Given Alex’s reticence, it had been a stroke of brilliance on Melissa’s part to suggest Jack call his sister, Meg thought now, soaping her face with the doll-size bar of motel soap. The siblings’ conversation had been sweet, Melissa told her right after. (Of course, her sister would find a way to listen in.) Alex sounded exhausted but OK, given all she’d been through. She had not asked for her parents.
“Give her time,” Melissa advised. “She loves you. You guys will get through this.”
Shana had begged to talk to Alex after Jack, Melissa said. Thinking it odd Shana stuck around after confessing and then making such a scene, Meg was grateful her sister hadn’t allowed it. In her soul-baring mood, Shana might have unloaded more than Alex could handle right now. There’d be time for confessions later—many sorts of confessions, Meg realized, wiping her face with a threadbare face towel.
They’d checked into the Washington Pines Motel way past midnight, Carl having ceded his reservation to them. The place was less a motel than a cluster of aging log cabins strung around a tiny fenced-in swimming pool. From the configuration of rigs edging the parking lot, Washington Pines seemed to be a favorite of truckers—and transporters, apparently.
She had wrestled with the decision to let Alex stay with Carl overnight. What must Alex have thought of that—their further abandoning her—after all she’d been through? Meg wondered as she headed into the bedroom, where an ancient heater rasped its tepid blend of nicotine and mildew. This would be one more thing to apologize for. They would have reached Alex in another hour or so of driving. But one look at Jacob in the visor light convinced her. She didn’t want Alex to see her father like this, with his puffy, reddened eyes and disheveled hair. She had said as much to Jacob, which was what finally wore him down.
Even now, combing his hair in the dresser mirror, Jacob swore he was fine; Meg thought his hands trembled. Maybe she was imagining it. Would it be like this from now on—inspecting his every gesture, parsing every word out of his mouth for slurring? How many times had he walked into their home under the influence without her knowing? At least by stopping here, she could watch him, make sure he sobered up overnight.
Except that now he was threatening to go to Swiftriver tonight without her.
“I want to see her as much as you do,” Meg said. “But it’s better this way. You promised.”
When Carl had called back with Alex safely in the car, Meg had begged to speak to her. Carl had rather awkwardly told her that Alex didn’t feel like talking.
Jacob had grabbed Meg’s cell. “Please. Tell her we just need to hear her voice.”
A moment later, with Jacob holding the phone between them, Meg wept again at the sound of Alex’s exhausted voice.
“Daddy? It’s me.”
“Hello, me.” Jacob’s signature response to the kids when they called. It usually made them smile, no matter how old they were. Alex didn’t sound like she was smiling. “How are you, kiddo?”
“Tired. Really tired.”
“I bet. Long day.”
“Yeah.” A long, raggedy sigh. “I just want to sleep.”
“Then sleep. We’re here. You know we love you, right?”
“Yup.” Tangled in her yawn, it came out more like yawp.
“Call if you need us, Al. See you tomorrow.”
Meeting Jacob’s gaze now in the motel mirror, Meg pointed her hairbrush at him. “You promised,” she said again.
“I didn’t promise anything.” Jacob plopped onto the twin bed by the window, sending the mattress skidding in a crackle of plastic. “You’re just trying to punish me.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? Isn’t this whole thing, sending Alex away, about sticking it to me? Making me pay for my sins, the separation? You couldn’t stand the fact I finally did something for myself after all these years.”
“Sorry ‘all these years’ were such a sacrifice for you. That we were such a burden. All that time, I thought we were building a family.”
“We were. We are. We’ll still be a family.”
“You’re so full of yourself, Jacob. Today wasn’t about you. I wasn’t even thinking—”
“Obviously.”
“I was taking care of our daughter. But don’t worry. Once we get home, you can go back to your trees, and your band, and your . . .”
“My what? I’ve told you a million times. There’s no one else.”
“I was going to say ‘your pills.’”
