The Color of a Silver Lining
Page 19
He arrived with an I Spy book for Louise which got the evening off to a fantastic start. While they immersed themselves in rhyming riddles and a hunt for hidden objects in the pictures, I put the final touches on our spaghetti dinner—without a single french fry in sight.
While sitting with Louise at the table, Luke and I refrained from discussing any of our personal issues. We behaved as if everything was hunky-dory, and it was a relief to simply enjoy the meal and talk about mundane things.
* * *
“If you have any problems,” I said as I gathered up my purse in the entry hall, “Claire’s phone number is on the fridge and she’s home tonight, so don’t hesitate to call her if you need to.”
“Don’t worry,” Luke replied as he stood in the archway with Louise. “We won’t get into any trouble. We’re just going to play with some matches later. And maybe we’ll run around with the scissors before bed.”
Louise laughed herself silly.
I strode toward her and wiggled her nose. “It sounds like I’m going to have to put you in charge. You keep an eye on him, all right?”
“I will,” she replied with a gigantic grin.
I slid my purse strap over my shoulder and headed for the door. “Don’t forget to let Leo out before bed.”
“I got it covered,” Luke replied.
“Great. I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll be back at seven, in time to take Louise to school.”
Luke waved good-bye to me at the door, and I forced myself to get in the car, go to work, and not worry.
* * *
During my shift, whenever there was an opportunity, I checked my phone to make sure Luke hadn’t texted to tell me something awful had happened. Somehow, I managed to resist the urge to call and ask how they were getting along. I wanted to trust him, and I also wanted him to enjoy some quality father-daughter time with Louise.
When my shift ended the next morning, I couldn’t get out of the hospital fast enough. Still wearing my scrubs, I drove home and hurried up the steps.
As soon as I opened the door, I smelled pancakes. Leo greeted me with a wagging tail and I patted him on the head, then dropped my purse onto the hall table. “Good morning,” I said.
I entered the kitchen where Louise and Luke were just sitting down to breakfast.
“How was work?” Luke asked.
“It was great.”
“Are you hungry?” He gestured with his chin toward the stove. “I made enough to feed an army.”
I glanced at the top-heavy pile of pancakes on a serving platter, and noticed a bowl of fresh strawberries and sliced ham on the table as well. “I’m starved.”
“Have a seat, then.” He filled a plate and set it in front of me.
“How was your night?” I asked Louise expectantly as I popped a strawberry into my mouth.
“Fun,” she replied. “We took Leo out in the backyard and threw a frisbee for him. He jumped in the air and caught it in his mouth a whole bunch of times.”
“Do we even own a frisbee?”
“I brought one with me last night,” Luke mentioned. “So now you own one.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Cool. What else did you do?”
Louise swallowed another bite of her pancake. “We played with my teddy bears, and then I painted another picture of Papa and Nanny.”
Feeling suddenly breathless, I met Luke’s gaze. “Really?”
He nodded and there was a look of total serenity on his face.
“Then I got in my jammies,” Louise continued, “and I brushed my teeth, and we read the fairy book. Then I went to sleep.”
“That does sound like a fun night.” I picked up the maple syrup and doused my pancakes. “Could I see the picture you painted? Is it in the hall?”
“No, I gave it to Daddy. I told him he could keep it.”
I touched my daughter’s hand. “That was very nice of you, Louise.”
“I’ll show it to you after breakfast,” Luke offered. “What time do we need to leave for school?”
“Oh, I can take her,” I replied, because I was used to doing everything myself.
He gave me a look. “Why don’t we both take her?”
My heart felt suddenly light and full of hope as I swirled a bite-sized piece of pancake through the syrup. “Okay.”
As soon as we cleared the table and Louise went off to brush her teeth, I spoke quietly to Luke. “Could I see the picture now?”
He reached on top of the fridge, pulled it down and showed it to me.
I observed a tall man and a small woman holding Louise’s hands as they ran across a colorful meadow full of wildflowers. There were butterflies and dragonflies flitting about, shafts of golden sunlight shooting out from behind white clouds in a lavender sky. I could almost hear the swish of grasses blowing in the wind, and my heart swelled with elation. Tears filled my eyes. My voice shook as I spoke. “I get choked up every time she paints a new one.”
“The same thing happened to me last night,” he said. He pointed at the hearts in the meadow, hidden in the wildflowers, which I hadn’t noticed at first glance. “She says she draws hearts because she doesn’t know how else to paint the love in a way that we’d be able to see it.”
I shook my head in amazement as I scrutinized it further and found more hearts within the paint strokes of the sky, and in the woman’s hair. I was overcome as I handed the canvas back to Luke. “And these look like your parents?”
“Yes, it’s them. She talked about them, too, and the way she described them and what it was like there…” He bowed his head and took a moment to collect himself before he continued. “I believe her, Bev. I believe she was with them. And I believe she came back because of you. And for me, too.”
A warmth radiated through my body and I felt weak in the knees. I had to sit down at the table where I began to laugh and cry at the same time. “Do you really, truly believe it?”
