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Anita smoothed her hand across the pillow. "Your daddy always tried to get me to take up needlepoint, but I never could master it. Such a feminine thing. "
Elizabeth glanced down at the pillow. It was one of the few mementos she had of her mother. She had often tried to imagine her mother in a rocking chair, working with all that beautiful silk thread, but all she could draw up was a black-and-white image of a young woman looking into the camera.
"Your mama made this pillow," Anita said. "I can tell by her dainty stitches. That time she came into the beauty salon? She stitched the whole time Mabel cut her hair. "
"I try to picture her sometimes. "
Anita set the pillow down and stood up, then placed her thin hands on Elizabeths shoulders and guided her toward the mirror that hung above the bureau.
Elizabeth stared at her own puffy reflection. Her hair was a mess, her face looked pale without makeup.
"When I first saw your mama, I thought she was the loveliest woman Id ever seen. She and Edward looked like a pair of movie stars together. " Anita pulled the hair back from Elizabeths face. "Youre the spittin image of her. "
As a girl, Elizabeth had spent hours searching through family photographs for pictures of her mother, but shed never found more than a few.
Shed been looking in the wrong place for years, and no one had ever told her. All shed needed to see Mama was a mirror. Now, as she looked into her own green eyes, she saw a hint of the woman shed spent all her life missing. "Thank you, Anita," she said in a shaky voice.
"Youre welcome, honey. "
Jack barely slept that night.
Bleary-eyed and hungover, he padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
Unfortunately, the hot water couldnt wash away his regret. Hed slept with Sally again last night.
He wished he could believe it wouldnt matter; he and Birdie were separated, after all. But he knew better. This separation wasnt a license to screw around. It was a hiatus, a resting period in the midst of a long marriage. If he found out that Birdie had been unfaithful, he would kill the guy.
Shed forgiven him once, but that had been years ago, when they were different people. Back then, shed been willing to sacrifice a huge amount of herself for their family. Though hed hurt her, shed been willing to believe in him again. In them.
But those days were gone. The new Birdie was a woman he couldnt predict.
She might learn about this mistake and file for divorce.
Or maybe she wouldnt care anymore. Maybe shed drifted so far away that fidelity didnt matter.
He wiped steam off the bathroom mirror and stared at his hazy reflection. After a night of partying, the wrinkles around his eyes were more pronounced, and his skin had a sick gray tinge. It was easy to imagine himself as an old man, stooped by time and bad choices, tottering forward with a cane to steady his walk.
Hed always believed that Birdie would be beside him in those twilight years, still loving him when he had nothing to offer but a shaking hand and his heart. It had never occurred to him--not even in the past weeks--that they wouldnt always be together.
Now, suddenly, he was afraid. What if hed finally ruined it?
He had just started shaving when the phone rang. Naked, he walked into the bedroom to answer it. "Hello?"
"Hel-lo, Dad. " Jamie sighed disgustedly. "I told you he was still at home. He forgot us. "
Shit. Today was the day they were going to Oregon. "I was just walking out the door. "
Lame, Jack. Lame.
"Often, people leave for the airport before the plane lands," Jamie said.
"I meant to. "
"He meant to," Jamie said, clearly talking to her sister. "How long until youll be here? Maybe we should get a room and wait until its convenient for you to pick us up. "
He glanced at the clock. It was eight-forty-eight. "An hour, max. I dont know what traffic is like. Our plane doesnt leave until . . . "
"Eleven-forty-nine. "
"Right. Ill meet you at the gate by ten. "
Jamie sighed. "Well be there, Dad. "
"Im sorry," he said. "Really. "
"We know. See you in a few. "
Jack hung up the phone, took two aspirin, and rushed to get dressed.
What if Birdie could tell hed been unfaithful just by looking at him?
Damn. One screwup at a time. For now, he had to deal with the fact that hed forgotten to meet his children at the airport.
In ten minutes, he was out the door and in a cab, heading toward Kennedy.
That gave him plenty of time to figure out what to say beyond, Im sorry.
Maybe Stephanie would buy it, would smile prettily and say, Thats okay, Dad, but not Jamie. Shed stare daggers at him and ignore him for as long as she damned well felt like it.
Once again, he needed Birdie. Shed always been the glue that held their family together. Shed guided him, gently and not so gently, toward an easy relationship with his daughters. Shed made sure that hed apologized when he needed to and listened when it was imperative. Without her, he was on his own, and he had no idea what to say.
"You can quit being strong, you know," Anita said as they sat at the kitchen table, eating an early lunch. A few presents sat on the counter.
"What do you mean?"
"A happy birthday from your stepmother and a little gift doesnt quite cut it. Admit it, you miss your family. Youve looked at the phone about fifty times today. "
"Im fine. And you said you were going to teach me how to play cribbage tonight. Thats something to look forward to. "
She eyed Elizabeth. "What did you normally do on your birthday?"
