The Taste of Air

by Gail Cleare

  Turning her thoughts to her new Dior gown, Bridget stood in front of the rack that held her evening wear and ran one hand along the beautiful dresses, making them swing. She tried to put all the bad news out of her mind, but it still floated in her memory, and the shining colors before her blurred into a rainbow.

  Sometimes things happen, and we never guess where it’s all going. We make mistakes, and then we have to pay.

  The glamorous life she led might not have seemed difficult to others, but Bridget knew better. Her teenage years and first two marriages had left her heart crazed with little cracks where it had shattered and been glued back together, over and over again. At any moment, the fragile mask of sophisticated indifference could totally disintegrate. All the more reason for a fresh coat of makeup and a push-up bra. Hiding her vulnerability was essential when going out for an evening with her husband. He homed in on weakness like a hound on a scent.

  She ran her eye down the row of gowns. Catching a glimpse of herself in the long mirror on the wall, she flinched. Those frown lines between her eyebrows, the tension around the mouth—they would definitely have to go. Forcing her face to relax, she showed her beautiful teeth in a model’s smile. But in her eyes there was still a flutter of darkness behind the blue.

  She heard the garage door and knew Eric was home. She straightened her shoulders and deliberately radiated confidence. Time to enter the battlefield.

  She could still play the game, though it was beginning to wear her down. Tomorrow, Bridget promised herself, she would call her divorce attorney and see what could be done about the money. Once upon a time, she had made Eric fall in love with her, and for the right incentives, she could probably make him glad to see her go. Best if she left town while her lawyer served the papers and negotiated.

  This little trip to Vermont was coming at a perfect time. Plus, she was dying to find out the story behind Mom’s strange adventure. Bridget guessed there was a man involved, though romantic liaisons were not normally her mother’s thing. Whatever was wrong with Mom’s health, Bridget felt sure it would soon be mended. Her mother had always been very strong and fit. It was impossible to imagine her in serious danger.

  Bridget was much more worried about her own health once Eric caught wind of what she was about to do.

  Chapter 6

  Nell ~ 2014

  Nell watched her mother sleep for another hour or so.

  The nurse came in and beckoned her into the hallway. “The hospital’s doctor on duty is here. He’d like to speak with you.”

  A tall, slim man wearing golf clothes under his white lab coat, Dr. Hicks had a soft way with words. Nell’s frustration evaporated. She liked him.

  “She’s doing as well as we can expect.” He led Nell to a nook at the end of the hallway where they could speak privately. “When she came in early this morning, she had a high fever and her air passages were nearly closed. We’re lucky she made it through the night. She’s in great shape for her age, remarkable really, but it’s a good thing she called for help.”

  He showed Nell an X-ray of her mother’s lungs on his laptop and pointed out the infected areas. He mentioned the name of the bacteria that had invaded Mom’s body, streptococcus pneumoniae.

  “What happened to her? How did it get so bad?”

  “We don’t know. She could barely talk when the EMTs brought her in,” Dr. Hicks said. “I imagine she was probably sick for a day or more before seeking medical care.”

  Nell thought of her phone call with Mom on the previous morning. She must have already been ill, though she didn’t say anything. Obviously, Mom had been in Vermont then, not at Maplewood. How strange to think of her mother telling an outright lie. Nell couldn’t remember that ever happening before. Why hadn’t Mom trusted her?

  “How long will she need to recover from this?” Nell asked.

  “It’s too soon to predict,” Dr. Hicks said. “I’m concerned about her being quite a bit underweight. How do you feel about putting her on a feeding tube until she’s off the respirator?”

  Nell reluctantly agreed to it. The doctor assured her that soon as possible, they would wean Mom off the machines and all the tubes could go away.

  “She needs complete rest and nothing to worry about,” he said emphatically. “Seeing you here will work wonders. You need to keep her spirits up. Be cheerful, and let her rest. Read to her. Show her pictures of your kids. No heavy discussions. Okay?”

