The Beginning of Always

by Sophia Mae Todd

  I shoved my hands into the front pockets of my jeans, fighting off a scowl. I wasn’t up for this talk. My dad had avoided the topic beyond the basics, and with Nicolas and Tracy busy fighting the fire for me back East, I hadn’t spent any considerable amount of time with anyone dissecting the details. Well, except myself. “What are you trying to say, Bill? You know what he did.”

  “Yes, and I just wonder if this is just the same stuff he’s done all his life, trying to drive you away. He works himself up to bring you closer, but always with a finger on the self-destruct button.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Al always enjoyed his secrets. He knew they’d be the end of him.” Bill readjusted his pack over his shoulder. “Do you love Al, Florence? Now?”

  “Yes. I do. But this is a special kind of messed up, what he did.”

  I leaned my head back to take in the heavens. I couldn’t believe it was the same sky we’d once played under.

  “You have to understand, Mr. Blair, being a journalist is all about integrity, all about credibility. I worked for years to build my reputation and it was spotless, one of the best in my field. Alistair wanted to play a game. He was selfish and did things to his own advantage. He wanted to get back together—okay, fine, I can accept that, but his own messed-up machinations created this scenario. He created a playing field where I was always at a disadvantage and he was always at an advantage. He didn’t care about the collateral damage, as long as he got what he wanted.”

  “But he didn’t get what he wanted,” Bill pointed out.

  “Who knows? He probably just wanted to play around for a while. Then he got sick of me.”

  Bill placed a hand on my shoulder and gently consoled me to a stop. His skin against mine, I found it odd how familiar the feel of it was compared to Alistair’s—callused, rough, worked over in the land. “Florence, I’m a farmer. I’m a simple man, never seen much beyond the Gulf oil fields when I was young and this farm now that I’m old. That’s why I can’t leave it. It’s all I know. I only did two things right in my life—marry Sandra and take Al in. I didn’t do a great job raising him. We did our best, but the Good Lord knows he’s got problems none of us could understand. But please believe this—he’s a good man. He tries. And if there’s anything else I know about him, it’s that he loves you more than anything else in the world. More than his own life. There is nothing more in the world more important to him, that he cherishes more, than you. Just you.”

  Bill dropped his hand off my shoulder, casting me a sad look.

  “He would never do anything to hurt you, not intentionally. You know that. Deep down, you do.”

  I hesitated, taken aback by his heartfelt monologue. Bill had never been one for wordiness, so his speech had to have been one of importance to him.

  I inhaled a deep breath and shook my head, looking off into the distance to the main house. “We should keep going.” I didn’t want to get into this with Bill; it was a nonstarter.

  I took a couple steps forward and Bill followed.

  “Has he tried to call you since you’ve come back?”

  “Mr. Blair—”

  “Can’t you indulge an old man’s curiosity about his only child? You know he doesn’t talk to us much as it is.”

  Great, a guilt trip. I gritted my teeth before answering, “He’s been calling, yes.”

  To say Alistair had calling would be an understatement. I didn’t have much of an idea of how often he had tried my cell phone. I had long since discarded it, abandoned and forlorn, in the bottom of my luggage. I wasn’t sure how aggressive the press still was in trying to find me, but I wasn’t eager to find out.

  Unfortunately for me, Alistair knew my house phone number. The phone at home had rung so much in the first couple days that I’d yanked the cord out of the wall, but Dad had plugged it back in when he got home. “In case of emergencies,” he’d told me curtly.

  So, yeah, Alistair had been calling, which wasn’t the same as saying we were talking. I had hung up on him and deleted his messages. The incessant ringing had tapered off in recent days, much to my relief.

  Bill and I walked on, stepping lightly down the narrow dirt pathway worn down by the years. Alistair and I had taken the same path so many times, so long ago.

  So much hadn’t changed, yet everything had.

  “Why don’t you talk to him, hear him out?” Bill asked.

  I huffed a sigh of exasperation. Bill was Alistair’s dad. He’d defend him until his last breath.

