by Anna Schmidt
She stood up and walked back toward the kitchen where she picked up Tessa’s backpack.
“Jeannie?” Emma’s call seemed to come from far away as Jeannie slowly climbed the stairs. The backpack was heavy. How many times had she fussed at Tessa about not overloading the bag? How many times had Tessa rolled her eyes and moaned, “Mom!” How much would she give to have that very conversation right this minute?
She stopped on the landing and stared at the backpack for a long moment, knowing that she wasn’t yet ready to go through it. That would be like admitting… She retraced her steps and positioned Tessa’s backpack on the chair where it belonged. “Jeannie?” Emma reached out to touch her arm, but Jeannie ignored her, and this time she went all the way up the stairs without hesitating. She walked into her daughter’s room and stood there taking in her surroundings. The room was pristine—bed made, everything in its place, clothes hung, drawers and closet door shut. And yet the aura that was Tessa was everywhere. It came from the way she had folded her nightgown and tucked it under her pillow—a bit of the lacy hem peeking out. It was in the very scent of a bowl of fresh fruit that Tessa kept on her desk. It was in the flattened cushion in the small rocking chair where Tessa liked to sit every morning and every evening to read her Bible.
Jeannie stood there taking it all in. Then she closed the door and locked it before crossing the room and sitting down in the rocker to stare out the window at what had to have been what Tessa had seen on her last morning on this earth.
Chapter 13
Geoff
Time had no meaning.
Outside the sun had come out and the skies had cleared, but the sun was low in the sky, and this day that had begun in a deluge of anticipation and excitement would soon be gone.
In the hours that had passed since Zeke handled the call with the funeral director, the house had slowly filled with people—family, friends, neighbors, kids Tessa often invited over, kids Tessa knew from church, kids from Geoff’s athletic teams, teachers and other staff that he worked with, people Jeannie worked with in her various volunteer projects. A steady stream of people coming up the front walk, the women carrying some covered dish or basket, the men and young people parking their cars or bicycles wherever they could find a space.
Dan’s car was gone now, but no one parked on the driveway as if worried that the space might be needed by someone older or frailer. Or maybe it was just that that space was tainted now—forever stained with Tessa’s unshed blood.
Geoff stayed where he had gone when Hester and John had driven them home from the hospital, in the den. It was the room where he had always felt closest to Tessa. It was where she came to study while he graded papers or worked on reports. It was the room where the two of them watched and analyzed college games on the small television in the corner. He would sit in the cracked leather club chair, and Tessa would sit cross-legged on the floor. Jeannie would make them a huge bowl of popcorn then tell them not to ruin their appetites as she headed off to attend to one of what Tessa referred to as her mom’s do-gooder projects.
He sat in the chair now, picking absently at the cracked leather as if picking at a scab. He allowed the flow of people to move around him, hearing the hushed tones the women spoke in as they took over the kitchen and set out or stored the food offerings. Once in a while one of the men would enter the den, clear his throat, and offer some condolence. Geoff was amazed at how easily he had fallen into the routine of standing to accept the handshake—or sometimes the hug—before murmuring, “Thank you” when the person stopped speaking and then adding, “I just need some time,” releasing the person to go back into the large great room where most people had gathered. He never actually heard the words people spoke to him, but he saw from their faces that it was some form of how sorry they were.
He felt irritation at that. Sorry for what? For him? He didn’t want their pity. For the fact that they had not been able to stop this horror from happening? Like he was?
Guilt welled up in him like wet cement, oozing into every crevice of his being. He had been right there when the car raced toward his child. Why hadn’t he done something?
“Geoff?”
His sister-in-law set a plate of finger food on the side table next to his chair. “You should eat something,” she said. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast—”
“Where’s Jeannie?” he asked, ignoring the food.
“Still upstairs,” Emma replied. “I tried to talk to her. Maybe if you went to her?”
Emma was right. Jeannie needed him—they needed each other. This was their child taken from them too soon. Their home forever stripped of her presence. Their lives forever changed.
“Can you do something about maybe getting folks to move along and give us some time?” he asked.
As if time would help—as if they could somehow get over this.
“Sure.” Emma handed him the plate of food. “Try to get her to eat a little something,” she said as together they walked into the hall and he started up the stairs.
He was aware that the house packed with people had suddenly gone silent. Only after he had reached the landing at the top of the stairs did conversation resume. He walked woodenly past the bedroom he and Jeannie shared. The bed had not been made. It was something—like the breakfast dishes—that Jeannie would have done once she had seen Tessa and him off to school.
He passed the guest room—the room that Tessa often referred to as her mother’s office since it was more often a catchall for whatever project Jeannie was involved in than it was a haven for guests.
The bathroom was still in the disarray he’d left it in that morning after cutting himself shaving and then later scouring the cabinets and drawers for the missing shed keys.
The door at the end of the hall was closed, and hanging from a hook was a cloth angel holding a hand-lettered sign that read: THIS ROOM PROTECTED BY ANGELS.
Not really, Geoff thought as he tried the knob. It was locked.
