She urged him to explore the property, picking her way carefully over the lumpy ground until they were behind the half-built house and out of sight of the neighbors. From there it was approximately fifty feet across a barren field that would eventually be some family’s backyard, and into the woods. Luckily, Cosmo didn’t balk. He loved the woods, loved exploring anything new, the cheerful little mutt, and he pulled eagerly against his collar, straining the leash in her hand as he explored the cold ground with his nose.
Bea moved more slowly at first, blinking against the change in light. She kept her free hand outstretched to ward off low-hanging branches and tried to find a clear path through the dense foliage. She didn’t mind the dark, she’d never been afraid of it, unlike her daughter, who hadn’t been able to sleep without a night-light and had woken Bea often with nightmares or fears of something lurking in the shadows.
Bea had been so tired on those nights, wanting sleep so desperately and worried that these night terrors would last, but in retrospect that time had been easy. She paused to catch her breath, thinking of how much harder things had gotten later on, how difficult it was to see your child suffering and not be able to make it all better with a hug. If she’d known it then, when her daughter was small, she’d have held on tight and never let go.
The hillside dropped steeply and she had to support her descent by grabbing the thin trunks of saplings. She disturbed small creatures as she plunged downward, a tiny vole scurrying out from some leaves and squirrels chittering complaints nearby. It was fairly quiet otherwise. Between her own labored breaths she could hear the far-off drone of an airplane. At the bottom of the ravine she paused along the edge of the shallow creek bed that ran its length and looked up the other side, trying to figure out where to go. It was too steep to see anything but more hillside, so she waded quickly across before trudging up the opposite hill, jerking the leash as Cosmo paused to lap at the dirty water.
Freezing water squelched from her sneakers with every step, and despite the cold she felt sweat trickling uncomfortably between her breasts and at the base of her spine. Her hands were damp and she had to pause several times to rewrap the leash and urge Cosmo up the hill. He wasn’t so eager now, lolling behind her, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. She had water for him in the car, but it hadn’t occurred to her to bring it. He moved slower and slower the closer they got to the top until finally she scooped him up in her arms. He snuggled against her shoulder like a furry baby, licking her cheek frantically, as if she were a melting ice cream cone, with a tongue that felt like wet sandpaper.
“No! Stop it.” She pushed his little muzzle away until he got the hint, and she kept climbing. They were within sight of the top and she moved faster, stirred on by adrenaline to crest the hill.
They were still in the woods but on flat land again, and she could see the backs of the massive houses on Wakefield Drive. Things would look very different at night, of course, but she had to take the route at least once in the daylight to get the lay of the land. While she stood there, trying to figure out which house was theirs, she heard a faint clicking sound and a door opened onto the raised stone patio of the house to her left. A familiar towheaded little girl rushed out, followed more slowly by a dark-haired woman. Bea stopped, clamping a hand over Cosmo’s muzzle to stop him from barking. They weren’t supposed to be home; they must have pulled in right after she’d left their street.
The little girl was talking, Bea could hear a faint, high-pitched singsong, but she was too far away to make out what she was saying. Bea moved slowly left, making sure to stay behind several yards of trees, hoping that this and the afternoon sunlight would be enough to stop them from spotting her.
The mother looked nothing like the child—dark where the child was light, thin even bundled up in a jacket, with bony angles and high cheekbones, where the child was dimpled and rounded. Jill Lassiter’s dark hair was loose today, worn down around her shoulders in a shiny wave. She took a seat at one of the chairs in a patio set and opened a folder that held something; photos, Bea realized, when the woman held them up to the light. Jill smiled at Sophia’s pleas to come and play and said she’d be with her in a minute. And then the child ran down the stone steps and across the lawn straight toward Bea.
She froze, panic shooting through her, while Cosmo writhed in her arms. It was chilly out, but the child didn’t seem to notice. She came closer, running on fast little legs, close enough that Bea could see the white furry lining in her pink wool coat. Close enough that she could hear her humming. Sophia seemed to stare directly at her and Bea, mesmerized, stared right back and then, just as suddenly, she realized that the child wasn’t heading toward her but a playhouse at the back of the yard.
Bea had been so busy looking at the child that she hadn’t noticed the little white house and she sagged in relief against the trunk of an oak tree. She could hear Sophia carrying on a one-sided conversation in the playhouse. “You want some tea? No, you’re too little, bunny, but you can have a cookie.” Things clattered and Bea moved left again, trying to see into the playhouse window, but the angle wasn’t right. She could only make out shadows and hear the clear little voice directing her toys.
Over at the table the mother examined another photo before turning it facedown, rubbing her hands together to warm them, but clearly absorbed. If Bea stepped out of the woods she probably wouldn’t even notice. The playhouse stood only a few feet away. She could see the child, could smell her. Bea inched forward.
The door of the playhouse slammed open and the child stepped out carrying an armload of stuffed animals. “Time to go for our walk,” she said, mimicking an adult’s voice.
At that moment an excited Cosmo pulled his muzzle free and barked twice, tail wagging. The little girl halted, head turning toward the noise, then dropped her toys and took off for the lines of trees yelling, “Doggie!”
