Stumbling on the Sand

by Jenna Rae

  How do I get out of here, she wondered, without hurting this chick’s feelings?

  “Sara, I’m sorry,” Del called in a regretful tone, striding quickly from the bathroom to the front door. She felt like a jerk, but she couldn’t sleep with this woman. “I got a call. I have to go.”

  “Oh, my God!” Sara was trailing after her, her eyes bright, her expression mixed. “Do you have to go right now? We were just—”

  “Yeah, it sucks, but that’s the job. I’m sorry to run out on you.”

  She rushed out, ignoring Sara’s requests for a phone number, a rain check.

  “Good night, now. Lock this door behind me, Sara.”

  Del walked home in the bracing cold. She looked up at the stars, wondering where Lola was, if she was safe, happy. Was she with the moronically happy redhead? Was she gone from Del’s life forever?

  “Good night, honey, wherever you are.”

  Chapter Six

  When she saw finally checked her personal email after getting home and showering, Del saw a series of digital missives from Lola. She ignored them, spending an hour working on White’s timeline before she stopped to make a cup of tea. Finally unable to keep her curiosity at bay any longer, she stared at her inbox on the computer’s glowing screen. What if she was announcing her intentions to move in with that woman? What if she wanted to get back together with Del?

  Instead, Lola explained that she’d had a burst of inspiration and produced her new collection of stories. She wanted to send some of the stories to Del, and she mentioned again her preference for writing over talking. Del realized Lola had sent her each of several stories as attachments to several individual email messages. She wondered why Lola had sent those and not communicated directly. Was it really so hard for Lola to talk to her? Del made a face before opening the attachment, not entirely sure she wanted to read these stories.

  Half drowsing at a diner in Chicago, Lola stared at a woman in another undersized booth. She was in her fifties, maybe, and a bit overweight. Her coat obviously didn’t close over her massive chest. But her hair was carefully styled and her makeup flawless. Lola leaned to the side to peek at the woman’s feet. She wore beautiful and undoubtedly expensive shoes, but there was a gigantic run in her stockings. Closer examination revealed a smudge in her too-bright lipstick, along with a faint line near her jaw where the makeup ended and her paler, pinker skin was revealed.

  Lola sneaked glances at the woman as she chatted on her cell phone, as she pulled out a mirror to refresh her fuchsia lipstick and cleaned up the smudge, as she sipped her coffee and left a bright new lip print on the white stoneware mug. Lola tried to imagine what the woman was thinking, what was important to her, what she hoped for and feared.

  Lola was almost as surprised as the stranger to find herself standing over her table, asking if she could sit down. The woman narrowed her eyes and nodded a grudging yes.

  “I’m a travel writer, looking for an insider’s take on things,” Lola fibbed. She couldn’t believe she’d lied like that, and she was further surprised when the woman seemed to believe her. They spoke for over an hour about what Chicago offered its visitors, and Lola took copious notes on restaurants and theaters and parks and shops. Then the woman began to tell Lola her story.

  Her name was Helen Rollins. She was fifty-two, divorced. She had been married at nineteen to a man far above her in status, she said, a handsome doctor in his thirties.

  “I was pretty then,” Helen asserted in a matter-of-fact voice. “Thin as a rail and pretty. Bright, too, or so I thought. Back then I was an innocent. Trusting, you know? Sweet. But mostly I was pretty.”

  Lola believed this. The woman carried herself with the confidence of someone who has been admired for her beauty. Helen waved her hand, adorned with heavy rings, her nails displaying a French manicure. It was a graceful hand, small and long-fingered and dainty. It was a delicate pink rosebud of a hand and seemed to hold all of Helen’s former beauty in its tapered digits and curved palm.

  Helen continued her story, her ironic tone a thin veneer of indifference over what seemed to be great pain and loss. The doctor, Gary, came from a rich family. A good catch, her mother told her, and her family was in awe of him. Yes, Helen was pretty, but was she really pretty enough to snag a doctor?

