One Season of Sunshine

by Julia London

  But Crystal never went off. She was a little odd, sure, but she was a perfectly nice and sane person. Jane knew, because she couldn’t stand how Crystal was ostracized and had begun to have lunch with her. Crystal wasn’t crazy; she wasn’t even close to crazy. She just marched to the beat of a different drummer, and frankly, it was not an unlikable drummer.

  Surely the same could be said of Susanna. Jane could not imagine that the charming, sexy man of Friday night could have been married to a crazy woman for fifteen years.

  Jane continued to scroll, her pace a little slower, looking for any other clues about Susanna. She found only one: a charity event at which Susanna had been listed as a cochair. There was a picture of her, front and center, her smile luminous, her gown sumptuous. She had her arm around a portly gentleman, and he around her. Susanna was leaning into him, her hand on his chest, and she was smiling broadly. Her long tail of silky black hair hung artfully over her shoulder, jewels dangled from earlobes, and her décolletage plunged almost to her navel. She was so glamorous, so beautiful, and so enviable.

  But what caught Jane’s eye was Asher. He was standing slightly behind and apart from Susanna. Holding a highball glass, one hand in his pocket, he looked very handsome in his tuxedo. He was gazing at Susanna, but his expression was sullen. Was he jealous? Tired? Angry? His was not the look of a happy man, but there was something else . . .

  He looked alone.

  That was not the smiling face of the man sitting beside Susanna in the portraits around Summer’s End. That was the look of a man who was living on the outside.

  His expression left Jane feeling sad and a little uncomfortable.

  She continued on, scrolling through years of high school sports and county bonds projects, finally reaching December 1980. To her horror, her hand had a slight tremor in it. November, October, September, August. She felt strange, as if the walls were shifting closer to her. July, June, May. In the office behind her, the baby started to fuss, and tears suddenly clouded her vision.

  Monday, April 28, Weekly Edition. On the right-hand side, in a small table of contents, she found Death and Birth Notices, Page 4.

  Jane stared at the page. Page four was where she would see the name. She’d have that one thing—a name—that would be the key to her past. It suddenly all seemed so simple, and Jane couldn’t understand why it had taken her almost thirty years to find that single, tiny bit of information about herself.

  Did she want to know?

  She gasped softly, shocked that she’d just had that thought. Not want to know? She’d left everyone and everything behind to know. But suddenly, the moment left her feeling like she was about to throw the only life she truly had under the wheels of a gigantic bus.

  She scrolled to page two. And to page three. She took a deep breath, plunged past her fear, and moved to page four. There it was: Births. Jane held her breath. Births . . . there was a little box with an announcement:

  Cedar Springs continues to grow! Five babies were delivered at Cedar Springs Memorial Hospital the week of April 21: a boy on April 22, and a bumper crop on April 25: three healthy girls!

  Jane blinked. She shifted closer, peering intently at the screen, thinking surely she’d missed the names. She scrolled down. And up. She scoured all of April, frantically moving between the weekly editions. In the first two weeks of April, five children were born, their names all listed. In the last two weeks of April, there was nothing but that box and a headcount. There were no names. All she had was a birth announcement that wasn’t, a small box smashed in between an ad for a hardware store and the results of the high school basketball game.

  “I don’t understand,” Jane said aloud. “How can this be?”

  “Jane? Are you talking to me?” Emma called to her.

  “How can this be?” Jane asked again.

  Emma and Macy appeared at her back, leaning over her shoulder, peering at the screen.

  “I don’t understand why there are no names!” Jane exclaimed.

  “Oh, for Chrissakes,” Macy said with some disgust. “This is such a rinky-dink little paper that Ed called the hospital and asked for baby names just so he’d have something to fill an empty column. And the hospital staffer was probably on vacation or too busy to do Ed’s job for him, so he printed what they gave him. It’s so typical!”

  The week of April 21 . . . Jane’s stomach was advancing on her throat. Only moments ago, she’d been afraid to find the one thing she’d been looking for. Now she was furious that she’d been robbed of it, that she didn’t know, couldn’t know. Disappointment and frustration were choking her and could not be forced down.