  “Look, Bill, I get it. He loved me once. But that was a long time ago. Alistair is a different man now, a different person. He was someone who was able to do this to me without a second thought about the impact. He ruined everything, literally everything. I warned him, I told him to stay out of my career and said for us to take it slow. And now see where we are. He did this to me to discredit me, to make me rely on him. He manipulated my life, a life I had worked hard to build beyond him.”

  “Don’t think I don’t understand. Don’t think I don’t sympathize, either. You’ve worked hard, and Al did you wrong, I know that. But you understand him best out of anyone, and I don’t even know if you can see one hundred percent of him. But there’s a part of him, a real fine part of him.” Bill’s voice softened from his usual gruffness. “Try to focus on that. See the good in him.”

  I sidestepped his request. “Does Sandra know?”

  Bill shook his head. “She never reads the newspapers out of New York, and I’ll be damned if I tell her our son did this. She’s already kind of fragile, don’t want to upset her.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “Oh, you know, she just has to watch what she eats and take care of her insulin. But there are good days and bad days.” Bill shielded his eyes from the merciless sun, spotting the faded yellow house that grew larger in the horizon. “Today is a better day. I should be getting back. She’ll be wondering what’s taking me so long.”

  * * *

  Bill waved goodbye at the edge of the driveway, and I got into Dad’s old sedan and drove off. The air-conditioning was busted, and in the abnormally warm spring weather, I rolled down the windows, the car picking up and scattering dust into the cab. I turned on instinct once the faded, cracked, and wobbly blue mailbox came into view. I stopped the car and leaned out the passenger-side window to fish the contents out of the mailbox.

  Some advertisements, the gas bill, and on top of the meager stack was a black-and-white postcard of the New York skyline. I fell back into the driver’s seat, puzzled. I flipped it over and it read, “GIVE ME A DAMN CALL.”

  The order was scrawled across the back of the card in blue ballpoint ink, and the message was signed, “—Jones.”

  I put the car back into drive and rumbled up our rocky driveway. My heart rate picked up the closer I got to the house.

  Along with everyone else, I had distinctly avoided the Journal newsroom as well. Tracy had volunteered to be my intermediary and I had gladly taken her up on that offer. As a result, since Dad picked me up at O’Hare Airport and brought me home, I’d been in strangling, low-grade denial about everything.

  Did I still have a job?

  Had everything died down?

  What did people think of me?

  Most of my hours were spent evading those questions. I helped out at Dad’s clinic. I cleaned the house. I cooked dinner. I slept, a lot.

  Escaping life was busy work.

  I crashed into the house, tossing the mail and the postcard on the front foyer table. It lay there, jeering at me with its directive. I quickly flipped it over so the picture side faced up. The Empire State Building glistened in an equally glossy mocking shimmer. I shuffled the mail and stuck the postcard underneath a grocery advertisement for discounted meats.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon tidying up the kitchen and living room. Not much had changed since I had left, and once Nicolas had departed for New York, Dad barely ever came home, deciding just to extend his office hours. Bu
t despite his just eating and sleeping at home, there were still piles of odds and ends that had accumulated over the years.

  I sorted through dated bills, recycled old magazines that Dad had never even broke the plastic on, and mopped the tile downstairs, which I suspected hadn’t seen water since Nicolas’s senior year in college.

  But by late afternoon, it was obvious that I was leaning hard on avoidance tactics. I didn’t want to leave the house for fear of running into an old face, and since I had sworn off technology for the time being, there wasn’t much for me to waste my time on. Not working sucked. I clicked through the TV channels, but Dad didn’t even have cable.

  I guess that was one thing he had gotten done—he’d canceled all the good TV, all to just screw me in this very moment.

  After trying to sit down with a book, but failing to concentrate, I recognized that the gnawing sensation wasn’t going to go away and I might as well get it over with. Like ripping off a Band-Aid. What was the worst thing Gordon could do to me? Yell? Fire me? As if I wasn’t already expecting those responses anyway.

