Untethered

by Julie Lawson Timmer

  ALSO BY JULIE LAWSON TIMMER

  Five Days Left

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Julie Lawson Timmer

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  eBook ISBN: 9780698407862

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Timmer, Julie Lawson, author.

  Title: Untethered / Julie Lawson Timmer.

  Description: New York : G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2016.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016007261 | ISBN 9780399176272 (hardback)

  Subjects: LCSH: Families—Fiction. | Death—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Family Life. | FICTION / Literary. | FICTION / Contemporary Women.

  Classification: LCC PS3620.I524 U58 2016 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007261

  p. cm.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my parents

  CONTENTS

  Also by Julie Lawson Timmer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-one

  Chapter Forty-two

  Chapter Forty-three

  Chapter Forty-four

  Chapter Forty-five

  Chapter Forty-six

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  One

  Char slumped low in the pew, fretting about the casket. It took her brother, Will, a moment to realize what she was doing. Like everyone else, he had risen with the priest’s invitation and was waiting, a hand extended, to help her up and walk her to the social hall.

  “I need a minute,” she said.

  “Take all the time you need.” He sat and draped an arm across her shoulders. “No one’s going anywhere for a while.”

  Given the weather forecast—six inches of snow in the morning, changing to freezing rain around noon—the priest had made the call to proceed straight from the service to the reception. There would be no processional to the cemetery for the internment. It wasn’t worth the risk, having people out on the roads. The pallbearers had been instructed to leave the casket in the sanctuary for now.

  “I should have gone with darker wood,” Char said. “Bradley would be horrified at that thing.” They hadn’t noticed until two hours ago the casket they had chosen had a large wood knot on one side.

  “I feel there are other things about the scene that would bother him more,” Will said. “His being inside the casket, for example.”

  “Will, I’m serious.”

  “You can’t be, Charlotte. You can’t possibly think he’d be horrified about a tiny knot on the side of a coffin. Or that he’d even notice.”

  “It’s not tiny. And of course he would. He was a perfectionist. He was a quality control guy. He was—”

  “He was a man who loved hiking in the woods with his wife and daughter,” Will said. “And I’m certain he recognized that those woods were made up of trees. And that trees have knots.”

  “There were those black ones, remember?” Char said. “Made of synthetic . . . something. I bet they were perfect, all smooth dark paint. No flaws. I should’ve spent more time choosing—”

  “I bet they had fake knots swirled into the paint, to make them look real,” Will said. He drew a circle on her shoulder with his finger. “Somewhere in America, in some other church, in some other town, a widow is perseverating about how she regrets having chosen something so fake when she could have had natural wood. With a big, natural, gorgeous knot in it.”

  He pulled her to him, released her, and pulled her to him again, a gesture indicating the conversation was over. What he would like to do, she knew, was smack her on the head, or tell her to shut up already about the goddamn knot in the wood. They had been over it three times now. She patted his knee, thanking him for his patience.

  “I just . . .” She sighed. “I’m angry with myself for not checking every detail about it, you know? Like he would have done. He was so meticulous. About everything. If there was a knot on my casket, he’d have known about it, and approved it, in advance. He wouldn’t be staring at it during ‘Amazing Grace,’ wondering how it . . .” She raised her hands, palms up, then brought one to her mouth. “He never would have . . .” She gave up trying to explain her regret and instead cried it.

  “Okay,” Will whispered, kissing her temple. He leaned sideways and reached his hand past her, to her purse. Rooting through it, he found a tissue and pressed it into her hand.

  Char wiped her nose and slid lower in the pew, her head now resting against her brother’s rib cage. “I know I need to pull it together and get out there but I just can’t seem to—”

  The sanctuary doors opened behind them and Char felt Will turn. “Hey, Allie,” he called.

  Char bolted upright, wiped her nose with the tissue, ran the sleeve of her dress across her eyes, and forced her mouth into a smile. By then, the fifteen-year-old had reached the pew.

  “Allie!” Char said. “I hope you weren’t worried about us. I was”—she stumbled for an excuse—“I was, uh, talking to Uncle Will about his flight home tomorrow, and whether it’ll be canceled or not. You know, with the weather.” She pushed her purse to the floor and gestured to the expanse of wood on her right.

  Allie looked from Char to Will and back before plunking herself onto the pew and patting Char’s knee lightly. “You were staring at Dad’s casket.”

  “No,” Char said. �
�Not exactly. I was—”

  “And you were obsessing about that goddamn knot.”

  Will laughed. So did Allie, and Char gave her brother a grateful smile.

