When she turned to the next page, she found that it was blank. There had once been pictures inside the sleeve; she could tell because the spots where they had once been were not as yellowed as the rest of the page, leaving lighter boxes where the pictures had once been. There were at least ten pages where the pictures had been removed, and then suddenly the pages were filled once again. Mrs. Neumann and the man she’d been with in the earlier pictures were back, staring at the camera. Some of them were holidays, and some of them were random moments, the kind people caught on film before cell phones had been invented—imperfect moments printed for all to see. But what struck Brydie was that Mrs. Neumann and the man were no longer smiling . . . in any of the pictures. Gone was the radiant glow, replaced with, what? She didn’t know exactly, but there was something in her face that Brydie recognized. Something she’d seen in herself more than once when she looked into the mirror.
Grief.
It was grief.
She thought about how there were no pictures anywhere upstairs. It had seemed odd the first time Brydie noticed it, but she’d grown accustomed to the naked walls. Now, with the photo album lying dusty in her lap, she thought it odd once more.
She was so busy contemplating the photo album that Brydie hadn’t noticed that Teddy had jumped down from the couch and was standing motionless in front of one of the walls at the far end of the basement. There was a low growl coming from his throat. “What are you doing?” Brydie asked. “Stop being weird.”
She shone the light over to where he was standing, but she didn’t see anything but the wall. Teddy didn’t move, and instead began to bark. It was a funny, little bark, and if Brydie hadn’t been so busy replaying every scary movie she’d ever seen in her head, she might have laughed.
With her heart in her throat, she crept over to where Teddy was standing. She shone the flashlight just above his head, and that’s when she saw them . . . all of them. They were crawling along the wall, one after another in an eight-legged pilgrimage to the floor, five granddaddy longlegs.
Brydie jumped, edging back toward the couch, not itching to let them crawl all over her. “Come on, Killer,” she said to Teddy. “Let’s go back upstairs.”
Teddy looked from the spiders over to Brydie and back again, and before Brydie could stop him, Teddy unfurled his tongue and licked the wall, picking up each spider one by one. He was still chewing on them when he turned and scampered up the stairs.
Brydie stood there for a moment, not sure whether she should laugh or throw up. Instead she started up the stairs after him. Then, thinking better of it, she hurried back to the chair, picked up the photo album, and carried it up the stairs and into the wash of the early morning daylight.
CHAPTER 17
THE NEXT MORNING, BRYDIE STOOD OUTSIDE THE NURSING home with Teddy on his leash next to her. After a frantic call to Elliott and a Google search, she learned that the now deceased and digested granddaddy longlegs wouldn’t hurt Teddy. Still, she figured she’d probably keep their late-night shenanigans out of the conversation with Mrs. Neumann. She knew that if the old woman had wanted the person staying in her house to have the key to the basement, she probably would have given it to her. She’d been so kind to Brydie so far, and Brydie couldn’t shake the feeling that looking at Mrs. Neumann’s photographs was a breach of her trust somehow. Besides, she still had to clean the mess up once she got home. She’d tell the old woman the next week—once she’d seen the basement in the daylight and the trash men had hauled off the rotting shelves and broken glass.
It was a steely day, and the sky hung heavy above her. With her gray cardigan and blue jeans, she almost faded into the background, and after the way she’d behaved at Nathan’s house the day before, she wished she could indeed do just that.
However, she had an agreement with Mrs. Neumann, and besides, she was excited to show her the tricks she’d been able to teach Teddy with the new treats she’d baked for him—carrot-oat-applesauce treats—and the dog would do just about anything for them.
She waved at the receptionist as she walked by, and Pauline was waiting for them in the chair where she always sat, a blanket covering her legs. “Brydie and Teddy!” She clapped her hands together.
Brydie unhooked Teddy’s leash so that he could run to her and jump on her lap. “He’s learned some new tricks,” she said. “And we’re both excited to share them with you.”
