The Good Father
Diane Chamberlain
A little girl, all alone, with a note that reads ‘Please look after me’.Four years ago, nineteen-year-old Travis Brown made a choice: to raise his newborn daughter on his own. While most of his friends were out partying and meeting girls, Travis was at home, worrying about keeping food on the table. But so far he’s kept her safe. And never regretted his decision for a second.But now he’s lost his job, his home and the money in his wallet is all he has.As things spiral out of control Travis is offered a lifeline. A one-time offer to commit a crime for his daughter’s sake. Even if it means leaving her behind. Even if it means losing her. What would a good father do?Praise for Diane Chamberlain ‘Fans of Jodi Picoult will delight in this finely tuned family drama, with beautifully drawn characters and a string of twists that will keep you guessing right up to the end.' - Stylist‘A marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem’ - Literary Times’Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’ Daily Mail’So full of unexpected twists you'll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult's style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’ - Candis
Praise for
Diane Chamberlain
‘Emotional, complex and laced with suspense, this fascinating story is a brilliant read’
Closer
‘An excellent read’
The Sun
‘This complex tale will stick with you forever.’
Now
‘A hugely addictive twist in the tale makes this a sizzling sofa Read … a deeply compelling and moving new novel.’
Heat
‘This exquisite novel about love and friendship is written like a thriller … you won’t want to put it down.’
Bella
‘A bittersweet story about regret and hope’
Publishers Weekly
‘A brilliantly told thriller’
Woman
‘An engaging and absorbing story that’ll have you racing through pages to finish’
People’s Friend
‘This compelling mystery will have you on the edge of your seat.’
Inside Soap
‘A fabulous thriller with plenty of surprises’
Star
‘Essential reading for Jodi Picoult fans’
Daily Mail
‘Chamberlain skilfully … plumbs the nature of crimes of the heart’
Publishers Weekly
‘So full of unexpected twists you’ll find yourself wanting to finish it in one sitting. Fans of Jodi Picoult’s style will love how Diane Chamberlain writes.’
Candis
‘The plot is intriguing and haunting revelations will have you glued to the very end.’
Peterborough Evening Telegraph
‘I was drawn in from the first page and simply could not put it down until the last. I think I have found a new favourite author.’
Daily Echo
‘[A] gripping summer read that’s full of twists and turns—5 stars’
Woman’s Own
‘The compelling story of three friends who are forced to question what it is to be a friend, mother and a sister’
Sunday World
‘A gripping novel’
The Lady (online)
‘Diane Chamberlain is a marvellously gifted author. Every book she writes is a gem.’
Literary Times
‘A strong tale that deserves a comparison with Jodi Picoult for, as this builds, one does indeed wonder if all will come right in the end.’
lovereading.co.uk
‘I couldn’t put it down.’
Bookseller
Also by Diane Chamberlain
The Lost Daughter
The Bay at Midnight
Before the Storm
Secrets She Left Behind
The Lies We Told
Breaking the Silence
The Midwife’s Confession
Brass Ring
The Shadow Wife
Keeper of the Light
The Good
Father
DianeChamberlain
GETS TO THE HEART OF THE STORY
www.dianechamberlain.co.uk (http://www.dianechamberlain.co.uk)
For Nolan and Garrett, Claire and Olivia,
who are so lucky to have very good fathers!
1 Travis
Raleigh, North Carolina
October 2011
IT WAS NINE-FORTY WHEN I WOKE UP IN THE back of the van. Nine-forty! What if Erin had already left the coffee shop by the time we got there? What if she’s not there? That sentence kept running through my head as I got Bella up and moving. She’d had a dream about her stuffed lamb and wanted to tell me the whole thing, but all I could think about while I changed her into the cleanest clothes I had for her was, What if she’s not there?
On the phone yesterday, Roy had told me I was making the smart choice. “You can get rich doing this, bro,” he’d said.
I thought of the gold watch he wore. The red Mustang he drove. “I don’t care about getting rich,” I’d answered. “I just want enough money to keep me and Bella fed till I get a real job.” I felt smarmy just talking to him on the phone. The dude was a total cretin.
“You feel that way right now,” he said, “but wait till you get a taste of easy money.”
“Look,” I said, “just tell me where to meet you and when.”
“We’ll come to you about eleven tomorrow night,” he said. “You still hanging in the same place? The lot by the Target?”
“Yeah.”
“Just make sure you’ve got enough gas to get us to the Virginia border and back,” he said, and then he was gone from the line.
So, now I’d have all day to freak out about my decision and, if things went according to my plan, I wouldn’t have Bella with me. My chest tightened at the thought. I wasn’t sure I could do this. Erin was a good woman, though. I could tell. Plus, Bella knew her and liked her. The only thing was, she might be too good. The kind of person who’d call the cops on me. I just had to trust her not to.
My hands shook as I scratched a note on the back of a gas receipt and stuck it in Bella’s pants pocket, sneaking it in there so Bella wouldn’t ask me about it or try to pull it out. I remembered the tremor in my mother’s hands. “A fine tremor,” the doctor had called it and he’d said it was harmless and barely noticeable. Mine wasn’t so fine. I could hardly help Bella get her socks straight on her feet.
“I’m hungry, Daddy,” she said as she pulled on her shoes.
I opened some Tic Tacs and shook a couple into her hand. “We’ll get breakfast in a minute,” I said, as she popped the Tic Tacs into her mouth.
I pictured Erin finding the note. She would find it, wouldn’t she? If she didn’t, then what? I thought of all the things that could go wrong and my head hurt like a bitch. First things first, I told myself. First I had to get to JumpStart before Erin left or else the whole plan was going to cave in.
“I got to go potty,” Bella said.
“Yeah, baby, me too.” I ran a comb through her dark hair, which I really should have tried to wash in the Target restroom last night like I did once already this week. Last night, though, washing her hair had been the furthest thing from my mind. She needed a haircut, too, but it wasn’t like I’d thought of bringing scissors with me when we left Carolina Beach. Her bangs were almost long enough to put behind her ears now, and I tried that, but as soon as she hopped out of the van, her hair fell into her face again. Poor kid. She looked like an orphan nobody cared about. I prayed to God she didn’t become one tonight.
I held her hand as we walked toward the coffee shop.
“You’re hurting my hand, Daddy,” she said, and I realized I was holding on to her way too tight. How could I do this to my baby girl? I couldn’t even prepare her for what was going to happen. Bella, I’m sorry. I hoped she was so young that she’d never remember this. Never think of it as the day her daddy abandoned her.
Wildflowers filled the grassy strip of land next to the coffee shop and I had a sudden idea. They were nothing but weeds, but they’d do. “Look, Bella.” I pointed toward them. “Let’s pick some of these for Miss Erin.” We stepped onto the lawn and began picking the flowers and I hoped Bella’s bladder could hold out one more minute. The flowers were the only way I could think of to thank Erin for what I was going to ask her to do.
She was sitting in the brown leather chair where she always sat, reading something on her iPad, as usual, and brushing a strand of light brown hair out of her eyes. I felt a crazy rush of relief and a crazy rush of disappointment. If she hadn’t been there, I would have no way to do what I was going to do tonight, and that would have been a good thing. But she was there and she smiled like she’d been waiting for us.
“There she is!” Bella shouted loudly enough for the two girls at the corner table to look over at us. They were close to my age. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. One of them smiled at me, then went red in the face and looked away. I hardly glanced at her. I only saw the thirtysomething woman sitting in the leather chair. I felt like hugging her.
“Hey,” I said, like it was any other morning. “How’s it going?”
“Good.” She reached out to run a hand down Bella’s arm. “Good morning, honey,” she said. “How are you today?”
“We had Tic Tacs for breakfast,” Bella said.
“Well, we’ll get something a little better here,” I said, embarrassed.
“Did you?” Erin asked. “Were they yummy?”
Bella nodded, her bangs falling over her eyes.
“We need to use the bathroom, don’t we, Bell?” I said, then I looked at Erin. “You’ll be here a minute?”
“Oh, I’m not going anywhere,” she said.
“These are for you.” I held the flowers toward her and wished I’d thought to tie them together with something, but with what? “Bella picked them for you this morning.”
“How pretty!” She took the flowers from my hand, sniffed them and then put them on the table. “Thank you, Bella.”
I spotted a kids’ book on the table next to the flowers. “Looks like Miss Erin has a new book to read you,” I said, hoping that was true. A book would keep Bella busy while I … I couldn’t think about it.
“I got to go potty, Daddy,” Bella reminded me.
“Right.” I reached for her hand. “We’ll be back in a sec,” I said to Erin.
In the restroom, I rushed through the teeth-brushing, the going potty and the face-washing. My hands were like a guy with DTs and I mostly let Bella brush her own teeth. It was all I could do to brush mine. I didn’t bother to shave.
Erin had moved the book to the arm of the chair by the time we got back.
“I think you’re going to love this one, Bella,” she said. She held her arms out to my four-year-old daughter, who climbed into her lap like she’d known Erin all her life. Thank you, God, I thought. What I was going to do tonight was as wrong as wrong could be, but the fact that Erin had been put in my path this week made me think maybe it was supposed to happen.
“I’m going to grab my coffee and our muffin,” I said. “Can I get you anything, Erin?” I asked, like I could actually afford to buy her something.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I picked up an OJ for Bella.”
I knew—and had known from day one—that it was Bella she was into and not me. That was fine. Perfect, actually. “Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
I ordered my coffee and a muffin and a cup of water for Bella. When I went to pick up the water from the counter, I knocked the damn thing over with my not-so-fine tremor. “Sorry!” I grabbed a handful of napkins from the holder on the counter and started to mop up.
“No problem,” said Nando, the barista who waited on me every morning. He called to a girl in the back who came out and cleaned up my mess while he got me another cup of water. He put the cup and the coffee and muffin in one of those cardboard carriers, and I lifted it carefully and took it back to my seat.
Erin and Bella were deep in their story. Bella asked her questions, pointing to things in the book. She rested her head against Erin’s shoulder, looking kind of sleepy. That dream had gone on and on last night, she’d said, and we woke up so late. She looked as totaled as I felt. I’d use some of the money I’d make tonight to find a clinic and get her checked out. She wasn’t exactly eating a great diet these days, either. I was about to break the muffin in half to split with her, but decided to give her the whole thing instead. I didn’t think I could eat this morning, anyway.
I sat down on the couch, wondering how to time things. I couldn’t wait too long. I had no idea when Erin would leave the coffee shop. I sipped my coffee and it felt like acid going down. You suck as a father, I thought to myself.
Erin came to the end of a chapter and said they’d take a little break while Bella ate her muffin.
“Come over here to eat so you don’t get it all over Miss Erin,” I said to Bella.
“Oh, she’s fine here,” Erin said. “Just set the water on the table.”
I did, although I wanted Bella back right then. Yeah, I was glad she was so happy on Erin’s lap and all that, but I wanted to hold her right now. I’d scare her, though—holding her too tight the way I’d squashed her hand when we walked across the parking lot. It was better this way. Now, how to make my graceful exit. I hadn’t quite thought through that part. Maybe I’d say I needed to use the restroom again, but they’d be able to see me if I left the restroom and went out the door.
“So, just a couple more days till you go back to work?” I asked Erin. I needed to make sure she didn’t need to go back to the pharmacy any sooner than that. I hoped I’d figured this out right.
“Don’t remind me.” She rubbed Bella’s back. Bella had blueberry stuck in her teeth and I was glad I’d remembered to put her toothbrush in her little pink purse.
“Do you ever feel, you know, tempted being around all those drugs all the time?” I asked. Why the hell did I ask her that? I had no idea. Nerves. I was a frickin’ mass of nerves.
She gave me a look like I was a total lowlife. “Not even a little bit,” she said. “And please don’t tell me you would be tempted.”
I tried to smile. “No way,” I said, “It’s not my thing.” Why’d I even go there? I worried she could see how I was shaking today and think I was using something. Suddenly, I knew how to handle the next few minutes. “I’ve got another interview today,” I said.
“Great! You found something on Craigslist?”
“No, my friend came through.” I tapped my sweaty fingers on my thighs. “I hope this one works out.”
“Oh, me too, Travis. I guess it’s in construction? Is it for a business? Or residential? Or—”
“I’ve got the info in my van,” I said, getting to my feet. “Can you watch Bella a sec and I’ll go get it? I can tell you the address and maybe you can tell me how to get there.”
“Sure,” she said. I couldn’t move all of a sudden. I wanted to take Bella back into the restroom and hug her so hard, but I had to get this over with. Just do it. I bent over and kissed Bella’s head, then walked away fast. Out the door, across the parking lot, into my van. Fast, fast, fast, before I could change my mind. I turned the key in the ignition. I couldn’t leave the van here where Erin and Bella would be able to see it when they came out of JumpStart. I drove all the way to the other end of the lot, nearly crashing into parked cars, my foot jerking all over the gas pedal, the whole wide world a blur in front of me and one word on my mind.
Bella Bella Bella.
2 Travis
Six Weeks Earlier
Carolina Beach, North Carolina
YOU KNOW HOW EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE happiness kind of comes over you like a bolt of lightning, surprising you so much it makes you laugh out loud? That’s how I felt as I worked on the molding for the kitchen cabinets of the oceanfront house. I’d been doing construction four years and always thought of it as a job I hated, just something I had to do to put food on the table for me and Bella and my mom. But construction jobs were hard to find at the beach these days, especially in Carolina Beach, which wasn’t exactly overflowing with high-end properties even though the ocean was just as blue and the sand just as white as the rest of the coast. Plus, it would always be my home. The foreman on my last job watched me work on a deck addition for a few days and he must have seen something in me because he asked me to do some custom work inside the house. He was teaching me stuff, like the detailing on this molding. He was grooming me. I didn’t know I was learning skills that, on this late August day, would make me laugh out loud when I realized I was actually enjoying the work. I was glad I was alone in the kitchen so I didn’t have to explain my reaction to any of the guys.