  The call had come on Monday night about the accident on US-127 North. Black ice. A fourteen-car pileup. Six ambulances. Three fatalities. Char and Allie had collapsed in tears on the couch and hadn’t moved, other than to use the bathroom, until Will flew in from South Carolina on Tuesday afternoon.

  If he hadn’t dragged them to their feet and ordered them to shower and change clothes, they might still be lying there, sobbing into each other’s necks. There had still been plenty of tears since his arrival. But thanks to him, there had been arrangements made, too. Friends and relatives called. Meals eaten. Hair washed and brushed. And, eventually, stories shared—and even jokes told—about the late Bradley Hawthorn.

  “Language, young lady,” Char whispered. It was Bradley’s line. He had been determined to have the only teenager in America who didn’t curse.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Allie said to the casket. She shifted closer and let her head drop onto Char’s shoulder.

  Char put an arm around the girl and kissed her temple. “You holding up okay?”

  Allie nodded.

  “I’m proud of you. Your dad would be, too.”

  “I know.”

  “We should really get out there,” Char said. “People won’t feel they can leave until they’ve spoken to the family, and with this weather, they shouldn’t wait too long.”

  Allie snuggled closer. “Five more minutes?”

  Char leaned her head against the girl’s. “Okay. But only five.”

  Will stretched his arm across his sister’s shoulders until his hand found his niece. He massaged her neck, then rested his palm there. Char heard the hum of the radiators along the wall of the sanctuary, Allie’s soft, even breathing, Will’s change jingling in his pocket as he shifted in the pew. Orange-yellow cones of light rose from the dozen small fixtures that illuminated the stained-glass windows around the perimeter of the sanctuary. The colors, softened by the glow, soothed.

  It was better this way, Char thought. Did a fifteen-year-old really need an internment as her final memory of her father? Was there any place bleaker, lonelier, than a Michigan cemetery in winter? She pictured black coats huddled around a dark rectangle in the frozen ground, dull stands of leafless trees offering no protection from the frigid wind and snow, the gray-white sky unyielding, unbroken in its desolateness. Better that their last moments with Bradley should be in the gently lit warmth of the sanctuary. Char pulled Allie closer and the girl sighed.

  A thud from behind startled them. Moments later, the double doors burst open, light and noise from the hallway roaring in. They turned, squinting, to find a woman stamping her boots hard, clumps of gray slush sliding onto the carpet. She rubbed her gloved hands together and shook the snow from her hair, then raised a hand to touch each of her curls back into place.

  “I missed it!” she shrieked, gazing around at the rows of empty pews. They flinched at the noise. “Damn! I’m so sorry, but the highways are skating rinks! And try getting a cab at Metro on a day like this! For a ride all the way out to Mount Pleasant!”

  She pounded her boots against the floor again and bent to sweep off a few last bits of snow that hadn’t shaken free. Setting her purse on a nearby pew, she withdrew a pair of peep-toe stilettos, which she placed in front of her. She pulled off her gloves and tucked them neatly into the purse before unbuttoning her coat and folding it over the back of the pew. Stepping out of her boots and into her shoes, she smoothed the fitted dress that didn’t attempt to reach her knees, and touched her curls again. With a smile big enough to show every one of her bleached teeth, she spread her arms wide. “Darling!”

  Allie rose. “Hi, Mom.”

  Two

  Well, aren’t you going to come and give your mother a hug?”

  Allie walked slowly up the aisle as her mother, Lindy—Bradley’s first wife—shook her extended arms with impatience but made no effort of her own to close the gap between them. When Allie finally reached her, Lindy pulled her into a long, tight hug. “My baby!”

  Char could see Lindy’s lips move against Allie’s ear, but couldn’t hear the words. Allie nodded a few times and raised a hand to wipe her eyes before breaking down in sobs. “Oh, my poor baby,” Lindy said, kissing her daughter’s hair.

  When Allie stopped crying, Char and Will rose and joined the others in the aisle. Lindy let her daughter go and stepped past her, taking Char’s hands in hers. “Charlotte!” She tilted her head, assessing, and apparently deciding hand-holding wasn’t enough, she dropped Char’s hands and hugged her. Char tried to pretend her sudden coughing fit was due to grief and not the overpowering smell of hair spray, coconut oil, and perfume.

  “You poor thing!” Lindy said, pulling her closer. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine,” Char said, struggling to free herself. She stepped back, beside her brother. “Well, not fine, exactly. But, you know.” She reached a hand toward Allie, who took it. “We’re coping. And what about you? I know things weren’t great between you two recently, but you had a long history.”

