“Are you there?” he asked.
“Right here…”
“Remember when Luna called herself a terrible secret? And then you said the same thing? Well, now I keep hearing it in my head, over and over. Since you left, I’ve been sick with all the hiding and secrets, but I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t know what to do?” A voice can hide tears, and hers did.
“I just need more time to think about it all, talk through it.”
“More time?”
“Yes…”
“Thirteen years wasn’t long enough?”
“I don’t know who else to talk to about this, Katie. I don’t want you to hurt. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt, but no matter which way I turn I’m messing this up.…”
“I’m sorry this is hard for you, but listen, I’m having a party here in a few minutes and truthfully, Jack, I don’t know how to be with you right now.” Kate paused, taking in a breath, exhaling the next words. “I just don’t know how to be.”
“You don’t have to be any kind of way; I just wanted to talk to you about it.” His voice was quiet, moving away.
“You asked me to stay away from you.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Yes. Yes, it’s exactly what you said.”
“I’m so sorry. That all came out wrong.”
“I can’t stay away from you and be here for you. I can’t do both at the same time.” Humiliation and hurt spoke for her. “What good can come of all this talking?” she asked. “The good already happened.”
“Okay,” he said. “I get it.”
“Bye, Jack.”
When Kate hung up, she was again that girl on the monkey bars, swinging off and landing, and if for only a moment, triumphant. But this time instead of trying to get Jack to love her, she was trying to love herself.
* * *
Crystal and colorful beads nestled inside small bowls set on Kate’s coffee table. Wire and pliers were set on a tray to the side. Round glass balls and small jars of paint were lined up on the kitchen counter. The ornament-making party with Norah and Lida was a yearly ritual. Each year they made decorations that were more extravagant than the last and then placed them around the boutique. Customers often asked where the one-of-a-kind ornaments came from.
Kate whipped the last of the lights onto her tree and turned the music up just as the elevator buzzer rang. Norah arrived first with the salsa, guacamole, and chips. She wore a bright red dress and her hair hung loose around her face. “Merriest,” she said to Kate and kissed her cheek, balancing and carrying her bowls and a wrapped present to the kitchen. “Did I beat Lida?”
“You did.” Kate took a bag from Norah’s hand. “Nothing says Christmas like salsa.”
“Shut up, you. I was swamped today and this was the best I could do.”
“Trust me, it’s better than anything I did.”
“The apartment looks great.” Norah walked over to the tree, laughing. “Did your mom do this tree?”
Kate smiled. “Nope. All me.” The tree was covered in bright red and green lights, every branch buried and bending under the weight of the heavy cords. Kate touched an unlit bulb and twisted it harder into the socket until it popped on. “Just thought I needed something completely different this year.”
“Well, this is most definitely different.” Norah slid her wrapped package under the tree, a green bow poking its head from the square box.
“Everything is most definitely different,” Kate said.
The buzzer sounded again and Kate pressed the button to allow Lida to enter the room. When hugs were finished and compliments given, they sat down to craft ornaments. Lida entertained them with stories of her date the previous night, of the woman who came into the boutique the day before and asked for “anything that would make her husband want to touch her. Just anything.”
“I swear,” Kate said, picking up two small beads and slipping them onto the wire, “people will say anything to you. I mean, when people come in and ask my opinion, the most risqué they get is, ‘does this make my butt look big?’”
“Damn,” Lida leaned over the coffee table and squinted. “That ornament is so gorgeous it could be jewelry. What can’t you do, Kate?”
Norah laughed and shoved Kate to the other end of the couch. “Nothing. There is nothing this girl can’t do.”
“You two are crazy.” Kate stood. “Lots of stuff I can’t do. For one, I can’t dance.” With Vince Gill singing a jaunty “Winter Wonderland,” Kate jumped up and attempted to move with the music, her arms and legs in disjointed patterns. “I look like those Gumby arm-waving things at the car dealership.”