I was on the ladder working on the molding when I heard sirens in the distance. A lot of them, but far away and echoey, hardly loud enough to cut through the sound of the ocean, and I didn’t pay all that much attention. After a while, they became part of the white noise of the sea as I kept working. I was climbing down from the ladder when I heard someone rushing up the stairs to the living room.
“Travis!” Jeb, one of my coworkers, shouted as he ran into the kitchen. He was red-faced and winded, bending over in the middle of the room to catch his breath. “It’s your house, man!” he said. “It’s on fire!”
I dropped my hammer and ran for the stairs. “Are they safe?” I called over my shoulder.
“Don’t know, man. I just heard and ran here to tell—”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said as I nearly slid down the stairs, stopping a fall with my hand on the banister. My brain was going crazy. Was it the screwed-up electrical in the living room? Or one of those scented candles my mother liked to burn to get the musty smell out of the air of the old cottage? Or maybe it was her damn cigarettes, though she was careful. She wasn’t the type to fall asleep smoking, especially not with Bella in the house.
Bella. Oh, shit. Let them be okay.
I ran out to my van and as I turned it around to head toward my house, I saw smoke in the sky. It was the pale gray of a fire that had burned itself out, not the black you’d see if the fire was still raging, and that gave me hope. The gray billowed into the sky and then hung in an air current drifting toward the mainland. I made the four miles to my house in three minutes flat.
There were two fire trucks, a couple of cop cars and one ambulance in front of the charred shell of the small cottage that had been my home for the past eight years and would never be my home again. Right then, I didn’t care. I jumped out of my van and headed straight for the ambulance. Ridley Strub, a cop I’d known since we were in middle school together, showed up out of nowhere and grabbed my arm.
“They took your mother to the hospital,” he said. “Bella’s in the ambulance. She’s going to be fine.”
“Let me go!” I pulled away from him and ran to the open rear of the ambulance, jumping inside without waiting for an invitation.
“Daddy!” Bella’s cry was muffled by an oxygen mask, but it was strong enough that I knew she was okay. I sat on the edge of the stretcher and pulled her into my arms.
“You’re all right, baby.” My throat was so tight that baby came out like a whisper. I looked up at the EMT, a girl of about twenty. “She’s okay, right?”
“She’s fine,” the girl said. “Just needed a little O2 as a precaution, but—”
“Can we take the mask off?” I asked. I wanted to see her face. To check her all over for damage. I wanted to make sure the only thing she’d suffered was a scare. I noticed she had her stuffed lamb clutched tight in one arm, and on the floor of the ambulance I spotted her little pink purse. The two things she was never without.
“I want it off, Daddy!” Bella picked at the edge of the plastic mask where it pressed against her cheek. She hiccupped like she always did when she cried.
The paramedic leaned over and slipped the mask from Bella’s face. “We’ll leave the O2 monitor on her finger and see how she does,” she said.
I smoothed my hands over my daughter’s brown hair. I could smell the smoke on her. “You’re okay,” I said. “You’re perfect.”
She hiccupped again. “Nana fell down in the living room,” she said. “Smoke comed out of the windows.”
“Came,” I said. “That must’ve been scary.” My mother fell? I remembered Ridley saying she was in the hospital. I looked at the EMT again. She was checking some monitor on the wall above the stretcher. “My mother,” I said. “Is she okay?”
The EMT glanced toward the open doors and I didn’t miss the relief in her face when she saw Ridley climbing into the ambulance. He put a hand on my shoulder. “Need to see you a sec, Trav,” he said.
“What?” I didn’t look up from Bella, who was clutching my hand like she’d never let it go.
“Come outside with me,” he said.
Mom. I didn’t want to go with him. I didn’t want to hear whatever he was going to tell me.
“Go ahead,” the EMT said. “I’ll be here with Bella.”
“Daddy!” Bella clung harder to my hand as I stood up, knocking the monitor off her finger. “Don’t go away!” She tried to scramble off the stretcher, but I held her by the shoulders and looked into her gray eyes.
“You have to stay here and I’ll be right back,” I said. I knew she’d stay. She always did what I told her. Nearly always, anyway.
“How many minutes?” she asked.
“Five at the most,” I promised, glancing at my watch. I’d never once broken a promise to her. My father’d never broken a promise to me, and I remembered how that felt, knowing I could always trust him no matter what.
I leaned down to hug her, kissing the top of her head. The smell of smoke just about seared my lungs.
Outside the ambulance, Ridley led me to the corner of the lot next door, away from the fire trucks and all the tourists who’d gathered to watch somebody else’s disaster.
“It’s about your mom,” he said. “Neighbor said she was outside hanging laundry when the fire started and it went up like a … just real fast. Your mom ran in for Bella and she was either overcome by smoke or maybe had a heart attack. Either way, she fell and—”
“Is she okay?” I wanted him to get to the point.
He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Trav. She didn’t make it.”
“Didn’t make it?” I asked. The words weren’t getting through to me.
“She died on the way to the hospital.” Ridley reached a hand toward my arm but didn’t touch me. Like he was just holding his hand there in case I started to keel over.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Bella’s fine. How can Bella be fine and my mother’s dead?” My voice was getting loud and people turned to look at me.
“Your mom saved her. They think she fell and Bella knew enough to get out of the house, but your mom was—”
“Shit!” I pulled away from him. Looked at my watch. Four minutes. I headed back to the ambulance and climbed inside.
“Daddy!” Bella said. “I want to go home!”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “One thing at a time, Bell,” I said. “First we make sure your lungs are okay.” And then what? Then what? Where would we go? One look at the house and you knew everything we owned was gone. I closed my eyes, picturing my mother running into the house through smoke and flames to find Bella. Thank God she had, but God had done a half-assed job this time. I hoped my mother had been unconscious when she fell. I hoped she never had a clue she was dying. Please, God, no clue.
“I want to go home!” Bella wailed again, her voice loud in the tiny space of the ambulance.
I held her by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eye. “Our house burned down, Bella,” I said. “We can’t go back. But we’ll go to another house. We have plenty of friends, right? Our friends will help us.”
“Tyler?” she asked. Tyler was the five-year-old boy who lived a few houses down from us. Her innocence slayed me.
“All our friends,” I said, hoping I wasn’t lying. We were going to need everyone.
I saw something in her face I’d never seen before. How had it happened? She was two weeks shy of her fourth birthday, and overnight she seemed to have grown from my baby daughter to a miniature adult. In her face, I saw the girl she’d become. I saw Robin. There’d always been hints of her mother in her face—the way her eyes crinkled up when she laughed. The upturn at the edges of her lips so that she always looked happy. The rosy circles on her cheeks. But now, suddenly, there was more than a hint and it shook me up. I pulled her against my chest, full of love for the mother I’d lost that afternoon and for the little girl I would hold on to forever—and maybe, buried deep inside me where my anger couldn’t reach, for the teenage girl who’d long ago shut me out of her life.
3 Robin
Beaufort, North Carolina
JAMES AND I STOOD UP WHEN DALE WALKED into the waiting room. Dale always seemed to have a gravitational field around him and sure enough, the seven other people sitting in the room turned to look at him as he walked toward us. They would sail right through the air toward him if they hadn’t clutched the arms of their chairs. That was the sort of pull he had on people. He’d had it on me from the first moment I met him.
Now, he smiled at me and gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, then shook his father’s hand as if he hadn’t seen him at home only a few short hours ago. “How’s she doing?” he asked quietly, looking from me to his father and back again.
“Eight centimeters,” I said. “Your mom’s with her. Alissa’s miserable, but the nurse said she’s doing really well.”
“Poor kid,” Dale said. He took my hand and the three of us sat down again in the row of chairs. Across from us, an older woman and man whispered to one another and pointed in our direction, and I knew they’d recognized us. I had only a second to wonder if they’d approach us before the woman got to her feet, ran her hand over her flawlessly styled silver hair and headed toward us.
Her eyes were on James. “Mayor Hendricks.” She smiled, and James immediately stood up and took her hand in his.
“Yes,” he said, “and you are …?”
“Mary Wiley, just one of your constituents. We—” she looked over her shoulder at the man, most likely her husband “—we have such mixed feelings about your retirement,” she said. “The only good thing about it is that your son will take over.”
Dale was already on his feet, already smiling that smile that made you feel special. I once thought that smile was only for me but soon came to realize it was for every single person he met. “Well, I hope that’s the case,” he said modestly. “Sounds like I can count on your vote.”
“And the vote of everyone I know,” she said. “Really, it’s a given, isn’t it? I mean, Dina Pingry? She’s completely wrong.” She gave a little eye roll at the thought of Dale’s opposition, a woman who was a powerhouse Realtor in Beaufort. Of course, the people we hung out with were all Hendricks supporters, so it was sometimes easy to forget that Dina Pingry had her own fans and they were fanatical in their support. But James had been mayor of this small waterfront town for twenty years, and passing the torch to his thirty-three-year-old attorney son seemed like a done deal. To us, anyway.
“It’s never a given, Mrs. Wiley,” Dale said. He was so good at remembering names! “I need every vote, so promise me you’ll get out there on election day.”
“Oh, we work the polls,” she said, nodding toward her husband. “We never miss an election.” Her eyes finally fell on me, still in my seat between the two men. “You, dear, are going to have the wedding of the decade, aren’t you?”
I didn’t stand, but I shook the hand she offered and gave her my own smile—the one I had quickly learned to put and keep on my face in public. It came pretty naturally to me. That was the thing Dale said first attracted him to me: I was always smiling. For me, it had been his gray eyes. When I saw those eyes, I suddenly understood the phrase Love at first sight. “I’m very lucky,” I said now, and Dale rested his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m the lucky one,” he said.
“Well, we’re waiting for our daughter to have her third.” The woman gestured toward the double doors that led to the labor rooms. “And I guess you’re waiting for Alissa …?” She didn’t finish her sentence, but raised her eyebrows to see if she was right. Of course she was. Alissa was the Hendricks’ barely seventeen-year-old daughter, my future sister-in-law and the poster child for Taking Responsibility for your Actions. The Hendricks had turned what might have been a scandalous event into an asset by publicly supporting their unwed pregnant daughter. This was a family that didn’t hide much, I’d discovered. Rather, they capitalized on the negative. To the outside world, their actions might have looked like complete support, but I was privy to their inside world, where all was not so rosy.
“Mrs. Hendricks is with her,” James said to the woman. “Latest report is she’s doing very well.” He always called Mollie, his wife, Mrs. Hendricks in public. I’d asked Dale not to do the same to me after we were married. I’d actually wished I could keep my maiden name, Saville, but that wasn’t done in the world of the Hendricks family.
“Well, now,” the woman said, “I’ll leave you three in peace. It’s the last peace you’ll have for a while with a baby around, I can tell you that.”
“We’re looking forward to the chaos,” Dale said. “So nice meeting you, Mrs. Wiley.” He gave a little bow of his head and he and his father sat down again as the woman returned to her seat.
I was tired and wished I could rest my head against Dale’s shoulder, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate it here in public. In public were words I heard all the time from one Hendricks or another. I was being trained to become one of them. I think they’d started grooming me from the moment I met them all two years earlier, when I’d applied for the job to assist with running their Taylor’s Creek Bed and Breakfast at the end of Front Street. It was a job I’d handled so well that I was now the manager. I’d met with all three of them in the living room of Hendricks House, their big, white, two-story home, which was right next door to the B and B and almost identical in its Queen Anne–style architecture. They told me later that they knew I was right for the job the moment I walked in, despite the fact that I was barely twenty and had zero experience at anything other than surviving. “You were much younger than we’d expected,” Mollie told me later, “but you were a people person, oozing self-confidence and full of enthusiasm. After the interview, you left the room and we all looked at each other and knew. I picked up the phone and canceled the other applicants we’d scheduled for interviews.”
I’d wondered later if they knew then I would become one of them. If they’d wanted that. I thought so. It had been funny getting that glowing feedback. I was only beginning to know the real me. I was only starting to live. I was one year out from my heart transplant and still learning that I could trust my body, that I could climb a flight of stairs and walk a block and think about a future. If I wore a perpetual smile, that was why. I was alive and grateful for every second I’d been given. Now I was living that future. There were days, though, when it felt as though my life was no more in my control than it had been when I was sick. “Everyone feels that way,” my best friend, Joy, told me. “Totally normal.” I’d had so little experience with “normal” that I could only hope she was right.
Mollie walked through the double doors into the waiting room. She wasn’t smiling and I suddenly felt afraid for Alissa. This time, I was the one to get to my feet. “Is everything okay?” I asked. I loved Alissa. She was so real. So down to earth. She was five years younger than me, but I felt as though we were kindred spirits—in ways only I truly understood.
“She’s very close,” Mollie said, “but she wants you with her.” She looked at me. “You want to go in?”
“Me?” From the start, the plan had been for Mollie to be in the delivery room with her daughter. “She wants you, honey.” Mollie sounded tired.
Dale stood up and put his hand on the small of my back. “You okay with that?” he asked quietly. He was always protective of me. Sometimes I appreciated it. Other times it reminded me of my father, cutting me off from the world.
“Sure,” I said. I was no stranger to hospitals, though a delivery room was unfamiliar territory. I hoped someday to have a career in medicine, though Dale said I’d never have to work if I didn’t want to. My only hesitation in being with Alissa was stepping into a role that had so clearly belonged to Mollie.
