by Tish Cohen
He took a long, satisfying drag. “It’s not the time. Gracie has barely been home for twenty-four hours.”
The screen door swept open with a long creak and a flushed River leaned against the doorjamb. “When are you coming in, Mom?”
“Soon.”
He turned to look inside. “I don’t want to be in the house alone. What if Andy comes here?”
“Andy’s been arrested, toad. Go back up to bed. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
River cast Matt a disgruntled look and left.
“Now that she’s back, he’s hit harder. Go figure.”
“Go ahead in, then. He needs you.”
She glanced at Matt sideways. Wind ruffled a long curl across her mouth and she tucked it behind her ear, then flicked ashes into the soda can. “And you don’t.”
He didn’t answer.
“Okay, okay. I get it. Not the right time.”
“My whole life has been turned upside down. I’m seeing what’s salvageable.”
“Salvageable,” she repeated. Her tongue moved around in her mouth as if trying to locate a hair. She looked toward the water. “What’s to salvage? Life can suddenly be all peachy between you two? She’s not going to change, Matt. A person is who she is. You said so yourself. Elise is out to please Elise.” She sat directly beneath the overhead pot lights her father had installed in the soffits some thirty years earlier. The harsh light made her look cruel. “Even the plane crash that night on the news. Five people die and all she has eyes for is the dog who lived.”
He stared at Cass. How righteous he’d been in his certainty that Elise did everything wrong.
“You’re lucky it worked out the way it did with Gracie,” Cass said.
“I won’t argue that.”
He ran through it all in his mind. Nate? Elise was right about him. The crutches? Elise was right again. Even about saying yes to the turtle. And who the hell had found Gracie? Elise. She hadn’t said anything about the pregnancy yet, but could he really blame her? He’d all but removed himself as her support system. And if she did ride pregnant because her horse was the only lifeline she had left? Almost all professional riders rode. This was dressage, not eventing.
And never once through the dark, dark days of Gracie being gone did Elise call Matt out for telling her to go get gloves. She fully bore his brunt.
“You’ve got to think about your daughter, Matt.”
They watched as a raccoon crept along the fence line, crossed the road. Tiptoed toward Ruth’s garage door to inspect for gaps. The deep, haunting call of a loon penetrated the darkness, a long and plaintive cry from across the lake.
“You’re right.” His daughter needed her father and her mother. She needed to be a big sister to her younger sibling. Matt extinguished his cigarette beneath his heel and stood. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.” Without a glance in Cass’s direction, he parted the bushes and walked home to his family.
In the darkness of Nate’s old master bathroom, Elise stood at the window and watched her husband step through the bushes at the edge of Cass’s overly lit property and across their driveway. When she heard the creak of the front door opening, she returned to where she’d been sleeping with their daughter.
Chapter 44
Matt stood in the doorway and watched his wife and child slumber, so still it was almost eerie. They faced each other, Gracie using her mother’s arm as a pillow, Elise using her daughter’s forehead as oxygen.
He stepped forward on the creaky floorboard and Elise stirred, sat up halfway.
“We tried to wait up for you, but she was out like a light. And then I guess I was too.”
He crossed the room. Ran a hand over Elise’s hair, then Gracie’s. “Unbelievably beautiful.”
“She really is.”
“I meant the two of you curled up together.” Matt pulled back the duvet and climbed into his side of the bed, wrapped himself around their daughter. He kissed Gracie’s cheek and took Elise’s fingers in his. “We never talk about the day she was born.”
Elise picked at the duvet with her free hand. “I’ve been . . . afraid to.” She hesitated, looked at him. “Actually, I guess my rationale was that, if I brought up the accident, I’d be shining a light on what happened and you might realize you despise me for it. And leave. And how would I survive that? Besides, saying sorry didn’t begin to cover what I was feeling, what I’ve felt ever since.”
“Wow.” He rolled his eyes. “If that wasn’t lifted straight out of O magazine, I don’t know what is. You’re better than that.”