Jill stood up from the table. “No, Sophia! Come back!”
Bea ducked behind a wide tree trunk, Cosmo thrashing in her arms. The little girl plunged into the woods; Bea could hear her small feet crunching through old leaves and pine needles. “Doggie! Doggie, where are you?” Her voice high-pitched and excited.
Jill Lassiter pelted after her, coming across the lawn faster than the child had before her. “Sophia! Come back here right now!” Angry and afraid.
Bea moved equally fast, slipping back through the trees the way she’d come, down the hill so hurriedly that she slipped and slammed her left hip hard against the ground. She scrambled up and behind another tree trunk, peering around in time to see Jill slipping sideways down the hillside, arm outstretched to catch her daughter before she toppled down the steep embankment.
“Sophia, wait!” Her voice shrill. The child slipped against loose acorns, they scattered ahead of her down the hillside, a light, rushing sound, and then Jill had Sophia in her grip, the child squirming just like the dog.
“Doggie! I want doggie!”
“There’s no dog out here,” the woman said, squinting as she tried to peer down into the depths of the woods. She hoisted the child onto her hip, gently scolding as she began a slow climb back toward the house. “You know you’re not supposed to be in the woods alone; it’s dangerous.”
Bea waited, heart pounding, until they’d crested the hill before moving in the opposite direction. Cosmo scratched at her arms, struggling to get down, but she didn’t dare release him until she’d gotten across the creek and halfway up the other side.
* * *
When Bea made it back to her own little house in the woods, Cosmo jumped against her legs, whining and barking to go out. “You were just outside,” she complained, wishing Frank was around to take him out, but he could never be counted on to do anything domestic. Despite her exhaustion, Bea quickly let Cosmo out the kitchen door, and he lifted his leg next to the sagging fence. She had to force him back inside, and after she’d fed him and he’d lapped up a full bowl of water, he raced back and forth in the living room, trying
to engage her in playing even after she’d sunk onto the old couch.
“Settle down,” she told the little dog. “I’m too tired for this.” When Cosmo jumped on her lap, she plopped him back on the floor, but gave up after they’d repeated this three times. “Damn dog,” she muttered. “Just sit down there, then.” She shoved him to the end of the couch and turned onto her side. Cosmo made a throaty, whining sound, but finally settled, his small body warm against her feet. She switched on the old TV and watched the local news, a roundup of everything awful that had happened in one day. She hated them all, these reporters with their smiley, overly made-up faces, feigning concern when you could see the lust for tragedy in their eyes, hear the sharklike glee as they recited it all: Murders and house fires, rapes and robberies. A veritable buffet of bad news; sidle up and gorge on someone else’s sorrow. Bea sank deeper into the couch, fatigue overtaking anger. Her eyes closed.
She was in the passenger seat of a car watching the speedometer climb. They were going too fast, the car racing down the road and still the speedometer climbed—seventy, eighty, eighty-five—the needle trembling. The car shook. She told her daughter to slow down, but the girl just smiled. She was driving in the wrong lane, but she didn’t seem to notice. Bea could see that they were going to crash. An approaching car came closer and closer.
Bea woke up screaming. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, and then Cosmo licked her face and Bea pushed him away, sitting up on the couch, breathing hard, her throat sore. It had gotten dark—the only light in the room the glow from the old TV. She rubbed a hand over her face and looked at her watch. It was after seven—she’d slept for over two hours.
“I’m getting old,” she said out loud, voice scratchy. The dog tilted his head to one side, looking at her quizzically before jumping against Bea’s legs and whining until she stood and walked to the back door again. She let him out into the yard and stood there staring up at the night sky, pulled back into memory, a cold autumn night like this one, but long ago, her daughter pointing out the constellations to her mother, “There’s Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and there’s Orion.…” Bea tried to remember the feel of those small shoulders under her arm, the smell of silky hair as she’d stooped to kiss the top of her head. She’d never fully appreciated that moment and all the hundreds of other small moments in her daughter’s life.
“You can’t undo it, Bea.” Frank had come home without her hearing him. He stood beside her on the patio, a solid presence impossible to ignore.
For a moment she thought her husband was talking about the past, but then she saw that he’d dropped a Polaroid of the child that she’d taken that day at the park. “Give that to me; what are you doing with it?” She snatched it from the ground before he could retrieve it and pushed past him back into the house. He followed her inside, hovering as she hung up the set of keys she’d had copied. She hadn’t used them today, but she would soon enough.
“It’s never going to work,” he said, not for the first time. “You need to let it go.”
He’d always been negative; she felt the acid burn of long simmering anger. “Mind your own business, Frank!” She refused to look at him. If she didn’t look at him, with any luck he’d get the message and disappear.
chapter nine
OCTOBER 2013—TWO WEEKS
Jill had just finished taking engagement photographs for a couple at Frick Park when David called. It was late afternoon and she balanced her cell phone between ear and shoulder as she loaded camera cases, tripods, and other equipment into the trunk of her car. He sounded rushed as he always did at work. “Are we all set for tonight?”
