Yesterday's Embers

by Deborah Raney

  Kayeleigh hunched over in a back-row seat of the school bus. The yellow bus bounced over the county road Mom always called Washboard Lane. She put her hands over her ears, trying to tune out Landon and the other rowdy elementary kids in the front of the bus. She didn’t know which was worse—having to go to daycare after school like a little kid, or riding the bus home to be babysat by Grandma Thomas. Why couldn’t Dad just let her be home alone for a few hours?

  Okay, she knew why. He was afraid the same thing might happen to her that happened to Mom and Rachel. He was only trying to protect her, and she loved him for it, but come on. She was responsible. She wasn’t stupid. Besides, she was almost a teenager, and he couldn’t protect her forever.

  It seemed like Dad spent every spare minute these days fixing stuff. Since the day after the funeral, he’d come home nearly every night to march through the house on a mission, looking for something that wasn’t working right. Loose hinges, closet doors that didn’t shut right, the electrical short in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. All the stuff Mom had always been nagging him to fix. Well, it was too late now. He could fix everything in the whole stupid house, and it wouldn’t change anything.

  The bus eased to a stop in front of their driveway. Landon jumped up from his seat behind her and smacked the back of her head. “Come on, dopey. Get your nose out of that book. We’re home.”

  “I’m not reading, dummy.”

  “Well, then wake up from your nap.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You shut up.”

  Landon ignored her and dragged his oversized backpack past her down the aisle. She watched through the window as he bounded across the front yard. Probably thought he could beat her to the last pack of Pop-Tarts in the cupboard. What he didn’t know was that she had her own secret stash in the laundry room. And she didn’t feel one bit guilty. It was the only way to make sure you got a snack around this stupid place.

  She gathered her things and climbed down from the bus, waving over her shoulder at Mr. Turner, the bus driver. She stopped by the mailbox at the end of the driveway, but it was empty. Grandma must have already gotten the mail.

  When she got inside, Landon had already parked his butt in front of the TV. He waved a shiny, empty foil wrapper in the air. “Ha! Too bad they’re gone.”

  “So? Who cares? I didn’t want a dumb ol’ Pop-Tart anyway. I hope you get food poisoning.”

  “Kayeleigh.” Grandma’s stern voice came from the kitchen. “That’s no way to talk to your brother.”

  Landon stuck his tongue out at her.

  She returned the favor and went out to the kitchen. “Hi, Grandma.”

  She braced for a lecture on getting along with Landon, but Grandma only smiled and asked her how school was.

  Kayeleigh shrugged. “It was okay, I guess. Did I get any mail?”

  “Why, were you expecting something?”

  “No…not really. Can I see what came?”

  “It’s in on the dining room table. But there’s nothing there for you, honey. It’s all important stuff for your dad.”

  “I know…I’m just going to look.”

  “Well, don’t lose anything.”

  “I won’t.” She went to the dining room table and found the newest stack of catalogs and envelopes. She riffled through the envelopes. A bunch of stupid credit card offers and what looked like bills. There was a card in a lavender envelope, too. Probably another sympathy card. The cards had come in an avalanche at first, mixed in with Christmas cards that were sometimes addressed to Mom, too. Some people—the ones who lived far away—hadn’t heard about Mom and Rachel yet. Those always made Dad sad. She could tell because he would read them, then sit there for a long time, staring at nothing.

  But the cards had pretty much quit coming after New Year’s. She glanced over at the mile-high stack of opened envelopes and cards on the highboy. Dad kept saying he needed to answer them, but he never did. She’d heard him hint at Grandma to do it. But Grandma said she had her own stack to answer.

  “Can I open this sympathy card, Grandma?”

  Her grandmother appeared in the doorway, dishtowel in hand. “I don’t know…who’s it addressed to?”

  Kayeleigh read the front of the envelope. “Doug DeVore. It’s probably a sympathy card.”

  “Let me see it.” Grandma took the card. “Hmmm…no return address. It doesn’t look like a sympathy card. Looks more like an invitation.”

  “Can I open it?”

  “It’s not addressed to you, is it?”

