Without a doubt, she knew that there was no way he would ever believe her without visible, tangible proof. It was way too outlandish a story, and Melanie would never have believed it had it not happened to her. They were both science-minded people, and mentioning it would only cause him to question whether she’d finally gone off the deep end. She didn’t want him to worry about her even more than he already was. So she held her tongue and said nothing, only that she felt really close to her mom at the lake house and was especially missing her right then. Even though her reasons for not confiding in him were perfectly sensible, she still hated withholding that from him. It felt like their marriage was becoming a kind of Venn diagram: things she kept to herself, things he kept to himself, and only a shared sliver between them.
Ben finished telling her about the punishing ten-mile run he’d gone on the day before, tackling the hilly terrain of Churchill Park, then shifted gears. “So how did things go with your bloodwork?” he asked nonchalantly, as if it had only just occurred to him, but Melanie knew he’d been dying to know if she’d gone to the lab or blown it off.
“Fine.” She toyed with the plastic handle of the garden trowel. “Dr. Maroney said my HCG levels are dropping appropriately. She still wants me to go in for tests every two weeks, though, until my levels are back at zero. She said we can’t start on another course of Letrozole until then.”
“Well, that’s good, right?” He paused for a few beats too long. “Look, Mel, I’ve been thinking. Why don’t we take a little break from the fertility drugs? Five months, six months tops. Just some time to let your body recover, to let us recover. We’ll just throw the schedule out the window and make love whenever we feel like it, not because some ovulation timetable tells us to. I was just talking to our pharmacy tech, Avani, the other day—”
“You didn’t tell her about us, did you?” Melanie interrupted, affronted.
“No, no, of course not. But she and her husband struggled for five years to have their son, and they did everything, Mel, absolutely everything. They had just finished their fourth unsuccessful round of IVF and had decided they were done trying. They were finally going to look into adoption. So they stopped everything, then two months later, she found out she was pregnant. It seems like sometimes the harder you try, the harder it becomes.”
Tears blurred Melanie’s view of the impatiens, turning them into a blood-tinged smudge. Ben had advocated for breaks and told her those “miracle baby” stories before, and it dismayed her. “Have you forgotten the year of ‘not trying’ we did?” she asked, her volume rising despite her best efforts to keep it level. “Why do you think a break would be any different this time? We were so close, Ben. So close—” Her lips trembled, and she suppressed a sob.
“I know, sweetie,” he said softly. “But I think we need this.” She imagined him in his parked car outside of the pharmacy, needing to go inside but not wanting to hang up just yet, his hand cradling his cheek. “I need this.” His voice was gentle yet firm.
He had supported her every step of the way, done everything she asked of him, and never asked for anything in return except for a half-year break without the Letrozole her body needed for her to have even a slim chance of getting pregnant. The one thing she didn’t want to give him.
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’ve got to go,” she said, ignoring his plea, avoiding giving him a response. “The contractor just pulled up, and I need to show him to the basement.” A blatant lie but a plausible one. It was supposed to be the guy’s first day of work, and he was already fifteen minutes late.
“I understand. Let’s continue this talk tonight, though, okay?”
“Okay.”
“And don’t forget to send me a picture of your impatiens when you’re done, all right? And why don’t you throw in one of the house and lake while you’re at it too?”
“Will do.”
“I love you, Mel.”
“Love you too.” She dropped the cell phone to the ground and crouched beside the flowers, wrapping her arms around her knees. Her body felt brittle and hollow, a cracked-open seed. Becoming a mother had never been further away. Even Ben was giving up on her.
Chapter Eight
Kelsey had overslept. Her plan had been to wake up early, take Sprocket for a quick walk, shower, slip into her flirty green dress, harass Melanie into another exploration of their mom’s past, and have a couple of loaves of banana bread baking in the oven, the sweet scent wafting through the house, all before Everett arrived so she could greet him at the door. But when the doorbell rang at 8:25, she was just pouring a bowl of kibble for Sprocket and a bowl of cereal for herself. She froze, unsure what to do. She hadn’t showered and had some serious bedhead—not the gently-tousled-yet-kind-of-sexy bedhead most women complained of but tornado-tangled, sticking-up-straight-in-a-faux-hawk-on-one-side bedhead. She frantically tried to pat it down and dove behind the refrigerator door.