  I trudged begrudgingly to the kitchen where the house phone was, yellowed plastic cradle attached to the wall like a brutal reminder of my childhood. Along the way, I stopped by the foyer and fetched the card.

  It was a high-contrast aerial shot of the Manhattan skyline, the heavens a dull gray punctuated by fluffy white clouds but the city below on fire with high-rise lights, the Empire State shooting up tall and proud in the middle of the frame.

  Even though New York City had been my home base for most of my adult life, I wouldn’t call it home. Seeing this very distinct and iconic city shot, no pangs of longing or sorrow assailed me. How strange. I hadn’t missed St. Haven when I had gone to Chicago, and I hadn’t missed Chicago when I’d left for Asia, and I hadn’t missed Asia since moving to New York.

  I threw the postcard into the trash can, sliding myself onto the barstool next to the wall.

  I picked the phone up and, with a sigh, dialed the Journal’s number. I had it memorized after years of calling in from hotel rooms and foreign pay phones.

  I cradled the phone receiver against my shoulder, turning my attention out of the box window into the backyard. The grass was overgrown and the tree branches were curling into each other. I made a mental note to hire a gardener.

  “Jones,” came the curt greeting.

  I leaned against the kitchen counter. “Hey, Gordon, working late?”

  A mild crackle and then some shuffling. “Reynolds?”

  “Got your postcard.”

  “About damn time! I’ve been looking for you for ages. Where’d you go, Antartica?”

  “A little warmer, western Michigan. But you know that, you sent me the card.”

  “I didn’t know that. I had to give the thing to Tracy. She damn near acted like you’d entered Witness Protection.”

  I twirled the cord between my fingers. “Just about. Did she put in my vacation request to HR?”

  “How would I know?” he said in an irritated tone.

  “Because you’d sign off on it?”

  “Get your ass back here and ask HR yourself. Or turn on your phone like a normal human being.”

  Silence stretched. Gordon’s loud breaths filtered through the phone receiver. It was as if I was having a conversation with a dinosaur.

  Finally I spoke. “Look, I’m not taking your job, Gordon.”

  Gordon gave a huff of breath in response. “Of course you’re not. But I knew that, knew the moment I saw the headlines it was all bullshit. I trust you Reynolds. You’re quality.”

  “Really?” I had been avoiding this conversation for a week, making myself sick with worry. This was not the response I had anticipated. “You’re not going to fire me?”

  “Why would I fire you for what those idiots are writing?” I now noticed his tone was exasperated, more than angry. “Ignore that noise, it’s all garbage. But I want to talk about your work. The Blair article. Reynolds, it’s good. Damn good. We’re going to run it.”

  I laughed uncomfortably. “Have you even read the news lately? You know Alistair is the owner of the Journal, right? He’s never going to sign off on it.”

  “Well, as it so happens, my contract stipulates I can publish whatever the hell I want, owner be damned. Since when have owners had a say in this shit? This is going to press.”

  “What about the tabloids?” It seemed as if Gordon was not seeing this situation clearly. “They’re going to go rabid again once this comes out.”

  “Screw the tabloids! Those jerk-offs barely remember if they scratched their asses this morning, much less what they printed a week ago. This is going to press ASAP with next month’s issue and I need you back for the morning shows.”

  I shook my head. “You can print it, but I’m done with this, sick of it. You do the press. I know you live for that stuff. Now that it’s all out, you schedule a meeting with Alistair and figure out what’s going on between the two of you and the Journal.”

  Gordon grunted back at me.

  “So the rags, it’s true? You like this Alistair Blair?”

  “No, I loved him. But that doesn’t matter, not anymore, anyway.”

  A short cough greeted my answer. I suppose Gordon hadn’t thought I’d be so honest. When he answered, it was in a gruff tone that betrayed his sincerity. “I’m sorry, Florence. Tough break.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks. I’m on extended leave, but you can send some fluff pieces my way, like popular summer beach reads or something.”

  “Don’t jerk me around. But I do have a lead on Michigan’s Blueberry Festival.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “Take care of yourself. See you soon?”

  “Maybe. But thanks.”