Norah and Kate’s laughter overcame the music, blocking it out. “Oh, Mary and Joseph,” Lida said. “You’re right. You can’t dance.” She jumped up to join Kate, moving her hips and upper body in synchronistic sway.
“Damn Lida, you dance like a sexy version of jeans-and-dreadlocks ballet,” Norah said through her laughter. “I’m not even gonna try next to you.”
“Well, if you think that’s so funny,” Kate said. “There’s more I can’t do. Like sing.”
“Don’t even go there,” Norah said. “I know you can’t do that. You proved that years ago on the high school stage.”
Lida sank onto the couch. “Girls, if you two want a celebratory drink or something, don’t not-drink cause of me. I promise I’m all good. It won’t bother me.”
Norah’s hands stopped in mid-motion as she strung a wire with all clear beads. “I can’t have one anyway.” She looked to Kate as she spoke.
“Nah, not in the mood,” Kate said. “Long day and I love just being here with you two. Plus I want to make better ornaments than you so I have bragging rights.”
“What, are you preggers or something?” Lida asked, a mirror-upon-mirror image repeating itself in a changeless question from the wilderness past.
Kate’s throat clenched with a flinching of her heart and she glanced at Norah. “Oh…”
Norah nodded.
Together, as if connected by the wire on the table, Lida and Kate jumped up and hugged Norah, but it was only Lida who found words. “Oh, my God and Christmas and Craziness, you are having a baby. We are having a baby.” Lida stood and raised her hands to the sky. “This is the best news in the world. Oh, you must be so excited.”
Norah nodded. “I am. Scared as hell, but yes, I am excited.”
Kate held Norah in her hug. “This is so great. When did you find out? How far along? When are you due? What did Charlie say?”
“Two weeks ago. Eight weeks. July. And he said I and love and you.” Norah answered each question in order. “Crazy, isn’t it?”
“No, not crazy at all,” Kate said. “Not at all. Amazing. I thought…”
“I know. You thought he didn’t want kids. But, sometimes things change.”
“Sometimes?” Lida laughed and sat on the couch. “I love living my life near both of you. Every day is an adventure of nothing staying the same.”
The three women celebrated and made ornaments, eating chips and salsa as if it were a delicacy. When her best friends left, Kate cleaned up and piled the ornaments in a box to take down to the boutique in the morning. She unplugged the Christmas tree lights, already regretting the multicolored strings.
After slipping on her pjs, she found herself sitting on the closet floor, digging behind her boots and long dresses to a wooden box shoved against the wall.
Are you preggers or something?
Hidden behind the clothes, the box found its way into Kate’s hands without being seen. She pulled it out and set it in the middle of the closet, staring at it as if the long-ago rattlesnake might pop out.
The box was made from juniper wood, carved and sanded by Kate’s hands over months and months in the desert. It was the box she’d made when she couldn’t sleep, or she was afraid one of the young girls might run. She’d not known—then—what would ever be held inside, but she knew, und
er the stars and phasing moon, that the box was important.
She picked it up and carried it to bed. She slipped under her white covers and sat cross-legged with the box balanced on her knees. She was crying, but hadn’t remembered starting. Opening the lid, Kate rifled through the contents: Jack’s yearly letters; a single white feather (the pair to Emily’s own); her pregnancy journal; a photo of Emily the day she was born; and finally a faded black-and-white picture, cut from the Wesley Junior High yearbook, of Jack and Katie at fourteen years old, standing next to a rocket from the time they’d gone on a school field trip to the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville.
“I’d get on that rocket right now,” fourteen-year-old Katie had said. “If it would take me to the moon.”
“Someday,” Jack had said, sincere as if promising his life to righteous war. “I’ll take you there.”
This was the last time Kate would allow herself the misery and pleasure of going through the box. She’d once believed that the greatest pain came from saying good-bye to her daughter, that if she chose the agony of letting go at that moment, then she wouldn’t feel it so sharply later. God, how wrong she’d been.