Her face went slack with confusion for a moment, then the twitch of his lips gave him away. She laughed. “Jerk.”
“Hey. Lightened the moment.”
“Stunk up the moment.”
“Anyway, that’s not what I meant. About the day she was born. Even with all the rushing and the doctors and nurses, even with the fear, I remember thinking we had the most gorgeous baby ever born.”
“I kind of felt sorry for other parents.” Elise relaxed and let herself smile. “I still do.”
“Me too. Losers.” They both laughed.
After a few moments of silence, he said, “I was no better. In my own silence, I mean. I had no idea how I felt. I was having so many mixed emotions, I couldn’t get past the tangle of it. It wasn’t until she was kidnapped that I realized what was churning me up inside was rage—it had been there since she was born. I totally blamed you.”
“Who wouldn’t? I blamed myself.”
“But you were just as excited about having a baby as I was. You’d have offered up your own life rather than put our baby in harm’s way. The truth of it is that I’d have trusted Indie too. It was just so damned easy to point a finger at you in my head. It was lazy on my part. And wrong.”
Coyotes yipped and barked across the lake. Elise reached over and pulled the duvet up over Gracie’s chin.
“How did I miss it?” he added. “That we are everything?”
“We always were, Matt.”
“I know. I do know that now.” He threaded his fingers through hers. “I want back in. I mean, for real. Nothing hanging on from the past. Just us, now. And the future. She needs us whole, right?”
“It’s not enough to want it for her. You need to want it for you.”
“We’re a little pack,” he said. “I want to love you badly again.”
Elise hesitated a second too long.
“What?” Matt went into a free fall, a full panic. Did she know about the motel? Did she follow him? Worse—follow Cass? Here, on the brink of having everything, he could wind up with nothing because of his own foolish conceit. “Say it.”
“I need to know that nobody is a threat to us. I don’t want to move forward thinking there’s anyone who holds your admiration or . . . your desire more than I do.” She looked at him coolly. “No matter how long you’ve known them.”
“I was . . . honestly, there is no excuse,” he said. “So much hit me when I got here. I was a prick, and I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you that it’ll never happen again. No one compares to you. Not in any way.” He touched her face. “It’s Gracie and you for me. Please tell me you’re in.”
Elise paused. Then, “I’m in.”
He leaned across their daughter to kiss his wife’s forehead, temple, cheeks, jawline, mouth. To tell her he loved her. “We’ll be amazing. I’ll be behind you like never before.”
Beneath him, Gracie grumbled in her sleep, reaching up to rub her eye with the back of a hand before turning onto her side to face her father. He lay back down and, together, he and Elise watched Gracie’s rib cage rise and fall.
“I’m not going to try for Rio,” Elise said.
“What?” Matt held her eyes. “No. Don’t do this. I won’t let you do this.” His face spread into a sly smile. “You’re pregnant and you think I’ll disapprove. But I don’t.”
“You found the test.”
“I found the test.” He sha
ped her hand into a ball and wrapped his around it. “And we can do it all. This is your time in every way.”
Chapter 45
For the old donkey, it was like being a princess for a day. She’d been the “nanny” for years, always watching Indie being fussed over. Poppins swelled with importance as Matt ran a brush along her sides and Warren sprayed her tail with Indie’s silicone show spray. With Elise guarding Gracie from an accidental kick, the child squatted down and brushed thick, gummy hoof polish onto Poppins’ tiny hooves. Elise then slid the borrowed saddle and pad along Poppins’ withers to settle it on her swayed back.
Sunny, warm, and quiet, it was a great day for their daughter’s first ride on Poppins. The horse shows and crowds were long gone and the grounds were all but empty at the end of August. They had their pick of which rings to ride in. Farther up the breezeway, Indie snorted in the crossties, already tacked up and impatient to get going.
“Why does Daddy have to lead me when I ride with you?” Gracie groaned. “It’s not fair.”
“You can hold the reins,” said Elise. “He’ll just keep a hand on her bridle.”
“Then how am I going to gallop?”
“You’re not,” Matt, Elise, and Warren said together, laughing.