“I’ll show you where,” Mollie said, and she led me through the waiting room and the double doors and into a hallway. She pointed toward a doorway. “Just hold her hand. Be there for her. She’s tired of me.” She gave me a smile that let me know she was a little bit hurt that Alissa wanted me with her rather than her mother.
I heard Alissa the second I opened the door. She was halfway sitting up, panting hard, a look of intense concentration on her face, and I guessed she was in the middle of a contraction. “Robin!” she managed to say when she could catch her breath. Her face was red and sweaty, her forehead lined with pain.
“I’m here, Ali,” I said. One of the nurses motioned toward a stool at the side of the bed and I sat down and took Alissa’s hand in both of mine. I wasn’t sure what to say. How are you feeling? seemed like a ridiculous question to ask. It was pretty clear how she was feeling, so I just repeated myself. “I’m here,” I said again. Someone handed me a damp, cool washcloth and I pressed it to her forehead. Tendrils of her auburn hair were plastered to her face and her brown eyes were bloodshot.
“I couldn’t take one more minute of my mother.” She spoke through clenched teeth, then let out a long, loud groan. I watched the monitors on the other side of the bed. The baby’s heartbeat was so fast. Was it supposed to be that fast?
“I think she’s okay with it,” I lied.
“I hate her right now. I hate them. All of my stupid family. Except you.”
“Shh,” I said, pulling the stool closer to her. I wondered if delivery room nurses had to keep things they heard confidential. I bet they heard all kinds of gossip in here. The last thing Dale needed was for the world to know all was not well with Beaufort’s first family.
“Will should be with me,” Alissa whispered. “That’s how it’s supposed to be. Not like this.”
I was surprised. Will Stevenson was completely out of the picture and I’d thought she was finally okay with that. He’d created a mess the Hendricks family had needed to clean up, but now wasn’t the time to get into a big discussion with her about it. I’d never even met Will. Alissa had kept that relationship even from me, and I had to admit I was hurt when I found out about it. I’d thought we were closer than that. But she’d done me a favor. I didn’t want to feel as though I was keeping secrets from Dale—at least, no more than the secrets I was already keeping.
She had another contraction and nearly broke my fingers as she squeezed them. The baby’s heartbeat slowed way down on the monitor and I glanced nervously at the nurses, trying to gauge if something was wrong, but no one except me seemed concerned.
“This baby’s going to wreck my life!” Alissa nearly shouted when the contraction had ended.
“Shh,” I said. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard her say that and it worried me. If Alissa had had her way, she’d be putting this baby up for adoption, but that would never have been acceptable to her parents. “You’re going to love her,” I said, as if I knew about these things. “Everything’s going to work out fine. You’ll see.”
An hour later, baby Hannah was born and I watched my future sister-in-law change from a screaming, fighting, panting warrior to a docile and beaten-down seventeen-year-old. The doctor rested the tiny infant on her belly, but Alissa didn’t touch her or look at her. Instead, she turned her head away, and I saw two of the nurses exchange a glance. I wanted to touch that baby myself. How could Alissa not want to?
One of the nurses took Hannah to the side of the room to clean her up and I leaned my lips close to Alissa’s ear. “She’s beautiful, Ali,” I said. “Wait till you get a good look at her.” But Alissa wouldn’t even look at me, and as I wiped her face with the washcloth, I wasn’t sure if it was perspiration or tears I was cleaning away.
The nurse brought the baby back to the side of the bed. “Are you ready to hold her?” she asked Alissa, who gave the slightest shake of her head. I bit my lip.
“How about you, auntie?” the nurse asked me. “Would you like to hold her?”
I looked up at the nurse. “Yes,” I said, draping the washcloth on the metal bar of the bed. I reached out my arms, and the nurse settled Hannah, light as feathers, into them. I looked down at the tiny perfect face and felt the strangest emotion come over me. It slipped into my body and locked my throat up tight. I’d rarely related Alissa’s pregnancy to my own. That denial had been easy, since I’d blocked so much of my own experience from my mind. The baby I’d had didn’t exist for me. But suddenly, holding this beautiful little angel in my arms, I thought, This is the part I missed. This was the part I’d never realized I was missing and that no one must ever know that I missed. And as I pressed my lips to the baby’s warm temple, I cried the first tears ever for the empty place in my heart.
4 Erin
Raleigh
MICHAEL SET ONE OF THE BOXES ON THE granite counter of my new, small kitchen. Through the window over the sink, I could see the sun disappear behind dust-colored clouds. The sky would be opening up soon with a late-summer storm. I was glad we’d gotten all the boxes in before the rain started.
“This is the last one,” Michael said, brushing his hands together as if the box had been dirty. He walked into the attached dining area and looked out the window with a sigh. “You’re way out in the boonies here,” he said.
I knew what he was seeing through that window: the sprawling Brier Creek Shopping Center. Acres and acres of every big box store and chain restaurant you could imagine. Hardly the boonies.
“It’s not that far,” I said, although it was a good fifteen miles from our house in Raleigh’s Five Points neighborhood.
“You don’t know anyone out here,” he said. “I don’t get it.”
“I know you don’t,” I said. “That’s okay. It’s what I want, Michael. What I need right now. Thanks for just … for tolerating it.”
He looked out the window again. The gray light played on his ashy brown hair, the same color mine would be if I didn’t lighten it. The color my roots were. I was really late for a touch-up, but I didn’t care.
“Let me be the one to live here,” he said suddenly.
“You?” I frowned. “Why?”
“I just …” He turned his head toward me. “I don’t like to think of you in a place like this. You’ve worked so hard on the house. You belong there.”
“It’s perfectly nice,” I said. “It’s new, for heaven’s sake.” I was deeply touched; he still loved me so much that he’d be willing to live in this bland little furnished apartment so I didn’t have to. But he didn’t understand. I couldn’t be in our house any longer. I felt Carolyn’s absence everywhere in that house. Her room, which I hadn’t walked into once in the four months since she died, taunted me from behind the closed door. Michael had actually suggested we turn her room into an exercise room! It was like he wanted to erase Carolyn from our lives. He found this apartment depressing. I found it safe, away from my old life. My Carolyn life. The friends and their children I could no longer bear to be around. The acquaintances I didn’t want to bump into. The husband I no longer felt I knew. I didn’t think my friends wanted to be with me any more than I wanted to be with them. They’d been wonderful in the beginning, but now they didn’t know what to say to me. I was a horror to them, a reminder of how quickly their lives could change.
“What do I tell people?” Michael asked. “Are we separated? Getting a divorce? How do I explain to people that you’ve moved out of the house?”
“Tell them whatever makes you comfortable.” I didn’t care what people thought. I used to, but everything was different now. Michael still cared, though, and that was the difference between us. He was still living in our old lives, where what people thought mattered and where he wanted to find a way back to normal. I’d given up on normal. I didn’t care about normal. My therapist Judith’s reaction when I told her that? “That’s normal,” she said, and the old me would have laughed, but I didn’t laugh anymore.
Michael gestured to one of the boxes on the stool by the breakfast bar. “This one says bedroom. I’ll carry it in for you.”
“Great. Thanks.” I watched him lift it into his arms. I used to love his arms, probably more than any other part of his body. He worked out every day and his arms were undeniably ripped. Michael was that rare combination of brains and brawn. “A geek with a great body,” one of my friends had once told me, when we were watching our husbands playing with our kids in someone’s backyard pool. Watching him now, though, I felt nothing.
I walked the few short steps to the living room windows and looked at the reassuringly unfamiliar landscape. Absolutely nothing to remind me of my bubbly and beautiful daughter. You want to run away, Judith had said when I told her my plan to rent this apartment. There was no accusation in the way she said it, although I knew she didn’t think it was a good idea. But she didn’t do the lecture bit like Michael did. “You might be able to run away from home,” he’d said, “but you can’t run away from what’s inside your head.” I’d wanted to slug him for saying that. I was sick of his advice and his finding fault in my own personal style of grieving. Never mind that I found plenty of fault in his. I had deep questions he simply couldn’t relate to. Mystical questions. Would I ever see Carolyn again? Was her soul someplace? I felt her around me. I heard her voice sometimes. When I asked him if he did, he said, “Sure” in a way that told me that he didn’t.
Michael came into the living room and stood next to me at the window. He put his arm around my shoulders and I felt the tentative nature of the touch. He no longer knew what I would welcome and what I would shrug off. Judith tried to get me to have some sympathy for him, but I was too busy having sympathy for myself. I had no energy to pay attention to what Michael needed these days. He’d turned into someone I’d once loved but could no longer understand. I knew he could say the same about me.
“I’m worried about you,” he said now. His arm felt too heavy across my shoulders.
“Don’t be.”
“I think it’s wrong for me to let you do this.”
“‘Let me’?” I walked away from his arm and sat down on the sofa. It was uncomfortably firm, nothing like the big, cushy sofa we had at home. “What are you? My father?”
“When are you going back to work?”
“If you ask me that question one more time …” I shook my head in frustration. I’d tried going back to work. I’d lasted half a day. I made a mistake with a medication that could have cost a person his life and I took off my white coat, turned the order over to the other pharmacist, and walked out of the building without looking back.
“You’re going to sit here in this—” he waved an arm through the air to take in the combined living room/dining room/kitchen “—this place and ruminate. And that scares me, Erin.” He looked at me head-on then and I saw the worry in his eyes. I had to look away. I stared down at my hands where they rested flat on my thighs.
“I’ll be fine,” I said.
“You need to stop going over every detail of it the way you do,” he said, as though he was telling me something he hadn’t already said twenty times. “You have to stop asking yourself all the what-ifs. It happened. You need to start accepting it.”
I stood up. “Time for you to go,” I said, walking to the door. I’d moved into this apartment, in part, to get away from exactly this. “Thank you so much for helping. I know it was hard for you.”
He gave me one last frustrated look before walking to the door. I followed him, opening the door for him, and he leaned over to hug me.
“Do you hate me?” he whispered into my hair.
“Of course not,” I whispered back, even though there were moments when I did. I could honestly say he was the only man I’d ever loved and if anyone had told me we would one day fall apart the way we had, I would have said they just didn’t know us very well. But here we were, as fallen apart as we could be.
I opened the door and he walked into the hallway.
“Bye,” I said. I started to close the door behind him, but felt a sudden rush of panic and pulled it open again. “Don’t touch her room!” I called after him.
He didn’t turn around. Just waved a hand through the air to let me know he’d heard me. I knew he was in pain—maybe tremendous pain. But I also knew how he would deal with it. He’d invent some new video game or work on a repair project. He’d lose himself in activity. He certainly wouldn’t ruminate. He didn’t even know how. I had it down to an art. It wasn’t deliberate. It just happened. My mind would start one place—making a grocery list, for example—and before I knew it, I’d be going over every detail of what happened as if I were describing it to someone. Who was I telling it to inside my head? I needed to relive the details of that night the way an obsessive-compulsive person had to wash her hands over and over again. Sometimes I felt crazy and I’d make myself think of something else, but the minute I let my guard down, I’d be at it again. This was why I loved the Harley’s Dad and Friends group I’d found on the internet. It had been started by the father of eight-year-old Harley, a little girl who was killed in a bicycling accident. The group was full of bereaved parents I’d never met face-to-face but felt as though I knew better than I knew anyone. Better than I knew Michael. They understood my need to go over and over what had happened. They understood me. I spent hours with them every day, reading about their struggles and sharing my own. I actually felt love for some of those people I’d never met. I didn’t even know what most of them looked like, but I was coming to think of them as my best friends.
So, now I was safe. I was creating my own world, in a new neighborhood, with new friends in the Harley’s Dad group and a new apartment. I turned around to take in the living room, thinking my escape. But instead of the bland furniture and the small room, I saw a sky the color of black velvet and the long, illuminated ribbon of the Stardust Pier, and I knew that no matter how far from home I ran, that horrible night would always, always be with me.
5 Travis
BELLA RAN AHEAD OF ME ON THE BEACH AND I watched the sandy soles of her feet flashing in the sunshine. Labor Day had passed and we nearly had the beach to ourselves. Bella’s brown hair flew behind her like a flag and her pink purse slapped against her side as she ran. She looked so free. I wished she could always feel the way she felt right this second. Free and happy. That’s why I brought her out on the beach today, so she could run and just act like a kid. My wrecked house was only a couple of blocks from the beach, and I usually brought her out here nearly every day, but we hadn’t been once in the week since the fire and she’d become this totally serious and confused little girl. Sort of like her totally serious and confused dad. Our lives had turned to shit overnight. I didn’t want her to know that. I didn’t want her to feel scared, ever. But she was no dummy. She knew everything had changed.
We were staying with one of my mom’s church friends, Franny, but it wasn’t good. She had a slew of grandkids running in and out of the house and a bunch of cats I thought Bella might be allergic to, and you could tell she was letting us stay there because it was the Christian thing to do but that we were in the way. Bella and I shared the sagging mattress of a pull-out sofa and I thought we were getting flea bites in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t like I could say anything about it. We didn’t have a lot of other offers and about three times a day, Franny asked me if I’d found a place we could move into yet. I had—a shithole of a trailer that sat in a row of other trailers along the main road. It was nothing but a one-room tin can, and a good nor’easter would probably send it flying down the street, but it was going to have to do. There was a double bed I’d let Bella sleep in and a futon that would work for me. I thought it was okay for little kids to sleep with their parents, but the books I’d read said it wasn’t cool once they were three or so. Bella was really good at sleeping in her own room at home. At Franny’s, though, we didn’t have much choice and anyway, Bella needed me close. I needed her close to me just as much.
