by Sophie Gunn
Lizzie waved at her daughter from where she stood on the driveway, then waved to Judy Roth. “Come on down to help. You, too, Judy. It’s do-the-walk day!”
Paige’s window slammed shut.
Judy let the curtain fall back into place.
The driver maneuvered a forklift to lift the pallet of bluestone from the truck bed. He deposited it in the middle of the driveway along with eight enormous bags of sand. Lizzie wondered how she’d ever lift the bags. How she’d move all that stone…
Lizzie tipped the driver.
“Good luck, little lady.” He smirked. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
The old walk with its missing bricks and haphazard leveling was dangerous, so Lizzie was bewildered why she felt such a sense of loss pulling the old bricks from their weed-bed, sending earthworms and spiders scurrying. She tried not to flinch at the wildlife, or at the beauty of the old bricks that she tossed behind her. Their edges were worn, and a few of them had split. They were crumbling, woefully inadequate. But they were pinkish-yellow, multicolored. How had she never noticed how lovely they looked? Some of them had grown a lovely coat of moss, which of course was what made them treacherous by mid-November, deadly by December. But it was lovely the way the moss contrasted with the pink.
By the time Paige came outside in her bathrobe and slippers, her hair a rat’s nest, Lizzie had half the old bricks in a pile behind her, and she was wondering if she could put them back when the ground was leveled. There wouldn’t be enough, especially since she had read in her copy of The Perfect Path Home that a pleasing walk should be at least three feet wide, and hers was currently only two and a half.
“What are you doing?” Paige asked.
“You told me that you want the place to look nice for your dad. Well, I decided that’s a noble goal. So we’re starting here. We’re going to make the place look nice, you and me. Get dressed and come out and help me.”
“You scared away Tay, didn’t you?” Paige asked. She picked up a brick as if it were made of radioactive waste. “Yuck. It’s slimy. Oh, my God, there’s a slug stuck to the bottom.” She tossed it into the grass. “And it’s freezing out here.”
“It’s only going to get colder as the weeks go by. C’mon. It’ll be fun. Working warms you up.”
“It’s Saturday morning! Blankets warm me up!”
“Help. I’m not asking, Paige.”
“If I don’t, will I have to play Monopoly again?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, God, not that!” Paige stomped back into the house. “I want my old mother back. The one who let everything go to hell and left me alone.”
By noon, Lizzie had pulled up all the old bricks and laid string tied to stakes to indicate the boundaries of the new, improved walk. She studied the copy of The Perfect Path that she’d checked out of the library to make sure she hadn’t skipped any steps. She knelt to check her stakes. Her line was straight, wide enough to be “more inviting, drawing people to your front door.”
What if she didn’t want people to come to her front door? What if she veered the walk around the house and into Mr. Newell’s hedges next door, would that keep Ethan away?
“Hi, ma’am.”
Lizzie looked up past the work boots, the ripped jeans, to the Iron Maiden T-shirt. She stood, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. She wondered if she had streaked her face with dirt. Hi? Was the walk leading people to her front door already?
The kid was blond and handsome. “I’m Aidan Treaman. A friend of Paige’s. She said you needed help.”
Lizzie looked to the silent house. Paige had better be well hidden, because Lizzie intended to kill her. “Did she?”
The boy picked up the shovel that was leaning against the porch. He inspected it like a pro, then went to work jamming its pointed end into the sod, digging out clods of grass along her string lines. He was like a machine, strong and efficient. “How deep you gonna lay the bed?” he asked.
She looked again to the house for Paige. Don’t you talk about beds around my daughter, Mr. Treaman. “I’ll be right back, um—”
“Aidan.”
“Right. Aidan.” Lizzie sprinted up the porch steps two at a time, knocked most of the dirt off her boots, and went inside. “Paige!”
Paige, still in her pajamas, looked up from the couch. “Problem?”
Was it necessary to wash her hands before she strangled her daughter? Perfect Path left out all the essential details. “Aidan? Excuse me? Get your butt out there.”
“Aidan is totally strong. He can do it twice as fast as we can.”
