Ella felt so tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of things not going their way. She slumped back against him, letting him take the weight of her bones and her worries. His arms encircled her and he kissed her head and then her temple and then she slid around to face him and TJ kissed her mouth with what felt like a kind of surrender all its own.
“Is it so impossible?” she whispered into the space between them. “I mean, if we try to stop thinking of them as problems, can’t they go away?”
TJ exhaled, holding her hands tightly, and she felt one of the walls going back up between them.
“It’s not that simple,” he said.
“I know I can be a bitch. I know it’s unfair.”
TJ frowned. “It’s not that. We’re both at fault. But no matter how happy I am that you came home and how much I’ve wished we could talk to each other without all the tension and bullshit…”
He glanced past her at the open kitchen doorway, looking wary and troubled. Ella turned to see if they were being watched, if Grace had come in, but they were still alone.
“But?” she asked.
“I think there’s a problem we can’t wish away.”
TJ looked over at the doorway again and suddenly she understood.
“Grace?” she said quietly. “What are you talking about?”
He stepped away from her, ran a hand over his face, glancing around as if the words he sought might appear in the air. Whatever they were, he seemed to find them.
“It was weird this morning, right?” he whispered.
Ella nodded. “A little. But she’s—”
He halted her with a raised hand. “Just listen. She came up to talk to me during my set today and it was even worse. She’s talking like…”
“Like what?”
TJ cocked his head, staring at her with that imploring look that she knew so well, the one that said, You know. You know, Ella, don’t make me say it.
“She talks like she’s an adult,” he whispered.
“They all do that.”
“No,” he said, raising a finger. “Not like this. It’s like she’s this wise, cynical old lady now instead of an eleven-year-old girl. And it’s too weird, too … intimate. Like she knows us better than we know ourselves.”
Ella felt herself stiffen. She narrowed her eyes. “I think you’re overstating it a little, don’t you? Kids are always trying to redefine themselves, figure out what makes the difference between them and adults. When I was nine I told my parents that I had rights and they had no business bossing me around.”
TJ shook his head much more fiercely. “This isn’t that. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t. Trust me. Better yet, go and take a look at her.”
Ella hesitated, then shrugged. “Okay. Living room?”
“Yes,” TJ said. “You go take a look out there and you tell me that she’s not acting weird … that she’s still the same kid.”
“What are you—”
“Go look,” he said with a quiet urgency that got her feet moving.
Ella went back out through the sitting room and foyer to the other side of the house. She could hear the sitcom laugh track even before she entered the living room and she allowed herself to wonder about the thing that had been sneaking around the shadowy corners of her mind for the past couple of minutes. Is it really Grace who’s acting strange, or is it him?
Then she stepped into the living room.
Grace sat way back on the sofa, tucked primly against the cushions. She wore a yellow cardigan that Ella recognized as having come from her own closet; the eleven-year-old practically vanished inside it. Grace had buttoned the sweater all the way to the top. Across her legs the little girl had thrown an old blue blanket that TJ’s late mother had knitted by hand. On the coffee table was a small tray, a porcelain teapot, and a little teacup to match.
Another ripple of laughter came from the television, drawing Ella’s gaze to the screen, where a half-century-old episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show unspooled in crystal-clear black-and-white. Ella frowned, trying to force her mind to make sense of the scene before her. It’s a game, she thought. Some kind of make-believe, like a tea party, only she didn’t have anyone to pretend with.
More canned laughter on the television—Mary Tyler Moore giving her husband the cold shoulder—and it occurred to Ella that most of those laughs, recorded so very long ago, belonged to dead people. It’s like the ghost of laughter, she thought, and a chill went through her unlike any she’d ever felt before.
Grace leaned forward to pick up her teacup and the motion startled a tiny noise out of Ella. The little girl froze for a moment, aware of her presence, and then continued as if nothing at all had happened, taking a sip of her tea.
Slowly, Grace turned to look at her, teacup in hand, the blue light from the television making strange shadows on her face, and Ella’s little girl smiled at her.
“Come and watch with me, Mother,” she said, oh so properly. “You’ll adore this episode. It’s one of my favorites.”
Dread traced cold fingers along Ella’s spine. Heart pounding, body trembling ever so slightly, she backed up two steps and then fled the room.
THIRTEEN
On Monday morning, Allie stood on the sidewalk in front of Trumbull Middle School, monitoring the cars that were pulling up to the curb so that parents could drop their children off. The school put two teachers out front every morning, ostensibly to greet the students who did not take a bus, but Allie knew that a part of morning-drop-off duty was chiding the parents who didn’t follow the rules. The instructions were given at the beginning of the year and they were clear. Parents were not to allow students to exit their vehicles until they were at the curb in front of the school, and then only on the passenger side of the car, so they could step right out onto the sidewalk. Still, some of them bypassed the line and let their kids out in the middle of the street, never mind the traffic around them and the possibility that their children might be struck by another vehicle.
Allie hated those people and envied them all at the same time. She hated them for putting their children in danger and envied them for the innocence that allowed them to be so cavalier about the safety of their kids.