If she asked me one more time when Nana was coming back, I didn’t know what I’d do. I told her Nana was in heaven and had to stay there and then she worried someone was keeping her in a locked room or something. So I explained about God and how heaven was a good place, but I got scared maybe I was giving her the message that dying was a good thing and I didn’t want her to start thinking she should die. Then she started asking me if I’d go to heaven and leave her. Franny told me I was overthinking the whole situation and making it too complicated. She said to Bella, “Your nana’s gone to sleep in heaven with Jesus and when you’re a very old lady, you’ll get to see her there again,” which seemed to satisfy Bella, or so I thought, until about an hour later when she asked me, “Can we go see Nana in heaven today?”
Man, I wished we could.
Mom hadn’t been perfect. She’d smoked and had diabetes and was overweight and didn’t take care of herself at all, but she’d loved Bella and she’d been happy to watch her while I worked. It turned out the fire was caused by some malfunction in the wiring behind the stove, so it wasn’t anything I could blame on my mother and I was relieved by that. I didn’t want to be angry with her now. I didn’t want that to be the last feeling I had toward her. Instead, I felt grateful. She gave her life for Bella. I couldn’t wrap my head around that—my fat, wheezy mom running into the burning house to save her. “God was working through her,” the minister said at her funeral, and even though God and I had never been on the best terms, I liked that thought. I was holding on to it.
I never realized just how much I’d come to depend on my mother. Now I was it for Bella and it scared the shit out of me. I had no job now. Couldn’t work with a kid to take care of, and no job meant no money. My boss found somebody else to finish up the work on those cabinets in the oceanfront house. There’d been about a hundred guys waiting to step into my shoes.
The thing that really sucked was that I’d been getting paid under the table for my work. That meant cash, and my most recent pay envelope had been in the house. Four hundred bucks, up in smoke. I’d had about a hundred dollars in my wallet when the house burned down. That was what stood between Bella and me and starvation now.
Ahead of me on the beach, Bella squatted down and picked up something I couldn’t see from where I stood. She ran back to me, holding it and her lamb against her chest with both hands. The lamb fell to the sand and when she bent over to pick it up, the object she was carrying fell, too, and I had to laugh.
“Need some help?” I asked as I walked toward her.
“I can do it!” she said as she picked up her lamb. By that time, I’d reached her and saw that the object was a huge pale gray whelk, the biggest I’d seen on our beach, and I’d seen some big ones over the years.
“Wow, Bella, you hit the jackpot.”
“It’s a whelk,” she said. She gave up trying to hold both the shell and the lamb and sat down on the beach instead.
I sat down, too, and examined the shell. Busycon Carica. It was nearly one and a half times the length of my hand and totally flawless, the interior the pale peachy color of a sunrise. I was so glad she’d found it. We’d been collecting shells on the beach since she was a toddler, but most of them had been ruined in the fire and now we were starting over.
“Do you remember what lived inside?” I asked.
“A snail!” she said. She sat cross-legged, gently touching the knobby shoulders of the shell with her fingertips.
“Right. An animal like a snail,” I said.
“That’s right.” Like me, she loved hearing anything about marine life. I felt my own father’s spirit inside me when I was on the beach with Bella, teaching her something. I’d hear his voice coming out of my mouth. I wish they’d had a chance to know each other, my dad and Bella. They would have gotten along so well.
“It liked to eat clams!” Bella said.
“Very good. What else did it like to eat?”
She scrunched up her face, thinking. Her nose was a little pink. I’d forgotten sunscreen. “Scabbits?” she tried, and I managed not to laugh.
“Scallops.” She could never get that word right. Someday, she’d be able to and I’d miss the way she said it now.
She petted the shell like it was a puppy. “Is this the one, Daddy, where the boys turn into girls?” she asked.
I let out a little sigh. Franny was right; I gave this kid way too much information. She really didn’t need to know about hermaphroditic gastropods at age three. Almost four. I’d probably been seven or eight when my father gave me that bit of mind-boggling information.
“That’s right,” I said simply. “Should I put it in the bag and we can look for more?” Over my shoulder, I carried the canvas tote bag we always used for the shells we found.
“Okay!” She hopped to her feet and took off ahead of me down the beach. I followed a few steps behind, moving closer to the water to let it swish over my feet. There was one big difference between my dad and me, I thought. He’d been a plumber with his own successful business and he kept me fed and clothed. I might not have grown up rich, but I never went without. He didn’t fail me the way I felt I was now failing Bella. I wanted more than anything to be the kind of man who would make my father proud. I wasn’t doing such a great job of it right now.
Honestly, if Robin’s father had still been alive, I might have asked him for help. He had plenty of money. The contract he’d made me sign said I would never contact Robin herself—and I was still so pissed at her that she was the last person I’d turn to for help anyway—but I didn’t think her father would be cruel enough to turn his back on his own granddaughter if she was starving. Didn’t matter. He was dead. Mom had been an obituary reader, always checking to make sure her friends were still above ground. I’d felt kind of numb, hearing that he was dead. That man and I had never liked each other. The first time I held Bella in my arms, though, I sort of got where he was coming from. I felt this awesome need to protect her. I’d do anything to keep her safe. That’s all Robin’s father had been trying to do. Protect his daughter. I got it then, even if I still hated the dude.
Bella and I watched the dolphins and pelicans for a while, then started walking home. I’d been feeling so content on the beach, so far away from my problems, that I started heading in the direction of our burned-down house before I remembered and turned toward Franny’s. The tote bag on my shoulder was a little heavier than when we’d started out. Walking away from the beach and back toward my real life, everything felt a little heavier.
6 Robin
2004
DR. MCINTYRE HELPED ME DOWN FROM THE examining table. “Have a seat in the lounge while I chat with your father,” he said. I’d been seeing him for years and he always ended my examinations with a private talk with my father, but something felt different this time. Daddy held the door open for me and as I walked past him, his face looked a hundred years old. He hadn’t quite closed the door behind me when I heard Dr. McIntyre say, “I believe her condition’s significantly worse than your wife’s was at this age.” The door closed before I could hear my father’s response, but it would have been lost on me anyway. I was shocked. I walked down the hall to the lounge, my legs feeling like they were moving through mud. I’d known, hadn’t I? Deep down inside, wasn’t I worried that my mother’s fate—death at twenty-five—would be my own? I knew I was worse off than I’d been even six months ago. I’d never been able to run as fast as my friends or ride my bike for miles like they could. But now, any teensy little bit of exertion left me winded and dizzy. Just the day before, my friends and I were dancing around my bedroom and after two seconds, I had to sit down. From my seat on the bed, I watched them laugh together as they perfected their moves and it was like I could actually feel them drifting away from me.
Now I sank into one of the leather chairs in the lounge and waited. Even if I hadn’t heard what Dr. McIntyre said, I would have figured it out because by the time my father walked into the lounge, his eyes were red. He motioned for me to walk with him and he held my hand tightly as we headed through the double doors and out to the parking lot. Neither one of us said a word until we reached our car. I don’t think either of us could speak.
“I love you so much, Robin,” he said finally, as he opened the car door for me. “I want everything good for you.”
“I heard what Dr. McIntyre said,” I admitted, “about my heart being worse than Mom’s. Does that mean I won’t live as long as she did?” I’d just turned fifteen. That gave me ten years, max.
“You’ll live longer,” my father said quickly. “Probably even a normal lifespan, because the doctors know more about your condition now than they did ten years ago, and more people are signing those donor cards, so when you need a heart, you’ll get a heart.”
I wasn’t stupid. I knew it wasn’t that easy. I slid into the passenger seat and my father shut the door and walked around the rear of the car while I stared at the dashboard.
“I want you out of PE altogether,” he said once he was back in the car and turning the key in the ignition.
I was already sitting on the sidelines for just about every activity we did in Phys Ed anyhow, but I hated one more thing that was going to set me apart from my friends.
“It’s not like I’m exactly straining myself in there,” I said.
“And I’m going to drive you to school from now on.”
“Dad,” I said. “You have to get to the university early.”
“I’ll rearrange my schedule.”
“What’s the difference if you drive me or I ride the bus?” I felt him chipping away at my freedom. He’d always been super overprotective. I had the feeling it was going to get a lot worse.
“You have to walk to the bus stop and there’s just too much … excitement on the bus.”
“No, there’s not! What are you talking about?”
“Just … humor me, okay? I want your life to be as easy and peaceful as possible.”
What he wanted was to be with me every minute. Protecting me. Suffocating me. Soon, he’d have me chained to his side.
For the first time that night, I understood real fear. In bed, I felt my heart pounding against my ribs and heard the blood whooshing through my head, and I was afraid to go to sleep. My mother had died in her sleep, her heart stopping without warning. So I stayed awake for hours listening to every echoey thump, like I could somehow keep my heart going if I just paid attention to it.
My father drove me to school the next morning. I caught up with my friends as they got off the bus and they were all talking about a boy my best friend, Sherry, liked and a party they all wanted to go to and how Sherry hoped the boy would kiss her there and how maybe there’d be beer and weed. I couldn’t find a way into their conversation and they forgot to slow down for me as we walked into the school. Sherry and I broke away from the rest of them as we headed for our science class, and we didn’t seem to have much to say to each other. I could hardly keep my eyes open, worn out from a nearly sleepless night. While my friends had been dreaming about boys and parties and getting drunk, I’d been doing my best to stay alive.
There was a new boy in our science class. We sat at two-person tables, and since the boy who usually sat next to me was absent, Miss Merrill stuck Travis Brown in his place. He looked more like he belonged in the sixth grade than the eighth. Short and skinny. When I handed him the stack of papers Miss Merrill wanted us to pass around, he didn’t look me in the eye. He had these really long eyelashes and thick hair that hung over his forehead. He looked like a girl and he seemed really sad. He was the kind of boy who’d be a target for some of the idiot bullies at my school.
“Robin,” Miss Merrill said from the front of the classroom, “after class, please share the assignments from the last few weeks with Travis so he can get caught up to the rest of us.”
“Okay,” I said, because I couldn’t really say I didn’t want to. From a few rows in front of me, Sherry turned to give me an I’m glad she asked you and not me kind of grin.
The last thing I wanted to do after class was hang out with this weird new kid, so I told him I’d email him the assignments that night. As I was walking out of class, though, Miss Merrill called me to her desk.
“I picked you to help Travis for a reason,” she said to me. “His father died recently. I thought you might be able to understand what he’s going through.”
“My mother died a long time ago,” I said. “It’s not really the same.”
“Isn’t it?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Not really,” I said again, but as I walked to my next class, Travis’s email address and phone number in my pocket, I knew she had a point. We were both half-orphans. You never got over that.
I emailed him the assignments that night, but when he didn’t understand something I’d typed, I impulsively decided to call him.
“Miss Merrill told me your father died,” I said, after explaining the assignment to him. “My mother died when I was four. So I think that’s why she picked me to help you.”
“Not really the same,” he said.
“That’s what I told her.”
“You’ve had your whole life to get used to it.”
“It’s still terrible,” I said. “I don’t remember her very well, but I still miss her. Miss having a mother.”
He was quiet. “My father was so cool,” he said after a minute.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?”
“No. You?”
“No.” I felt the loneliness suddenly. Mine. His. “It’s hard.”
“Yeah, it sucks. And then we had to move on top of it. We couldn’t afford our house in Hampstead anymore and my mother has friends at the church here, but I hate it. We’re renting this old dump. I hate your stupid school, too. The beach is the only good thing about living here. My father always took me to Topsail and we’d hang out on the beach.” It was like I’d plugged him in and suddenly all these words were spilling out of him.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“Carolina Beach.”
“Oh.” I never hung out with the Carolina Beach kids at school. My father had always seemed to look down on them, an attitude I guessed I’d picked up without meaning to.
“What about you?” he asked. “Where do you live?”
“In a condo in Wilmington near UNC, where my father teaches.” We talked about our neighborhoods and I knew we were living totally different lives. Mine was clean and orderly and middle class and his sounded sort of thrown together in an emergency.
“At least you have friends here,” he said, “I’m starting all over.”
“I used to have friends,” I said. “Not so much anymore.” Wow, was that true? I felt like I was finally admitting it to myself. When was the last time Sherry called me instead of me calling her? When was the last time she texted me? My friends were moving on. Leaving me behind.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“They’re … I don’t know. They’re changing in a way I’m not. They don’t talk about anything important anymore.” I made it sound like I was leaving them. Not the other way around.
“Most girls are like that,” he said. “Airheads.”
“Major generalization.”
“Maybe.”
He told me about his old friends in Hampstead and how cool they were. I told him who was okay at my school and who he should watch out for and then we started talking about music we liked and before I knew it, it was ten o’clock and Daddy was knocking on my door telling me to go to bed.
“Is that your father?” Travis asked.
“Yeah. He wants me to get off and go to bed.”
“It’s only ten.”
“I know.” I looked over at my bed, remembering how I’d stayed awake most of the night before, trying to keep my heart going. “I’m afraid to go to bed.” I bit my lip, wishing I could take back the words. I couldn’t believe I’d said that to someone I hardly knew.
“Why?”
“It’s just … It’s stupid,” I said. I didn’t talk much about my heart. I didn’t like people to think I was weak. The scrawny, girly image of him suddenly popped into my mind. Why was I talking to him at all? But the words wanted to come out in the worst way. “I have this … I have the same heart problem my mother had,” I said. “And yesterday I found out it’s even worse than my mother’s was, so last night I kept feeling it beating when I was in bed and it freaked me out and now I don’t want to go to bed.”
