Orchids and Stone

by Lisa Preston

  She knew it threw him yet he compartmentalized, put it away. That’s what he told her, showed her. He lived it down, moved past it somehow.

  Vic looked at the box on the bed and studied her. “Did you find something new at your mom’s house recently? I mean, something you hadn’t seen before?”

  “No. And I never will.” She waved Suzanne’s papers at him, at this man who loved her. “Right?”

  “Right.” He used both hands to massage her hand, fingers kneading.

  “I’ve combed through that room, every inch. When I was twelve. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. I remember doing it again when I was sixteen, the same day I first got my driver’s license.” Daphne pictured her new licenses—the one she got on her sixteenth birthday and the one she got today. She still needed a new wallet and replacement credit cards. “Do you think my mom should do something with our bedroom?”

  “With our bedroom?” Vic’s baffled expression as he stopped rubbing her hand made Daphne want to smack him.

  “Mine and Suzanne’s. Our old one.”

  He let go of her hand. “Hmm.” Rubbing his chin, he took a breath and paused before answering. “I think it is up to your mother what she does with her house. Sometimes I think it would be better for people to move on with more … demarcation … when they’ve lost someone, the way you’ve lost your sister and father. But I think loss of that kind is very traumatic and personal and no one ought to tell anyone else how to grieve in the first place or how to handle such loss in the second place.”

  Tears topped Daphne’s smile. “That was quite a speech.”

  “I’m glad you liked it.”

  Vic’s kind outlook toward her mother sometimes chafed Daphne, who’d grown used to Thea’s snarky support about how difficult mothers could be.

  Sleep wouldn’t come soon, but she knew it would come. Yesterday, a man called Guff had grabbed her and she’d ended up in handcuffs within the hour. They had taken her jacket, they had taken Minerva Watts. And here she was going to bed, as though nothing bad had happened. She knew better. She remembered being eleven, Suzanne missing more than a week. They thought—hoped—that Suzanne might have run away again, been on a lark, but Lindsay insisted Suzanne must be in trouble, said she was missing. And at night, with hours eking past, they went to sleep. They said they couldn’t and then they did, all of the Mayfields, even her father. Eventually, the exhausted slept. Just as she and her mother had somehow slept after her dad hanged himself in a hotel room.

  This is how life is done, she knew. One minute at a time.

  CHAPTER 20

  Jed was already up when Daphne slipped down the stairs Saturday morning. Wearing his spare eyeglasses, with his cheap electric guitar slung at his hips, he opened the fridge and pulled out the orange juice. She was about to tell him to use a glass instead of drinking from the container, when he poured juice into a coffee cup and raised the carton to her.

  “Want some?”

  She melted. “No, thanks.” And she thought, No, thanks, buddy. That’s what Vic would say, would get to say. Daphne cleared her throat. “It’s nice of you to ask.”

  “Want to hear me?” Jed thrust his electric guitar forward.

  Daphne turned from her coffee making. Jed pulled the guitar up to his stomach, fingers clutching at the strings. She nodded.

  The thin squeaks were hesitant, then went on. And on and on.

  “It sounds better with the amp,” Jed said after a lengthy effort.

  “It sounds fine this way.”

  “You don’t want to hear it anyways.”

  “I do,” Daphne insisted.

  He pulled the guitar strap free of his body. “I wish Dad worked normal hours.”

  Daphne went back to her coffee making. “Why?”

  “He’s always tired. He’s no fun.”

  Josie came out of her tiny bedroom—she hated that Jed’s was bigger than hers, had once made a show of measuring and calculating the two areas to prove her case—and looked pointedly away from Jed.

  Daphne clipped in a sigh. So the kids weren’t getting along this morning. She thought of so many days early on when they’d been out of sorts and fussy. At first it got better as the divorce became more distant in time. And then it got worse, because the kids grew older, smarter, more perceptive. And their mother’s poison matured, too, worked through the kids. They became more hurt, the family more riven.