  “I’m sorry, Jane,” Emma said. “Is there something else we can look up?”

  Jane shook her head. Macy and Emma were watching Jane like they expected her to fall apart. But Jane was too stunned to fall apart. “Thank you. That’s all I need today. Thank you.” She tried to force a smile as she stood, but her thoughts were bouncing around like popcorn in her head. “Thank you,” she said again, and walked out of the office, her stomach churning, the taste of bitter disappointment in her throat.

  23

  Jane was still sitting on the couch in the guesthouse when someone knocked at her door. She’d been sitting in the same spot since she’d returned from the Cedar Springs Standard office, staring blindly at the wall. She hadn’t eaten, she hadn’t done anything but brood.

  The knock came again; Jane glanced at the clock. It was nine.

  She tossed aside the pillow she was clutching and opened the door. “Hi, Riley,” Jane said dispassionately when she saw Riley standing there. “Come in.”

  Riley walked in. “Dad said to tell you he’s home,” she said as she looked around.

  “Great,” Jane said, uncaring.

  “What’s that?” Riley asked, pointing at Jane’s boxes.

  “My things.”

  Riley wandered over to peer into an open box Jane had been using to hold her clothes. “Why haven’t you unpacked them?”

  Ah, the million-dollar question. “Well . . . I don’t really know,” Jane said.

  That earned a suspicious look from Riley. “Are you lazy?”

  Jane smiled thinly. “I guess.” She resumed her seat on the couch. “What did you do today?”

  “Nothing. Watched TV.” Riley flopped dramatically into one of Jane’s chairs and fidgeted with a little charm that hung from her cell phone. “I talked to Tracy. She says Michael Howser likes me.” She gave Jane a wary sidelong glance, as if she expected Jane to argue.

  “Oh, yeah? Who is Michael Howser?”

  Riley dropped her gaze. “Just this guy at school. I don’t think he really likes me. I think Tracy is just saying that.”

  “Why would she just say that? She doesn’t strike me as the type to make things up.”

  “She’s not,” Riley said. “At least I don’t think she is.” She bowed her head, letting her hair fall to cover her face. “But I don’t know why Mike Howser would like me.”

  “I do,” Jane said. “I think you’re great. You’re funny, you’re cute, you’re smart, and you’re talented.”

  Riley snorted. “Not really.”

  “Yes, really. I wouldn’t make things up, either.”

  Riley didn’t say anything. She bent over her lap and touched her fingers to the floor. “I kind of feel like Janis Joplin sometimes, you know?”

  “I know. Me, too. But you’re not really like Janis. She had problems. You don’t have those kinds of problems.”

  “You don’t know,” Riley said. “I’ve done things.”

  “Like what? Fighting?”

  Riley’s head came up, her eyes narrowed. “How do you know?”

  “Just heard it. What happened?”

  Riley suddenly stood up and walked to the kitchen bar. She touched Jane’s laptop, keeping her head down, hiding behind her hair. “Sometimes people say things I don’t like,” she said with a shrug.

  Jane thought of what she’d read abou
t Susanna today. “Do you mean about your mom?”

  “No,” Riley said impatiently. “I’m not Levi. I mean they say things about me. Stupid things. And please don’t try to be a counselor and ask me what, because it’s so stupid I forgot already.”

  Jane knew that was a lie, but she was in no mood to be a counselor. “Okay,” she said.

  Surprised, Riley looked at Jane. But when Jane offered nothing else, Riley walked to the door. She paused there, her hand on the knob. “It’s really weird that you haven’t unpacked your boxes. You’ve been here, like, forever now.” She walked out, closing the door quietly behind her.

  “Some days it feels like forever, I’ll give you that,” Jane muttered and sank lower onto the couch.

  She couldn’t sleep. She wasn’t tired; she was keyed up and anxious. She kept seeing that headline: “Cedar Springs Continues to Grow!” Lying on her bed, watching the ceiling fan drift in a lazy circle, she heard Levi crying over the monitor. Jane looked at her clock; it was half past midnight. He would have been in bed for three hours or more now. She got up, pulled on some shorts under her camisole, and hurried to the house.