"You mean besides warn everyone for a week that it was coming?"
Anita nodded.
"Lets see. I usually took the day off from all volunteering projects and slept in. By the time I woke up, the house was empty. Jack and the girls always left birthday messages on the table. Once they tied balloons to the chairbacks. " Elizabeths heart did a little flip. Shed forgotten that . . . "Jack always made dinner for me that night. His one meal--chicken piccata. It took him two hours and two drinks to make it, and you couldnt talk to him while he was cooking. He cursed a blue streak the whole time. After dinner, he gave me a body massage and then we made love. Oh, and I got to kiss and hug the girls as much as I wanted--they werent allowed to protest. "
"It sounds wonderful. "
"It was. "
"Youre good at it, you know. "
"What?"
"Denial. I mean, if I didnt know you, I might think everything was just peachy for you. "
"I made a choice. I wanted to be alone. " Elizabeths voice softened; hurt feelings flooded through the barriers shed built. Suddenly she was drowning in sorrow; a minute ago shed been happy. Shed buried herself in denial because she knew how much a birthday without her family would hurt. No one had even called her today.
That was the realization shed been running from all morning. No one had called.
Elizabeth forced a smile. "Im going to go paint now. I need to finish four more pieces before the festival. "
Anita stood up from the table and unwrapped her apron. "Do you mind if I tag along? I could knit while you paint. "
"Id appreciate the company," Elizabeth answered truthfully. "Ill go change my clothes and grab my stuff. "
Upstairs, she changed into a pair of baggy Levis and a well-worn blue denim shirt. She was almost to the door when she realized that she needed a belt.
She went back to the bureau and dug through her clothes, finally finding an old leather belt with a big silver buckle. She threaded it through the loops and cinched it tight, then went back downstairs.
Anita grinned at her. "You look like one of those country-and-western singers from home. "
"Daddy bought me this belt at Opryland, remember? I havent been able to wear it in years. " Smiling at that, Elizabeth gathered her supplies. It wasnt ten minutes later that she and
Anita were climbing down the steps.
"I cant believe you can carry all that stuff down these horrible old stairs. I keep thinkin Im gonna twist my ankle and plant my wrinkled face in the sand. "
Elizabeth laughed. She felt good again. The girls would call tonight. Most definitely. "The tides out," she observed. "We can spend hours down here. "
Anita picked up the knitting bag shed dropped down from the top of the stairs. Flipping her blanket out on the sand, she sat down and started knitting. A pile of fuzzy white yarn settled in her lap like an angora birds nest.
Elizabeth set up her easel, tacked the paper in place, and looked around for a subject. It was easy to find things to paint, but difficult to settle on just one. Her practiced eye saw a dozen opportunities: Terrible Tilly, the lighthouse in the distance, lonely and stark against the aqua-blue expanse of sea and sky . . . Dagger Rock, the black stone monolith that rose from the ocean in a cuff of foamy surf . . . a Brandts cormorant circling the lands edge.
She settled on the ocean itself; it was definitely a watercolor day. No oils or acrylics. She needed to complete four paintings in time for the festival; there was no way she could make the deadline if she worked in oil.
Happy with that decision, she started work.
It wasnt as easy as she remembered. She started and stopped three times, unable to find the flow she needed in watercolor. Everything was so damned wet; the colors kept bleeding into one another. She wasnt controlling the paint.
"Damn it. " She ripped the latest attempt off the easel and tossed it to the ground.
"Its never easy to start a thing," Anita said, barely looking up. "I guess thats what separates the dreamers from the doers. "
Elizabeth sighed, unaware until that moment that she was breathing badly again. "I used to know how to do this. "
"In high school, I spoke Spanish. "
Elizabeth got the point. Skills came and went in life. If you wanted one back, sometimes you had to dig deep to find it. She walked out to the water and stood there, staring out. She let the colors seduce her, reveal themselves in their own way and time.
She was doing it incorrectly. Trying to impose her will on the paper. That was a level of skill she had lost. Now what she needed to do was feel. Be childlike with wonder again.
She released another breath and went back to the easel. She set everything up again. And waited.
Sea air caressed her cheeks, filled her nostrils with the scents of drying kelp and baking sand. The steady, even whooshing of the waves became music. She swayed along with it. This time, when she lifted her brush and dipped it in paint, she felt the old magic.
For the next few hours, she worked at a furious, breathless pace. Finally, she drew back and looked critically at her work.
In a palette of pale blue and rose and lavender, shed captured the dramatic, sloping coastline and the glistening curve of sand. The distant peak of Dagger Rock was barely discernable, a dark shadow amidst a misty blue-white sky. A few strokes of red and gray formed a couple, far off in the distance, walking along the sand. But something was wrong . . .
"Why, Birdie, thats beautiful. "
Elizabeth practically jumped out of her skin. Shed been so intent on her subject that she hadnt even heard Anita walk up. "I cant seem to get the trees right. "
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