  Cassandra had dragged out the divorce proceedings for almost two extra years although she was the one who threw Vic out, who filed in the first place. Oh, how she filed, postponing court dates, asking the Superior Court for a litany of discovery on his finances, even on Daphne’s. Oh, how she demanded witness statements and threatened to make the kids testify.

  Jed shrugged and slumped off to put his guitar away. They could all hear Vic helping Grazie down the stairs.

  Josie leaned toward Daphne and spoke in a soft, crying rush. “You have to understand. It just would have been better if our mom and dad hadn’t gotten divorced.”

  Considering the out-of-the-blue comment, Daphne swept the girl with a level gaze. Josie’s hair, like every other girl in her grade, hung straight and simple but brushed with care. Her clothes, too, were standard, the low-cut jeans, camisole not covering her belly, and thin hoodie that couldn’t have kept her warm.

  “Yes,” Daphne said. “It would have been.”

  Josie’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God. You think you and my dad shouldn’t even be together? And here you are! You are so twisted.”

  What should I have said? Daphne wondered as she walked away, stepping out the front door for air while she pretended to want the newspaper.

  Green Springs Extended Care Facility necessitated a forty-five minute drive, one-way. Every other weekend, Daphne dreaded the drive as much as she knew Jed and Josie did. Perhaps the novelty of the rental car would make the trip smooth for the kids.

  Daphne pursed her lips, considering the vehicles outside. This morning, she’d slid into the same jeans she’d worn the day before. Pushing her hand into the pockets to find her truck key, she felt stiff paper and pulled out a police officer’s card and a folded flier for the Rainier Court Vacation House. The larger card made her think of nothing so much as escape. Her brow furrowed as she recalled the car rental clerk’s comment—that she happened to know the vacation house had been rented out the day before yesterday. But there were plenty of inns and B&Bs.

  After peanut butter on toast for everybody, Vic smiled all around and said, “Everybody ready?”

  “I’ll take my truck and meet you guys there,” Daphne said, and was first out the door. Outside, she counted from one-one-thousand to ten-one-thousand before the front door opened and Vic stepped out alone. The kids must still be getting themselves together inside.

  “Daph …” Vic began his protest on the steps, putting both hands over hers.

  “What!” She yanked her arms free from his grasp.

  “Josie said she was mean to you this morning.”

  “She wasn’t,” Daphne said, moving down the steps without looking at him. When he reached for her arm again, she faced him with her hands shoved into her hip pockets. “Let me talk to her.”

  “Let me talk to you,” Vic said. “I’ve never loved someone more. I know I’m not perfect. But we’re good together, Daph. You know we are. You know I love you. All these years. I remember what kind of ice cream I bought you the second time I ever saw you—”

  “We had ice cream the first time we met.”

  “Yes, but it wasn’t the first time I saw you. I came back with Grazie, the Wonder Dog. Back when she used to walk faster than two miles an hour.”

  “You saw me and came back? Fetched your dog and came back to meet me?”

  He nodded.

  “Huh,” she said. “I’m trying to decide whether or not to be creeped out by that, Stalker Boy.”

  “No! Not creeped out. Definitely vote for not. Swooned, maybe. Daph, come on. I wanted to meet you. And I’m
so glad I did. Where am I going to find another girl who’s so interesting and gorgeous and good for me and understanding and crazy and kind to my son and daughter and father and dog? What other woman could even listen to Jed murder String Cheese songs?”

  “That was String Cheese he played for me this morning?”

  “Please don’t tell him you didn’t recognize it.”

  “No, no,” she assured him. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  He kissed her left ring finger, stroked its empty length. “I know you wouldn’t. Daph, listen. When guys propose, women tend to say yes. And they say it right away.”

  “I’m not them.”

  “No. You’re not. That is all about why I want you. You’re not like other women, Daph. You’re special. You are a once-in-a-lifetime find.”

  The words gutted her and she frowned. She didn’t reply, having no answer to give. The kids came out and piled into the rental with Vic.

  Throughout the near-hour drive in Seattle traffic, Daphne glanced at her truck’s rear view, watching Vic and his kids in the rental car.