Jacob’s head dropped. Meg knew it was a vile, vindictive thing to say, but she couldn’t help herself. She leaned against the imitation oak dresser. “I told you back in the car. Alex has enough going on without seeing you in this state.”
“That’s it.” Jacob slapped his knees and stood. “Give me the keys, Meg. I’m going.”
Meg crossed her arms, keys digging into her armpit. “If you go, I’ll tell Alex everything.”
“You just said how overloaded she is. I promised I’d tell her when I’m ready.”
“Well, you won’t have to.”
He squinted, gauging her intentions. “How do you think Alex will feel about you wrongly accusing her? That you sent her up here based on a lie?”
“Your lie,” Meg flashed.
Jacob continued to eye her. Whether it was Meg’s threat or his own conscience that swayed him, she sensed him wavering. He sat back down and yanked off a muddy boot, letting it drop to the floor with a thud. “You win. Happy?” Fully dressed, he slid under the covers and turned away from her.
Meg watched him for a while from an Adirondack chair, waiting for the inevitable twitch signaling he was on the verge of sleep. When they were together, she couldn’t fall asleep until she felt Jacob’s half start beside her. Many times over the last few months Meg had wondered if they would ever sleep in the same room again. In her wildest dreams, she never would have imagined a circa-1970s log cabin with faux fireplace, frayed rugs and wispy-thin towels as the setting for their reunion.
“You don’t have to guard me,” Jacob called in the dark. “Get some sleep.”
She knew she wouldn’t sleep, determined as she was to keep an eye on Jacob and consumed with her own guilt. Meg realized she’d given scant thought to how she would justify the transport to Alex, how she would explain that she really had believed in The Birches’ potential. Instead of the empowering step forward Meg had envisioned, Alex’s first exposure to the White Mountains had been nothing short of a nightmare.
Meg had absolutely no idea where they would go from here.
It was chilly in the chair. Still in her scrubs, Meg slipped under the threadbare quilt on her bed. Rolling onto her back, she couldn’t banish the nagging worry that, despite Carl’s presence, Alex might try to flee again. Or worse. The Alex she’d sent off to New Hampshire this morning wasn’t one to follow rules. What Shana told her in Alex’s room tonight had helped her to understand why. Meg turned toward the other bed.
“Jacob, what if she does try to hurt herself?” she whispered.
“She won’t. She was talking about Happy Corner. Let it go.”
“I’m trying. It’s hard.” She couldn’t let those messages go, any more than she could erase the events of the past year that had transformed their family or transport them back in time to a happier, safer place. This time last year, she was buying congratulatory bouquets for the Annie cast. Six months later, she was choosing a floral arrangement for Cass’s service. “Jacob?”
His annoyed sigh rose in the dark. “Yeah?”
“Remember when she was born?”
A beat. “’Course. One of the best days of my life.”
“Mine, too.”
A crinkle of plastic signaled Jacob’s shifting. “For a nurse, you sure gave me a hard time about going to the hospital.”
“I just wanted to watch the end of the show.”
“You were scared. Admit it.”
The night Alex was born, with contractions easily fifteen minutes apart and her hospi
tal bag parked by the front door, Meg sat on the couch, glued to Jeopardy!, Jacob beside her holding her hand. “Shouldn’t we go now?” he asked.
“I’m good, honey. I know when to go.”
When Meg bent over double for the entire commercial leading into Double Jeopardy, he had jumped up. “That’s it. Let’s go, Mommy.” Jacob clicked off the television and pulled her gently to her feet.
Many hours later, still damp from the exertion of the birth and cradling their as-yet-unnamed daughter, Meg giggled suddenly. “I wonder who won.”
“Won what?” Jacob was staring at their baby, already in love.
Meg sniffed the baby’s head. “You know. Double Jeopardy.”
“I think we should focus on naming our child.”
“What do you think of Alexandra?” Meg snuggled the swaddled newborn. “We can call her Alex.”
“For Alex Trebek?” Jacob joked.
“Of course not. Alexandra means ‘defender of mankind.’”