“Wow.” He was quiet for a few seconds. “You could call me,” he said finally.
“What do you mean?”
“Call me from your bed and we’ll talk about other stuff. It’ll keep your mind off your heart. And keep my mind off my father,” he added.
“That’s crazy.”
“You could,” he said.
“No, thanks,” I said. “And I have to get off. I still have to read a chapter for history and you have all those assignments to check out.”
“Like I’m really going to do that,” he said with a laugh. “See you tomorrow.”
I hung up the phone and got ready for bed, thinking about what a total dork I was for spending an hour on the phone with him. But once I was lying in bed, my heart started hammering against my rib cage and I felt like I couldn’t pull a full breath into my lungs and before I knew what I was doing, I reached for the phone and hit Redial.
He answered so fast, I knew he’d been waiting.
He became the person I looked forward to seeing at school. Not Sherry or my other long-time friends. As I was losing them, I was gaining Travis. He didn’t fit in well with the other boys. It wasn’t only his looks, although honestly, I was starting to think he was cute. He had really nice gray eyes beneath those insanely long eyelashes and although he didn’t smile often, when he did, he kind of tipped his head to the side in a way that made me smile back. He was too down over his father’s death to make much of an effort to fit in. He talked to me a lot about him, and I felt jealous that he’d gotten to know his father so well when I’d been cheated out of knowing my mother. His father sounded amazing. I loved my own father and I would have said we were close, but Travis’s father was almost like a best friend to him. A really, really good father.
We talked on the phone more than we emailed and it took me a while to realize the old computer he shared with his mother was always breaking down and they didn’t have the money to get it fixed. I didn’t know what it was like not to have enough money for something as necessary as a computer. We had three in our condo for just Daddy and me. Travis had to use the one at the library sometimes to get his work done—and he did get it done even though he always acted like he didn’t care about school. My father drove me to his house every once in a while so we could study together and afterward Travis and I would slowly walk the two blocks to the beach and he’d talk on and on about the tides and the surf and the marine life—all the things he’d learned from his father. My own father seemed to like Travis and called him “that nice little boy at the beach.” He was happy I was no longer hanging around my old friends, who were getting wilder by the minute. The nice little boy at the beach struck him as much safer.
By the time summer rolled around, I was hardly speaking to Sherry and everybody, and that was okay. We had nothing in common anymore and they always wanted to put distance between themselves and Travis, who seemed like such a loser to them. That summer, Travis and his mother spent the entire two months with his aunt in Maryland, and when he came back he looked completely different. It was such a shock. When I saw him the first day of school, I honestly didn’t recognize him. He’d had a growth spurt so huge it must have hurt. He was taller than me and he had muscles where he used to be all skin and knobby bones. He actually needed to shave! No one would ever think of him as girlish again. Especially not the girls, Sherry and my former friends included. They practically threw themselves at him, but he hadn’t forgotten how they treated him. And he hadn’t forgotten the one girl who treated him like he mattered: me.
I’d changed, too, over the summer. I suddenly understood my old friends’ fascination with guys and I saw Travis in a whole new way. We settled back into our friendship pretty easily, but there was something new and exciting cooking beneath the surface and we both knew it. We still spoke on the phone nearly every night, but our conversations were different, full of unexpected twists and turns.
“I met a girl in Maryland,” he told me one night, soon after school started.
I tried to act cool, though I felt ridiculously jealous. “What was she like?” I asked.
“Nice. Pretty. Sexy.”
I didn’t think I’d ever heard him use the word sexy before and it set all my nerve endings on fire. I was dying at the thought of him kissing her. Touching her body.
“Did you do it?”
He laughed, sounding a little embarrassed. “Almost, but no.”
I felt relieved. “Are you still … I mean, do you want …”
He laughed again, and this time I knew he was laughing at me. “Spit it out,” he said.
I shut my eyes. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it pounding through my back into my mattress. “Are you going to see her again?” I asked. “It’s not like Maryland’s on the other side of the country.”
“No, I’m not. It wouldn’t be fair to her.”
“Why not?”
“Because the whole time I was hanging with her I wanted to be with you.”
Yes. I couldn’t believe how much I’d wanted to hear him say that! “I love you,” I said. I blinked my eyes open and stared at my dark ceiling, biting my lip. Waiting.
“Since when?” he asked. Not exactly the response I’d wanted. But I thought back.
“Since that first night we talked on the phone. Remember? How you said talking would keep me from thinking about my heart and you from thinking about—”
“I love you, too,” he interrupted, and suddenly everything was different.
I missed tons of school that fall because I was weak and kept getting sick. My father was afraid every time I left the house for “the germ factory,” which is what he’d started calling my school. Travis was driving by then, this little old Honda of his mother’s, and he’d pick up assignments and books for me and bring them to our condo after school. My father didn’t like it. At first, I thought it was because the books and papers were coming from the germ factory, but then I realized he didn’t like Travis and me being alone together. Daddy’d had no problem with Travis when he looked like a harmless, skinny little kid. Now, though, he looked like a man, and suddenly Daddy wasn’t crazy about him. When Travis finally asked me to a movie, my father said I couldn’t go. Daddy and I were sitting in our den. I was doing my math homework on the sofa while he answered email and he didn’t even bother to look at me when he told me no.
“Dad,” I said, looking up from my work, “we’re just friends. It’s no big deal.”
He took off his reading glasses and set them on the desk. Whenever the glasses came off, I knew we were in for a long conversation about what I could and couldn’t do. It had been that way for years. “Honey,” he said, “one of these days you’re going to have a new heart and you’ll be able to live a full and active life, but until then, staying healthy and taking it easy are your top priorities, and—”
“Sitting in a movie with my best friend isn’t going to tax my heart,” I argued. I rarely fought back. I’d been taught not to argue by both my father and my doctor. They’d taught me to avoid conflict and stress for the sake of my failing heart. I was supposed to breathe slowly and repeat the words peace and calm in my head over and over again until the urge to fight passed. But some things were worth fighting about and this was one of them.
“You may consider him your best friend,” Daddy said, “but I know how boys think and that’s not the way he’s thinking about you.”
“Yes, it is.” The lie felt so natural to me. I wasn’t going to let my father screw this up.
“Boys and girls can’t stay friends when they become men and women,” my father said. “Hormones come into play and it’s impossible. Travis is the wrong boy for you to get involved with, anyway.”
“First of all, we’re not ‘involved,’” I said, although when my father said that word, all I could think about was holding Travis’s hand in the movie and kissing him afterward. “Second, there’s nobody who cares about me more than he does. Besides you,” I added quickly.
“I was a boy and even the nicest boy has one thing on his mind.” My father swiveled his chair to face me. “But even if … all that wasn’t a concern, I still wouldn’t want you with Travis. It’s time to cool down that friendship, honey. He could drag you down.”
“Are you talking about money? It’s not like we’re rich and he’s poor.”
“We’re not rich, but we’re very comfortable,” he said. “Travis … isn’t. I doubt he ever will be. It’s not his fault. I know he hasn’t had the advantages you’ve had, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s not the sort of person I want my daughter to end up with. So there’s no point in giving him any encouragement. And that’s that.”
“That’s so unfair!” My cheeks burned. I felt the heat in them as I slammed my math book onto the coffee table. My father was instantly on his feet, holding his hands out in a calming motion.
“Settle down,” he said. “Settle down. You know better than to argue—”
“You’re always telling me to treat people equally and all that and then you say that just because he has less money than we do, I can’t go out with him. He’s smart, Daddy. He wants to be a biologist someday.”
“Listen, honey.” He sat down next to me on the sofa and put an arm around my shoulders. “I don’t want you going out with anyone right now, okay? You don’t understand how serious your condition is.”
“You’re upsetting my heart more than Travis ever would,” I said.
“Then stop arguing with me.” His voice was so annoyingly calm. “You have to trust that I know what’s best for you right now. If you want, I can have Dr. McIntyre talk to you about this. He’ll agree with me. Until you can get a new heart, you need to—”
“To stay locked up in my room without friends or ever doing anything fun.”
“You need to be careful. That’s all I was going to say.”
I knew it was time to back down. I could feel my heart hurting, though it was more like a heartache than anything to do with my condition. I would find a way to see Travis. I would just have to hide what I was doing from my father. I’d never done anything behind his back before, but he wasn’t leaving me much of a choice.
So, I did go to the movies with Travis. I told him we needed to keep it from my father because he was worried about my health and didn’t want me to date. I didn’t tell him Daddy didn’t want me going out with him. I’d never hurt him that way. Travis was sweet and sensitive, which was why I’d loved him back when he was a scrawny little boy and why I was falling into something deeper with him now. He wasn’t like the other guys I knew who were all about drinking and hooking up with girls. The guys my old girlfriends hung out with and drooled over and talked about day and night.
It was amazing to sit next to Travis in the theater, holding his hand, feeling electricity between us where there used to be just the warmth of friendship. In his car, he kissed me and made me feel a little crazy with the way he ran his hands down my body over my clothes, and I thought: I could die tomorrow, so there’s no way I’m going to deprive myself of this today. I decided right then that I was going to squeeze every drop of living into my life that I could.
Every single drop.
7 Erin
I’D BEEN LIVING IN MY BRIER CREEK APARTMENT for nearly a week when I discovered a coffee shop tucked into the far corner of the shopping center’s vast parking lot. The tan stucco building looked very old, as though it had been there for decades and the shopping center had grown up around it, but I knew that couldn’t be the case. It was simply designed to look old to give it some personality. The shop’s name was painted on a board that hung above the wood-and-glass front doors and I couldn’t read it until I was nearly on top of it. JumpStart. I walked inside and was transported from the bustling parking lot with its zillions of cars and the illusion of squeaky-clean newness into a warm space that felt almost like a living room. The furniture was organized into intimate little groupings set apart from one another by bookcases and a fireplace—not burning, since it was still very warm outside. Then there was the long counter with a menu made up of pastries and salads and coffees and teas. Music played softly in the background. It was something jazzy, which I didn’t usually like, but I didn’t really care about music one way or another anymore. Music, books, politics, art, sex—what did any of it matter? It was all so insignificant to me now.
Half the chairs and tables and leather sofas were occupied, mostly by people my age typing on their computers or doing paperwork. Three young women shared a table and they were laughing at something on a computer screen. A man was talking about real estate with an older couple. I heard the words town house and too many stairs. Another couple was in the midst of an intense conversation, an open bible on the table between them. I knew the moment I walked inside that I’d be spending a lot of time there. I felt anonymous and I liked the feeling.
I spotted a leather chair that I wanted to claim for my own. Although it was part of a grouping—three chairs and one sofa—no one was sitting in that little circle. I liked knowing I would have that space to myself, at least for a while.
I ordered a decaf latte and a bagel I knew I would only nibble. I’d lost twenty pounds in the five months since Carolyn’s death and I had to force myself to eat. I couldn’t taste anything and food seemed to stick in my throat. The barista, a dark-haired guy whose nametag read Nando, smiled at me, showing off a deep dimple in a handsome face. I did my best to smile back without much success. I noticed a tattoo of a unicorn on his forearm as he handed me my bagel.
I settled into the brown leather chair, pulled out my iPad and did a quick check of my email. Michael wrote that he missed me and asked how I was doing.
Okay, I typed. In a coffee shop right now. It’s nice. Hope you’re okay, too. We’d had a similar exchange every morning since I left and I guessed that would be the nature of our communication for a while. Polite and bland. Empty words. The sort you might write to an acquaintance you checked in with once a year instead of a man you’d shared your life with for so long. A man you’d made love to and laughed with and cried with.
We used to email each other all the time during the day. The days I worked in the pharmacy, I’d check in to talk about dinner or household things or simply to tell him I loved him. The days I was home, I’d describe what Carolyn and I were up to and he’d write back saying he was sad that he wasn’t with us. He meant it, too. My friends had envied that, how close he and Carolyn were. How capable Michael was of taking care of her. If my friends had to leave their kids with their husbands for some reason, they worried the guys wouldn’t be able to manage. I never worried about that with Michael. He’d take Carolyn to the park or just make up a game to play with her on the spot. I’d admired that about him. He was so creative and fun and Carolyn always looked forward to “Daddy Time.”
How did he stand it, losing her? He’d loved her so much. How could he just go back to normal, talking about having another baby like nothing had happened? I didn’t understand my husband.
I deleted a bunch of spam, along with a confirmation email from Judith about our next appointment, and that was the sum total of my mail. A few weeks ago, I realized someone had taken me off my neighborhood Mom’s Group email list. I’d been part of that list for four years. It was a way of staying connected and sharing experiences and advice. We made plans for birthday parties or announced a spontaneous get-together at the park. After Carolyn died, they took me off the list for a week or so while they figured out how to help Michael and me. They divvied up food responsibilities, bringing us casseroles and meatloaf and chicken potpie every night. Michael and I didn’t need to think about cooking for a month. The only thing was, we couldn’t eat. Or at least I couldn’t. Some of that food was still in our freezer.
Then they put me back on the list, but that was torture of the first order. How could I read about what they were doing with their kids? Debates about vaccinations, recommendations of pediatric dentists and ideas for birthday gifts. Temper tantrums and preschool problems and, the worst, the get-togethers I would no longer be part of? The moms emailed me separately to find out how I was doing, but gradually that stopped. I wondered who made the decision to take me off the list? Who said, “She never participates anymore. We should just remove her” or “Maybe it’s hurtful to her to be on the list? Should we take her off?” Yes, it was hurtful to be on the list and just as hurtful to be off it. But what hurt the most was how everyone had disappeared, as though I didn’t matter anymore because I didn’t have a child. I honestly didn’t blame them. We were in different worlds now. My world was scary to them and theirs was painful to me.