“Hi.” Melanie’s voice floated from the foyer. “Everett from Flood Repair Pros?” Kelsey couldn’t make out his reply, but Melanie let out a forced-sounding laugh. Maybe he had offered a lame excuse for his lateness. “It’s okay,” she said. “I’m Melanie. Come on in.”
Sprocket licked his bowl clean and chose that moment to burp loudly. He heard the unfamiliar voice in the foyer and ran to the front door, his claws scratching the wood floor, his bark low and tentative. Kelsey shut the fridge and crept toward the doorway, still out of sight but within better earshot. It was the moment of truth. Though Sprocket didn’t know how to roll over or play dead, his true talent lay in his impeccable judgment of character. Kelsey took his first impressions very seriously. He had hidden behind her legs when he’d met Tristan, and look how that relationship had turned out.
“Well, hello there, buddy!” Everett exclaimed.
“Sorry,” Melanie said. “That’s my sister’s dog, Sprocket. He can be a little overexuberant sometimes. But he’ll love you for life if you play fetch with him. Or feed him salmon, apparently.”
“You like fetch, huh, Sprocket? So do my goldens, Bailey and Bella. They love diving off the pier and going for a swim.”
Kelsey risked a quick peek around the corner to see that Everett had dropped to a squat and was scratching behind Sprocket’s scraggly ears. She ducked back into the kitchen, a wide smile spreading across her face. He’s a dog person. Yay! And Sprocket approved and was even letting him pet him on their first meeting. Double yay! So what if Bailey and Bella are some of the most common, uninspired dog names he could have picked? That didn’t mean that Everett was an unimaginative guy. Maybe the names had come with the dogs, like Sprocket’s had from the Fraggle Rock fan at the animal shelter where Kelsey had adopted him. Although she definitely thought the name suited him and his offbeat personality.
“So what’s the plan for today?” Melanie asked.
Kelsey cringed. Her sister was all business. Kelsey could have kicked herself for hitting the snooze on her alarm. If only she had been the one to answer the door. She would have asked Everett follow-up questions about Bailey and Bella, but no, no, Melanie couldn’t be bothered to make small talk about pets—yawn.
“Mold remediation,” Everett said cheerfully. “I’m going to seal off the vents and doors, get an exhaust fan going in one of the windows for negative pressure, then get to work removing it.”
“Sounds good,” Melanie said. “We’re on a pretty tight schedule to get this place on the market. You quoted us two weeks for the whole restoration, right? Was that two weeks of eight-hour week days?” Her voice drifted off as they descended into the basement.
Kelsey left her untouched cereal on the counter and tiptoed upstairs to the master bathroom to shower, with Sprocket in noisy pursuit.
She stood under the pulsating spray, thinking about Everett and his golden retrievers and his irresistible dimpled grin. She imagined the two of them on the dock with their three dogs, tossing tennis balls into the water for them to retrieve as the sun slo
wly sank below the horizon. It was a pathetic fantasy, she realized, a sure sign she was rapidly approaching her thirties, but one that gave her a warm, relaxed feeling.
Dear Mom, she composed in her head. At what point did you know that Dad was the one? She imagined stepping behind the Tree of Life and witnessing her parents’ first kiss, their first earnest exchange of I love yous, or maybe even her dad’s marriage proposal, but if she remembered correctly, that had happened in Madison, not at Lake Indigo.
The life of singledom was getting to her. Most of her friends were married or in committed relationships, and she was tired of going out for drinks and having them ask eagerly about her love life, as if they, too, hadn’t just climbed out of the trenches and already had amnesia about how awful it could be. Though she loved cooking and baking, she rarely did either anymore because it seemed like too much effort for just one person, and she hated doing the dishes afterward. She worked constantly, and what little time she had left over, she spent trying to assuage her guilt for leaving Sprocket home alone by chucking balls for him at the dog park—which she had once thought would be a good place to meet single guys but recently seemed only populated by happy couples. So she spent the majority of her free time on the couch with Sprocket, eating frozen pizza from a paper plate and watching the cooking network, as lonely as the orphan she sometimes felt like—no mom and a dad with another family in Arizona.