  But when she reached Levi’s room, she found Asher at Levi’s dresser, rummaging through it. He was bare-chested, wearing a pair of lounge pants that rode low. He looked up and started at the sight of her. Jane pointed at the monitor to explain her appearance. “I heard him. Is everything okay?”

  “An accident,” Asher said softly and glanced over his shoulder at the bathroom door. “He’s in the tub. He’s embarrassed.”

  “Poor little guy,” Jane said quietly. “Can I help?”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got it. Go back to bed.”

  “Daddy?”

  Asher and Jane both looked toward the bathroom. “Coming, buddy,” Asher said, and with a halfhearted smile for Jane, he walked into the bathroom carrying clean pajamas.

  Jane wasn’t leaving. She stripped Levi’s bed, found clean sheets in a hallway linen closet and made the bed up again. She took the soiled sheets down to the utility room and began to fill the washtub.

  “Hey, I can do that.”

  She hadn’t heard Asher come in. He’d put on a shirt and was carrying Levi’s wet pajamas. He took the jug of detergent from her. “Please, I’ll do it.”

  He seemed determined, so Jane moved back and folded her arms across her chest as she watched him. She thought she ought to go, but her curiosity about his coolness to her was swallowing her practical side. “Poor kid,” she said.

  “Yeah, poor kid.” Asher dropped the pajamas into the washer. “He’s worried about Carla finding out.”

  “I won’t tell her.”

  Asher glanced at Jane, his expression cool, shuttered. She smiled, feeling suddenly out of place. “He must really miss his mother,” she said. “He thinks he hears her in the attic.”

  “What he hears is mice,” Asher said shortly.

  “Yes, but I . . . I meant—”

  “I’m sorry,” Asher said and shoved his hand through his hair. “Sorry. I’m just worried about my son.”

  “Me, too,” Jane said. “He’s such a great kid.” She bent down to pick up the sheets and handed them to Asher. “I was just thinking how awful to hear those things said about his mother and then to imagine he hears her in the attic. It must be frightening for a little boy.” Particularly as five-year-olds tended to have rather vivid imaginations anyway. “You must miss her, too,” she added quietly.

  If Asher missed her or not, he didn’t respond. He looked down into the washtub. Apparently satisfied it was doing what it should, he closed the lid.

  His silence was unnerving. “I know this is hard for you all.”

  “Do you know that, Jane?” he asked and turned his head to look at her. His eyes were blazing. “It’s been a while. I don’t think we’re missing her quite as much as you’d like to have us miss her.”

  “What?” she asked, confused. “I think you misunderstood me. I just meant that she died so suddenly and so young. It’s obviously weighing on Levi, and you yourself said that Riley needs her—”

  “Their mother,” he said coldly, “went on a drinking binge and killed herself in a fiery car crash. She wasn’t much help to them then, and I can’t honestly believe she’d be much help to them now.”

  Jane’s jaw dropped. His voice was so bitter, so hard. “What are you saying? Maybe she drank, but at least they had a mother. Children need their mother—”

  Asher suddenly moved, grabbing her head in both hands, lifting her face to his. Jane made a small cry of alarm, but he ignored her. “They don’t need her, they never needed her. They loved her, but they never needed her the way . . . the way they need you, even after a few short weeks. My children learned not to need their mother because she always put herself first. Don’t romanticize it.”

  Jane’s heart was pounding from surprise at both his words and the fact that he was holding her. “I don’t believe you,” she said breathlessly, trying to back away from him, not knowing quite what to do in this situation. She wanted to touch his face. She wanted to flee.

  “Believe it. It happens.” His gaze fell to her mouth.

  Her pulse began to race. “Was she crazy?” Jane whispered.

  “Not as crazy as I am, apparently,” he said low, and his mouth descended to hers.

  Jane grabbed his wrist. After days of imagining it, of wanting it, Asher’s mouth was on hers, warm and soft, moving on her lips, his tongue against hers.