  It had been a toss-up, Vic had told her the first time he took her to meet his father. He’d talked so much about when he had to put the old man in care, how hard it all was, right down to choosing his father’s final home. When his father signed the house over, Vic took an equity loan and chose between two decent facilities, Green Springs and Memory Lane, going with the former because the name of the latter made him want to scream.

  Outside Seattle, in the town of Woodinville, as leafy as the name suggested, a walking path curved around the large lawn bordering the moss-colored nursing home. Its single story stretched in four wings that joined at a courtyard nestling Green Springs’s central dining and recreation rooms.

  “What’s he like today?” Daphne asked an aide at the desk as they walked by.

  “Like always,” the heavyset woman in white said, her smile huge.

  Vic nodded and turned to wave his kids forward. “He’s okay.”

  Daphne ground her molars. If this visit was like the last one, Vic would be upbeat, his father would ask about Cassandra, and the kids would be uncomfortable. And maybe Josie would have an outburst that reminded Daphne of Cassandra.

  Lloyd’s roommate was a man named Charles Pafford, whom he called Bud. As they approached, Daphne pushed the scent of urine away and heard Bud’s hoarse, craggy voice from the end of the hallway. “When they come, I’m going to be introduced to the man who’s going to be my grandchildren’s new father.”

  Daphne winced, thankful that only she and Vic knew he had proposed to her. Lloyd Daily nodded to Bud as Vic, Jed, and Josie stepped into the room behind Daphne.

  “I don’t much care for the word boyfriend,” Bud said, his gaze coming to the door, seeing the four visitors. “Makes a man sound like a boy.”

  Lloyd nodded again, then turned in bed to see his family. His face brightened and he held his arms wide. Josie went first, slipping in for a hug, patting her grandfather on the back. Jed waved, hovering at the foot of the bed.

  “Is he getting too big for hugging?” Lloyd asked Vic.

  Vic’s laugh was instant, if forced. “Maybe he thinks so, Pop. How are you today?”

  Bud pressed his buzzer, making a yellow light shine outside their door and a soft chime ring. An aide came in and conversation stalled until Bud had been helped out of bed and down the hall on his walker.

  Lloyd shook his head. “They won’t come, his family. They never do. But Bud keeps hoping.”

  Josie sat on the edge of Bud’s plastic visitor chair. Jed slumped into Lloyd’s chair by the window.

  “Is Cassie here?” Lloyd asked.

  Jed snorted.

  “No, Pop,” Vic said with his usual calm, his face wooden as his hand dropped to his father’s shoulder. “Cassandra and I are divorced. You know tha—”

  The old man waved a hand. “That’s right. That’s right. I know that. You don’t have to tell me. I know. Sorry. Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.” He pointed a finger at Daphne at the foot of the bed. “I know who you are.”

  She smiled at him, her heart breaking.

  “You’re the roofer!”

  “That’s me,” she said, “I’m Daphne, the roofer.”

  The kids drummed their heels on the chair legs.

  Three and four years ago, Daphne used to come and pick Lloyd up, drive him to the kids’ T-ball games. Lloyd had loved it then but had become less and less able or brave enough to leave his home.

  Put your name on it, Josie. That’s what Lloyd used to say when he watched his granddaughter at the games, roaring when she swung, incredulous that the little girls and boys didn’t always know which way to run, that the fielders sat down in their boredom and dawdled in the grass. Astounded that boys and girls played together, he’d marveled at the coed play, shaken his head, and asked Daphne again and again about her work.

  “I want to see them next week,” Lloyd said at last, when Vic had covered every conversation topic he could, an hour had passed, and Lloyd’s attention flagged.

  “Two weeks, Pop,” Vic said. “I get them again in two weeks. Every other weekend.” He reached for his son’s shoulder.

  Jed rolled his eyes and was first out of the room. Daphne kissed Lloyd and followed Jed but didn’t catch him until the courtyard. Exiting through the rec room meant a longer walk to the car, but less walking inside the Green Springs building. Daphne pushed through the closest exit door, too.

  Outside, the boy’s mouth pinched and he rubbed his scalp, looking just like Vic.