  Lola smiled faintly when Helen repeated the question, in her nasal, ironic voice.

  “As a matter of fact, I was,” she declared, her slight jowls wobbling. “I was more than pretty enough. I knew that. But what I didn’t know, at first,” she whispered, her other graceful hand held up in a warning, “is that my good catch was a goddamn rutting dog. Slept with everything in a skirt. Gave me a social disease. Knocked me around. Flirted with other women right in front of me.”

  Lola shook her head.

  “I put up with all of it. He’s rich, he’s a doctor, that’s what I told myself. It’s part of the deal. But then I couldn’t get pregnant. Oh, boy, that was that. He had to have a son. Had to. Made me go through all these goddamn clinic visits and shots and he didn’t do anything to test himself. He didn’t care when I cried, when I gained weight from the shots, when I had one miscarriage after another. He just had to have a kid and it had to be a son. So I finally get pregnant and manage to carry it, after all those years. Well, it’s a girl, and that’s that—he leaves me. Right then, the day I had her! Our daughter. I had to move in with my mother, can you imagine? All she could say was, what did I do wrong? What did I do to make him leave like that?” She rubbed her ring-laden hands together so roughly the skin reddened.

  “How did you get by?”

  “Got a job, counter girl at the drugstore. After a few years I got a ratty little apartment, let my mother tell me I was garbage so she’d watch my daughter while I was at work. I did what I had to, to take care of my daughter. Gary? He married a twenty-two-year-old nurse. Had three kids with her. All three of ’em are goddamn girls, can you believe that? Ha! Lived in a fancy house in Orland Park. Drove a Hummer. Bastard never paid a dime in child support. Never even bothered with my daughter until she graduated college, which I paid for. She asked him to walk her down the aisle. After all that. Here I paid for the kid’s roof and food and clothes and shoes, walked her to school, took her to the dentist. Paid for the wedding too! And that smug bastard walked her up the aisle like it was his right. While I just sat there like an idiot, wishing my girl had an ounce of self-respect. Only she don’t, and you know why? She learned it from me.”

  Lola made a questioning face, loath to interrupt.

  “It’s true! I still loved him and she knew it and so did he. Never stopped loving him, not for a minute. If he’d a crooked his little finger, I woulda come running, even after all those years.”

  Lola made a sympathetic face.

  “Don’t worry,” Helen assured her. “I got my revenge. Second wife left him for a younger man! Ha, ha! And that’s not all. My Gary, he’s dead now. Heart attack, three years ago. Bastard thought he was God. He never expected to die, never changed his will. I got a pile of money.” She smiled, but then her face collapsed. “I still love him,” she muttered, her hands covering her face, muffling her voice. “Can you believe that shit?”

  Lola held Helen’s soft, pretty hand, ignoring the rings that were cutting into her fingers. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  “Thank you, honey.” Helen blew her nose into a beautifully embroidered handkerchief. “I tell you what, I never told anybody all that. Honest.” Helen shook her head. “Everybody figures I hate him and Lord knows I have good reason. But I’ve loved that man since I was a teenager, and I’ll love him till the day I die. What can I say, I’m a hopeless romantic!”

  Del sat watching her tea cool as she tried to figure out what Lola was trying to tell her. Or was she reading too much into this? Maybe Lola had just experienced a creative flood and was excited to share it with Del. With anyone. For all Del knew, Lola had sent the same email to ten other people. Had she sent it to Marco? The redhead? Pushi
ng her questions aside, Del opened the next email, which had no content but the attachment.

  “It’s a damn shame,” the withered old man sputtered, staring at the Grand Canyon.

  Lola turned away from the awe-inspiring view to look questioningly at her fellow tourist. When she asked if he was okay, the old man introduced himself as Stanley.

  “You must think I’m a loony bird.”

  “No. But you do sound like you could use someone to talk to.”