He nodded. “Yes, I do. Don’t you?”
Tears streamed down my face and I found myself nodding. “Yes, I think I do now.”
He squeezed my shoulder, and urged me to get up and go to the hall to look at more of her paintings. “Do you see the hearts?” he asked.
I stared at the pictures. The early ones were drawn with crayons and paper, but the newer ones were on canvas, painted with oils.
Like the hidden treasures in the I Spy book, her works contained hearts in everything—in the hull of a boat, in a cloud, a flower, a door, a babbling brook, the wings of a bird. The hearts were all different colors, shapes and sizes.
“This is incredible,” I said. “How did she do this?”
“I don’t know. She’s an artist. Did she have this gift before?”
“Not like this. I mean, she always liked to draw pictures, but these are…”
“Inspired,” he finished for me.
“Yes.” Eyes wide and glowing, I continued to stare. “It’s all so beautiful. They move me to tears.”
Louise came out of the bathroom just then and placed her small hand inside Luke’s larger one. “Will you pick me up after school, too?” she asked him.
His eyes met mine. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask your mom.”
A flutter of joy rose up within me. “Are you available to pick her up?”
He looked back down at Louise. “I’m always available for anything where this little one’s concerned.”
“Then yes,” I said to her as a lump formed in my throat and happy tears filled my eyes again. “He’ll come with me to pick you up today. But if we’re going to pick you up, we need to get you to school in the first place and not be late. So, go and get your backpack and put on your shoes.”
Louise hurried off to get ready, and together, the three of us got into my car and headed off.
* * *
After we dropped Louise at school, I explained to Luke that I needed to go home and sleep for the day. “But thank you so much for staying with her last night. She really loved it.”
I turned left at an intersection and we ended up behind a city bus.
“There’s something else I should tell you,” Luke said while we paused in the morning traffic.
“What is it?”
He turned to me. “That woman I was seeing—Emma—she’s the reason I found you.”
“I don’t understand.”
He inhaled deeply and began to explain. “The reason I found that picture of you online was because Emma had become obsessed with what happened to Louise and the possibility that she went to heaven. The picture was on Emma’s laptop and I stumbled across it after she left me. She was following your story because she had a son who died.”
My heart sank. “I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. “She had a four-year-old boy named Sammy who drowned in a backyard swimming pool, and when she heard about Louise drowning and being brought back to life, it made her think of her own son, and that’s why she and her ex-husband started seeing each other again.”
“I see.”
“But there’s more to it than that,” Luke continued. “They went to a psychic who told them that Sammy was still with them, in a sense, on the other side of this life. The psychic claimed she talked to him, and that he wanted his mom and dad to forgive each other. When Emma told me about it, I tried to be supportive, but I didn’t really believe in it, so I think maybe that played a part in what made her pull away from me. We weren’t really on the same page. But now I’m changing my mind about it, because of what Louise has told me, and the pictures she’s been painting.”
“She’s turned you into a believer?” I asked.
“I guess so. And she’s also made me understand the connection that Emma had with her son, and with her husband, because of how they both couldn’t let go. I didn’t really get that before. Now I do. I understand the profoundness of parental love.”
I wasn’t sure what to say in response. All I could do was reach for Luke’s hand and squeeze it.
A moment later, he said, “We should talk about where we go from here, because I can’t go home at the end of the week without some kind of plan. I want to be a part of Louise’s life.”
“I want that, too,” I assured him as I braced myself for whatever he was about to say next. Maybe I would need that lawyer Scott had recommended, sooner rather than later.
Luke tapped his thumb on his knee. “I spent some time online last night, searching for condos.”
I shot him a look. “Condos for sale in Halifax?”
“Yes. They’re shockingly affordable compared to BC.”
“That’s for sure,” I replied. “There’s a huge difference in the housing market. So…” I regarded him curiously. “What are you thinking?”
“That maybe I could buy a condo here and visit often. I could get something with two bedrooms, and when I’m here, maybe Louise might want to stay with me?”
I chewed on my lower lip, almost afraid to hope that this could work out. “Did you talk to her about it last night?”
“No, I wanted to talk to you first. See what you thought.”
“I think it’s a great idea,” I told him. “How often would you come?”
“I don’t know about that yet. It’s a long flight to get here. It’s not something I could do every weekend, but I work in Toronto a lot, which is more than halfway here, so I could combine business travel with visits here.”
The bus in front of us pulled over to pick up some passengers, and we were forced to wait behind it.
“What about Louise going to visit you in Victoria?” I asked. “Is that something you would want?”
We’d definitely need lawyers for that…
Luke considered it briefly. “I’d love to have her, but from what I’ve seen over the past few days, she has a busy schedule here, with ballet classes and swim classes and school, and she loves her cousin, Serena. I wouldn’t want to interrupt any of that or take her away from those things. This is where her life is. It’s better if I come here.”
I smiled at him. “That sounds very generous, Luke. I like how this is sounding. Thank you.”