  Nell nodded, relieved. He seemed to know what he was doing.

  “I can do that. Should I sit with her tonight?”

  “Stay as long as you want, but then go get a good night’s sleep.” He walked her back to the nurses’ station. “She’s sedated now, so she won’t be awake much. It’s important for her healing. Tomorrow morning, she’ll have been on the antibiotics for twenty-four hours, and we’ll be one step closer to recovery. No reason why she shouldn’t come all the way back to where she was before, despite her age. She’s a strong woman, and she’s responding to the treatment.”

  Nell looked in on Mom, who was sleeping again. After sitting for an hour or so, watching her mother breathe, she said good night to the nurses and made sure they still had her cell-phone number. Once outside, she sat on a bench to try and make some calls. The cell-phone service was spotty up in the mountains, and her texts and phone messages seemed to get stuck for a while then all come through at once. She noticed there were several new messages, and first, she listened to her sister’s. When she returned the call, Bridget didn’t pick up, and it went through to voicemail. Nell left a short message and condensed all the news about Mom’s health.

  Then she called David and told him about her meeting with the doctor. She heard the kids squabbling in the background and the sound of the TV.

  “That sounds terrible.” His voice was sharp and worried. “I feel so bad for her and for you too.”

  “It’s pretty scary. I miss you.”

  That seemed to cheer him up. “I miss you too, baby. Wish I could be there with you to hold your hand and Mary’s. Do you want me to fly up? Can I help?”

  Nell pictured his dark hair and eyes, square jaw, and seductive mouth. She almost caught a whiff of his scent as the image sharpened in her mind and multiplied into thousands of images of loving moments between them, streaming back through time. For a moment, she missed him so much her chest ached. She wanted to tell him about the cottage and how she’d found it and about Jake. David would know how to handle all that.

  Her lips pulled into a smile. “No, it’s good that you’re in charge of the kids so I don’t have to worry about them. But thanks for the offer. Sorry it’s a pain for you to take care of everything at home by yourself.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll handle it.” Then his voice changed as he scolded the kids. “Hey, keep it down, will you? I’m on the phone here.”

  Nell heard her daughter whine and the sound of glass breaking.

  “God damn it. Hurry home, Nell. I’m not very good at this.”

  “I will. But I’m sure you’ll do fine, David.” Distracted from what she’d meant to say, she ground her teeth and considered that a top-level executive really ought to be able to manage two sweet kids without any trouble. And she couldn’t exactly hurry home. She wasn’t on some spa weekend with the girls. “It’s going to be a while, you know. I’m not sure how long. Mom is in really bad shape, and she needs me a lot more than you do right now.” Fatigue pushed her down like a weight on her shoulders.

  “Of course, of course, sorry,” David mumbled. In the background, the dog started barking, and the kids were shouting at each other. “Take care, Nell. I love you.” He sounded angry.

  “Love you too. Kiss the kids.”

  He hung up, and the sounds of uncontrolled family chaos were suddenly cut off.

  Nell pushed the red button on her phone. Gl
ad that David had to be the parent for a change, she decided it was good for him to experience the family from Nell’s point of view. If she’d been home, he would have just walked into the study and closed the door.

  Nell drove back to the cottage. It was dark out in the country, and the black sky that floated over the lake was full of stars. She’d brought Winston back home and left the porch light on before leaving for the hospital, and the house looked warm and welcoming. Relieved at the prospect of a night alone with no kids or husband to make demands, she got her luggage out of the backseat of the rental car and saw the dog’s face at the living room window.

  He greeted her with much tail wagging. Nell fed him and put a frozen dinner in the oven, setting the timer. After opening a bottle of red wine from the liquor cabinet, she brought a glass into the den and joined Winston on the couch. She switched on the television, kicking off her shoes.