“Jeannie? It’s just me.” He didn’t recognize his own voice. It was so weak. He waited, and then when no sound came from the other side, he cleared his throat and rattled the knob. “Come on, babe. Let me in.”
He detected a faint rustling sound as if Jeannie might have been curled up in Tessa’s bed. Maybe she had cried herself to sleep. Maybe he should leave well enough alone.
The latch clicked, and he waited, but she did not open the door, so he did and was speechless at the scene. Spread across every possible surface were Tessa’s clothes, arranged in outfits, he realized, complete with matching shoes and accessories. They hung on hangers from the curtain rods, on the back of the closet door, and on dresser drawer knobs. There were three outfits laid out on the daybed—like two-dimensional bodies, the tops propped against the back of the bed with the skirt or jeans spread over the quilt and matching shoes set precisely below each outfit on the floor.
“What are you doing, honey?” Geoff asked, fearful that while he was sitting downstairs his wife had quietly gone mad above him.
“We have to decide what she’ll wear,” Jeannie replied, and he saw that she was dry-eyed and studying each option in the same way she and Tessa had studied the choices of what would be best for Tessa’s first day as an upperclassman just twenty-four hours earlier.
“Her favorite outfit is what she wore this morning, of course. Needed to look her best but also be comfortable, but the EMTs had to cut that.” She made a face. “This one comes pretty close,” she mused, fingering a stretchy lime-green top that looked as if it might fit a doll but certainly not a real person.
She stood transfixed in front of the outfit lying in the center of the bed. “The boots are a nice touch,” she murmured as she sat down and picked up a tall tan suede boot. She seemed to lose her train of thought for a moment. Geoff sat next to her and put his arm around her. “The boots,” she continued, “she bought with Sadie at the thrift shop.” She shook her head. “They were to share them, with Sadie only wearing them when sh
e visited. Tessa made me promise not to breathe a word of it to Emma.”
Geoff took the boot from her and set it with its mate on the floor.
“That’s why they’re here in Tessa’s closet,” Jeannie continued. “So Emma wouldn’t know… like the way I took Sadie for her learner’s permit… so Emma wouldn’t know until it was too late.…”
Geoff felt tears the size of raindrops fall onto the back of his hand, and he gathered his wife in his arms as she broke down completely. Her soft red hair, like expensive silk, brushed his face, and the scent of her almost blocked out the unique fresh laundry scent of Tessa’s clothes surrounding them.
Still holding Jeannie, he leaned back against the pile of pillows at one end of the bed and looked around his daughter’s room. He had rarely seen it from this angle. Oh, maybe a couple of times when he had sat with her when she was a little girl and told her bedtime stories or read her one of her favorite books. But now it came to him that this was what his daughter saw every morning when she woke up. She had opened her eyes to this room that very morning and thought… what?
He pulled Jeannie closer as he fought back his own tears.
“Geoff, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to go on.” What he didn’t say was that he had no idea how they would manage that.
Dusk had come by that time, and now Tessa’s clothing was cast in shadows, shadows that were somehow comforting.
“Emma sent me up with a plate of food,” Geoff said. “I left it on the hall table.”
“We should probably go downstairs,” Jeannie ventured, and her tone told Geoff that she hoped he would not agree.
“Folks will understand,” he said. “Let’s just stay here a little longer.”
She curled into him, seeking his warmth, his strength, his assurance that somehow they would find a way to get through the next days and weeks. The problem was that Geoff was wishing he had a safe harbor to pull into as well.
“We have to make the arrangements,” she whispered after several long moments in which they were both aware of people leaving, car doors closing. Engines started and conversation grew muffled among those left downstairs. “There are people—out of town—that we need to call…”
“Emma can make those calls.”
Jeannie sat up suddenly, and in the waning light he saw that her eyes had gone wide with shock. “She’s still here? She should be with Sadie.”
The rage that swept over him in that split second made it hard to breathe. “Lars is there,” he managed.
“She must be…” She pushed herself off the bed. “Emma said they kept Sadie for observation. Did they tell her? About Tessa?”
He realized for the first time that Jeannie didn’t know what he knew—that it had been Sadie behind the wheel when the car struck Tessa. Now was not the time to tell her, he decided. She’d been through enough—too much—already.
“I’m not sure what Sadie’s been told, but that’s up to Emma and Lars. They’ll do what they think best, Jeannie.”
Jeannie flicked on a lamp, and Geoff blinked in the sudden brightness. She studied the various outfits for a moment and then took one down from the curtain rod. “This one,” she muttered to herself and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Geoff asked.
“Sadie needs her mother. And we need to get Tessa’s clothes to… to…” She stopped moving and stared into space, practically catatonic in the doorway. She shook her head, squared her shoulders, and forced herself forward. “To the funeral home,” she said, grinding out each word as she walked woodenly down the hall and paused only a fraction of a second before descending the stairs.
Geoff could not help but admire her. Jeannie had always been a just-do-it kind of woman. It was one of the things that had attracted him to her from their first meeting. She was not big on protocol or rules, but with her sunny disposition and features that made her look younger than her thirty-some years, she won hearts and minds without even realizing what she was accomplishing.