“That’s not the point. The point is that we’re going to do it together.”
“Your idea. Not mine. Anyway, he wants to help.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s a nice guy.”
“No. Because he likes you! He thinks he’s going to, to—” Lizzie faltered. “You don’t just invite boys to help you lay your bed.”
“We’re just friends, Mom. Jeesh.” She flopped back on the couch and focused her attention on SpongeBob. “Tay helps you.”
Lizzie flicked off the TV. She refused to be baited by the Tay comment. “Aren’t you even going to say hello to him?”
“I’m going to wait until he gets all hot and sweaty. He’ll like that better, believe me.”
Oh, my God.
“I’m kidding, Mom. God. You turned completely white. I’ll be out in a minute. I didn’t think he’d show up so early.”
Lizzie tried to recover. “You’ll be out there ready to work?”
Paige leveled a doubtful stare. “To supervise.”
“Paige. We are not helpless little ole things who manipulate men to do our bidding. We can do the front walk, just us.”
“But why? Life’s so much more fun with friends. Right? You’re not exactly avoiding your new fix-it-man friend.”
“What did you hear about me and Tay?” Lizzie asked.
“Joy told Susie’s mom that you took a two-hour lunch break with him,” Paige said. “At his house. And came back grinning.”
“Get your butt out there or I’m sending him home.” Lizzie felt her blood pulsing. She tried to breathe. This was just exactly what she hadn’t wanted to happen: Paige to see men as saviors.
Paige didn’t even sit up. “Did Ben show yet? His dad’s a contractor. He knows all about this stuff.”
“How many boys did you call?” Lizzie went to the window to look outside. Two more boys had appeared. They had brought their own shovels. One hooked up a sound system and a bass beat began pulsating from the porch, vibrating the windows.
“If you’re not out there in five minutes, I’m sending them all home,” Lizzie said. Then she stomped outside to meet her adolescent crew.
Paige tried to hide her smile as Ben put in the last stone. The walk looked amazing, and with the five of them, they’d done it in less than three hours. She never even had to break a sweat and she hadn’t ruined a single nail. Plus, Paige had never noticed just how cute Aidan was until she saw him all sweaty in his loose T-shirt and jeans. He was flirting with her by the end, she was pretty sure. As soon as her mother went inside to get them something to drink, the boys collapsed on the porch steps around her.
“Done deal,” Ben said.
“Done deal,” Paige said. She handed him forty bucks. Then handed the same amount to Aidan and Paul. “Don’t tell my mother. She’ll freak. She thinks you’re all doing this ’cause you want to make out with me.”
Ben and Paul laughed, but Aidan went a little red around the ears.
“Why are grown-ups so sex-crazed?” Ben asked. “Especially the moms. My mom gives me the Condom Talk like every time I leave the house.”
“No clue,” Paul said. He kissed his forty bucks. “I love you madly, mmmm…”
“Gross,” Paige said.
“So, what’s on for next week?” Aidan asked. “That porch? It totally needs painting.” He turned red again. “And I totally need the gas m
oney.”
“I don’t know,” Paige said, watching her mother come out with a pitcher of lemonade and paper cups. She hoped her mother didn’t notice the boys stuffing their money into their front jeans pockets in unison. She probably just figured they were adjusting themselves. “I’ll call you,” she told them. “Now, smile and drink lemonade and flirt with me.”
“Lemonade?” Lizzie asked.
God, this was humiliating. It was as if her mother thought they were all adorable five-year-olds and horny, out-of-control thirty-five-year-olds simultaneously.
Aidan accepted the lemonade with a polite, “Thank you, ma’am,” but when Lizzie turned her back, he leaned over and pecked Paige on the cheek. He whispered, “Just for show,” in her ear and it was her turn to go red.
Maybe she would call them back next week for the porch. After all, it wasn’t like she didn’t have the money.