“Tonight?” Jill pulled out the album she had to deliver and slammed the trunk shut. “What’s happening tonight?”
“The firm dinner, remember? Andrew is going to be there and most of the other partners.”
“Aargh, no, I completely forgot!” Jill slid behind the wheel and placed the album on the passenger seat. “Let’s just skip it, okay?”
“I can’t do that.” David sounded aghast. “C’mon, I have to go and all the other spouses will be coming—what would they think if you didn’t show?”
“I doubt anyone would notice. Besides, I haven’t even lined up a sitter—how on earth will we find someone this late?”
“Call my mother.” He said it so quickly that she wondered if he’d planned it all along. “She’d be happy to watch Sophia.”
“I don’t want to do that, David.”
“Why?”
“You know why. She feeds Sophia junk and she won’t follow her schedule—”
“So what? She’s a three-year-old for God’s sake. How terrible is it for her schedule to be disrupted one evening?”
“—and she finds a million and one ways to criticize my parenting.”
“C’mon, she’s not that bad.”
“Really? So she didn’t tell me last month that I was to blame for Sophia’s ear infection because I didn’t make her wear a hat?”
“You’re too sensitive, Jill. Just ignore what she says, that’s what I do.”
“Easy for you to say, you’re not the one she criticizes.”
“She loves Sophia.”
“No one’s doubting that.”
“Then call her.”
Jill groaned and David said, “Fine, don’t call her. But I need you tonight so we’ve got to find a sitter.”
Jill glanced at her watch. “I won’t even have time to get ready at this point. I’m on my way to a client’s now to drop off some photos—”
“Can’t you drop them off tomorrow?”
“I promised them today.”
“Then have someone else do it.”
“It’s too late, I’ve already left the studio.”
“So just call and cancel. They’ll understand.”
“I can’t do that, not with these people.”
“This is for one of those families, isn’t it?” David groaned when Jill didn’t say anything. “It’s like you keep tearing at a scab,” he said. “Why do that to yourself?”
“Because I know how they feel,” Jill said, struggling to explain to him for the umpteenth time what she could barely explain to herself. “I need to do it. It helps them. It helps to have someone who understands. It helps me.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone, but she could hear his frustration. In a way David was right—every photo shoot she did for charity reminded her—but what he didn’t understand, what she couldn’t talk to him about, was that she didn’t need to be reminded. Ethan was always there, a constant presence, not like picking at a scab at all, really, because the wound had never healed.
After a moment David sighed and said, “I don’t want to argue, it’s your choice. But please, at least call my mother and ask, okay? I’d do it myself, but I can’t break away, especially now.”
“Especially now” had been going on for months. If the latest case reached a successful conclusion then he would certainly be promoted before the end of the year. This was according to Andrew, who as a partner himself couldn’t explicitly say anything, but had been encouraging David to think positively about his future with Adams Kendrick. “Come on,” David said, his tone softening. “How often do we get to go out in the middle of the week? It could be fun.”
* * *
“Of course I’ll watch Sophia!” To the average listener, Elaine Lassiter’s voice sounded nothing more than warm, gracious—the perfect mother-in-law and grandmother. Friendly and outgoing, a charmer just like her son, and once, long ago, she’d charmed Jill, too. “Do you want me to pick her up from day care?”
“No thanks, I can get her from preschool.” Jill emphasized the last word, her grip tightening on the steering wheel.
“I’m sure she’d love to go home early—it must be so hard on her to sit in day care all day.”
“She only does the extended option three days a week.”
“Well, I don’t know how you career girls do it.” Elaine’s
voice was light, her laugh a melody. “I’m sure it must be hard leaving your child every day.”
“Sorry, Elaine, hitting traffic—I’ll see you at six. Thanks!” Jill pushed the off button with force, pretending it was Elaine’s face. “Annoying witch!” That woman always made her feel bad no matter how many times Jill tried to tell herself not to listen, that what her mother-in-law said didn’t matter.
She must have done something in a past life to have not one, but two difficult mothers. The letter from her own mother had gone into a box at home unread, but it was undoubtedly just like every other letter she sent; they arrived at regular intervals: “Dear Jill, life has been hectic with the move, but this new job looks exciting. Things are a little tight right now, with the economy the way it is and moving expenses, but soon I’ll be making enough to finally buy that dream home we always talked about. After so many years, I can say that I’ve finally found my bliss.…”
Things had always been tight; her mother always chasing rainbows in search of her “bliss.” Jill couldn’t recall a time in her childhood when they’d ever completely settled down. No sooner did they move to one place than her mother was announcing that she knew, just knew, that the life she really wanted was in another city or state. She blew through careers and relationships like tissue paper, working as an artist, a secretary, and eventually in health care, leaving lovers behind without any visible sign of discomfort. Jill’s father had been a musician or a science teacher or maybe the door-to-door salesman who’d once given her mother a ride from Indiana to Pennsylvania. It was only when Jill reached adulthood that she’d stopped to ponder that her mother’s only real attachment was to her.
Only Ever You Page 6