“The president should send Mom to the Middle East,” Tessa had said one time. “She’d get them all talking to each other in no time.”
Geoff took one last look around his daughter’s room, taking the time to study the items on her dresser, the stuffed animals that shared shelf space with her books, and the fashion show of outfits that Jeannie had staged. Then he turned off the lamp and left the room, closing the door behind him. When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw his best friend, Zeke, standing at the front door, holding the shoes Jeannie had selected.
Did Tessa even need shoes?
“Jeannie wants to take these clothes over to the funeral home,” Zeke said when Geoff reached the bottom step. “I told her I would do it—or maybe Emma could or Hester—but…”
“We’ll do it tomorrow. Right now I just want to make sure Jeannie eats something and gets some rest.” He saw in his friend’s eyes that they both knew that the chances of such a thing were slim to none. Zeke handed him the shoes.
“Maybe a doctor could give her something to help her sleep?”
“We’ll get through it one hour at a time,” Geoff said, not for one second believing they would ever survive this. “Thanks for being here—for both of us.”
“No…” Zeke shook his head vigorously, and Geoff knew that he had caught himself about to deliver his signature, “No worries, man.”
“See you tomorrow,” Geoff said, opening the front screen door for Zeke. Emma had done what he’d asked of her—most of the visitors had already left. The street was deserted now as the darkness of night settled over the neighborhood. Zeke headed for the bright orange van he used to deliver produce to markets for the co-op.
Up and down the block, the houses were lit, the golden lamplight spilling out the windows and across the lawns. Those people were counting their blessings, Geoff thought. Those people with children were thanking God that this horrible day had not happened to them. They were holding those children a little tighter tonight. He felt his chest clench as if someone had attached a vise and tightened it until he was having trouble breathing.
For one moment, he thought he might be having a heart attack. For one moment, the idea that he might die along with his only child brought him a measure of comfort. But then he heard Jeannie and Emma coming toward the porch and he remembered that he was the man in this family. He had lost a child, but he still had a wife and others who would look to him for the strength they would all need to get through this. His mom, Jeannie’s parents, not to mention his siblings, in-laws, Tessa’s cousins, and so many others.
And as he turned to Emma, intending to thank her for all that she had done for them that day, all he could think about was that she still had two children, one of them responsible for the accident that had robbed him of his daughter.
“Where’s Matt?” he asked.
“When… after…” Emma took a breath and cleared her throat before continuing, “Lars picked Matt up from school so he would hear the news from us. Then they went to be with Sadie at the hospital. We thought it best if they had a little time.…”
“Yeah. It’s good to have time, Emma,” Geoff said as he brushed past her on his way back inside.
Chapter 14
Emma
Emma hugged Jeannie and waited until her sister had followed Geoff back inside the house before retrieving Sadie’s bicycle. When Hester had driven Emma to Jeannie’s house earlier, she had seen Sadie’s bicycle still leaning against a cluster of palm trees in the front yard. There was something so poignant about seeing that bicycle where it was so often left whenever Sadie visited the house. It seemed like everything must be all right after all. That the girls were upstairs in Tessa’s room, giggling over some silliness or the confidences the two of them so often shared.
“I could load it in the trunk,” Hester had offered, following her gaze as she stood at the end of the driveway.
“No, leave it. I’ll need a way to get back to the hospital l
ater.”
“You’ll be okay?”
“I’ll stay busy,” she promised.
“Be strong,” Hester had whispered as the two friends embraced.
On her way into the house, Emma had avoided looking at the closed garage door. It was a relief to see that Dan’s car was no longer on the property. In fact, there was no sign of the accident at all.
She had wondered if Dan Kline was being kept overnight for observation like Sadie was. She’d also wondered if the full weight of what Sadie had done—or let her feelings for Dan Kline allow her to do—had hit home yet. What did a sixteen-year-old think in times like these? Was Sadie reliving the accident? What had she seen as she frantically tried to stop the car? Had it even registered in her brain that Tessa was gone forever?
“I’ve got this,” Lars had said as if reading her hesitation to tend to her sister when her child also needed her. “Jeannie’s going to need you there to help Geoff and her deal with all the well-meaning people who will be coming to their house once the news gets out.”
“Hester could…”
“She needs you, Emma.”
So before going inside to make the tea that would be the start of comforting her sister, Emma had wheeled Sadie’s bike across the driveway and around to the side of the house where it would be out of sight when Jeannie and Geoff got back.
Now, hours later, she pedaled along the usually busy but at this time of night practically deserted main thoroughfare that bisected Pinecraft. With nothing to distract her, she allowed the full horror of the day to wash over her. She saw what they would face separately and alone in the days to come. Geoff’s parting remark about time had stalked her every block of the way. Sadie had been reckless in that carefree way that made her so much like Jeannie. It wasn’t the first time, but this time everything was different. How would Geoff and Jeannie ever be able to forgive her? How would Sadie ever forgive herself? As Sadie’s parents, how should she and Lars react—should they punish her? Surely realizing that her foolish act had caused an accident that had ultimately ended with her beloved cousin dead was punishment enough for anyone.