CHAPTER
32
Lizzie had her binoculars trained on the shore of the small pond, near the forest’s edge. Tay sat beside her on the bench, his legs stretched out, his head leaning back. Since they had finished the path in one day, Lizzie had relented and agreed to see Tay before Monday. But she didn’t want to go to his house again and have Paige hear about it. Instead, she’d suggested this wholesome expedition to the bird pond.
She looked at her companion. “Tay? Are you sleeping?”
He mumbled something and she nudged him with her elbow. “You have to keep alert if you want to see the green heron.”
“It’s six o’clock on Sunday morning. I don’t care if I see it. I just came out here because I wanted to be with you.”
His words warmed her more than her coat and gloves and hat ever could. “You said you wanted to try birding. C’mon, get with the program, mister. We can’t be naked all the time.”
“Why not? You know, I had to practically tie myself to the deck yesterday to keep from coming out there to help you guys.”
“We didn’t need you. We had three big strapping men.”
“Are you cheating on me with other handymen?”
She glanced up at him. “What are you going to do if I am? Maybe you weren’t the only one who overheard my wish.”
His eyes flashed. “I’ll rip out that damn walk stone by stone and rebuild it myself, with the three of them buried underneath.”
Lizzie relented, thrilled at his reaction. That sure woke him up. “They were Paige’s friends. I told her she had to work, and she called in her admirers.” Talking about Paige subdued her mood. She didn’t want to talk about Paige and how she knew about their relationship. She watched the beautiful man dozing beside her. “Did you sleep last night?” she asked.
“Not so much,” Tay admitted. “Fell asleep around four.”
“What’d you fix?” Lizzie asked.
Tay shrugged. “The lady in the next cabin had a load of wood delivered in a heap on her driveway. So I stacked it.”
“Oh, Tay.” Lizzie thought about the woman’s surprise when she woke up to find her wood neatly stacked, as if by elves in the night.
“I can’t remember what it’s like to sleep through the night,” Tay said. “I can’t remember what it feels like to not be tired when it’s light. Or to not be wired when it’s dark.”
“Oh, hey. There it is!” A small green heron hopped to the pond’s edge. Green herons were nothing like the huge blue herons that had been spotted nesting nearby. They were less than half the size, and they were also shyer, and much rarer. Mr. Petray had come into the diner last week to tell Lizzie that it had been spotted all week in this pond, but she didn’t think she’d actually see it. “You want to see, Tay? It’s amazing that it’s here so late in the fall. I wonder if there’s something wrong with it.”
“You know what I want?” He leaned into her. “I want to know more things wrong about you.”
The heron stood perfectly still, watching the pond for prey. Two cardinals landed nearby in a lilac bush and hopped from branch to branch. “What? Me?”
“You’re always talking about things being even. So after I tell you that I can’t sleep and I wander the woods at night performing mindless tasks for strangers, then it’s your turn to tell me your weakness.”
“You’re my weakness.”
Tay rolled his eyes. “I’m not that dumb. I’m going to ask Jill,” Tay said. “I bet she knows.”
Lizzie put down the binoculars. She hadn’t been kidding him, but now she was embarrassed and didn’t want to admit it. “Your weakness isn’t so big, Tay. You feel and so you want to make things right. What’s wrong with that?”
“Oh, God. You’re killing me. I’m a man. I’m not supposed to feel. I’m supposed to be a rock. I’m supposed to know exactly how to make things right.” He took the binoculars from her and looked at the bird standing in the water. “We got up early and came out here in the freezing cold to see that? It’s not even green.”
“Its head is.”
Tay looked around the marsh through the binoculars. “I wish I had these when I was looking for the money. They would have helped.”
“You can borrow them.”
“Nah. I’ve stopped looking.”
Lizzie watched Tay. “Really? Why?”
“Because I’ve looked and relooked and then looked again. I’ve given up. The money’s gone. Either someone’s got it or it’s rotting at the bottom of a creek—green heron food. I need a new plan.” He handed her the binoculars.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” she asked. He had said he was here to find the money. If he was giving up, then—she didn’t want to think about it.