  “No, but Dad lets me open the cards,” she said hopefully. She could tell Grandma was dying of curiosity. She was, too, now that it might be an invitation.

  “Well, I guess…if your dad lets you open the cards. But don’t you tell him I let you.”

  “I won’t.” She ripped into the envelope with her grandmother’s hot breath on her neck.

  Inside the envelope was another smaller envelope. This one simply said Doug DeVore and Guest.

  “And guest?” Grandma huffed. “That’s hardly appropriate.”

  Kayeleigh didn’t know what she meant by that. She slid a glossy cream-colored card from the second envelope. “It’s a wedding invitation.”

  Grandma peered over her shoulder. “Who is it from?”

  Kayeleigh read the fancy printing. “Oh, it’s Vienne—from the coffee shop. She’s marrying that artist guy Dad took lessons from.”

  “Jackson Linder. That’s right. I remember seeing their engagement in the Courier.”

  “Mom said Dad probably saved Jack’s life when he fell off the roof of the coffee shop.”

  Grandma nodded. “I was in Florida when it happened, but your mom told me. Your dad has saved a lot of lives.”

  Except Mom’s and Rachel’s. Kayeleigh ignored the accusing voice in her head and turned the inner envelope over to read the address. “Why does it say ‘and guest’ on it?”

  Grandma sniffed again, like she was disgusted. “It just means your dad can bring whoever he wants to the wedding.”

  Kayeleigh gave a little gasp. “Me?”

  Grandma’s frown turned into a chuckle. “Or me.”

  “Grandma…” For a second Kayeleigh thought she was serious. She let herself breathe again when she saw the twinkle in her grandmother’s eyes.

  But Grandma quickly turned serious again. “You let your dad decide about going, Kaye. He might not be ready for…something like that.”

  Kayeleigh didn’t bother to point out that Grandma had called her by Mom’s name…again. Dad did that, too, sometimes. Instead she let herself daydream about going to the wedding with Dad. She could wear her pink satin dress. The one Mom had sewed for her for the Christmas Eve program at church. She’d never gotten to wear that dress. The program was only three weeks after Mom and Rachel died, and Dad didn’t think it would be right for them to go. She still wasn’t sure why.

  It didn’t matter. She probably wouldn’t have been able to sing without crying anyway. But she’d tried the pretty dress on half a dozen times since then, dancing around her room in it after the twins were asleep, pretending everything was the way it was before the accident. Pretending Mom and Dad had come to the Christmas program to hear her sing “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming.” She could picture them side by side in the middle-school gym, Harley standing on Dad’s lap, clapping. She shook the fantasy away. She was starting to get mixed up about what had really happened and what she’d only wished for in her imagination.

  What really happened was that Dad called Miss Gorman and told her Kayeleigh wouldn’t be back in school till after New Year’s. Her friend Rudi told her that when Miss Gorman found out she wasn’t going to be in the program, she’d given Kayeleigh’s solo to Lisa Breck. At least Lisa hadn’t rubbed it in the way she usually did.

  She read the invitation again. The wedding was March 10. She would ask Dad if she could tack the invitation on the bulletin board above her side of the bed. But she’d take it to school to show off
first. She bet Lisa Breck wasn’t even invited.

  By March it would be spring. And surely by spring Dad would be ready to start going places again. Maybe a wedding was exactly what he needed to remind him how much he used to like being around people, how much fun he used to be.

  For as long as she could remember, Mickey had dreamed of having a big family like the one she grew up in…. And prospects in Clayburn were “slim to none,” as her brothers liked to say.

  Chapter Nine

  Mickey filled the watering can from the kid-height sink in the corner of the playroom and looked out at the blustery March sky. She’d be glad when she could get some of these plants back in the ground in her garden. Plucking off the yellowed leaves of a leggy philodendron, she eyed the rest of the plants. They were starting to look a little peaked. She’d neglected them over the winter.

  She soaked the soil in the clay pot and moved on to the next plant. Brenda teased her about babying her plants as much as she did the daycare kids. It wasn’t true, of course, but Brenda probably didn’t understand how much it meant to her to be surrounded by the leafy curtains of greenery—especially when the winter days grew short and sunshine was all too rare.