He nodded. “So, if you think it’s a good idea, I’ll call a real estate agent today while you’re catching some shuteye.”
“I approve of that plan,” I replied.
A moment later, we pulled into my driveway. Luke picked up his things from inside the house, told me to sleep well, and I let him borrow my car for the day.
Chapter Twenty-one
Luke
I had never minded a flight home to Victoria from the eastern provinces, but that particular flight across the country seemed to last forever. I resented every westward mile in the sky because it took me farther and farther away from my daughter.
It killed me to leave her behind in Halifax. She had cried at the airport when she hugged me good-bye and asked when I would return. I promised it would be soon, but in truth, I wasn’t sure.
It crushed my heart when I started to walk away and she cried even harder. I think Bev was shell shocked. Going through security was pure agony for me.
When I finally touched down at the airport in Victoria and picked up my suitcase at the baggage claim, my head was in a fog, and it had nothing to do with jet lag. I had to apologize to my driver for not wanting to engage in conversation on the short trip home to my house. I blamed it on the length of the flight.
After he dropped me off, I wheeled my suitcase to the bottom of my steps, but before I entered the house, I decided to check out my garage. I walked over and keyed in the entry code. The heavy door lifted noisily to reveal an empty space where Emma’s furniture had been, barely a week before.
I stood in a daze, staring at the emptiness. Someone had swept the floor clean.
Strangely, I felt liberated. I was glad she’d hired the movers to come while I was gone. Now she was no longer a part of my life, and under these new circumstances, that was quite all right with me. Sure, maybe I still held some bitterness toward her for the way things ended, but for the most part, I understood why she had to leave me and I was okay with it. This was how it was meant to be and I wished her well. I didn’t want her back. It was Louise that I missed.
And Bev.
I hit a button on the key pad and the garage door lowered in front of my face.
From there, I returned to collect my suitcase, carried it up the stairs, and entered my house.
Leaving my suitcase at the door, I wandered from room to room, feeling an emptiness like never before. This was far too big a house for just one person. It was meant to be a family home. I’d always known that. I don’t know why I bought it. Wishful thinking, I suppose. It certainly didn’t help that my dogs weren’t here to greet me, though I’d pick them up soon. Then, God willing, it wouldn’t feel so lonesome here.
But still… What the devil was I going to do now? I thought of Louise at the airport—her heart-wrenching wails, how she had clung to my neck and refused to let go. Bev physically peeled her off me. I hadn’t wanted to let go either.
Looking around at this big, vacant house, I felt entirely forlorn and utterly displaced.
* * *
An hour later, my laptop chimed as I connected with Bev through a video call. Her image on the screen appeared like magic, and my mood instantly lifted.
“Hey there.” I leaned forward in my chair.
Bev pulled Louise onto her lap so I could see them both through the webcam. The sight of them thrilled me. They were so beautiful. Mother and daughter. I wanted to be where they were.
“How was your flight?” Bev asked.
“Long,” I replied. “I miss you guys already.”
“We miss you, too!” Louise shouted. I loved the sound of her sweet voice.
“Do you want to meet my dogs?” I cheerfully asked.
“Yes, we do!” Louise cried out.
I raised my laptop to capture Max and Toby in the webcam lens. They were lying on the floor behind me, sleeping.
“Yeah, it was quite a reunion. I nearly got licked to death.”
Louise laughed hysterically. “That’s so funny!”
I threw my head back and laughed along with her. “Yes, it was pretty fun. How was school today?”
She launched into an animated account of the science project she’d worked on during class where they had to paste pictures of all the different types of clouds into a collage, with labels.
“I love clouds,” she said.
“You love everything,” Bev added, kissing her on the cheek.
“I do.” She spread her arms wide. “I love the whole wide world!”
I felt another rush of euphoria, and started to wonder if I was being touched by something miraculous here, or if this was just what regular parenthood was like. Because this child had some sort of power over me. It was as if, whenever I was in her presence, she waved a magic wand and drenched me with happiness.
Or inconceivable agony—like at the airport when I left.
I resigned myself to the fact that parenthood must be a state of emotional extremes. There was nothing lackluster about it. Everything was vivid and amazing.
We chatted for a while about french fries and Frozen, and Leo’s new frisbee. Louise laughed about all the “F” words and soon we were in hysterics.
Later, Bev sent Louise to brush her teeth because it was past her bedtime. As soon as we were alone, Bev asked, “Did you decide about the condo on Spring Garden Road? Are you going to make an offer?”
“I don’t think so,” I replied. “Something doesn’t feel right about it.”
“Really? I thought it was so nice. It was close to Public Gardens, and not that far from our house.”
“Yes, but I can’t imagine not having a yard for Toby and Max to run around in. They’d have to be on leashes all the time.”
Bev inclined her head. “But you wouldn’t bring them back and forth with you from Victoria, would you? They’d have to travel in the cargo hold. I think that would be stressful for them.”
I steepled my hands together in front of my face. “Yes, it definitely would, which is why I’m starting to think that a secondary residence might not be the way to go.”