Elise grabbed a child-sized helmet and set it on Gracie’s head, snapping the strap under her chin.
“Mom, I don’t think he meant to do something bad.”
Every time her daughter mentioned Andy, Elise’s breath still caught in her throat.
“He just didn’t know how to give me back. He didn’t want to go to jail. Every night he would tell me how bad jail is and say he just had to figure out what to do next. He was sorry. You shouldn’t be mad at him.”
Matt spoke first. “It’s good that you’re not angry. And we’re very glad he was . . . decent to you. But it’s a bit more complicated for your mom and dad.”
“When he was in third grade, he got bullied. It’s not fair. He had to go to the hospital.”
“Let’s just enjoy our ride today, pumpkin,” said Elise. “Enough talk about Andy.”
“Daddy, do you still have his fishing lodge T-shirt?” Matt and Elise looked at each other. “That sort of fell into the fire, Lil’ G,” Matt said.
It had been Elise’s idea to stay at the cabin until summer’s end. To whisk Gracie back to New Jersey too quickly could cement in her a fear of the area, of being away from home, and they all wanted her to come out of the summer strong. Besides, staying would give Matt the chance to finish the land severances and transfer the original lots back to their rightful owners before putting the place back on the market—this time with Phyllis Promislow. It was the year of making good.
The added bonus of remaining at the lake was having Warren stay on; Elise was reconnecting with her father, and Gracie was getting to know her only living grandparent.
For Matt, his small-town practitioner dream would take seed in New Jersey. He’d lease a small space in an old building and maintain the freedom to be close to both kids. Ronnie had mentioned that his next-door neighbor’s place was about to go on the market: a small acreage with a charming stone house and a nice barn. It wasn’t a bad idea, selling the house in Montclair and moving to a property where they could keep Indie and Poppins right there in the yard. Make horses more of a family affair.
“Okay, Lil’ G.” Matt went to lift Gracie up and onto the saddle, then stopped. Glanced at Elise and positioned the left stirrup for Gracie to climb up herself. She managed to get her foot in, hop a few times to give herself momentum, and hoist herself up until her stomach was over the saddle. Then Warren set a hand on her back and she swung her other leg over to sit tall and proud.
“Maybe one day your grandpa will get you a fat, shiny pony,” Warren said. “A real beauty. Any color you want. How would you like that?”
“Dad,” Elise said before Gracie could reply. She set a hand on Poppins’ neck and arched her brows at his big, dreamy promises.
Warren nodded. Grinned sadly. “There I go again?”
“We all slip up once in a while.”
Her own words sat with her. All the damning she was guilty of over the years. All that wasted time. She never would have believed she’d forgive her father. Though she wasn’t entirely sure forgiveness born of freshly discovered bitterness was the best absolution.
She’d forced her mother from her thoughts since finding Gracie.
Matt started to lead Gracie and Poppins along the aisle and into the sun. Elise followed behind, leading Indie. Elise was thrilled Gracie was finally willing to ride. It would remove some mobility issues. Build her confidence, because the playing field would be leveled. And Poppins was an old pro from her Santorini days.
Out in the sunshine, Elise pulled down her stirrups and led her towering horse over to a wooden mounting block, positioning him alongside it and throwing the reins over his head.
Squinting, Matt looked back at Elise. “Which ring do you want us in?”
Elise stepped up onto the block, holding reins and the pommel of the saddle in one hand, the cantle in the rear in the other, and started to slide a booted foot into the stirrup. There, she stopped.
“Hon? Do you want the big ring or the smaller? They’re both empty.”
She looked at the saddle, the horse’s shiny black mane. Reached over to rub his neck.
Warren came out of the aisle, banging brushes together to clean them. “You okay, Lisey? You need a leg up?”
She looked at her father, earnest and helpful, scrubbing every last bit of dust from the brushes. At her husband, helping Gracie shorten her reins. And her daughter, bouncing in her saddle, willing the old burro to take off.
“Lisey?”