  Brenda had kids of her own. She’d been a mom since she was twenty-one. She couldn’t know what it felt like to long to hold a baby of your own in your arms, but to have that wish denied year after year after year.

  For as long as she could remember, Mickey had dreamed of having a big family like the one she grew up in. When she was in high school, it never crossed her mind that she might still be single at thirty.

  And prospects in Clayburn were “slim to none,” as her brothers liked to say. Even though her brothers and their wives had all moved out of Clayburn after both parents had died, the Valdez clan still managed to get together the first Sunday of every month—usually at Rick’s house in Salina. She doted on her nieces and nephews. She had four of each, and Rick’s wife, Angie, was expecting another little girl any day now. But it wasn’t the same as having her own babies.

  She pinched out a spiky flower from a coleus she’d brought inside for the winter. It was tempting to let the flowers bloom, but the colors of the leaves—the true beauty of the coleus—were more vibrant if the flowers were pinched off as soon as they appeared. That was one question she would ask God her first day in heaven. Why would He create a flower that was meant to be pinched out before it reached full bloom?

  She wasn’t sure she could be happy if she had to go through life alone, never knowing what it was like to give birth, to nurse a baby at her breast. She wanted to look into her babies’ eyes the way her brothers and their wives did, and see Dad’s Cuban heritage in a little girl’s brown eyes and coal black hair, or their mother’s Swedish blood in the blue eyes and stubborn jaw of a little boy.

  Mickey had inherited equal doses of her parents’ blood. She had her father’s thick dark hair and warm olive skin, and Mama’s crystal blue eyes. It was a combination her high school friends had envied, but sometimes she would have preferred Mama’s silky white blond hair and Dad’s rich brown eyes. But even if that might have helped her fit into Clayburn’s Euro-American population, the Valdez name—and the Catholic faith that came with it—would still have set her apart from a phonebook full of Andersens and Petersens, Schmidts and Johannsens.

  She would die before she’d tell her brothers, but truth was, a chance to change her name was just one more reason she’d always longed to find a husband. Her brothers had all married nice Latina girls—never mind they were Mexican, not Cuban. They’d joined their wives’ churches and settled down to raise large, noisy families. And they were happy. Nauseatingly happy. They didn’t seem to feel out of place in the Midwest. Of course, they hadn’t stuck around Clayburn. Rick had headed to college, and Tony and Alex to trade school, straight out of high school. And they’d never come back to Clayburn except to visit her.

  She wasn’t ashamed of her Cuban ancestry, but Mama’s Swedish blood was in her, too. Pure native Clayburn blood. Why did people have trouble remembering that?

  She would never deny her surname, but she wouldn’t be sad to shed it someday. Maybe then everybody wouldn’t automatically assume that her father had worked the railroad (which he had) and against Grandpa Swenson’s will, Mama converted from her Lutheran faith so she and Dad could be married in the Catholic church (which they had).

  Dad had been a good man and a good provider, and Grandpa Swenson mostly forgave all when Mickey’s brothers started coming along. But Mama always said it was Mickey who finally melted his heart. She was christened Michaela Joy, after Michael Swenson, and that sealed the deal.

  Grandpa died when Mickey was ten, but she had happy memories of the white-haired man with twinkly blue eyes like Mama’s.

  She missed her parents and ached to think her children would never know their Papa and Nana Valdez the way most of her brothers’ kids had. She looked into the playroom and saw the DeVore twins playing with Harley. Sometimes it made no sense that God allowed someone like Kaye DeVore to die while Mickey Valdez, who had no one who depended on her, no one who waited for her to come home at night, went unscathed.

  Dad and Mama had raised their four children to believe that life wasn’t fair, wasn’t supposed to be fair, but that didn’t keep Mickey from wondering why. If God was omnipotent, as she’d been taught to believe, then he had the power to balance the inequities in the world. Why didn’t He just make things fair?

  She glanced at the clock. Doug would be here any minute. He’d been much better about picking the kids up on time since that night she’d had to bring them home. Mickey suspected Brenda had said something to him, though she denied it. At any rate, neither of them had stayed late waiting for Doug for several weeks now.

