struck back.
Sure, Audra had lost her husband and Jack had lost his father; but Meredith and Robert had lost their only child. For any parent, was anything more devastating?
“I’m so sorry, Meredith. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to hurt you....”
Slowly Meredith looked at her. From the start, she and Robert had welcomed Audra without question or condition. They were the picture-perfect Christmas cards, the movie nights and cribbage games. They were everything her own parents weren’t.
I’ve missed you. The declaration gathered on Audra’s tongue. But before it could find a voice, Meredith turned and left.
4
All thoughts of Isaak should have been left at that theater, cast off like an old ticket stub. Yet in the full day since their parting, Vivian could think of nothing else.
“No, no, Miss James,” Mr. Harrington said in his proper English. “I requested the brown peep toes, not the black.” Low on his stool, he handed the pair back, and she confirmed yet another error.
“Good grief, I apologize.”
The owner of the shoe store was typically as gentle as his dove-gray beard, yet his impatience began to show. “Please do hurry.”
“Right away.” She proffered a smile for the seated customer.
The robust woman looked on in disapproval, flushed from straining, by choice, to sample shoes too small. Her sons, young twins in matching jumpers, sparred in the corner with metal shoehorns.
Vivian was halfway to the back room when she heard the woman cluck, “American girls. They are simply not raised to listen.” Then tersely, “Matty. Natty. Stop that horseplay at once.”
During moments like this, protests from Vivian’s mother rushed to mind. The daughter of a U.S. diplomat has no business working at all, let alone to service the feet of strangers.
The implication of being paid to tickle and massage British toes would verge on amusing if not for the added point: How do you expect to find a good husband this way? I did not raise my only child to become a spinster. Her inflection conveyed a fatal disease, as though her own marriage encapsulated sheer bliss.
Vivian knew better.
She had also known, when offered the job at the store, to bypass her mother in favor of her father. Perpetually distracted, he had mumbled his consent. In doing so, he had spared her from torturous hours of knitting and playing bridge with her mother’s gossipy socialites. And most important, Vivian’s personal savings had continued to flourish. Stashed in an old coffee tin since early girlhood, each dollar and pound was a step toward her dream. Traveling. Self-reliance. Freedom.
That wasn’t to say she opposed marriage entirely-only the dreary, passionless type. She refused to be a caged and clipped housewife, with love deemed an afterthought. She would rather be alone forever than deprived of her independence.
Focusing on that divine word, she approached the storeroom’s mustard-colored curtains. Split down the middle, they draped to the ancient wooden floor. The scents of leather and black polish welcomed her entry. A single bulb threw dim light over the ceiling-high shelves.
She set aside the mistaken pair and scanned the array of choices, grouped by color and size. What a poor habit she had made today of placing shoes in the wrong slots. All because of foolishness over a boy.
At last, she spotted the chocolate-brown peep toes. They were up on a high shelf, but retrievable without the rickety stepstool. She rose onto the balls of her feet, stretching her arm. In her haste, her fingertips pushed the shoes away. She needed to concentrate, to be patient, if she wanted her life to improve, much less her workday.
“I can get those for you,” came the voice.
Her muscles petrified, rigid as stone.
Isaak.
For a second that seemed an hour, he reached over her from behind. Her head grew faint from the faded aroma of cigar on his clothes. His chest pressed against her shoulder blades. The warmth of his skin seeped through her flimsy cotton blouse, the drape of her skirt.
“There you go,” he said. That maddening rasp.
She fended off a shudder, and realized her eyes had closed. Opening them, she swung around and backed away, imprisoned by stacks of shelves. He peered at her from beneath the plaid bill of his flat cap. His black jacket hung unzipped.
How had he managed to sneak in here?
Before she could ask, he motioned toward the curtain. “Door was open from the alley.”
The side door was used for supply deliveries. And apparently, stray tomcats. “How fitting.”
“Vivian?” Mr. Harrington called out.
The customer.
The shoes.
She swiped them from Isaak. They were larger than requested, but she would present them regardless. It was silly, she had learned, to pretend something fit when it didn’t.
“One minute, sir,” she replied, then cut to Isaak in a hush. “You have to go.”
She attempted to stride past him, but his arm shot to the side. “You owe me an explanation.”
“I don’t owe you a thing. Now, let me pass, or-or I’ll have Mr. Harrington escort you out.”
Isaak drew his head back, emitting the same edge of mischief that had first lured her in. “Even though you’d left the back door unlocked for me? So we could mingle here in the closet?”
“I did no such-” She caught her raised volume. Was he trying to get her fired? “He’ll never believe you.”
Isaak folded his arms and leaned against the doorway, a bald dare.
At his outright arrogance, blood sped through her veins, spiking her temperature. “I can’t do this now.”
“And why is that?”
Didn’t he see she was at work? Or was it that he viewed a woman’s occupation as a piddly hobby?
“If you must know, I have inventory to take, supplies to stock, and a customer who, despite her toes being overstuffed sausages, is convinced she wears the same size as the Queen. Therefore, as I said, now is not a good time.” She pinned him with a glare, pressing him to relent.
Neither of them budged.
Finally he said, “A simple explanation. Please, Vivian. Give me that and I’ll leave you alone.” His tone suddenly shifted, tender as the memory of his hand on her skin, of his lips trailing the side of her neck.
She swatted away the thought, battled back with the truth-at least in basic form.
The Pieces We Keep Page 3