She stepped off the mounting block. Handed Indie’s reins to her father. “Would you mind taking off his tack? I think I’d like to help Matt.” She walked over to her husband and daughter. Let Gracie be the star of this show, she didn’t say. She tapped the girl’s foot. “You know what I just realized, sweetness? You haven’t been sucking your thumb.”
The girl looked surprised. “Oh. Yeah!”
Elise reached into her pocket, sorted through a few bills, and handed her daughter a fifty. “A deal is a deal.” She searched her daughter’s clothing for a safe place to put it and settled on the used paddock boots they’d bought her in town. Elise took hold of the bridle on the other side and started to lead the donkey. “Let’s go, guys.”
Matt looked at her, then at Warren leading Indie back to his stall.
“What’s going on?”
Another spray of bubbles fluttered in her belly. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t get on a horse. Not until this baby was born—full-term and safe.
“Elise?” Matt jogged to catch up. “What are you doing?”
Her dream of going to the Rio Games was no more.
Her free hand went to her belly. “What feels right.” She smiled to herself as they led donkey and rider to the small ring. Tokyo would be a glorious place to visit in summer.
Chapter 46
The sun was only a suggestion, in deep rose and tangerine and violet, growing ever more adamant above the pines. The driveway was still grainy with darkness and the definitive bite of summer’s end.
Gravel crunched beneath their feet as Warren gave Elise a hearty hug, kissed the top of her head, his hands weighty and solid on her shoulders. Matt and Gracie were still asleep, having said their goodbyes the night before. Behind him, Warren’s battered black Civic was packed, engine running, Gunner strapped awkwardly into the passenger seat.
“I don’t even know how to thank you. Especially for the stuffed dog.”
She laughed. “Anything to prevent you from buying another Big-Mouth Billy.”
He gazed at her, his lashless eyes rimmed with pink, deep lines fanning out as he smiled. “And . . . for forgiving an old man his lifetime of bad choices. Keep giving me a chance to make some good memories with you and your kid. Kids.”
“You’re o
fficially invited to carve the turkey this Thanksgiving in New Jersey. With Chloe.”
He gave her shoulders a squeeze and set himself in motion. Climbed into the car. Started the engine and rolled down the window, leaning an elbow outside. “I’m not a man who’s made a big success of his life. Not that I need to tell anyone that; it’s plain to see. I was a self-centered ass who forced his family to bend to his fantasies and then punished them for not becoming what I imagined.” He squinted up at her. “But I’ve learned a thing or two along the way, and one of them is to speak up about things that aren’t so easy to talk about.” He held out his hand and Elise took it. “When a person reaches that low point like your mother did—and I acknowledge my own hand in helping her get there—it’s not cruelty or selfishness or lack of caring that drives them. All they have is their own pain. You can’t judge them on anything else.”
A crow cawed from the towering pine beside Ruth Urquhart’s house, then took flight, leaving the treetop swaying in its wake.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
“Just in case you need to hear it.” He squeezed her fingertips and blew his daughter a kiss, then put the car in gear.
Elise watched her father’s Civic make its way down the driveway and turn onto Seldom Seen Road, snake its way around the bend and disappear. It wasn’t until the sound of the engine could no longer be heard, when the birds began to stir and chirp about the day, that Elise turned to go back inside.
An hour later, the trunk and doors were open wide while Elise and a clean-shaven Matt went in and out of the cabin to cram bags and suitcases into Nate’s Range Rover. Matt’s old BMW had finally died and the Rover seemed more practical for their growing family. Elise’s car was to be driven back to New Jersey by a vehicle-moving service.
Elise passed Matt with a bag of clean laundry. When he blocked her way, she poked him in the side. Laughed.
She caught a whiff of ash in the air from last night’s bonfire by the lake, and her stomach lurched. By her second trimester with Gracie, the nausea had abated. Not this time. She’d read that prolonged nausea could mean you were carrying the opposite sex from your first child, but she and Matt wanted it be a surprise. She leaned against the porch railing a moment. Matt moved past now with luggage. “You good?”