  Chapter 34

  “What day is it?” I mumbled with my face in my arms.

  “Thursday.” Winnie, Dad’s receptionist, didn’t acknowledge me with her answer. She was casually flipping through a fashion magazine poached from the waiting room.

  “Are you hungry?” I asked towards the tabletop I was pressed against.

  “Didn’t you just have lunch?”

  “Yeah, but that was an hour ago. I’m hungry again.” I was eating a lot and sleeping more. My schedule was making me sluggish, and a snack and a walk sounded good enough to counter each other.

  “Want to grab donuts for everyone?”

  “Sure.” I pushed the chair back from the front desk and stood up while shrugging on my coat. “Mooing Cow Bakery okay with you guys?”

  Winnie nodded without looking up. “If they’re out, you can try Lulu’s. She started selling donuts a couple years ago.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. I passed Winnie and swatted at her ponytail.

  She smacked my butt in retaliation. “Get going, you.” She finally glanced up, the deep wrinkles at the sides of her eyes crinkling as she smiled. “Remember sugar-free for me, love.”

  “Of course.” I swung my purse onto my shoulder and pushed out of the office.

  The warmer spring air greeted me as soon as I hit the sidewalk. I wrapped my jacket tighter around me and started towards the direction of Mooing Cow two blocks away.

  Downtown St. Haven wasn’t exactly bustling at this hour, but the parking spots were about half-filled and a couple housewives dotted the sidewalk, running errands. The downtown area had expanded a bit in recent years. A couple new gift shops had opened and the hardware store had expanded to the empty space next to it. It had been quite the news two years ago when all the Main Street facades got a sprucing up and a fresh coat of bright paint. But despite a decade-long effort to drag the district into the modern age, it still retained its sleepy nature. People went to Holland or Kalamazoo for the big shopping, so there were virtually no chain stores in town and most places just sold the necessities.

  I cast a glance up and down the intersection before crossing behind a white minivan. I was walking down the block and in front of the antiques store when I he
ard it.

  “Florence Reynolds?”

  My body seized slightly at the sound of my name. My attention fell to the other side of the road, where a small group of people clustered, the tallest of them waving both arms at me.

  I squinted in their direction, then realized it was Renee, an old middle school friend. She was now dragging two kids across the street with one hand and pushing a stroller with the other. Those characteristically large front teeth I remembered well stuck out of her wide mouth as she smiled broadly at me.

  “It is you! Florence!” She staggered to a stop before me, releasing her child burdens and snatching me into a tight hug.

  “Re-Re-Renee!” I choked out from behind her long hair, which was doing a good job of winding around my neck and strangling me.

  “You remember me!” she said, letting go but keeping her hands on my shoulders. She shook me twice, jostling me slightly. “I wouldn’t ever have guessed you’d remember me!”

  I placed a hand on top of hers, stilling them. “Of course I’d remember you, Renee. Don’t be silly,” I said.

  Despite my efforts to calm her vigorous palms, she shook me again, crying out, “What in the devil is up with you? We haven’t seen you in ages! Our little world traveler! What are you doing back in St. Haven? We just have to get lunch sometime! When are you free? Are you helping your father? I thought Nicolas was going to be the doctor, not you! Oh, it’d be wonderful if he came back and took over your father’s clinic.”

  There were too many questions to even begin answering. I stuttered, trying to find the start of my sentence. “It’s great to see you, Renee,” was the best thing I could think of.

  “It’s awesome seeing you,” Renee answered back. And she looked it—she looked happy to see me.

  “Oh, remember Matthew?” Her arms searched blindly behind her and found the tallest of the pair. She snatched him by the elbow and whirled him between us. The boy barely flinched, obviously used to his mother’s enthusiasm.

  “Dr. Reynolds delivered Matthew!” she said with panache, gesturing up and down at her son as if he was a prize on a game show. Renee crouched down next to Matthew and pressed her cheek against his. “This is Dr. Reynolds’s daughter! She and I have been good friends since when we were young,” she said, squeezing him tightly.