  “Oh, we did.” Lindy sighed. “We most certainly did. Long enough to create this beauty.” She lifted Allie’s hand out of Char’s and enclosed it in both of hers. She inspected the mass of entwined fingers for a long moment before letting go with one hand and touching her index finger to her daughter’s thumbnail. Allie’s polish was chipped. The girl snatched her hand away from her mother and put it behind her back.

  Lindy peered over Char’s shoulder at the casket, a palm pressed against her heart. “He was my first love. And I just can’t believe that . . . my Bradley . . .” Her hand moved from her chest and hovered in front of her mouth. “And to have to miss the service. You should have heard me in the back of the cab, telling the driver to hurry up—”

  “That’s why I asked you to come earlier,” Allie said. “It’s January. In Michigan. Anyone could have guessed—”

  “Mommy’s here now,” Lindy said, smiling thinly at her daughter and running a hand down the back of the girl’s hair. She rubbed the end of a blond strand between her finger and thumb, and frowned.

  Allie pulled her head away and her hair came loose from her mother’s grasp. “But you could have been here on time—”

  “And who is this handsome companion of yours, Charlotte?” Lindy asked, thrusting toward Will the hand that had been holding her daughter’s hair and was suddenly left, jobless, in midair.

  “This is my brother, Will,” Char said, as Will took Lindy’s hand. “Will, Lindy.”

  “This is ‘Uncle Will’? Nice to meet you.” She held on until he pulled away. “Allie tells me you were quite the savior this week.”

  “He certainly was,” Char said. She watched as Allie opened her mouth, then closed it. She would bet a thousand dollars the girl was about to say, “He flew in days ago.”

  Will waved them off and put a hand on Char’s back, nudging her up the aisle to the door. “We can exaggerate more at dinner tonight. Let’s go greet some guests.”

  “Give me one minute,” Lindy said, “and I’ll catch up with you.” She pointed to the casket. “I guess it would be crass to make a joke about finally being able to get in the last word.”

  “We’ve done our share of irreverent joking ourselves,” Char said. “I think he would have appreciated it.” She smiled at Lindy and turned to walk up the aisle, Allie and Will following.

  “Oh, and I’ll have to join you tomorrow night for dinner,” Lindy said. They stopped and turned, and Char heard Allie gasp. “I made plans for tonight with some people who have to get to the airport, to get back home. Assuming flights don’t get canceled. Most of us got out of this place years ago. You understand.” Lindy swept an arm around the sanctuary, but Char knew she was talking abou
t Mount Pleasant, not St. John’s Episcopal.

  “But Mom!” Allie said. “You just got here! And Uncle Will leaves tomorrow afternoon!”

  Will stepped closer to his niece. “It’s not a big deal, Allie,” he whispered. “We just met.”

  “I’ll be here until Wednesday,” Lindy said, giving Allie the same thin smile she had produced earlier, the one that seemed to say the discussion was over. “We’ll have dinner the other nights. And I assume I’ll see Uncle Will at the house tomorrow?”

  Will said, “Absolutely. My flight’s not till four.”

  “Perfect,” Lindy said.

  Allie stepped toward her mother. “But Mom—”

  Lindy turned and began walking toward the casket. “Oh, my Bradley!”

  “Mom!” Allie called.

  But Lindy kept walking, her sobs drowning out her daughter’s protests.

  Three

  Char stood in a corner of the social hall with Will, the refreshment table on one side, the doorway on the other.

  “Prime receiving-line real estate,” Will said. “People can grab a cup of coffee and a cookie, come pay their respects to the widow, and keep moving, out the doorway and straight on to the main exit.” He pointed. Inside the doorway sat a table for dirty dishes, a garbage can underneath. “It’s so efficient. Like an assembly line. Bradley would approve.”

  Char smiled. There was much more to Bradley than fastidiousness—he had a brilliant mind, a wonderfully dry sense of humor, and a bottomless well of devotion to his family—but they had all teased him mercilessly about his love of orderliness and efficiency. Although Char ribbed him about it as much as the others, she had found his meticulousness to be charming, and incredibly sexy. There was something so alluring to her about a man who cared about the small details in the world around him, wanted those details to be arranged in a certain way, and made sure it happened.

  Quality, Operational Excellence, Six Sigma, metrics, flawless execution of key processes: these weren’t mere words on a job description to Bradley, but a way of life. He viewed fourteen-hour days in the General Motors plant in Lansing as a privilege more than an obligation. Leave early (or even on time), when there were still manufacturing inefficiencies to discover and correct? Never!