“That’s a lot to live up to.”
“She will,” Meg said, handing Alex to her father. “She’s ours.”
All at once, Meg shivered, despite the motel room heater’s valiant cough. How much mankind had Alex defended herself against today, she wondered. “Jacob?”
More plasticky rustling. “What now?” His voice was coarse with fatigue.
“You’re right. I was scared.”
He was silent so long she assumed he had fallen asleep. She might as well try to do the same, she decided, folding the flat pillow in two when he said her name.
“What?” she asked, propping herself on her elbow.
“Remember back in the car, when you found the pills . . . ?”
“Yeah.” She sat up, pillow in her lap. “What about it?”
“I lied to you, Meg.”
CARL
It was nearly midnight by the time they pulled into Swiftriver, where a rosy halo of ammunition ringed the general store’s porch.
“They’re Cam’s,” Iris said. “Got them from a catalog. Lights from authentic fired shells. Go figure.”
Inside, Cam had restored order, chaos from the earlier command post all but erased. With Alex steadfastly refusing to see her parents, and everyone too exhausted to argue further, Carl had accepted Iris’s offer to spend the night at Swiftriver. It would be a neutral spot for the family’s reunion in the morning, she said. Carl fully expected the parents to veto the arrangement, but Meg gave in surprisingly quickly.
Iris said she would make up a couch for Carl; he knew he would spend the night outside Alex’s bedroom door.
After Mia led a silent Alex upstairs, Iris swabbed at Swiftriver’s already spotless counter with a dish towel. Once he checked on Carolyn’s condition, which hadn’t changed, and alerted the motel to the reservation change, Carl found himself at loose ends. Business-wise, Begin Again had some transports pending that he should firm up. He started a call, then realized the hour and set the phone down. Anyway, he didn’t have it in him at that moment to cheerlead the parents through the exercise.
Once word of this accident got out, he wasn’t sure parents would even work with him.
Having checked on Alex upstairs and finding the two young women talking in Mia’s room, Carl came back down and rejoined Iris, who was filling stainless-steel coffee urns for the morning. The generator’s steady hum was broken by the staccato jangle of silverware poured into plastic bins, the clink of ceramic mugs being stacked three high behind the counter.
Her preparations soothed; Carl was all about rituals and order. The day had shattered him. He was beyond exhausted, on empty, emotionally and physically, numb as the frozen branches scraping the general store’s windows.
He allowed himself to be distracted by the mountain landscape on the wall. In the painting, a man and woman clasped a child’s hands, leading her up the mountain, its snowcapped summit a pearl smudge in the distance. The woman was unmistakably Iris, in a long skirt and black ankle boots not unlike her outfit now, bracelets stacked up each wrist. Unlike most women he encountered in these parts, Iris wasn’t swathed in polar fleece. In fact, the Swiftriver storekeeper looked more like a New Yorker exiting a subway.
Iris caught him looking at the painting. “The view from Swiftriver’s porch. As Mia sees it, anyway.” She laughed, bangles colliding when she pushed them up her arm. “I don’t know what she was thinking. I might be a city girl at heart, but I’d never dress like that for a hike.”
She traced the outline of the child in the painting. “When I met her at Hope Haven, I had no idea how much she’d already been through in her young life.”
“Is that why Mia ended up there?”
Iris nodded. Eyes misting, she described the night Mia’s birth father, in a cocaine-fueled rage, sent her mother hurtling down the basement stairs, where she cracked her head against a cement wall. Crouched in a corner, Mia called 9-1-1, whispering into the phone, terrified he’d come after her.
The paramedics arrived too late to save the woman. The father was arrested and charged; juvenile services placed Mia at Hope Haven, where Iris often volunteered.
No wonder mother and daughter were so invested in the shelter—and why Mia was moved to take Alex there. “Mia’s very lucky you were there for her.”
Iris smiled and wiped her eyes. The two connected instantly, she said. “It was awful, but when we were waiting to adopt her, I prayed no family would come forward,” she confessed.