  Jane’s reaction was purely visceral; she opened her mouth to him. One of his hands dropped from her hair and slipped around her waist, pulled her hard into his body, pressing her against him. Desire was suddenly burning Jane up, turning her insides to ashes. His kiss was devastatingly sensual and full of need. The sensation was potent and spilled over Jane, filling up the space around them, filling her lungs and mouth and eyes with Asher.

  But then, just as unexpectedly as he’d kissed her, Asher broke away. He pressed his forehead to hers, his breathing ragged. Jane slowly realized that she was still gripping his wrist, holding on to keep from slipping beneath the surface of all that want.

  Asher stepped back. She let go of him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Jane, I . . .”

  “Don’t apologize.” They stood looking at each other for a long moment, his eyes searching hers. But a river of questions and confusion began to flow through Jane. Her knees felt weak. “I should go,” she said.

  He nodded.

  She hurried out, did not look back. She hurried through the kitchen, to the breezeway. She could still feel his arms around her. She could still taste him. Her body was smoldering. She had the very uneasy sense that she’d finally done it; she’d finally crossed some invisible line from which it was impossible to go back and be the person she’d once been. She was no longer standing in the middle of the bridge.

  In the guesthouse, behind closed doors, she leaned against the wall and bent over. “Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she whispered. She’d walked right into the scene of a TV movie script, the nanny and the dashing man of the house—how clichéd! She couldn’t believe what had just happened, that he’d kissed her, that she’d responded so easily, so eagerly, and now . . . now what was she supposed to do with all this longing?

  Longing hardly described what she was feeling. When Jonathan kissed her, it was with the desire for sex. But when Asher kissed her, it felt as if there was more, so much pent-up desire, so much need in his kiss. It was as intoxicating as it was wrong.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  The next morning, Jane walked cautiously in the house, expecting to be confronted with the evidence of that illicit kiss. But nothing had changed. Carla was her usual cheerful self. When Jane peeked into the laundry room, the evidence of Levi’s bed-wetting had disappeared, and that searing kiss along with it.

  Mr. and Mrs. Price arrived late that morning and took the kids for lunch. “Mr. P said this morning that you should take a few days,” Carla said to Jane as the kids t
rooped out with their grandparents. “They are leaving first thing in the morning for the Price ranch down by San Antonio.”

  “Great. I’ll leave tomorrow, too,” Jane said. Part of her couldn’t wait to get out of here. Part of her didn’t want to go.

  She felt restless and antsy, so she drove down to the square, to a cute little art supply shop, and bought Riley’s birthday present: a sketchbook and colored pencils. She wrapped the gifts prettily and left them on Riley’s bed.

  The day continued to drag, so Jane decided to go for a late afternoon run. She waved to Jorge on her way down the little path to the running trail. But as she jogged down, she saw where the path split, one trail to the hidden springs and the playhouse, one down to the lake. Jane veered onto the path to the hidden springs.

  The little house was still locked up. A humid breeze kept the tire swing twisting lazily. The leaf blower and the pile of debris were gone, the only change since the last time Jane had been here.

  She walked up on the little porch and, shielding her eyes, peered into the window. She could see the swaths of color, the scattering of paper on the floor. She walked around, checking the windows, looking for an opening, but the little house was locked up tight. She returned to the door and fiddled with the lock and doorknob. It was definitely locked.

  Jane stepped back; with hands on hips, she stared at that doorknob. There was something about that little house that drew her, something that she had to see without the filter of dirty windows. She didn’t really know what answers she was seeking, but something told her there was a key to them in there. She pulled a bobby pin from her hair, which she used to keep her bangs from her face when she was running.

  Don’t do it, she told herself as she straightened out the bobby pin and stuck it into the little hole in the center of the doorknob. Don’t, Jane. Don’t do it, don’t do it. But she continued to jimmy the lock with the hairpin until it caught and released the lock. The door popped and swung open onto a dank room.

  Jane peered inside, feeling a little guilty. But as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she began to sense something was off about the room. Not normal, Linda Gail had said. She was so creative, such a talent, Carla had said. Crazy, little Jackson Harvey had said.