  It had been a hell of a day. Her brain couldn’t absorb another thing. Mom’s care seemed to be on the right track. Nothing more to be done about that tonight. Trying to empty her overloaded mind, Nell sipped her wine and stared at the talking heads on the screen.

  While the voices droned on, Nell found herself gazing once again at the gallery of photos on the wall. A smile curled her lips when she came to the shots of her kids when they were babies. Then her eyes arrived at the photo of Mary, Jake, and the mystery woman, and Nell wondered again who the woman was and where she was now.

  Nell noticed a cupboard door set into the wainscoted wall underneath the photos, behind the TV. After getting up to wheel the TV stand aside, Nell pulled open double doors, revealing a deep space fitted with shelves. There were jigsaw puzzles and board games along with stacks of books and some boxes. Pulling a carton out of the cupboard, Nell looked inside and caught her breath with excitement. She lifted out a photo album, bringing it back to the couch to hold in her lap.

  Some of the answers must be here. Sure enough, the images were of people and places she had never seen before. It seemed to be a visual history of Mary’s life at the cottage.

  The album began with a series of shots taken at a picnic. The lake was visible in the background, and people were wearing summer clothes. One photo showed Mary Reilly with a group of women, posed in front of a picnic table. Mary had short blond hair like Nell’s and looked to be around the same age. The resemblance between them was startling.

  Nell frowned and slipped the photo out of the corner holders to look at the back. Sure enough, the date was stamped there… but it was nine years prior to the date on the framed photo hanging on the wall. That was nearly twenty-three years ago. Mom would have been a few years older than Bridget, though she didn’t look it.

  So it seemed that Mom had actually been sneaking up to the cottage for over twenty years. Fourteen years had sounded like a lot, but this was amazing. That was just before Daddy was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Nell and Bridget were both in college but still living at home during school vacations. She thought carefully, counting backward in her mind. The picture was taken soon after Grandma died, she figured.

  Maybe Mom used the money she’d inherited to buy this place. But why secretly, and how had she pulled it off?

  Everything had seemed fine back then. They were all sad about Grandma, sure, but Nell’s parents were affectionate toward each other. Daddy was grouchy sometimes, as always, and he fought a lot with Bridget, which was unusual. Then the summer before she left for college, Bridget went away to have her baby, and Daddy more or less stopped talking to her. He and Nell still got along great. She never disobeyed him, and he approved of her strong work ethic. She didn’t remember Mom going off by herself for more than a few days except for little trips to the “outlet malls” with her friends. Nell and Bridget would go to their friends’ houses when Mom was away. Now Nell had discovered that her mother had really been escaping to her little getaway in Vermont for some time to herself.

  Turning the page, Nell saw a picture of a big cake with WELCOME written on it and another of a man pouring wine into champagne glasses. Looking closer, she thought it might be Jake Bascomb, with short dark-brown hair and a neatly trimmed brown moustache. Those big hands and muscular forearms looked familiar. And yes, there she was too—the mystery woman, sweet and smiling with her arm around Mom’s shoulders and their heads tipped together, cheeks touching.

  Nell went through the album page by page, scrutinizing every photo. It spanned the time right up to about five years ago and then stopped, the last pages blank and a few loose photos tucked inside the back cover. She reasoned that Mom had started taking pictures on her new cell phone at that point and probably stopped making prints. Nell and David had bought her an iPhone for Christmas that year, and Ben made her a Facebook page so she could keep in touch with them online.

  Jake and the other woman appeared many times in the album, as eventually did Winston and several children and adults Nell did not know. She didn’t recognize any of the people in a winter shot taken outside the church in the town center. A woman stood in the middle of the group, holding a baby in a long christening gown. Most of the pictures were summertime shots, though a few showed fall foliage, spring green, and stark expanses of incredibly deep snow. Many of the pictures were taken in a sailboat out on the lake. One person who did not appear, conspicuous in his absence, was Nell’s father.