“How wonderful!” Pauline replied.
“How are you feeling today?” Brydie asked. “It’s awful ugly outside.”
“Oh, I like this kind of weather,” Pauline replied. “It’s good for the soul.”
“I don’t know about that,” Brydie replied. “It depresses me.”
“Don’t you like to sit back and just reflect a bit?” Pauline asked. “Or cuddle up by the fire with a cup of hot chocolate,” she looked around the room before whispering, “or bourbon, and read a good book?”
“The book and the bourbon I like,” Brydie said. “The reflecting, not so much.”
“You’ll get there,” she said. “When you’re as old as me, you’ll have more to reflect upon than you have time left on this earth.”
“I can’t imagine having that much to think about.”
“Ah, that’s yet another joy of getting old,” Pauline replied. “Selective memory.” She grinned and pointed to her head. “For example, I choose to think only about the parts of my marriages that I enjoyed.”
“You’ve been married four times, right?”
Pauline nodded. “I have.”
Brydie shifted from one foot to the other and then sat down in the chair opposite the old woman. “Well, I’ve just been married once, and I can’t seem to move past it.”
“The divorce wasn’t your idea?”
“No.”
“Ah,” Pauline said, giving Teddy’s back a stroke. “That was marriage number two for me.”
“What happened?” Brydie asked. She wondered if the man in the pictures with Mrs. Neumann was the second husband. She wanted to ask, but held back.
“He was my childhood best friend,” she replied. “When I came home to live with my parents after my second divorce, I was so depressed. My mother and father were embarrassed to have a child with a failed marriage. They hardly let me out in public.”
“That must have been awful.”
“The only person they let me see was Bill. He’d been widowed the year before. He had a good job as a car salesman. And oh, we loved spending time together,” Pauline said. She was looking out the window, just like she’d been doing when Brydie arrived. “I think my parents thought that he could sand away my rough edges, you know, make me a proper southern woman. I think I thought that he could do those things, too.”
“And he couldn’t?”
“Nobody could ever do that for me,” Pauline replied. “I loved him more than I’d loved any of my other husbands combined. I’d loved him all along, you see. Since we were kids.”
“He didn’t love you as much as you loved him?” Brydie asked. That was something she could understand. That was something she knew too much about already.
“Oh, he loved me as much as I loved him,” Pauline said. She smiled, her gaze catching something far away, a lost memory.
“Then I don’t understand.”
“You’re so young,” Pauline replied. “So young.”
“I’m not so young,” Brydie said, prickling. “I’m thirty-four.”
“Just a baby,” Pauline said.
“So what happened?” Brydie pressed, eager to hear the ending to the story.
“I had to move on,” was all Pauline said. “And so do you.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Then you’re foolish,” Pauline said, her eyes snapping back to Brydie, back to the present.
“I want to move on,” Brydie said, feeling herself straighten. “I just don’t know if I can.”
“You are allowed to grieve over your marriage,” Pauline said. “It’s
important to grieve. I grieved for every single one of my marriages. However, it’s also important to move on. It may not seem like it now, but it will get better, easier.”
“When?”
Pauline shrugged. “I can’t tell you that.”
Brydie stood up and pulled her phone out of one of her pockets. “Last night, my mother sent me this,” she said. She handed the phone to Pauline with the picture of Allan and Cassandra on the screen. “That’s my ex-husband and the woman he cheated on me with. They’re getting married.”
“Oh my.”
“I was feeling better,” Brydie continued. “I really was. I was feeling like maybe for the first time in months that I was ready to move on, to have something else.” She sat back down. “Now I don’t know what I feel.”
“He had an affair then?” Pauline asked, still looking down at the picture.
“He did,” Brydie replied. “And then he told me he didn’t love me anymore because he was in love with her.”
Pauline’s eyes flicked up to Brydie. “Honey, that’s terrible. I’m sorry.”