She needed to find a way to carry the wounds, the damage, without hurting anyone else, which of course she’d done. Just ask Rowan or anyone who had dared get close.
Kate read every letter, and then the journal. She stared at every photo and then closed the lid, placing the box on her bedside table. Like dreams of flying to the moon, of having her own child, or once more loving Jack Adams, nothing was to be gained by holding onto the idea or the box or the dream.
Norah, her best friend, was having a baby. Life endured that way: moving on, changing. Like Lida said, “the adventure of nothing staying the same.”
Kate glanced out the window at the bruised sky and held up her palm, and by closing one eye she blocked the bright crescent from sight, knowing that Luna’s name was as close to the moon as she would ever get.
twenty-nine
BLUFFTON, SOUTH CAROLINA
2011
Through and after the holidays, Kate’s days felt as fragile as glass. She stepped into them carefully, gently. Then it was that day—again the first day of spring—when she found herself laughing with Norah over the child who kicked inside Norah’s belly.
Kate’s mom walked through the front door of Mimsy while Kate’s hand sat on Norah’s stomach. “What’s so funny? What did I miss?” Nicole asked.
“Chase is kicking.” Kate waved her mom toward them. “Come here, feel.”
“Oh, you’ve already named your baby?” Nicole walked toward them, shaking her head. “You really shouldn’t name your child an action verb, dear, it’s a bad omen. You’ll be chasing him all over God’s green earth with a name like Chase.”
“I hope so,” Norah said, standing to hug Nicole.
Kate laughed again and her mom looked at her. “I just love when you laugh so good like that.”
“Kate’s always laughing.” Norah said, glancing sideways at Kate.
“Not like that though. I mean, it’s been a rough few months for our Kate, right? And I love to hear her laugh.”
“Mom, please. Rough?”
“Yes, rough. It just kills me that nothing has turned out for you, Baby. And we just wish we could fix it.” Nicole touched Norah’s arm. “I mean, don’t we wish we could fix it?”
“Nothing has turned out for me? What do you mean?” Kate twisted the jewelry display on the counter.
“I mean that you’ve lost Rowan and Jack. You can’t hardly talk to Emily, and everything just seemed to fall apart.”
“Mom, nothing fell apart. It just didn’t come out the exact way you or I would want. But I’ve got everything good in my life. Everybody misses something or somebody. It’s the way … of the world.”
“But it’s sad.”
“Of course it is,” Kate said and hugged her mom. “Of course it is.”
And Nicole was right—nothing had turned out exactly right: Kate hadn’t talked to Emily since Christmas, when Elena had allowed Emily to call and say “Merry,” but then Elena had decided that until Emily turned eighteen it was best that all communication go through Elena. A mother’s love was protective that way, and what was there to do but agree?
Jack hadn’t called since the night before the ornament-making party. For weeks and then days and then not at all, Kate had believed he’d return and try to begin again. Hope dissolved with winter’s thaw.
When Kate had run into Rowan with his new girlfriend, Gail, at the grocery store, he’d been happy. Kate had heard about Gail and her extravagant themed parties, about Rowan and Gail shopping together at the Farmer’s Market, about Rowan and Gail training together for a marathon. She wondered again and again why she couldn’t have been “that” girl for him. What if she’d loved him enough to be the party girl or the doting girlfriend?
But on the first day of spring Kate was determined to revel in all that was good and right and true: her sisters, her found daughter’s birthday, and spring’s arrival.
Molly walked through the door carrying a white box wrapped with an oversized pink ribbon. “Kitty-Kat, I come with cupcakes,” she hollered across the room as she walked in. “Seriously amazing cupcakes. We’re going to eat until we’re sick.”
“You’re crazy,” Tara said, her voice arriving before she was seen coming behind Molly.
Norah grabbed the box and set it on the counter, opening it. “I’m going to be as big as South Carolina by the end of this pregnancy. I swear all I want to do is eat.”
“What are we doing today?” Tara asked, dropping her purse behind the counter. “What’s the big plan?”