They’re not safe, she wanted to tell them. None of them are safe. Sometimes they die.
It was twelve years since she’d lost Isaac and these thoughts still filled her head every time she had to do morning-drop-off duty. Twice a week for twelve years, watching parents take their children’s lives for granted.
From time to time she knew that she took it too far, going into the street and sternly admonishing the parents, sometimes allowing a shrill edge to creep into her voice. In those first years after Isaac’s death, most of the parents knew that she had lost her son and had the decency to look stricken when she reminded them of the rules. But as the years passed, those children had gone on to high school and their parents had gone with them and fewer and fewer people were aware that she had once had two sons instead of only one.
What an odd thing it was to have endured such a loss and to have daily contact with so many people who had no idea. Allie knew that everyone had tragedies, large and small, that were not visible to those who encountered them each day, and once that anonymity had returned to her school days she found that she appreciated it. She liked being just another teacher—just another mother—and hated those moments in conversation when people learned of Isaac’s death for the first time. But morning drop-off was different. When she saw parents being so careless she wanted them to know what those few minutes they might save by skipping the line could cost them.
“Mr. Roche?” Allie said, stepping off the curb.
A couple of students stopped to watch but she smiled and waved them on. “Get inside, guys. Please.”
The boys walked off, muttering to each other. Allie lifted a hand to signal the driver of a Subaru and moved between the cars waiting in line. Out in the street, Kitty Roche’s father had stopped his red Volkswagen parallel
to the line and the seventh-grade girl climbed out and then reached inside to retrieve her backpack.
“Mr. Roche?” Allie called, quickening her step.
Kitty—a skinny blond girl with a red bow in her hair—gave her an apologetic look and then slipped her backpack over one shoulder.
Inside the car, Mr. Roche kept one hand on the wheel as he leaned over the passenger seat to peer out at her.
“Sorry, Ms. Schapiro. Just couldn’t be helped today. I’m late for a meeting.”
There were so many things she wanted to say to him, so many different ways she could express her fears. More than anything, she wished that she could let him feel for just a few minutes the pain that she carried with her every day … if only so that he would never have to feel it again.
“Mr. Roche,” she said, “better to be late for a meeting than on time for Kitty’s funeral.”
He gaped at her.
“Jesus,” Kitty whispered, shooting her a look of wide-eyed horror as she hurried off between the waiting cars and then onto the sidewalk and across the lawn toward the school.
“That’s a little much, don’t you think?” Mr. Roche said, his expression both angry and bewildered.
Allie felt her cheeks flushing with embarrassment. She hadn’t intended the words to come out. She had already reminded half-a-dozen parents about the rules this morning.
“I’m sorry,” she said, as the line of cars continued to move behind her and an SUV coming up the street behind Mr. Roche’s VW had to drive around him. “There are a lot better ways for me to have gotten my point across.”
Mr. Roche looked as if he might still be angry but then his features softened.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I get how frustrating it must be out here, having to police all us rule breakers. But maybe cut down on the caffeine?”
Allie smiled. “I’ll do that if you’ll use the line from now on.”
“I’ll do my best,” he said. “But right now I’ve gotta go.”
Kitty had left the door open because they were talking. Allie was holding him up. Confused and frustrated, wondering how the moment had reversed itself so that she was the one apologizing, she wished him a good day and swung the car door shut. She stepped back as Mr. Roche drove away, leaving her standing on the wrong side of the drop-off line, out in the street.
It’s the storm, she thought.
Though it was cold enough for her to be wearing gloves and a scarf and hat, the sun shone, a beautiful blue-sky day, so rare for February. But if the forecast turned out to be accurate, in two days they would be in the middle of a major winter storm, the worst blizzard in years. With such a storm on the way, was it any wonder that her grief seemed heightened, that Isaac’s death felt like it had happened twelve days ago instead of twelve years?
What was twelve years after all? She knew that once upon a time, when she was a little girl, she would have thought twelve years an eternity. But as she grew older she had begun to realize that a year was nothing. Twelve years was nothing. She still remembered details from her childhood with clarity, remembered things from a decade ago that seemed like fresh experiences to her. She wondered if she would reach old age and still look back and think the years had passed like nothing. A lifetime … was nothing. But it was more than Isaac had gotten.
“Morning, Ms. Schapiro!” a student called.
She turned to see Claire Nguyen waving to her as the girl hurried across the lawn from her mother’s car. Allie smiled and waved back.
At least the kids will have a snow day or two, she thought, trying to make light of the dread that had coiled itself like a snake around her heart.
She glanced at the line of cars, made sure Claire’s mother saw her, and then slipped between them. She had just reached the sidewalk when she heard the crunch of metal and a squeal of skidding tires. Students making their way across the snowy lawn spun around with wide eyes. Allie ran to Mrs. Nguyen’s car and stood on her toes to get a glimpse of a dark blue Cadillac drifting away from the parked pickup truck it had just sideswiped on the other side of the street.
The Cadillac coasted toward the back of the morning drop-off line, its driver’s-side mirror dangling from some wires.
Students were yelling, some hurrying toward the sidewalk to get a better look.