So now I had Harley’s Dad and Friends, and I navigated to that group to see what everyone was up to. I read through the most recent messages. There were some new people and I welcomed them and offered sympathy. They shared their stories in long, wordy, tearful paragraphs and I nodded as I read them. My heart expanded to take them into my world. I’d asked Judith, “Is it nuts that the people I love the most right now are these strangers in the Harley’s Dad group?” and she’d just smiled and said, “What do you think?” turning it back on me as she usually did.
There was an angry comment written by Mom-of-Five whose sister told her “Life is for the living and you need to get over your grief for the sake of your other children.” I felt indignant on her behalf and I typed an empathetic response, my fingers flying over the iPad screen. In my mind, I lumped her sister together with Michael and with anyone else who dared to tell someone she was grieving the wrong way.
Early on, Michael and I had been in the same place when it came to our sorrow. We were both in that denial stage where we walked around crying and shaking our heads and saying “I just don’t believe it” and “This can’t be happening.” We held each other and cried for hours and I loved him with all my heart. He was my connection to Carolyn, the person who shared the deepest love of her anyone could imagine. But then he returned to work, just a week after she died. He wanted to go, and I didn’t understand how he could possibly concentrate on work. Right then, I couldn’t imagine ever going back to my job. But Michael simply threw himself into some new project. I used to admire his work. He’d convinced me that his style of video game design went way beyond sport to something with far greater significance. “It’s about social connection,” he’d say. “It’s about people working together to solve problems.” He’d won a few awards for his games and I’d been proud of him. Now, though, I thought his work was superficial and silly. Games! What on earth did they matter? Still, you’d think he was saving the planet with the hours he put in. He’d work till six, then come home, eat dinner, and work some more in our home office. On the weekends, he started doing all the handyman jobs he’d put off for years. Repairing the deck. Painting the family room. Keeping busy so he didn’t have to listen to me rant and rave. As far as I could tell, he was finished grieving.
We saw Judith together a few times, but Michael was done talking about Carolyn by then, while I felt as though I was just getting started. I needed to talk about her. The way that one lock of hair on her forehead would never lay flat. The way she’d sing to herself in bed at night or come into our room to cuddle with us on Saturday morning. Chatty. She was always chatty. When I started talking about that terrible night on the pier, sifting through every detail of it, I wasn’t surprised when Michael got up and left the room. “This is pointless,” he said over his shoulder to Judith. “She can’t let go of it.”
After he left the room, I looked at Judith. “See?” I said. “He’s done with her and I’ll never be done with her.”
“Men and women grieve differently,” Judith said. She was fiftyish with straight, chin-length gray hair and vivid blue eyes. My doctor had recommended I see her shortly after Carolyn died, when no matter what drug I took, I couldn’t sleep. When I did doze off, I’d be back on that pier, reliving the whole thing all over again.
“I can accept that men and women grieve differently,” I said, “but I can’t live with it any longer.” That was the day I decided to move out.
After an hour in the coffee shop, I felt a little guilty sitting there with my empty cup and half-eaten bagel, even though no one was fighting for my seat. I went up to the counter and asked Nando for a refill.
“You’re new here,” he said as he filled my cup.
“I just moved to the area last week.”
“You working nearby?”
“No, I’m taking a little time off.”
“Room?” he asked.
“I … What?”
“Room for cream? I don’t remember how you took that first cup.”
“Oh. No. Black, please.”
“I’ll remember for next time,” he said with that dimply smile as he handed me the cup. “So, where did you move from?”
“Just … not far. A different part of Raleigh.” I wanted to get back to my seat. “Thanks for the refill,” I said.
“Anytime.”
I sat down in the leather chair again and opened my iPad. There was a new father in the Harley’s Dad and Friends group and he was in major pain. I wanted to respond to him. To let him know he wasn’t alone. I couldn’t imagine Michael ever baring his soul so openly, online or off. I typed a few lines to him. Donald, I’m so sorry you have to be here, but I’m glad you found us. It sounds like your daughter was a truly special little girl.
Nando started singing something in Spanish as he waited on another customer. I glanced over at him. He’d said he’d remember how I liked my coffee. So much for anonymity. I’d sounded rude, the abrupt way I’d answered his questions. Questions were becoming a challenge. It was nobody’s business why I’d moved from one part of Raleigh to another. It was nobody’s business that I was taking time off from work. I felt a sudden ache of loss in my chest, not for Carolyn this time as much as for my old life. The ache expanded and I had to clench my teeth together to keep from crying. I’d loved my job and I’d loved my life. Cooking, fixing up the house, taking care of Carolyn, making love to my husband. I pressed my fingers to my breastbone as if I could rub away the pain. Then I looked down at my iPad again, returning my attention to Donald and Mom-of-Five and the other people who understood how, on a warm April evening on a long moonlit pier, the life I’d loved and treasured had ended.
8 Travis
THE TRAILER WASN’T A PRETTY SIGHT. THE exterior was white—or at least it had been white at one time—with patches of rust and plenty of dings. It was maybe twice as long as my van and it sat on concrete blocks above the sandy soil. It was in a line of other trailers in all shapes and sizes, most of them empty now that summer was over. There was a car parked in front of the gold trailer next to ours, though—a sparkling new green VW Beetle convertible that looked out of place in a sea of grungy old trailers. I’d borrowed the money for my first week’s rent from a buddy. I hoped it wouldn’t be too long before I could pay it back, but I wasn’t optimistic.
I slid open the side door of my van and helped Bella out of her car seat.
“This is our new home, Bell,” I said. “At least for a while. Let’s go inside and explore.” Explore was the wrong word for what we’d be able to do inside a one-room trailer, but it didn’t matter. Bella stood staring up at the thing with her wide gray eyes. She’d turned four the day before and we’d had a little party for her at Franny’s with balloons and ice-cream cake and not much in the way of presents. I think Franny was actually celebrating our departure, but whatever.
“It’s not a home,” Bella said, staring at the trailer. Her lamb and pink purse were in her arms and she didn’t move from the side of the van. My mother had given her that purse for her third birthday and I was so glad Bella hadn’t lost it or the lamb in the fire. They let her hold on to something familiar. Inside the purse, she had a picture of the three of us—my mother, Bella and me—sitting on the beach around a sandcastle we’d built. She had a tiny little doll that one of the women I’d gone out with had given her. She loved that doll because it had really long, blond hair she liked to comb. And the third and final thing in her purse was a picture of Robin. Just a little headshot I’d had since we were in high school. I was glad I’d never given in to the temptation to toss it. Bella knew Robin was her mother, but that was it. Someday I planned to tell Bella all about her, though how I was going to explain why Robin didn’t want her, I had no idea.
“Well, we’re going to make it into our home,” I said now. “It’s not a house like we’re used to. It’s called a trailer and lots of people live in trailers. It’ll be an adventure for a while. Let’s go see what’s inside, okay?”
She took my hand and we climbed the steps to the door. I unlocked it and we stepped into a space so dark I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I could smell the place, though. It had that musty, closed-up, “beach place” odor and something else I hoped had nothing to do with cats.
“I can’t see anything, Daddy.” There was a sound in her voice that told me she was going to lose it any second. Sort of a mini-whine that only I could pick up. Even my mother never heard it, but sometimes Bella would say something and I’d whisper to Mom, “Meltdown coming,” and sure enough, five seconds later, the crying and wailing would begin. It didn’t happen much anymore, but I had the feeling it was going to happen now. My kid had been through too damn much in the past couple of weeks.
“We need to open all the shades and let in the light,” I said, prying my hand from hers to reach for one of the window shades, which I could make out only because of the line of sunlight around it. It sprang open so fast I blinked at the light pouring through the filmy glass. “That’s better!” I said. “How many windows do we have, Bella?”
She looked around the dim interior. “Three,” she said.
“I think there’s one more. Do you see it?”
She turned in a circle. “I spy!” she said when her gaze landed on the long narrow window above the kitchen sink.
“Good job!” I finished opening the shades.
Bella ran to the only inside door in the place and pulled it open. “That’s the bathroom,” I said.
“Where’s my room?” she asked.
“That’s the cool thing about this trailer,” I said. “It’s all one big room instead of separate rooms. So it’s our living room—” I pointed to the futon, then to the small table and two chairs beneath one of the windows “—and our dining room, and our kitchen, and your bedroom.” I pointed to the double bed crammed into the other end of the trailer. “You’ll sleep there and I’ll sleep on this futon.”
“What’s a futon?”
“Couch. It’s another name for a couch,” I said. “I think the first thing we should do, even before we bring in the bags with our clothes, is find a place to display your new shells.”
The people at my mother’s church had collected clothes and sheets and towels for us. They’d been so good to us that for a few days I thought I might start going back to church like when I was a kid, but the mood passed. Now I was into survival mode and I had my priorities: shelter, food, job, child care. My soul was going to have to wait.
“I want my old shells back.” The whine was there, not so little this time. A stranger would be able to pick it up now. She was tired. No nap today, and this was a kid who definitely still needed naps.
“Yeah, I wish you could have them back, but you’ll always have the memory of them.”
“I don’t want the remembery. I want them back. And Nana back, too.”
I’d told her she’d always have the memory of Nana, but I knew she wouldn’t. As she got older, she’d forget her. You didn’t remember people from when you were four. Maybe vaguely. I kept thinking about that—how my mother, who had done so much for her and who loved her more than anything, would just disappear from her memory. Whoosh! It seemed like one more unfair thing in a whole bushel of stuff that sucked.
“I’m going to get your new shells,” I said, hoping to avoid the meltdown.
“I don’t want them,” she whimpered.
I went out to the van and got the canvas bag with its lame collection of shells and carried it and the garbage bag filled with sheets and towels back into the trailer. The floor made a hollow sound when I stepped on it. This was going to take some getting used to.
Bella was curled into a ball on the futon, her lamb clutched in her arms, her lower lip jutting out in a pout that was so damn cute I had a hard time not smiling. I used to laugh when she’d pout like that until my mother said I was encouraging it. Mom said she’d turn out to be one of those girls who’d get her way with guys by acting like a pouty baby and I can tell you, that thought wiped the smile off my face. I wanted my daughter to be strong.
“Now, where’s a good place for these?” I asked, looking around the room. At home, we’d had them on the mantel above the non-working fireplace.
She was still pouting, but she sat up a little straighter and started looking around the room. I could see the only ledge in the whole place—under that long narrow kitchen window—but I waited for her to find it on her own. And she did. She hopped off the futon and ran to the sink, pointing to the window. “Up there,” she said.
“Perfect!” I handed her the bag. “You give them to me one at a time and I’ll put them up there.”
She handed me the first one, the giant gray whelk, which was clearly going to be the foundation of her new collection. It was her favorite. I put it right in the middle of the window ledge. She handed me an orange scallop shell and frowned. “The mantel was better,” she said. “There’s no room up there.”
I was kind of impressed she could figure that out. It seemed pretty smart for a four-year-old to realize there wouldn’t be enough space on that ledge as her collection grew. Mom said I had an inflated idea of her brilliance, but what did I know? She seemed smart to me. “Well, you’re right, and when we run out I think we’ll have to put some of them in a bowl, okay?”
“They’ll break.”
“Not if you’re care—”
“Knock knock!”
I turned to see a girl standing in our open doorway. The way she was silhouetted in the sunlight, I couldn’t make out her face, but her voice was unfamiliar and I was sure I didn’t know her.
“Come in,” I said, and she stepped inside. I’d definitely never seen her before. She was the sort of girl you wouldn’t forget. Twenty, maybe, and hot. Smokin’ hot. Maybe a little too skinny, but she had blond hair in a long ponytail that hung over her right breast and she was wearing just about nothing—shorts and sandals and a halter top. I felt myself go hard and had the feeling she knew it. She had one of those Let’s get it on smiles, or maybe I was just fantasizing. It had been months for me and I needed to go back and adjust that list of priorities I’d come up with.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m Savannah. Your next-door neighbor.”
“Cool.” I moved forward to shake her hand. “I’m Travis and this is Bella.” I squeezed Bella’s shoulder and she wrapped one arm around my leg, the other holding the bag of shells.
“Hey, Bella.” Savannah squatted down, giving me a really nice view of her breasts. “Welcome to the neighborhood, honey,” she said. “What do you have in the bag?”
I expected Bella to pull away from her. It usually took her a while to warm up to strangers. But instead, she opened the tote bag and let Savannah peek inside. I wondered if Savannah reminded her of the long-haired doll she carried around in her pink purse.
“Shells!” Savannah’s eyes lit up and she actually sat down on the ratty thin carpet, cross-legged, and patted the spot next to her. “Will you show me? I love shells.”
Okay, I thought. This is finally a stroke of luck. I could have gotten a trailer next door to a crazy old dude who walked around in his undershirt and had a thing for little girls. Instead I was living next to a hot girl who had a way with kids.
“The Beetle is yours?” I asked as Bella took out the rest of her shells and showed them to Savannah, one by one.
“Uh-huh.” Savannah didn’t look at me. Her attention was on Bella and she said nice things about each shell. “I’ve been living here three months and I’m glad to finally have a neighbor. I mean a real neighbor. There were plenty of people over the summer.” She rolled her eyes. “Too many. But now that the season’s over, it’s lonely here.”
“Do you … I mean, why are you living here?”
“I waitressed during the summer and I’m taking a couple of night classes now. Cosmetology. And I need a cheap place to live and this is about as cheap as it gets.”
I laughed. “Tell me about it.”
Okay, so she wasn’t a rocket scientist, but neither was I. Although at one time, I’d had higher expectations of myself. Those days were gone.