“No. Because you’re here and I’m getting stuck on you, despite this awful bird-watching habit.” He lowered his voice. “But I’ve got to tell you, Lizzie, it’s hard staying. I worry about running into Candy. I assume she thinks I’m gone. But this town is so small, everyone seems to know everyone.”
Lizzie said, “What’s it like, Tay?”
“What?”
“Feeling like you can’t make up for what you did.”
He shrugged. “It’s like everything is in color, but when I reach out and touch something, it turns to black-and-white. The opposite of Midas turning everything to gold. It started the instant after the accident. It was like the whole world had gone gray. I got home late that night and stood at my sink and ate some noodles that Emily had heated up for me, and I couldn’t taste them. I couldn’t smell them. Emily forced me to the doctor after a while to see if there was something wrong with my taste buds, with my nose. But there wasn’t. It’s in my head. I can feel life going on around me, I can see it, but I can’t get a piece of it. Like it’s a dream and I can only watch. Something inside of me shut down.”
“I’ve had bad colds where I couldn’t taste or smell.”
“Yeah, it’s like that. But it’s worse. It never stops. A constant dullness, interspersed with wicked knife-slicing painful stabbing.”
The green heron took off with a sudden flutter of flapping wings. Something brown swooped out of the sky. A wave of birds and other creatures skittered for cover. Cardinals and titmice and jays arced and darted in every direction.
Lizzie pointed. “A hawk!” She raised her binoculars. “Oh, Tay, a Cooper’s hawk. Isn’t it beautiful? It almost got the heron.” She handed the binoculars to Tay.
“It looks like a killer.”
“It is. Gets birds mostly. It was definitely after the heron. Did you see how it dove?”
The hawk landed in a pine tree near their bench.
Tay handed the binoculars back to Lizzie, picked up a rock, and tossed it at the hawk.
“Tay!” Lizzie grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”
He tossed another rock, this one hitting the tree, but too low to disturb the hawk. The big bird didn’t move a feather. “I don’t want it to get your heron,” Tay said.
Lizzie looked around for other birders. An old couple had set up an elaborate telescope across the pond. “Tay,
trying to stone the birds is frowned upon.”
“Look at that thing. It’s vicious.”
“It needs its breakfast, too, Tay.”
He flung another stone, and then another. Finally, one landed close. The hawk rose into the air with a few powerful beats of its wings, then glided off to perch in another tree on the other side of the pond.
Tay sat back down on the bench, but Lizzie stayed standing. “You can’t try to help everything all the time, Tay.”
“I thought you liked the heron.”
“It might be stuck so far north this late because it’s sick or dying or somehow weak. It might have been a mercy for it to be eaten by a hawk, because soon, it’s going to freeze to death. Nature works, Tay. You can’t take sides.”
Tay shook his head. They watched the heron come timidly out of the brush. It waded into the water, keeping an uneasy watch on the sky.
“It’s still there.” He started tossing rocks again, this time to drive the heron back into the bush.
“Tay!” She grabbed his arm. “You can’t control everything. Let it go.”
“It’s not safe for it to come out yet,” he said.
“Life’s not safe. The heron has to hunt. It can’t hide all day. Leave it alone. You’re scaring its prey.”
The heron had retreated to the scrub along the shore.
“Tay?” Lizzie turned him to her. He looked ashen, as if he’d turn to black-and-white himself before long. “Are you okay?”
He put his arms around her. “Sorry. I’m a city boy.” He pulled her closer. “Nature isn’t natural to me.”
She held him, feeling his warmth through his too-thin coat. She let her head rest on his chest. “I’m terrified of birds,” she said.
“What?” He pulled back.
“You wanted to trade weaknesses, there’s a good one. They make me nervous as hell, those beady little eyes and sharp beaks. When I fill the feeders, I bang on the door first to warn them I’m coming out so they’ll fly away.”
“Wait—what? If you’re scared of them, why do you feed them?”
“I like them. I think they’re beautiful. I love to watch them through the windows and through the binoculars, but they make me nervous when they get too close. Especially the robins. They flock together in the winter and sometimes I don’t want to leave the house when they’re out there. They can get a little spooky, you know.”