  So Thomas Reilly had never been to the lake house. Had he even known about it?

  Nell heard the timer buzz and went to pull her dinner out of the oven and poke at it with a fork. She didn’t feel hungry anymore. A bleak state of mind had come over her. Even though her father had been gone for years, her impression of the past had suddenly changed, and she questioned all her previous assumptions. What had her father done to deserve this betrayal? Or perhaps she and Bridget had done something to make their mother lead a double life. It was horrible.

  Unless there was something Nell had not yet discovered, some kind of a justification. It was hard to imagine her mother, always the model of gracious behavior, ever being hurtful or dishonorable. The whole thing didn’t make any sense, and it made her head hurt. She dumped the rest of her wine into the kitchen sink and washed it down the drain.

  Nell locked up, turned out the lights, and dragged her luggage upstairs to the front bedroom. Winston watched from the doorway as she unpacked her clothes, found sheets for the bed, and made it up then got into her pajamas. The dog was curled up next to the pillow when she returned from the bathroom, his eyes pleading with her not to make him leave.

  “Okay, boy, we can share the bed tonight.” She stroked his head. “We both need a friend about now.”

  Looking for something to read, she went into her mother’s bedroom where she remembered noticing a book on the bedside table. With the room dark and the window shades up, she could see the backyard lit by the swelling moon. Through the dark woods beyond the arbor, lights twinkled. That must be Jake’s house, seen straight through the trees. When she’d taken the path that curved around, it had seemed farther away.

  A shape moved, catching her eye. Something big in the shadows. It looked like a person standing there, just inside the edge of the lawn.

  Nell felt a jolt of fear and quickly stepped back from the window. Ducking behind the curtain, she peered out, careful not to stand where the light from the hallway would reveal her silhouette.

  Now that she knew where to look, she could see him clearly. Moonlight glinted off his eye, and his shoulder obscured the pale roses on the arbor. The man shape seemed to radiate animosity, and she shivered. He stood watching the cottage for a minute then reached up to adjust his baseball cap. Turning on his heel, he disappeared into the woods.

  Nell let out a breath. “Spying on me, Jake?” she whispered. “Or keeping an eye on things for Ellie?”

  She watched the yard for a few more minutes, but nothing else moved. Maybe she was being t
oo critical, but she just didn’t trust that man.

  Nell sprinted back to her room and ducked under the covers with Winston. Cuddling the little dog against her stomach, she whispered to him as he licked her nose, and eventually, they both fell asleep.

  Chapter 7

  Mary ~ 1990

  “Of course you’ll give up the baby. Don’t be ridiculous. Haven’t you embarrassed the family enough?” Thomas Reilly wore a dark scowl, and he growled the words.

  Mary and Bridget sat across from him on the sofa in the living room. Mary’s arm was around her daughter’s shoulders, which heaved as the girl wept. Mary’s eyes burned with suppressed anger. Things were bad enough already. He didn’t need to make it worse by torturing Bridget. The poor girl would suffer plenty without his punishing lack of sympathy. She adored her father and needed his love at a time like this.

  “But, Daddy.” Bridget struggled to speak. “What if this was meant to be… my chance to do the right thing? What if my baby…?”

  “No,” Thomas said firmly. “It’s totally out of the question, stupid girl. You’ll ruin your life and ours too. I’m not helping raise an illegitimate child. If you do this”—he pointed in her face—“you’ll be one hundred percent on your own.”

  Mary squeezed Bridget tighter. “No you won’t, honey. You’ll have me.” Mary tipped up her chin and glared at her husband.

  “What the hell?” Thomas sputtered. His face was flushed with anger.

  “You heard me.” Mary’s tone was adamant. She locked eyes with Thomas, daring him to challenge her. “It’s Bridget’s decision to make, and I’ll support her either way.”

  Bridget sat up a little straighter and wiped her eyes though her lower lip still trembled. “Yes, Daddy. It’s my body and my decision.”