The old woman’s voice dripped with sympathy, and Brydie took a deep breath and let it back out again. She hadn’t told anyone that before. She assumed everyone knew, since Allan left her for Cassandra, but saying it out loud made her feel better somehow, lighter even. “I guess this picture just proves what I’ve known for a long time.”
“I’m glad we didn’t have technology like this when I was your age,” Pauline said, handing the phone back to Brydie. “When I was a young woman, if you wanted to take pictures, you had to buy a Kodak Cresta and send off your pictures and wait for them to be developed.”
“I sometimes wish it was still that way,” Brydie replied. She thought about the pictures she’d found in the basement, and she thought about asking the old woman about them. But she knew that she’d have a hard time explaining how she even got into the locked basement to begin with.
“Anyway,” Pauline continued with a wave of her hand, “that was a different time—a much different time. And right now, it’s time for you to look forward. Especially when there’s a handsome young doctor after you.”
“I don’t think he’s after me,” Brydie said. “And if he was, after the way I behaved the last time I saw him, he’s for sure not after me now.”
As if on cue, there was a knock at the door. Brydie and Pauline looked up to see a short, squat woman with Harry Potter–esque glasses standing there with a clipboard.
“May I come in, Mrs. Neumann?” the woman said.
“Dr. Sower,” Pauline said and shot a glance at Brydie, then added, “Where’s Dr. Reid?”
Dr. Sower smiled. “He’s gone on back to the hospital a couple of weeks early,” she said. “He gave me a break, and I appreciate it.” She looked from Pauline to Teddy to Brydie. “And who do we have here?”
“This handsome fellow is Teddy Roosevelt,” Pauline said. “And this is his caretaker, Brydie Benson.”
Brydie stuck out her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” She wondered if Nathan had asked Dr. Sower to come in early because he didn’t want to see her. If that was the case, she didn’t blame him.
“It’s nice to meet you, too.”
“Brydie and Teddy were just about to show me a new trick,” Pauline said. “Come in and sit down.”
“Oh, I don’t want to interrupt.”
“Too late for that now,” Pauline replied with a good-natured wink. “Teddy always has liked an audience.”
Brydie reached down into her purse and pulled out the bag of treats. Teddy jumped down and sat down in front of her as soon as he saw the bag. “Okay,” Brydie said. “I hope you two aren’t disappointed. We haven’t been practicing anything fancy.”
“I’m just impressed he’s awake,” Pauline replied.
“Okay, Teddy,” Brydie said. She held out a treat to him. “Beg.”
Teddy stood up on his hind legs, his tongue uncurling from his mouth.
“Good boy!” Brydie gave him a treat. “Now, roll over.”
Teddy cocked his head to the side.
“You can do it.”
Teddy lay down on the floor and rolled from one side to the other.
“Good boy!” Brydie gave him a treat. “Now play dead.”
Teddy lay down on the floor once again, but this time he began to snore. And drool.
“Well, that’s close enough,” Brydie said.
“What kind of treats are those?” Dr. Sower asked. “They smell delicious.”
“They’re carrot, oats, and applesauce,” Brydie replied. “Teddy loves them.”
“Where did you get them?”
“I made them,” Brydie said. “They’re actually pretty easy.”
“I bet my boys would love them,” Dr. Sower said. “I have two Afghan hounds, Rufus and Oliver.”
“Here.” Brydie handed the doctor what was left of the treats. “Take the rest of these home.”
“Really?”
“Oh sure. I have more at home.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Sower said. “I’d be happy to pay for them.”
“It’s really okay,” Brydie replied, unable to hide her pleasure. She’d almost forgotten what it was like to bake just for fun. It was a feeling she’d missed.
“Be careful,” Pauline said once Dr. Sower had gone. “Before you know it, you’ll be baking for the whole darn place!”