So dog lover Everett with his fishing cabin, business cards advertising a real business—even one as unglamorous as mold remediation—and not to mention gorgeous body was an appealing fantasy. She decided that by the end of the day, she would ask him over to her apartment for dinner if he hadn’t already proposed a date on his own by then. The thought of them eating rosemary lemon chicken by candlelight at her little kitchen table gave her tingles.
But when she opened the basement door, she was greeted by a sheet of clear plastic taped up halfway down the steps. Behind the taut plastic wrap, she could see Everett—at least she assumed it was Everett—wearing a white suit, mask, gloves, and goggles like some kind of spaceman.
“Hello?” she called over the loud whooshing of a fan and the whirring of some tools, but Everett didn’t hear her. “Hello?” Already, she felt ridiculous in her jersey-knit dress and eyeliner and was just about to turn around and head back upstairs in defeat when he noticed her.
“Hey!” he shouted, turning off one of the whirring tools. “I’m sorry. You can’t come down here right now because of the mold spores in the air. It’s not safe. Did you need something?”
“No,” she said, ducking her head so he could see her face, or at least what little he could make out of her face through the thick plastic. “Just came down to say hi.”
“Oh, hi.” He waved at her with the spray bottle he was holding in one hand. “Kelsey, right? You haven’t fallen in the lake lately, have you?”
She blushed with a mix of pleasure and embarrassment. He remembered! Oh God, but he remembered what a klutz she was. She struggled to come up with a witty comeback and failed. “No. But it’s almost warm enough for a swim now.”
“Yeah. I heard they’re forecasting eighties by this weekend. My favorite kind of weather.” He tapped his goggles with one gloved finger and leaned his muscular white-cotton-clad body against the stepladder he was standing on.
The basement looked even worse than before he had started, which hardly seemed possible—chunks of plaster were missing, and a fine layer of white powder covered every surface. The exhaust fan continued to hum, and somewhere overhead, Kelsey could hear Melanie’s footsteps. She was probably looking for Kelsey to put her to work dusting baseboards or cleaning windows and would be irritated if she knew Kelsey was distracting the contractor.
“Mine too! But I’d better let you get back to work,” she said, trying not to sound as disappointed as she felt. “It looks like you’re pretty busy.” The goal she had set for herself—to ask him out by the day’s end—was clearly not going to happen unless she sprang it on him like a total novice. Outlook not so good, her Magic 8-Ball would say. Ask again later. And since she had to go back to Bartlett that night for five straight days of work at the pet lodge, she wouldn’t have another opportunity to see him again until the next week. Lucky Melanie would get to be there with both Everett and the time portal all week, and she would probably choose to spend the time spreading mulch and pulling weeds or something equally as dull. The thought made Kelsey wish she could call in sick and stay in Lake Indigo, but she knew she couldn’t leave Beth short-staffed during one of their highest-volume times of the year.
“Yeah, this first step is a pain in the ass,” Everett agreed with one of those rapid-fire, high-pitched laughs. It was a little endearing how weird sounding his laugh was. Is he self-conscious of it or totally unaware of how different it is? “It’s really easy to screw up and miss something.”
KELSEY FOLLOWED HER sister into the kitchen and put her hands on her hips. “But if we don’t go now, the next time I’ll be able to go is Sunday! And you’d better not break your own rules. Do you hear me? You said we should always go together—never alone. I don’t want to miss a single glimpse of Mom’s life.”
Melanie opened cabinet after cabinet in search of something. The cupboards were mostly empty except for a few cheap dishes they had bought at Target. “We can’t go in there right now,” she protested. “What if the basement guy has a question or needs us for something? He can’t come upstairs to find an empty house.”
“He won’t,” Kelsey said. “I was just down there, and believe me—he’s tucked behind plastic and won’t be done for hours.”