“What happened to the father?”
“The man had no soul.” Iris rubbed her arms, recalling the father in the courtroom in his orange prison jumpsuit, tattooed arms documenting the gruesome tale of his life. The judge put him away for life, she said. “He’s never once tried to contact her. I thank God for that, at least.” Her eyes went to the wall of pictures. “Painting saved Mia, you know.”
“Sounds like you saved her.”
“You’re very kind. But it was actually her court-appointed therapist who suggested art therapy for Mia. To help her work through her trauma. That’s when we saw how talented Mia was.”
“Mia’s certainly gifted,” he said. “You gave her a very different life than she might have had.”
Iris blushed. “And she us. We feel blessed. And Carl, your work. I imagine you’ve changed a few lives as well.”
“Some definitely changed today.” He spun his stool away from her.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .” She hung the dish towel over the neck of the faucet and came around. “What about you? Anybody special in your life?”
There was once. Iris’s question touched a raw place within. When he eventually returned home, his Pearl Street apartment would be empty, as always. He struggled to make his tone neutral. “Never found someone who could put up with my schedule.”
Nodding, Iris gathered her hair high over her head. “It’s hard to pin your life to somebody else’s dream. Look at me. I never pictured myself in a place like this.” He glimpsed her slim neck before she released her hair, curls spilling over her shoulders again. She leaned on the spotless counter and sighed. “I’m about done here, Carl. Listen. Cam’s been saving some good Scotch upstairs. I’m not much of a drinker, but I could use one tonight. Care to join me?”
There it was: the temptation that had taunted him all day, from his hike along the Kanc to the bar sightings in Lincoln. He licked his lips. At Trinity, singing provided the jolt, and Martin kept the ginger ale flowing, detouring congratulatory drinks sent his way. And he could always find a meeting. They were his backbone. He’d planned to hit the rooms in Woodstock tonight—another anonymous church hall, dinner with Murphy after.
All that had changed. Outside, the world was encased in a steely frost. Carl felt off-kilter. He’d lost control today—of his charge, of his partner, maybe even of his business. From the rear of the general store, the generator surged and moaned, lights flickered, then flared.
Just one. Who would blame him?
Iris disappeared upstairs
. He heard heavy footsteps overhead. He made himself a deal: if Cam came back with her, he’d refuse the drink. He rubbed his face, palms cracked and scratchy against his skin. On the counter, water beaded from a pot of defrosting chili into the growing puddle beneath it.
Iris returned alone. She set the bottle in front of Carl and grabbed two crystal tumblers from her nook, peeling off price tags and wiping them on her apron. She filled each halfway and handed him one, clinking her glass against his. “To your health, Carl. And to the girl’s.”
And to Carolyn, he added silently. The Scotch splashed inside his glass like amber waves. He brought the tumbler to his mouth. The smoky peat mingled with malt under his nose, the tang catching in his throat. He tilted the glass, imagining the liquid spreading over his tongue like honey, the burn in his throat an old friend, the heat in his gut.
Like coming home.
ALEX
Figures Jack’s first question would be about the moose, Alex thought, watching Mia make up the trundle bed in her bedroom, where the walls were papered with purple drawings of dragons and butterflies.
“You saw one, Al? Lucky,” Jack had breathed when she reluctantly took Carl’s phone in the car.
Then someone shushed him—Aunt Melissa?—and he moved to a new topic. Even on a normal day, her brother changed subjects so fast it was like he was flipping channels with an internal remote. “Al, don’t be mad. I showed Mom your box.”
The notes. Jack so couldn’t keep a secret. She was actually surprised he’d held out this long. “It’s OK, bud.”
“And I played Dad’s guitar. Mom caught me.”
Better you than me. “Cool, Jack.” She’d faced the car window for a shred of privacy and lowered her voice. “So, what did Mom say?”
“That she’d take my video games if I used it again.”
Deliver Her: A Novel Page 23