“I wanted to invite you and Bella over for dinner.” She got to her feet and dusted off her hands. “Just mac and cheese, if that’s okay.”
Bella drew in a quick breath. She was still sitting on the floor and she looked up at me with a little smile. Damn, she was cute. I grinned at her. “Mac and cheese work for you, Bella?” I asked. It was her favorite, and she nodded.
“What time?” I asked Savannah.
“Six?”
“Excellent. We’ll settle in. Maybe one of us will take a little nap.”
We exchanged phone numbers and I didn’t tell her I probably wouldn’t have my phone much longer. I hadn’t been able to pay the last bill. I thought about the magnetic signs I had on the sides of my van: Brown Construction, with my phone number below it. I wasn’t taking those signs down, no matter what. I had a thing about them. They were more than just magnetized plastic to me. My dad had had Brown Plumbing signs on the sides of his truck, and when I put my own up, I thought about how he must have felt about those signs. Proud to have his own business. Proud to have a way to support us, the way I’d supported Bella and my mom before the economy totally tanked. What use would those signs be if I had no phone, though?
Savannah’s trailer was a step up from mine, which wasn’t saying much, but you could feel a girly touch when you walked inside. First, it smelled a lot better, between the macaroni and cheese cooking and some other scent. A candle, maybe. Second, she’d put some nicer rugs on top of the old carpeting. Maybe I could do that, too, when I got some money. Third, she’d thrown this gold-striped fabric over the couch along with a bunch of pillows, and there were lamps all over the place. It just felt homey. I could see into the second room, where her bed had a bunch of pillows on it, too, and a yellow quilt. There was one thing that bugged me, though, and that was a bong sitting out on her kitchen counter. I didn’t do drugs. I was even careful with booze. Maybe I messed with it a little after things went south with Robin, but once I had a kid to raise, I cooled it. I didn’t care if Savannah smoked weed. It was no big deal, but the bong right out in the open like that with Bella there … well, I didn’t like it. But I was liking her well enough. She’d changed into a skimpy dress. No bra. She was so thin she didn’t need one, but the fabric of her dress hugged her nipples and I was having trouble keeping my eyes on her face. She’d taken her hair out of the ponytail and it was very long and gold. Smooth and silky. The kind of hair you’d see on a shampoo commercial. I wanted to touch it. Just grab a big fistful of it in my hand.
I needed to slow the hell down.
“Thanks for asking us over,” I said. “I didn’t have a chance to go to the store yet.”
“I know what moving day’s like,” she said. She reached into the fridge, pulled out a beer, uncapped it and handed it to me. “What about for Bella?” she asked. “Juice? Milk?”
“Juice,” Bella said. Usually I’d give her the milk, but tonight was a special occasion.
“Please,” I reminded Bella.
“Please,” she said.
Savannah poured some orange juice into a tall plastic cup with a cap and a straw. Perfect.
“You act like you understand kids,” I said as I settled Bella at the table with a puzzle I’d brought with me so she wouldn’t get bored. She loved puzzles and this one had Cinderella on it. She loved her princesses.
“Oh, I’ve got a slew of nieces and I volunteered in a day care for a year or so. This age—” she motioned toward Bella “—so adorable. The best. Still innocent, you know?”
I nodded, but I was thinking about what she said. She’d worked in a day care? Was there a chance I’d stumbled across not only the hottest neighbor a man could hope for but child care, as well?
Savannah pulled a bunch of salad stuff out of the refrigerator and set it on the counter, then seemed to notice the bong and quietly moved it inside one of the lower cabinets. I didn’t say a thing except, “Can I help?”
We worked together in the kitchen, talking about where we were from—me, from right there in Carolina Beach; her, from Kinston—and did a little “Do you know so and so?” but we definitely moved in different circles. I told her about the fire and she stopped chopping celery to look at me. She rested her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Travis,” she said. She glanced at Bella, who was quietly working on her puzzle. “This must completely suck for both of you.”
I nodded. “Yeah, it does.”
She still had her hand on my shoulder and she lowered it, running it down the length of my arm, slipping her fingers into my palm. She was coming on to me. I hadn’t had any kind of long-term relationship since Bella came into my life. I didn’t want one now, either. It would just confuse things. But I could use someone to sleep with. That I couldn’t deny, and the way she’d touched me let me know she knew what she was doing. She would be as good in bed as she looked.
I focused on the lettuce to keep my wits about me. “The thing is,” I said, “I really need to get work. My final paycheck literally went up in smoke with the house. And if I find work, I need somebody to watch Bella for me. Do you know anyone who does child care?”
She shrugged with a smile. “I know me,” she said. “I’ve had experience. I told you I worked in a day care. My classes are at night and all I do all day right now is hang out. I’d love to watch her.”
“I’d pay you, of course. I mean, as soon as I get work.”
She nodded. “Not easy to find right now, huh?”
I shook my head. “Twenty guys for every job, at least,” I said.
“Well, if you find a job, you’ve got a sitter. Except …” She hesitated, taking a few more chops at the celery. “I have to go out of town sometimes. I have friends I visit in Raleigh when I don’t have class. But I could probably find someone to cover for me then.”
“Okay,” I said, thinking that I wouldn’t want to leave Bella with someone I didn’t know. But then, what did I know about Savannah herself? I should probably ask to speak to the day care where she’d worked, but I was afraid that would sound like an insult. What I knew about Savannah was that she grew up in Kinston and was taking night classes to learn how to do hair or nails or whatever and that she drank beer and smoked enough weed to have a bong on her kitchen counter. I wondered if she did anything heavier than marijuana. I’d keep an eye on how much she drank tonight. What if she had friends who hung out with her at the trailer? I didn’t want a bunch of losers hanging around Bella. I wondered if I was one of the losers now. Maybe that’s what Savannah was thinking.
“Where’s Bella’s mom?” she asked quietly as she dropped the celery into the salad bowl.
“Beaufort,” I said.
“Is she … What’s her name?”
“Robin.”
“Was she unfit or what? How come Bella’s with you?”
“It’s a long story,” I said. Robin wasn’t my favorite topic, especially not with someone I didn’t know well.
“Does Bella ever see her?”
“Sure,” I lied. It was none of her business, and the lie seemed the easiest way out of the conversation. “Want me to shred some carrots for the salad?”
“Sure.” Savannah smiled. Touched my arm. “I think Bella’s a lucky little girl to end up with you,” she said.
Over dinner, we did most of our talking to and through Bella, but beneath the table Savannah ran her bare foot up my leg. The first time, she looked at me with a question in her eyes, like “Is this okay? Are we on the same page?” and I gave her a little smile back to let her know it was as okay as it could be, even though I knew hooking up with her might be really stupid. I needed her to take care of Bella more than I needed a lover. But right then, with her foot inching closer to the inside of my thigh, I wasn’t thinking all that much about child care.
We watched a little TV with Bella after dinner, then I settled her down on Savannah’s couch. I didn’t think she’d go right to sleep. It usually took her a while, especially in a strange place, and she was used to me reading to her in bed before lights out. She’d had a ton of books that burned in the fire, but Franny’d given us The Cat in the Hat when we first moved in with her, and Bella didn’t seem to mind hearing it over and over again. Even when we were finished reading, she’d rarely just drift off. She’d ask for water or get up to tell me or my mom something that couldn’t possibly wait until morning and generally wear herself out. But the lack of a nap was working to her advantage tonight. My advantage. I covered her over and watched while she sank into a deep sleep, and as I tucked the light blanket tighter over her shoulders, Savannah leaned over and nuzzled my neck.
I stood up and put my arms around her. “Listen,” I said. “I’m not ready for anything ser—”
“Shh.” She kissed me. “I don’t care about serious,” she said. “I’m all about living in the present moment.” She took my hand and we walked into her bedroom and, for a couple of hours, I forgot about the fire and my lack of a job and just about everything except my body and hers.
9 Robin
ONCE MY BED-AND-BREAKFAST GUESTS WERE well fed and ready to explore Beaufort for the day, I left my assistant, Bridget, to clean up and headed next door to Hendricks House. The fact that, at thirty-three, Dale still lived with his parents had seemed weird to me until I saw his apartment. He had the entire second story to himself with a separate entrance. Once we were married, we’d have a place of our own, of course. Just two weeks ago, a few days before Hannah was born, we’d signed a contract on a small house a block from the water. Or at least Dale had signed the contract. The Beaufort-style bungalow would be in his name until we were married. We’d close in a month and I couldn’t wait to fix it up. I’d still manage the B and B, although Bridget would take over my roomy first-floor apartment and I’d do less of the day-to-day grunt work. If Dale had his way, I wouldn’t be doing any of it. I could be a lady of leisure, he said, just doing volunteer work like his mother. He didn’t like it when I talked about going to school. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a nurse or some kind of medical technician, but I was absolutely certain I’d need more in my life than the garden club and playing golf and tennis, two games I hated to begin with. Dale thought I should just take it easy. He was always worrying about my health. I took a couple of handfuls of pills a day and had to be careful around germs, but I refused to live my life in a bubble the way he wanted me to.
I walked across the driveway that ran between the B and B and Hendricks House and spotted Mollie working in the garden by the front steps. They had a gardener, of course—a bunch of them, actually—who took care of both properties, but the garden that ran the width of the house belonged to Mollie.
“Hi, Mom,” I said as I neared her. She sat back on her heels and adjusted her straw hat to look at me.
“Hi, sweetheart.” Her smile looked a little tired and I guessed that having a baby in the house was taking a toll on everyone’s sleep. I’d started calling Mollie and James Mom and Dad at their insistence right after Dale and I announced our engagement a year ago. Calling Mollie “Mom” came easily to me. I loved how kind she was to me. I didn’t remember my own mother and I’d spent most of my life wishing I had someone I could call Mom. Calling James “Dad” had been tougher, though. My own father had still been alive then, so I already had a dad. Plus James always held his distance. Oh, he was really nice to me and I knew he loved me in his own way, but he was such a politician. I was never certain if what was written on his face was what he was really feeling. I’d seen him smile warmly at too many people he’d later put down in private to trust him completely. I sometimes saw the same trait in Dale and it shook me up.
“Alissa’s going to be so happy to see you.” Mollie brushed a speck of dirt from her khaki shorts. “That baby was up all night.”
“Did she keep you awake?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Ear plugs. I’ve worn them ever since I married James. I’m going to give you a pair as a wedding gift.”
I laughed. I started to say that Dale didn’t snore, but thought better of it. I honestly didn’t know if they realized how often Dale stayed over at my apartment. Anyhow, it would be “indelicate” of me to say. I was learning a lot about what was tolerated in a family that needed to keep a polished public image. The word indelicate came up a lot. That’s why they dealt so openly and quickly with Alissa’s pregnancy, making lemonade out of lemons.
I’d adored Alissa from the moment I met her. She’d been barely fifteen with silky-straight, long, dark hair and a wide, white smile. For the longest time, I’d thought what an amazing teenager she was. She seemed so together. Straight-A student. Popular, with a sweet, shy, lovable boyfriend named Jess. She was a whiz with anything to do with the computer. She set up the website for the bed-and-breakfast herself at fourteen. If anyone should have been able to see through a facade, though, it should have been me, and even I missed it. Only when she was five months pregnant did she tell her parents and Dale. Then, for the first time, I saw all hell break loose in the Hendricks family. When James and Mollie and Dale started talking about contacting Jess’s parents, Alissa owned up to the truth: Jess had been nothing but a cover. He was Alissa’s best friend, as gay as the day was long, and he’d been helping her sneak around to see Will Stevenson, a boy she’d been forbidden to go out with. Jess would pick her up for a “date,” then drive her to wherever she and Will were hooking up. I’d never met Will, so I couldn’t pass judgment on him, but the rest of the family seemed to hate him for reasons that still seemed small and wrong to me. I guessed there were enough small reasons that when you added them together, it was enough to equal one giant one. For starters, he was a high-school dropout doing custodial work for some businesses. His mother was a housekeeper—in fact, she’d been the Hendricks’ housekeeper when Alissa and Will were toddlers. His father was in prison for something to do with drugs. Plus Will was nineteen, two and a half years older than Alissa. The Hendricks all acted like that was a big deal. Since Dale was eleven years older than me, the age difference seemed like a pretty weak argument, but it was one of those family issues I knew I’d better stay out of. Anyhow, Alissa hadn’t been allowed to see him and when she announced he was her baby’s father, the shit hit the fan. We were all sitting in the living room when she told us the truth. James and Dale went ballistic. Seriously, I was afraid they were going to get the rifles from the gun rack in the den and hunt Will down.
The family kept Will’s name out of the whole mess, simply painting him as an older guy who took advantage of their vulnerable daughter. “Please let us deal with this family matter in private and protect a young girl who made a mistake and is taking responsibility for her actions,” James had said in a statement to the press.
I felt sorry for Alissa. She was sixteen years younger than Dale, a change-of-life baby, Mollie told me, and it was like she had three parents instead of two. They started monitoring her cell phone and computer to make sure she and Will had no contact, and I honestly thought she’d lost interest in him until she mentioned him in the labor room. I’d asked her about that once since Hannah was born but she said she was just “crazy” that day and that she really didn’t care about him anymore.
It was strange that I never connected what Alissa was going through with what I’d gone through with Travis. Maybe because Alissa was so healthy and together and I’d been anything but. Maybe because she had two parents and a brother and I’d just had my father. Maybe because I’d never met Will, so it felt almost as though he didn’t exist. The one thing I knew, though, was that my sympathy was with Alissa more than with her parents or Dale. I was careful about ever saying that, but I hoped Alissa knew I was in her corner. I could hear Hannah crying as I neared Alissa’s room. The door was open, and when I walked in, Alissa was sitting in the rocker by the window while Hannah wailed in her bassinet.