“Get back!” Allie said. “All of you get—”
The Cadillac’s engine raced, speeding up instead of slowing. It struck the last car in line with a whump of crumpling metal and fiberglass. The chain reaction slammed three or four vehicles into the cars ahead of them, and then it was over with the hissing of a cracked radiator and the enraged swearing of several parents who were already popping open doors and leaping out to survey the damage.
Allie whispered a prayer and rushed to the nearest car, looking in the passenger window at an eighth-grade boy named Ryan Morretti. The kid opened the door and stumbled out.
“Ryan, are you all right?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m good,” he said, shaking his head. “What just happened?”
Allie left him standing there and hurried along the line of cars as the students got out, none of them apparently injured, grabbing their backpacks and walking toward the group of parents who were gathered around the Cadillac. Its hood had buckled, the front end punched in, but the rear end of the little gold Ford Focus ahead of it had been demolished. Both airbags had deployed and now she saw that Lauren Cappuccio and her mother were still in the car. A parent Allie didn’t recognize had opened the driver’s door and was helping Mrs. Cappuccio extricate herself, so Allie tried to do the same, but Lauren’s door had been jammed shut by the collision.
The window had shattered, so Allie crouched and peered in at Lauren. “Are you okay?”
Ordinarily full of confidence and sarcasm, the girl had gone pale, but she nodded.
“Feel like I got kicked in the chest, but I think I’m okay.”
“You can breathe all right?” Allie asked.
Lauren smiled wanly. “If I say no, does that mean I don’t have to go to school?”
“You probably should have a doctor look you over anyway,” Allie said.
“I can breathe fine, but my ears are ringing,” the girl replied.
“Sit tight. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of,” Allie said, turning back to the Cadillac.
A shouting match had begun. Mrs. Cappuccio seemed to be trying to calm everyone’s nerves but the driver of the Cadillac had the misfortune to have included the queen bitch of the PTO, Helen Smith, in his collision.
“Is everyone okay?” Allie asked, looking for injuries.
Heads turned.
“Does it look like we’re okay?” Mrs. Smith barked.
“Actually it does,” Allie said. “But Mrs. Cappuccio’s daughter might have a concussion.”
And how lucky you all are, Allie thought. Banged up but alive. Your children alive.
“Oh my god, Lauren,” Mrs. Cappuccio said, rushing around the back of the Cadillac so that she could get to her daughter, passing right by Allie.
Only then did Allie realize that she recognized the driver of the Cadillac. Tall and broad and carrying thirty extra pounds, Eric Gustafson had won election to the city council the year before. His son, Kurt, was one of Allie’s students, though Mr. Gustafson had not come in for parents’ night or parent-teacher conferences—his wife had come alone. Allie recognized him only from his pictures in the local paper. With his Nordic features, chubby face, and buzz-cut red hair, it would have been hard not to remember him. She wanted to be furious with him but his expression was so pathetic and he was surrounded by so much anger that she could only pity him.
“Are you drunk?” Mrs. Smith demanded, poking Mr. Gustafson in the chest. “Is that it? Don’t think you’re going to get away with this just because you’re on the city council!”
The other parents—three of them, not including Mrs. Cappuccio—had seemed angry before, but with Mrs. Smith’s tirade ringing in the a
ir they all seemed to be feeling more awkward than angry now. All the students had slunk away to a safe distance on the snowy lawn where they could watch and mock with their friends. Even Kurt Gustafson stood twenty yards away, looking alternately enraged and humiliated by his father.
“I’m sorry! It was an accident!” Gustafson protested, his face reddening. He looked on the verge of tears.
“Drunk driving isn’t an accident, it’s a crime!” Mrs. Smith snapped.
“I’m not drunk!” Mr. Gustafson cried. He looked around as if searching for someone to back him up, and when his eyes lit on Allie, he pushed past the other parents to approach her. “Ms. Schapiro, please. You can smell my breath. I swear I haven’t been drinking.”
Allie stared at him. Maybe he hadn’t been drinking but his behavior was certainly odd. Mr. Gustafson seemed on the verge of panic, like a child in trouble for something and trying to get out of it instead of a grown man—a city councilman, no less—facing people who were angry about the damage he’d caused.
“Mr. Gustafson, I have no interest in smelling your breath. You need to calm down.” She looked at the other parents, focusing on Mrs. Smith. “You all need to calm down. It’s a fender bender. They happen every day. I’m sure you’ve all been in one at some point or another.”
“I am going to be late for work!” Mrs. Smith declared, crossing her arms defiantly. The sun glinted off her glasses and picked out the cat hairs that clung to her jacket.
A siren blared in the distance; someone had called the police. Allie turned around and saw the principal, Mr. D’Amato, and the gym coach hustling the students toward the school. Relief flooded her. She would be happy to leave this mess to Mr. D’Amato.
“All of you please go back to your cars,” Allie said, glancing over at Mrs. Cappuccio, who had knelt down on the sidewalk to encourage her daughter. Lauren had begun to release herself from her seat belt and the airbag, making her way to the driver’s door.
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