Lifelines: Kate's Story (31 page)

She
couldn’t think about that, not now. First she needed the peace she would find
in her father’s study. She fitted her hand on the doorknob and opened his door.

“T
here’s
a car in your drive,” said Mac. “A Mercedes.”

“It’s
Jennifer.” Kate wanted to demand Mac stop here, halfway up the drive, and let
her out so Jennifer wouldn’t see him.

“Are
you OK?” he asked as he stopped the truck.

“Yes.”
At the very least, she needed to act like a grownup. “It’s my daughter’s car,
and I feel a bit—awkward.”

“Do
you want me to let you out here?”

“Thank
you, but no.” She let out an explosive breath. “Life is so complicated. When I
was twenty I had no idea.”

“When
I was thirty I had no idea.”

They
shared a smile and she realized she could handle whatever Jennifer had to say
about a man in a truck delivering her mother home at four in the morning.

“Drive
me up to the house, Mac.”

“You’re
sure?”

She
nodded and he smiled, and she wondered why nothing seemed to need explaining to
him, as if they’d started on the same wavelength, or knew each other well in
another time.

Reincarnation
now?

“Do
you want to skip dinner tonight?”

“Probably.
With Jennifer here...”

“Call
me?”

“I
will.” She felt Socrates shift against her legs when she turned to grip Mac’s
shirt with one hand. She kissed him full on the lips. “I had a wonderful time.”

When
she and Socrates got out of the truck, Mac watched her, one hand on the
gearshift, waiting before he reversed down the drive. She realized that he
intended to wait until she was safely inside the house. They signaled each
other a final good-bye with mutually lifted hands, then she headed for
Jennifer.

With
luck her daughter would be asleep.

Kate
rejected that thought with its implied need to hide Mac from Jennifer. She
opened the door, which wasn’t locked—probably a sign that Jennifer was still
awake. Behind her, the gravel crunched as Mac’s truck reversed down the drive.
In her belly, a satisfied-woman muscle flexed. Any woman who could do what
she’d done last night, could have no doubt she was alive, here and now on this
earth.

Three
months ago, she’d been one of the walking dead, and had almost killed herself
on black ice. She’d come back to life now, and whatever happened she wasn’t
about to turn back.

The
reading lamp beside David’s chair bathed the room in soft light, and revealed
the girl asleep on the sofa. The
woman
sleeping on the sofa, Kate
corrected as she walked closer. Jennifer lay on her stomach, her head pillowed
on one arm, face turned towards Kate. Monstrous dark shadows garnished her
closed eyes. Her hair clumped damply, as if she’d showered but hadn’t dried
fully. She’d been crying.

Something’s
happened.

She
needed me and I wasn’t here.

“Jennifer?
Honey?”

She
mumbled incoherently, and the muscles around her eyes convulsed. Kate
finger-combed her daughter’s damp hair, but Jennifer didn’t respond.

“Honey,
are you all right?”

In
the bathroom, Kate found a towel on the floor with a heap of clothes stinking
of alcohol. Kate took a fresh towel from the shelf and returned to the living
room. She passed the empty decanter on the end of the kitchen counter under the
telephone.

Something
was very wrong. If only Kate had come home last night instead of having sex
with a younger man while her daughter sobbed on the sofa.

Kate
shed her running shoes in the corridor and knelt beside the sofa. “Wake up,
honey. If we don’t do something about your hair, you’ll catch cold.”

Jennifer
turned her head away from the sound and Kate saw a partly-filled glass of
whiskey on the table by David’s chair, a wet stain beside it.

“Jennifer,
I’m here now. Mom’s here.”

She
was so drunk she wouldn’t rouse, so Kate patted and rubbed her damp hair with
the towel. After a while, Jennifer began to mumble. When she flipped herself
onto her back, Kate’s terry housecoat fell away to reveal the smooth curves of
a woman’s breast and belly. Kate tried to tie the robe, but Jennifer mumbled
protest.

Kate
went to the linen closet and brought back a fluffy comforter, which she laid
over her daughter.

“Alain?”
Jennifer’s voice sounded clear and excited. “Alain, is that you? I’ve waited so
long. You promised ...”

“Honey,
it’s not Alain. It’s Mom.” Of course it would be a man. Jennifer was a woman,
and Alain—whoever he was—had hurt her. 

Jennifer
froze under her mother’s hand. Then she whispered, “I thought—I dreamed...”

“It’s
me, darling.” She smoothed Jennifer’s brow rhythmically.

“Mom?”
Her voice sounded so fragile Kate felt tears flood to her eyes.

“Yes,
it’s me, Jennifer.”

Jennifer
shuddered and Kate gathered her close, kneeling on the floor, her daughter
half-lying and half-sitting in her arms, sobbing as if her heart were broken. A
wave of weariness washed over Kate. What was God thinking of, jumbling things
together like this? She’d had a great day, a wonderful half-night with Mac,
then smash into crisis when she’d intended to float around the house savoring the
sensation of being alive.

“It’s
all right, honey.” She stroked Jennifer’s hair gently. “I’m here. Everything
will be all right now.”

A
n hour
later, Kate wished she could tell Jennifer how good it felt to hold her in her
arms again. But the time was wrong, Jennifer confessing her sins and Kate
guilty that despite feeling her daughter’s pain, and despite this secret joy at
their reunion, she resented Jennifer’s intrusion into the afterglow of Mac.

Jennifer
gulped and pulled away. “Tell me what to do, Mom.”

Kate
stroked her hair back again. “You know what you have to do, darling.”

“I
can’t go to the hospital.” Tears spilled onto Jennifer’s cheeks. “I can’t bear
knowing what I’ve done, and no one would let me see her. She’s in a coma. I
can’t bear it.”