  Stanley poured out to her his grief and loneliness and despair. He told her about despising his son when he was a child, almost hating the boy for his weakness and softness. He went on to detail how, thirty years later, he now adored and admired the same son for his open heart and kindness and courage. But he admitted that he couldn’t seem to tell his son about the change of heart or apologize for his harshness and disapproval.

  “Why not?” Lola asked him. “Why can’t you just say it?”

  Stanley shook his fragile-looking, blue-veined head. His cataractous eyes stared into the distance. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I just can’t.”

  He lurched away from her as if she might infect him with a disease, and Lola watched as he shuffled slowly toward the parking lot. She wondered what had made him open up to a stranger and whether he would ever tell his son how he really felt.

  Turning back around, Lola gazed out over one of the Wonders of the World and saw only a big hole carved from rocks. What occupied her thoughts, even when she used her phone to take a dozen pictures of the sight before her, was the story of the old man. Stanley loved his son, admired him, wished to connect with him before death took away his chance to do so. As though helpless to change things, he’d admitted that he would say nothing. He’d told Lola he could predict exactly what he’d do on the visit: comment on the dryness of the perennial birthday roast beef, criticize his son’s driving, grouse about taxes and the government. He already knew he would not for one minute let down his guard enough to tell the truth.

  Del again questioned Lola’s motive in sending these stories to her. Was she supposed to be the old man? Was Lola? Or was it egocentric, thinking everything was about her and Lola? This story was set in yet another geographical location. Did that mean Lola was traveling?

  Del made a fresh cup of tea before opening the next email, then poured out the tea and filled the mug with vodka. She remembered a dream she had right before Janet kidnapped her. In the dream, Janet made tea in her funny, impatient way and then drank vodka from the mug instead. Was it a dream? Del looked at the vodka. She couldn’t remember.

  Del trudged back upstairs to the computer, hesitating before opening the next message. Her hands were sweating and she decided to wait. Should she reply to the emails she’d already opened?

  No, she decided. Not until she’d read everything.

  Del eyed the clock on her computer screen. It was three thirty in the morning, well past time to get to bed so she could go to work in a few hours. Too late, she decided, for decoding Lola’s wandering missives.

  Chapter Seven

  Wednesday morning dawned with dazzling brightness for November, and Del groaned as her body fought waking up. An hour after dragging herself to the shower, Del stood at her front door and saw a couple walking up Lola’s front steps. There was a sign that claimed Lola’s house was for sale, and Del dragged herself across the street to check it out.

  A woman in a green tweed suit stood on the small front porch with a phone pressed to her ear. She was promising someone, a co-worker maybe, a quick sale, and with a friendly wave nodded at the open front door, continuing her conversation in a low voice.

  “It’ll go in a week. It’s crazy, right? Only in this city can you hold an open house on a weekday and attract a dozen buyers before nine in the morning.”

  Del nodded at the realtor, her face tight with shock and hurt. She walked through Lola’s place, noting small changes the realtor had made. It wasn’t Lola’s home anymore. It was a showplace, designed to seduce buyers. She was gazing out at the backyard when she felt a hand at her elbow and looked up to see the familiar face of her longtime friend and neighbor.

  “Marco?” She searched his eyes, wondering if her friend had chosen Lola in their breakup. That was how it worked, wasn’t it? The friends had to choose between the exes. But Marco pulled her in for a long hug.

  “Haven’t seen much of you, Del.”

  “Yeah.” Del smiled wryly. “I miss our talks. Remember when we tried to make Christmas dinner for Phil?”

  “Hey,” Marco said in mock protest. “My biscuits were delicious!”

  “Your biscuits were too heavy to lift. But your turkey was a thing of beauty.”

  Marco made a face. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry I’ve been out to lunch. How have you been? Is everything all right with you two?”