  Was he crying? Daphne squinted. “Jed?”

  The boy squinted back and kicked the ground. “Did you know that G-Pop wears a diaper?”

  Daphne nodded.

  Jed toed his shoe in the lawn and whispered, “Sometimes I hate coming here. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”

  She slipped one arm onto his shoulder, then her breath caught when he slipped his around her waist. He turned the gesture into a motion more akin to pushing Daphne away, and she let her arm drop.

  “I wish I didn’t hate it,” he said. His miserable tone became wistful.

  “Hey, buddy, would you have liked to … I mean, maybe sometime, would you like to get away for the weekend? You and your sister and me and your dad? Like to Leavenworth?”

  “Leavenworth?”

  “I had a chance to go this weekend. We were all invited. Maybe we should all go away sometime. I’ll talk to your dad if you need a break from coming here every Saturday.”

  “But then G-Pop would feel …” Jed shook his head and spread his hands in a hopeless gesture. “It’s like you can’t fix it, you know?”

  “I know. I do.”

  He rolled his eyes, let loose a disgusted snort, and stalked off, trailing his father and sister, who had cleared the courtyard and would beat them to the parking lot.

  “What should I have said?” Daphne asked no one, her voice soft. “That I’m sorry I wanted to be nice?” She tried to convince herself that the boy wasn’t rejecting her. It wasn’t personal.

  At her truck, watching the three of them go to the rental car, Daphne remembered the way the kids’ hands felt in her palm four years ago, when they were hand-holders and huggy. Recalling the softness, she nodded. She imagined those hands—little kid hands no longer in her palm—and remembered managing to give them slipping-away, finger-light squeezes today. She remembered stroking Josie’s hair the night before.

  Daphne glanced down at her empty palm, her fingers brushing nothing at all.

  In the distance, Josie raised her chin at her dad, making an imp’s grin. “This is the best thing you could rent?”

  Jed laughed at his sister. She flashed him a return smile and got into the backseat. Josie had been up front on the drive over. Fairness was crucial to Vic in how he treated his children. If they were driving several places, the kids took turns in the front seat, and on one-way rides, Vic seated them both in the back.

  “It’s just a
car,” Vic said, sounding tired. Then he smirked at his kids and said, “Yes, it’s the very best I could do.”

  Daphne’s soft hand turned into a fist.

  CHAPTER 21

  Pulling in behind Vic’s rental car at home, Daphne paused, her hand on the ignition, letting the truck’s engine run. She watched the kids go up the steps, saw Vic watch her through the windshield. She moved her hand from the key to the shift lever and backed her truck out again.

  Vic hurried to the street. “Where are you going?” he asked, leaning in her window.

  “I’m just going,” Daphne said.

  He looked ready to press her, to cajole her into hanging out with him and Jed and Josie for the rest of the afternoon.

  If he told her not to be distant or asked her what was wrong, she’d scream.

  The truth was, so much felt wrong amid so much right.

  Then Vic smiled and kissed her. “See you soon?”

  “Right,” Daphne said, faking a smile. “Yeah, of course.”

  She drove down Westpark Avenue to the end of the Peace Park, where she hesitated at the cross street until the car behind her honked and she was startled into turning along the edge of the park just to get out of the irate driver’s path.

  At Eastpark Avenue, she drove until she reached Minerva Watts’s house, where she slowed her truck, then parked on the street. She sat there for a long time, thinking and not thinking.

  Suppose she’d never stepped into the Peace Park Wednesday, had never seen Mrs. Watts, never heard her haunting cries about being kidnapped and robbed?

  Dementia? Or was the old lady making a real complaint about a terrible offense? Could it be both?

  She drove on, picturing the scene two days earlier with the Lincoln escaping down Eastpark, the black-haired woman holding Minerva Watts, holding Daphne’s jacket. But today, she was in her truck, not Vic’s Honda, and she was not chasing the Lincoln. And something … something else. Her mind niggled, processing, trying to find what she missed. Of Minerva Watts’s and her own troubles? Of Suzanne?