The
look in Jennifer’s eyes pulled at Kate’s heartstrings. “You’re exhausted. You
need food, sleep. Come into the kitchen and I’ll make you some toast, then
you’re going up to bed for a few hours. Anything you need to do can be done
after you’ve slept.”

The
relief on her daughter’s face made Kate ache. She would return with Jennifer to
Seattle. They would drive up this evening, after Jennifer slept. Thankfully
today was Monday, so Kate had no clients. If Jennifer needed her to stay in
Seattle, she would cancel Tuesday’s clients.

Kate
guided Jennifer to the kitchen where she offered milk, toast, and peanut
butter. Her daughter ate silently, then climbed the stairs at Kate’s side with
the automatic obedience of a toddler.

She
stopped in her bedroom doorway. The sky spilled pre-dawn light over the bed
Jennifer had used since she graduated from her crib. “My easel’s gone.”

“It’s
downstairs.”

“Dad’s
office. It’s there, isn’t it? I went in and—everything’s gone. His books and ...
all his books. What did you do with his books? Did you throw them away?”

“We’ll
talk about this later, Jennifer. You need to rest, to sleep.”

Jennifer’s
body vibrated with distress. “You took everything—his desk, what did you do
with his desk? How could you take everything of dad’s and just get rid of it?
How could you?”

“His
desk is in the spare bedroom. His books are in boxes in my car.”

“Your
car?” She spoke as if Kate had burned the books in the incinerator.

“I’m
giving them to the library.”

“What
about me? He’s my father. Did you stop to think I might want them? Are you
going to destroy everything, tear it out, leave me with nothing?”

Kate
touched her daughter to soothe, but Jennifer shrugged the touch away. She’d
torn the office apart, a personal catharsis, a rejection of grieving, but she’d
never once thought what it would mean to Jennifer.

“I’m
sorry. I didn’t realize you cared about the books.”

“They
were his! My father’s.”

“If
you want them, of course you can have them.”

Jennifer
escaped to the window. “You weren’t here when I came.” Her voice bit across the
memory of the embrace they’d shared downstairs. “I saw your car, but where were
you?”

“With
a friend.”

“Who?”

It’s
none of your business.

Hold
your temper, Kate.

“His
name’s Mac.”

“Mac?”
Jennifer turned her back to the window and her hands gripped the windowsill.
She looked like a disapproving mother, and suddenly Kate saw her daughter, who
had wanted so desperately to be pregnant by her lover, transported into the
future. Married, a mother herself, frowning in judgment at her own daughter.

Jennifer
would take to motherhood with enthusiasm.

“Nobody
is named Mac. That’s not a real name. What’s his real name?”

Kate
couldn’t help smiling. Mac probably
was
a nickname. His accent might be
Scots, and his last name something like Mackenzie or MacDougal. She thought of
her own father questioning her about John, her high school boyfriend: What kind
of name is John? Doesn’t he have a real name?

“Doesn’t
he have a real name?” demanded Jennifer again, grasping at any distraction to
forget Alain’s wife lying in coma.

“I
only know him as Mac. He’s a friend.”

“It’s
the middle of the night. Where were you?”

“We
went sailing.”

“Sailing?”
Jennifer shuddered. “I can smell
sex
on you. You were—you had
sex
with
another man. What about my father? How could you do this to Dad?”

Behind
her, Kate heard the sound of Socrates’ toenails on the stairs. Socrates.
David’s dog.
How could you, Kate?

“Jennifer—”

Her
daughter spun away and tossed her long hair angrily. “Don’t—don’t touch me!”

“Jennifer,
your father is dead.”

“How
can you—”

“Socrates
still waits for David to return, but he’s not coming back. He’s gone and we’re
still here. He’s dead.”

Jennifer
give a choked sob and Kate realized how harsh and unfeeling she must sound.
“Darling, sometimes I feel so lonely I can’t bear to move through the day. It’s
not easy, but we need to build our lives without your father.”

Jennifer
crumpled on the bed and rolled away to face the wall.

When
Socrates arrived to lean against Kate’s leg, she picked him up and lifted him
onto the bed. The dog crawled into Jennifer’s arms, and Kate reached for the
comforter at the foot of the bed. She tucked it around her daughter and her
dead husband’s dog.

Jennifer,
face buried in Socrates gray fur, muttered, “I don’t have to meet him, do I?
I’ll hate him.”

“Right
now, you don’t need to do anything but sleep.”

Kate
watched them for a long moment, and then she left dog and daughter to comfort
each other. Downstairs, she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. Too early to
phone Evelyn and warn her she wouldn’t be over for lunch today. Not that her
mother would care. After all, last time her mother had all but physically
kicked her out for interfering between her and her boyfriend.

Kate
disliked the parallel—she and Jennifer both disapproved of their mothers’
boyfriends. But Jennifer’s prejudice involved a man she’d never met, while Kate
worried about a man with a criminal record, who had borrowed ten thousand from
her mother.

Kate
headed for the shower to wash the smell of sex from her body, telling herself
she mustn’t let her grown daughter make her feel guilty about Mac. If Jennifer
at twenty could cry about being all alone, what about Kate who had lost her
husband of twenty-five years?

She
soaped her breasts and her belly and the folds of sensitive flesh between her
legs. She’d felt like a young woman in Mac’s arms, or if not young, then
ageless. Disconnected from her body in the way only orgasm could achieve. But
she wasn’t young, and she knew last night wouldn’t translate into everyday
reality. Mac would look at her and compare her to his young wife, or she’d look
and he’d suddenly be mixed up with David in her mind.