“Aha!” Melanie pulled down a green margarita pitcher. “This might do the trick.”
Kelsey raised her eyebrows. “It’s only ten o’clock. I’m not really in the mood.”
Melanie laughed. “It’s not for us, dummy. I need to water the flowers, and I thought to buy all the gardening supplies I needed except for a watering can. And the Holloways took their hose with them.” She said the last bit as if it were the stingiest thing imaginable. “Can you just wait until he leaves? I doubt he’ll work past four or five. We’ll go then, okay?”
“I can’t, Melanie. That’s way too late. I work tomorrow, remember? And I have mountains of laundry waiting for me when I get home. You know it’s over an hour’s drive back to Bartlett, and I really need to get to bed at a decent time tonight because I have to get up so early tomorrow.”
“Like you did this morning?” Melanie rolled her eyes and turned to leave the kitchen, the plastic pitcher dangling between her fingers.
“Come on! Aren’t you dying to know if Mom went to that cute boy’s bonfire? Tell me you’re not the least bit curious! Don’t you want to know if Grandpa Jack let Mom be a lifeguard? If we wait too long, who knows? She might be in her twenties the next time we visit. We might miss her entire teenage years!”
Melanie paused in the doorway. Kelsey almost had her. She could sense Melanie’s resolve crumbling.
“I’ll set my watch for one hour,” Kelsey promised. “That way, we can be back before Everett even thinks to take a lunch break.”
Melanie set the pitcher on the kitchen counter, and before Kelsey could process what was happening, she sprinted into the hallway. Kelsey darted after her, trying to catch the fluttering tie on Melanie’s short-sleeved blouse and pull her backward. They giggled like little girls as they raced each other, their bare feet pounding on the wood steps. With her head start, Melanie got to the top of the stairs and her bedroom first, where she gleefully slammed the door in Kelsey’s face.
“Butthead!” Kelsey cried as she yanked it open. She almost expected to hear their mom’s voice admonishing them from the master bedroom. No running indoors, girls! Someone is going to hurt themselves. Before the thought could make her sad, she focused on the fact that they were going to see her right then.
Melanie already had the tapestry pulled back and the door revealed when Kelsey entered the room. “Do y
ou want to do the honors?” she asked.
Kelsey grinned as she turned the latch with a flourish. She felt like Lucy Pevensie climbing inside the wardrobe, but instead of fur coats, pine branches, and snow, the door opened only on the low-ceilinged, claustrophobic room. Two packs of cigarettes lay discarded on the bench next to a tarnished gold lighter. She picked the lighter up. “Do you really think Mom smoked? Maybe we’re wrong and this stuff belonged to someone else.”
Melanie shrugged. “If she did smoke, talk about being a hypocrite. All those lectures she gave us about lung cancer and COPD and wrinkly skin and yellow teeth. Oh God.” She suddenly sounded anguished. “But her PE would make more sense. You know that smoking increases your risk of blood clots, right?”
A chill went down Kelsey’s spine as she tried to push away the thought of her mom curled up on the Oriental rug with her blue lips and cold, mottled skin. Fifty-five years old. She angrily snatched up the cigarettes but then didn’t know what to do with them since she was still wearing a dress. She thrust the packs at Melanie. “We’re taking them. Put them in your pockets.”
Melanie looked like she was going to object.
“Should we leave a note?” Kelsey asked. “Maybe one of Mom’s gems? ‘Smoking is a disgusting habit’? ‘Smoking causes one in five deaths every year’?”
“No,” Melanie said quickly, squishing the cigarettes into the front pockets of her khaki shorts. “No note.”
Kelsey didn’t bother arguing. She opened the closet door once more. It was late afternoon, and they couldn’t find their mom anywhere, not in her bedroom, not in the living room or kitchen, not in the yard, and not sunning herself on the dock. In fact, the only one home at all was a gawky teenage version of Uncle Bob, who was sitting on the porch swing, reading a zombie comic tucked inside a human anatomy textbook. Apparently using decoy reading material was an inherited family trait.
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