“Is she hungry?” I asked, walking to the bassinet to peer down at Hannah. I couldn’t stand it when she cried. I just wanted to fix whatever was upsetting her. “When’s the last time you fed her?”
Alissa held up a bottle. “I was just going to,” she said, although it looked to me like she’d been pretty relaxed for a while in that rocker. “You want to do it?”
“Is the bottle still warm?” I asked.
“Yeah. I made it too hot and was waiting for it to cool down.”
I bent over to lift Hannah into my arms. I could finally hold her without crying. That first day in the delivery room when I held her in my arms had opened up a whole part of myself I’d buried. Now I couldn’t get enough of her. I helped Alissa every chance I got, though Mollie had hired a nanny, an older woman named Gretchen, who came in several hours a day—hours I wasn’t needed and left me wishing I was. Everyone thought I was hormonal or something, the way I’d get so emotional around Hannah, and maybe that was it. I’d seen plenty of babies since my own was born four years ago, and I’d never had this reaction before. It was like I was ready now. Ready to let myself admit it had all happened, though I refused to dwell on it.
Through the bay window, the sun fell on Alissa’s long, reddish-brown hair, and for the first time since Hannah was born, she looked strong and well and pretty. I took the bottle from her and settled down in the wing chair opposite the rocker. I could see Alissa’s desk from where I sat. The book I’d given her on baby care was tossed on a messy pile of other books and magazines. I doubted she’d even glanced at it, although I’d read it from cover to cover myself before I gave it to her.
“Mom said she was awake a lot last night,” I said. I touched the nipple to Hannah’s lips and she trembled as she took it in her mouth as though she couldn’t get to the formula fast enough. It made me smile.
Alissa rocked a little. “I couldn’t get her to settle down,” she said. “Gretchen said I should make little swishing sounds in her ear, but it didn’t work.”
“Frustrating,” I said. Gretchen had told Mollie and me that Alissa wasn’t bonding well with Hannah. We were supposed to keep an eye on her. Make sure she wasn’t sinking into some major postpartum depression. I just thought she needed sleep, but maybe it was more than that. She was such a social girl and I knew she’d felt cut off from her friends, first by the pregnancy and now by the baby. She’d go back to school in another month and maybe that would help her mood.
Hannah opened her eyes and stared right at me. I wondered if she did that with Alissa. I hoped so. How could you feel those dark eyes on you and not be hooked for life? “Hi, sweetie,” I said to the baby. “Is that good?”
From her seat by the window, Alissa watched Hannah drink the way she might look at a puppy she hadn’t quite decided whether to take home or not. I smiled at her. “She has such a good appetite,” I said.
“She’s so much better for you than she is for me.”
“You’ll get the knack of it in no time.”
“But you never had a baby and it’s natural with you. It’s totally not natural to me. Gretchen said I need to relax when I hold her, but I get all tense.”
“Be patient with yourself,” I said.
She looked out the window toward Taylor’s Creek. “Maybe you and Dale should raise her,” she said, without glancing back at me.
“We’ll be right there to help you with her, Ali. Don’t worry.”
She let out a long sigh. “I am so trapped,” she said.
“But soon you’ll be back with your friends.”
“With a baby.”
“It’ll be fine,” I said, but I knew she had an uphill battle in front of her. Things would never be the same between her and her old friends.
I stayed with her another hour, until it was time for me to get back to the B and B to check on the housekeepers and answer messages. I’d burped Hannah, changed her and settled her back in her bassinet when Alissa grabbed my hand.
“I’m so glad you came along,” she said. “I’m so glad Dale ended up with you instead of Debra.”
Dale had told me about Debra, his former fiancée, early on, when we were just getting to know each other. He’d been crazy about her and she’d told him she’d never been serious about anyone before. Some reporter, though, wrote an article about the Hendricks family in the local paper and he’d dug up the fact that Debra’d been married before. Not a crime. The crime was that she’d never told Dale about it and he was hurt and humiliated by her deception. I saw it in his eyes when he told me. The pain had still been raw then, and I’d felt sorry for him.
I bent over to give Alissa a hug. “I’m glad, too,” I said. “Call me if you get lonely.”
I left her room and was nearly to the front door when I spotted James and two well-dressed men in the living room. “Here’s our Robin!” James boomed, and I slowed my pace to a more ladylike walk.
“Hello.” I smiled.
“Come in, come in!” James held out an arm to motion me into the room. I walked in, and he introduced me to the men, whose names I quickly forgot. Dale told me I was going to have to do better with names. I just couldn’t keep everyone straight the way he did.
“Robin’s going to be the newest member of the Hendricks family,” James said. He sounded proud of me and I tried to look worthy, but in my shorts and T-shirt with a little bit of baby spit-up on my shoulder, I doubted I was pulling it off. I hoped he wasn’t upset that I was such a mess.
One of the men held my hand in both of his. “All my wife can talk about is your wedding,” he said. “She said it’s been too long since she’s been to one. You’ll have to meet her beforehand so when she starts crying, she’ll at least know the person inspiring her tears.”
“I look forward to meeting her,” I said. I was getting so nervous about the wedding. It seemed like everyone in town was being invited. I’d had almost nothing to do with the plans. Mollie took over, picking out the invitations and the flowers and the cake. Well, I did say I wanted chocolate, but she picked the style. She also picked out my dress, but since it had been hers, I couldn’t criticize her for that, and it was beautiful. Just amazing. I was trying to think of the event as a dream wedding, but I kept waking up around two in the morning, feeling as though it was more of a nightmare. My life these days seemed a little out of my control.
“I have to run,” I said to James. “Need to see how things are going next door.”
“Of course, of course,” he said, and I heard him say to the men as I headed out the front door, “Isn’t she lovely?” The words made my eyes burn. The people in this family were sometimes two-faced, sometimes back-stabbing, sometimes calculating. But one thing I felt sure of: they loved me. And as I walked across the yard to the B and B, I had to ask myself if a lie of omission was just as bad as the outright lie Debra had told Dale.
In the B and B’s kitchen, I started putting together the casserole for tomorrow’s breakfast, thinking of James’s sweet words and what a miracle my life was turning out to be. My girlfriend Joy, whom I’d known from the cardiac rehab center where we’d both been patients, had been the one to tell me about the job opening at the B and B. She’d been working as a waitress at a Beaufort restaurant and she encouraged me to leave Chapel Hill and move in with her in Beaufort. I’d been at loose ends. Dad was pushing me to go to college. But while college was definitely in my plans, I wanted a taste of freedom. I felt as though I’d been locked in a closet of a life for years, first by my illness, then by my recovery. After my year of rehab, I didn’t feel like studying. I just wanted to enjoy being alive for once.
After the family hired me, Dale gave me a crash course about Beaufort so I’d at least know more than my guests about the area. He walked me along the waterfront, introducing me to every shop owner, pointing out the boats, telling me about their owners. In the distance, we could see a few of the ponies standing in the surf on Carrot Island. Dale and I fell in love on those walks. I was moved by how much he adored Beaufort and how much he wanted to do for its people. Even then, he was planning to be mayor one day, though I didn’t realize he’d be running so soon. I was so attracted to him. I’d forgotten that part of myself while I was sick. The sexual part. It’s so weird when your entire life is consumed by illness. Sometimes I’d felt like a heart instead of a person. With Dale, I felt the rest of me coming back to life. When he took my hand, I felt every cell in my fingers as though I’d just noticed them for the first time ever. And his beautiful gray eyes! I hadn’t yet seen those eyes turn stormy back then. Oh, wow, could you see thunderclouds in his eyes sometimes! Dale had a gentleness to him, a real honest warmth, but there was steel behind it. He didn’t bend easily, and I was learning that if I wanted to do something he didn’t want—to change the way we handled something at the B and B, maybe, or even to watch a movie he wasn’t crazy about watching—I had to approach the subject carefully and slowly if I stood a chance of breaking through that stubbornness. But there were compromises in any relationship. I’d learned that growing up with my father. This was nothing new.
My father was thrilled when I told him I was seeing Dale Hendricks. Since he taught political science, my father had always been tuned in to state politics and he knew exactly who Dale was: heir apparent of the Hendricks empire. Daddy had wanted me to be taken care of. He knew if I became a Hendricks, he’d never have to worry about me again.
I was tired of talking about my heart by the time Dale gave me my Beaufort tour, but he asked tons of questions about it and I answered them all. He said I was amazing, and I said the people who were really amazing were the donor’s family. And then I cried, which is what I always did when I thought about the people I would never know who gave me the greatest gift I’d ever receive. We’d been sitting in the public gazebo looking out over Taylor’s Creek, dusk falling around us and the colors of the sunset in the air and the water. Every single moment of my life was beautiful, but that one was like a painting in my mind, permanently hanging on the inside of my forehead. Dale put his arm around me. He brushed away one of my tears with the back of his fingers. Then he turned my face toward him and kissed me. It had been so long since I’d been kissed, I’d forgotten how the simple touch of lips could send sparks to every other part of my body. How it could make me lose all reason. How it could lead me to do things that were a little crazy, like sleeping with a man I barely knew. Yes, we walked back to Hendricks House, quietly climbed the outside stairs that led to his private apartment, and I was pulling his shirt out of his pants before we’d even reached his bedroom.
I smiled at the memory of that night as I covered the casserole with foil and slid it into the refrigerator. Then I picked up my cell phone and dialed Dale’s number.
“Can you come over earlier tonight?” I asked, leaning back against the counter. “I miss you.”
I could hear my baby crying from somewhere in the B and B, but I couldn’t get to her. I knew I was dreaming, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I ran through the house, which in the dream was made up of rooms that led into other rooms that led into yet more rooms, some of them so small I had to crawl through them on my hands and knees, others as big as a ballroom. The crying was heart-wrenching—she needed me! The sound seemed to come from one direction, then another, and I couldn’t find her. When I looked down at the T-shirt I was wearing in the dream, I had two round wet patches over my nipples.
“Robin!” The voice sounded far away. “Wake up, Robbie. You’re dreaming.”
I opened my eyes. In the darkness, the only thing I could see was the blue LED light from the small TV on my dresser. I was winded from running in my dream and confused about where I was. The hospital? My childhood bedroom? I touched my left breast through my tank top. Dry.
“Sit up, honey.” It was Dale’s voice. I was in the B and B, and Dale’s body was nearly wrapped around mine as he lifted my shoulders from the bed.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You’re breathing so hard. Is your heart—”
“It was just a dream,” I said, to myself as much as to him. I knew my heart was fine. It was probably stronger than his. It had come from a fifteen-year-old girl killed in a car accident. When I had nightmares, they were usually about her. I dreamed about her last moments, lying injured and alone in a car that had flipped over into a ravine. I dreamed about the life pouring out of her body and into mine. Sometimes I dreamed we both lived and I’d wake up feeling this impossible joy until I remembered.
“Whew.” I leaned forward and Dale massaged the back of my neck. I was embarrassed. “I hope I didn’t scream or anything.” I tried to laugh. “Freak out the guests.” When Dale and I became lovers, we experimented to see how much noise could be heard from my room in the guestroom right above. Dale went upstairs and I stayed in my room and made erotic-sounding noises and rocked the bed to make it squeak. He promised me he couldn’t hear a thing, but the whole thing cracked both of us up. “Was I actually screaming?” I asked now.
“No,” he said. “You were just whimpering and breathing hard.” He locked his arms around me and rocked me a little. He could be so sweet. “Tell me about the dream,” he said.
I hesitated a moment but could think of no reason not to tell him. “I had a baby in the dream,” I said. “She was crying and I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t find my way through the house to her. It was very … I just wanted to get to her.” My tears were a sudden surprise and I was so glad it was dark in the room. This wasn’t the first time I’d had a dream about my baby in the two weeks since Hannah was born. During the daytime, I was fine. No problem. But when I was asleep and had no control over my thoughts, there she was, crying for me from a distance and I could never, ever reach her. In one of the dreams, I was upset that I didn’t know the baby’s name, just as I didn’t know the name of my own child. What had Travis named her? Was she happy and healthy? I knew she didn’t have my heart problem. My father told me they checked her out right after she was born and she was fine, which was a miracle because of the medications I’d been on when I got pregnant with her. Most of the time, I could push that baby out of my mind. Now, suddenly, she was trying to get in.
Dale laughed a little. “You’re spending way too much time with Alissa and Hannah,” he said. “Seriously, though,” he added quickly, “you’ve been such a help to her. She’s really … She’s not adjusting that well to motherhood, is she.”
“I think her hormones are still screwed up,” I said. “Once she’s back in school with her friends, she’ll probably be fine.” I didn’t really believe it. Alissa was right to be nervous about her future. None of her friends would have to run home after school to take care of a baby.
“You’re going to be such a great mother,” he said and I was glad it was so dark because I didn’t want him to see how I cringed. I’d told him I might never be able to have children. I’d been honest about it. The antirejection meds made it extremely risky. My doctor had said having children was “unlikely but not impossible” for me, and Dale seemed to have completely wiped the “unlikely” part of that sentence from his mind. “We’ll find a way,” he’d said, and I’d let it go, like I always let go of anything that might lead to conflict. I wanted children, but I would have been happy adopting. I knew from the way Dale and his parents reacted when Alissa said she wanted to place her baby up for adoption that it wasn’t an idea they’d take to easily.
I thought I heard the baby again, way in the distance, even though I was now wide-awake. I leaned away from Dale to turn on the light on my night table. The darkness was getting to me.
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