Kate picked up the newspaper, pointing to an advertisement. “There’s an art festival in Savannah. I thought it would be fun.”
Molly groaned. “An art festival?”
“There are bands and cute guys and bars,” Kate teased, poking at her sister.
“Then I’m in.” Molly picked up a cupcake, licking off the icing without taking a bite.
Nicole stepped forward then, placing her hand on Kate’s arm. “Did you get a letter?”
Kate shook her head. “No. I didn’t think I would,” she lied, not wanting to again taste the dry-mouthed regret she’d awoken with. “There’s not much he could tell me about his year. I was there for most of it.” She smiled, but turned away.
“Look what I’ve got,” Molly said, digging into her bag.
Kate glanced at her sister, and for the briefest moment, that moment of hope that often came with the ding of incoming mail or a ringing phone, Kate thought her sister might have the letter. Instead Molly pulled out a tiara. “I found this and I want to mail it to Emily for her birthday. You think that would be okay?”
“Absolutely,” Kate said. “I sent her a set of oil paints. Elena said she was really into painting these days.”
“Let’s go to Savannah,” Tara said, changing the subject and then also grabbing a cupcake. “I have to be back before car pool.”
“Car pool.” Norah groaned. “God, my days are numbered, aren’t they?” She touched her stomach, but smiled.
“Numbered in ways in which you have no idea,” Tara said. “If I were you, I’d go to sleep now and not get up until you go into labor. Cause I’m telling you, you’re not sleeping again for a long, long time.”
“Let’s go, Miss Encouragement,” Kate said. “Get out of here.”
“Hey, Katey-Latey,” Tara said. “What’s your First Thing today?”
Kate stopped and turned to her sister. “I haven’t decided. Sometimes it just shows up and I know. You have any ideas?”
“I do,” Molly said, holding her hand over her mouth to stifle laughter. “I think you should skydive.”
“Not happening,” Kate said. “Never. It would be a First Thing that might be my very last thing.”
Laughing, the gathering of sisters, mom, and best friend walked to the front door and stopped as Kate, once again,
opened the iron mailbox to peek inside. Hope was having its say.
Nothing.
Empty.
“You looking for a letter?” An impossible voice asked.
Kate looked up and into those green eyes. “Yes, I am.” She tried not to smile, but some happiness can’t be stopped. Morning sunlight settled between them, a puddle on whose edges they stood. A dogwood tree bloomed overhead, a green umbrella dotted white. Time waited. It seemed as if all of nature and future held its breath with Kate, wondering what Jack’s arrival meant.
Behind her, Kate’s mother let out a cry. “Jack.”
Norah spoke softly. “Let’s go back inside for a minute. I want another cupcake.” The double front doors swished shut, leaving Jack and Kate on the sidewalk.
“Maybe I’m better than a letter?” he asked.
“Maybe. But those letters are pretty special.” Her toes inched toward the middle of the sunlight puddle.
He laughed, holding out his hand. She took it and he pulled her toward him, sliding his hand around her waist to hold her lower back. “I am so sorry, Katie. I said and did so many stupid things in the mess of these past months. I wish I could take back every word. Please forgive me.”
She nodded. “We were both a mess.” She paused. “But what are you doing here?” she whispered, both wanting and scared of the answer.
“I just happened to be in town for the Sand Gnats baseball game and…”
“Yeah, right,” she laughed, “Baseball was my excuse. You have to find a new one.”
He pulled her closer, if there was a closer. “I’ve told everyone about everything. How could I have not wanted to tell the world?”
“Told them about Luna?”
He nodded. “Of course about Luna, but also how I love you. How I’ve always loved you.”
“You told them before you told me?” She smiled.
Their bodies, so close together, allowed her to feel his laughter. “I love you,” he said. “And I have a great idea for your First Thing today.”
“You do?”
“I do.”
“And what is it?”
“For the first time, you promise me forever. You. Me. For good and all.”
And Then I Found You Page 21