  “We’re fine. Phil works a million hours a week like you. I can’t paint for shit anymore, so I think I’m going to kill myself.” Marco smiled at his own hyperbole. “You know how it is, up and down and all around. And now I need you to tell me about you and Lola. Talk to me. I miss you.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. It’s just this case. Cases, actually—”

  “I watch the news, honey. I’m asking about you.” He released her, and they stood side-by-side looking at the yard. Someone had laid sod, an awkward rectangle of green, and stuck rigid rows of colorful flowers in the narrow twin planting beds on either side of the grass. Lola had made one of them, and Del wondered if someone had been hired to duplicate it on the other side, even though that side didn’t get enough light to sustain a flowerbed. The tiny yard looked like a little kid’s drawing of a backyard, and Del shook her head. She doubted the underlying issues, the drainage and leveling, had been addressed. The realtor had arranged to make things look good and done no more.

  Del shrugged. “There’s not much to say.”

  Marco shook his head and stared at her with his big dark eyes. “If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on between you two, say so. But I can’t understand how things could have gone so wrong so quick. I don’t want to pry, but you’ve shut me out. I’ve been polite for as long as I could. What happened?”

  “I—listen, I don’t know. It seemed like we were a million miles apart after all the shit with Janet and Sterling. You had a stalker, she had a stalker.” Del colored. “It was my fault. All that other stuff was crappy, but the real issue is that I cheated—did Lola tell you? With Janet.”

  She glanced at Marco’s expressionless face. “You knew?”

  He waggled his hand. “I guessed. Janet saw you and Lola were happy together, and she couldn’t leave it alone until she ruined things. I was here when she ruined your life the first time, remember? She’s a succubus.”

  Del laughed in spite of herself. Then she sobered. “I was the one who cheated. I—”

  “Right. I get that. But Janet had her hooks deep in you from the first day. Don’t you think she still does?”

  Del bit back a reflexive denial. “I don’t know. I can’t see any of it clearly. After I found out Janet was trying to get Lola killed, I just went numb. Then after everything, I should have been there for Lola but I wasn’t.”

  “Well, you were kidnapped.”

  “Ha.” Del snorted. “By Janet. Come on, it’s not like she’s some kind of monster. She only got over on me by drugging me and tying me up.”

  “Okay, Patty Hearst. Tell me all about your trip to Sweden.”

  Again Del laughed in spite of herself. “You think? Yeah, I don’t know, it doesn’t matter anyhow. Lola was the one kidnapped by the serial killer, and she saved the day. Then I just went off to see Janet in prison like it was nothing. Lola wanted to talk about it, and I wouldn’t. I fucked it all up.”

  “So tell her that.” Marco nudged Del with his shoulder. “Call the woman you love and tell her you’re sorry and you miss her and you’d do anything to get her back.”

  “Oh, please. She�
�s too busy with her girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?” Marco frowned at Del with obvious confusion.

  “The redhead? Young? Pretty? Makes Lola smile like a kid on Christmas?”

  Marco’s laughter burst from him. “You don’t mean Emily?”

  “I don’t know her name, Marco. I just saw them together.”

  He rolled his eyes. “I love you, honey, but you’re a jealous idiot.”

  Del shrugged, annoyed.

  “Emily was just a friend, a straight lady with a boyfriend. They met volunteering at the food bank. They were friends for about five minutes until the boyfriend didn’t like it.”

  “Did the boyfriend—what happened? Is Lola okay?”

  “Lola’s jetting around the country trying to avoid the woman who broke her heart.”

  “Oh, God.” Del had seen a dozen friends lose their hearts to straight women who’d ultimately gone back to husbands and boyfriends and left only pain, humiliation and bitterness in their wake. “Poor Lola! She—”

  “Sugar, Emily’s not the one who broke Lola’s heart.”

  “Oh.” Del felt a bubble of defensiveness rising and collapsing. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

  “Do you really not—why can’t you see how much she loves you?”

  Del swallowed hard. “Is there any chance she’d take me back?”

  “Not if you don’t call her.” Marco held her gaze. “Ask. Maybe she’ll say yes.”

  I wouldn’t. If I were Lola, I’d tell me to go to hell.

  Del stepped back. Tears pricked at her eyes and she turned from Marco.

  “I gotta go,” she muttered. “See you around.”