  She’d thought often of her time at the DeVores’. Kayeleigh and Landon hadn’t been in daycare since the end of January, since Kaye’s mother was back and helping out with the older kids after school. The twins and Harley seemed to be getting along okay—they laughed and played like the other kids, though they seemed to stick together and play apart from the other children more than before. She had to wonder what kind of lasting emotional damage they would have. Even as an adult, you didn’t lose your mother without it affecting you deeply.

  She heard the front door open and looked up to see Doug making his way through the maze of toddler-size furniture and bookshelves to where she stood.

  He nodded at the watering can in her hand. “Trying to keep a little green in your life?”

  “Trying. I haven’t done a very good job lately. Things are looking a little wilty.”

  He pinched the leaf of a hibiscus between his index finger and thumb. “A good watering, they’ll spring back.”

  She winced. “I just hope I haven’t waited too long.”

  He gave her a sympathetic smile, digging in his back pocket for his wallet. “I want to pay my bill.”

  “Oh…okay. Let me get you a receipt.” She set the watering can down and crossed to the file cabinet.

  Doug followed her and straddled a chair in front of her desk. He pulled a blank check from his wallet and selected a ballpoint pen from the pencil holder made by some long-ago daycare child.

  The scratch of his pen stopped, and she realized he was waiting for her to tell him the amount. “Oh, sorry.” She checked the hours and read off the amount.

  He filled it in and handed her the check, looking up at the bulletin board behind her. “I see you’re invited to the big wedding, too.”

  She turned to follow his gaze to the invitation tacked up on the bulletin board. “Oh, yeah…Jack and Vienne’s. Are you going?” she asked. She hadn’t decided yet if she was or not. Probably the wedding, for Vienne’s sake. But there was a reception and dance at Latte-dah after the ceremony, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to subject herself to that.

  “I suppose I’ll go. It’s all Kayeleigh’s talked about since the day the invitation came.”

  Mickey smiled. “I lo
ved weddings when I was her age, too.” It was true, but she refrained from telling him that lately they only served to emphasize what she didn’t have.

  Doug became preoccupied with a loose thread on the carpet, rubbing at it with the toe of his boot. “What do you think a guy’s supposed to wear to something like that? I’m not going to have to rent a tux or anything, am I?”

  She curbed a grin. “No, you can just wear a regular suit. A tie would be nice.”

  He tugged at the collar of his chambray shirt as if the mere thought of putting on a tie made him claustrophobic. “Okay, then. Well…maybe I’ll see you there. See if I can remember how to dance.” The sheepish grin he gave her did something funny to her insides.

  Maybe she’d go to that dance after all. Her invitation said “and guest.” Maybe she could borrow one of her brothers to chaperone her for the evening. It would beat sitting home moping.

  Doug wished desperately for a glimpse into his own future.

  Chapter Ten

  Doug yanked at his tie and craned his neck to catch his reflection in the pickup’s rearview mirror.

  “You look fine, Daddy.” Kayeleigh flashed him a telling smile. “You look handsome.”

  Embarrassed at being caught primping like some girl, he patted her knee. “You look pretty fine yourself, young lady. That’s a nice dress. Grandma buy you that?”

  She huffed. “No, Dad. Don’t you remember? Mommy made it for me. For the Christmas program.”

  “The Christmas program? Last year? It still fits?” He didn’t remember seeing her wear the dress before.

  “This year.” She stared straight ahead, out the windshield, looking like she might cry.

  “Oh…okay.” Had he said something wrong? It didn’t seem to take much to set her off these days. How did he always manage to say exactly the wrong thing? “Well, you look awful pretty.”

  She turned to him with a shy smile, her chin quivering. “Thanks.”

  They rode the rest of the way into town in silence. Kayeleigh smoothed her hands over the skirt of her dress until he thought she’d flat wear a hole in it. She must be feeling as nervous as he was. He’d never been big on weddings, but if Kaye were here, he would have simply followed her lead. Kaye was the life of any party, and wherever they went together, her vivacious personality had paved the way and made him look good.