CHAPTER 18
THE SMELL WAS EVEN WORSE LATER THAT AFTERNOON when Brydie went down to the basement to clean the mess. She tried breathing through her mouth instead of her nose, but that only made it worse. It was like she could actually taste the liquefied food and mold and rotting wood. She armed herself with rubber gloves, a bucket full of bleach, a mop, trash bags, a box, and a broom with a dustpan.
Teddy sat at the top of the stairs and whined.
“I don’t know what you’re complaining about,” she said to him. “You’re not the one down here cleaning up this cesspool.”
Brydie knelt down next to the broken shelves and began to pick up glass and deposit it into the box she’d brought down with her. She propped what was left of the shelf up on its side, and stacked any stray boards up along the wall.
Despite the smell and the occasional shard of glass tearing through her gloves to prick one of her fingers, Brydie found that she was enjoying clearing the basement of the debris. It kept her from thinking about Cassandra and Allan and that horrid engagement announcement. She’d wasted too much time on it already, and if she was going to be over the whole thing by Christmas, she couldn’t invest another second in it.
Really, what was her mother thinking by sending it to her?
Of course, Brydie already knew the answer to that—her mother hoped that it would help her move on. She hoped that it would break free the invisible tether holding Brydie to Allan and that she’d find herself a nice, preferably rich and older man with whom she could settle.
The thought made Brydie roll her eyes.
She’d known since she was four that she and her mother were different—that they went about things differently. It was a truth that both of them forgot, and often. When her mother was angry with her, it was Brydie’s inclination to cry, which in turn made her mother even angrier. It was Ruth Benson’s nature to be blunt, to always tell the harsh truth, and it was a trait that Brydie, most of the time, envied. She just wished her mother wouldn’t be quite so blunt with her.
Brydie was more like her father, and her mother knew it. Brydie knew it, too, and that was one of the reasons she didn’t drink much—she’d known before her mother told her that her father was an alcoholic. Of course she’d known. She just hadn’t wanted to ever admit it or ever talk about it. She knew it just like she’d known that she and Allan were having problems in their marriage, long before Cassandra came into the picture. She just thought that maybe if she didn’t admit it, didn’t engage those thoughts, it would go away and work itself out.
It hadn’t, and now she wondered
if she would ever meet someone who could help her heal, both from her divorce and her father’s death.
But she had met someone, hadn’t she? She’d met Dr. Reid, and despite knowing she’d blown it with him, she held on to a small kernel of hope. She liked him, still, and she wanted, despite herself, to keep that hope alive. It wasn’t just that Dr. Reid was kind and handsome and very probably doing well for himself; there was something more about him that made Brydie want to be near him, want to talk to him, want to know him. Maybe it was his unruly mop of thick, curly hair, or maybe it was his dark eyes. She didn’t know, but she felt the pull nonetheless, deep down inside of her in a way she’d never experienced before—not even with Allan.
She wondered if that was what Pauline had felt with her second husband, Bill. If they had loved each other as much as she said they did, then how could their marriage have ended? Brydie wasn’t naïve enough to still believe that love conquered all; she wasn’t a child, and even when she had been, she’d never been one for fairy tales. But she’d always harbored a suspicion that no relationship truly ended with two people in love with each other equally. At least one of the responsible parties had to be in love with the other just a little bit less. It was possible to love someone without that love being enough to save the relationship, wasn’t it? To love without actually being in love?
That’s what Allan had told her more than once during their divorce. He loved her, but he wasn’t in love with her. At the time, she’d scoffed at his assertion.
How could he love me at all, even a little, and be doing this to me? she’d thought.
She’d accused him of trying to placate her, trying to keep her from making his life and Cassandra’s life miserable. She’d accused him of a lot of things in those early days, and some of them she wished she could take back.
Brydie’s gaze fell to the trunk in the corner. She wondered idly if the pictures missing from the photo album were inside. Placing the mop down inside the bucket full of bleach, she walked over to the trunk and stood in front of it.
Just a peek inside of it wouldn’t hurt.
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