Authors: A. J. Banner
The man looked around. “Where should I
. . .
?”
“Why not right on the table?” Eris said, and grinned at Theresa. “What’s the special occasion?”
“I’m not sure,” Theresa said, but she was beaming.
As the man placed the pot on the table in front of Theresa, she stared at the hydrangea with delight.
“They’re beautiful,” I said, recalling the whole hedge of hydrangea plants in the backyard on Sitka Lane. Gifts from Johnny.
He sat motionless now, watching the scene unfold.
“Thank you very much,” Theresa said to the deliveryman, who stood awkwardly in the arched entryway to the dining room.
“You’re welcome,” he said, tipping an imaginary hat. “Have a wonderful evening. I apologize for the interruption.” He left in a hurry.
Eris sat, and we were all silent a moment, admiring the blooms. “Aren’t you going to read the card?” she said.
Theresa reached for the card. We all watched her intently. She looked at Kadin and smiled. “You shouldn’t have.”
He grinned, but the grin did not reach his eyes. “They must be from your secret admirer.”
“I don’t have any secret admirers, except you.” She turned the envelope around in her hands.
“Of course you do!” Eris said. “Open the card. You don’t have to tell us what it says.”
“I don’t mind,” Theresa said. She opened the card and read it in silence, then she smiled. “It says,
To an incredibly talented woman. A token of my appreciation for you only, and only you.”
I froze, the words sharp, hanging in my mind like stalactites in an ice cave. Could more than one couple in the world share the same intimate expression? It wasn’t exactly the same. But what were the chances? Theresa had received a hydrangea, Johnny’s first present to me.
A clear truth struck me then.
None of this was meant to happen here, at Eris’s house
. The plant was meant to go to Theresa, while her husband was away. I looked around at each person, seeking a sign that anyone else was thinking what I was thinking. They were all smiling. Perhaps I was the only paranoid person in the room. The concussion had done a number on my brain.
Theresa flung her arms around Kadin’s neck, kissing him on the lips. “Thank you, sweetie!”
He remained stiff, unyielding. When she let go of him, a shadow of confusion crossed his face, and then he took the card from Theresa and read it to himself, then gave the card back to her. “You’re welcome.”
“What’s the occasion?” Eris said. “Are you going to spill? Birthday? Anniversary?”
Theresa looked down at her hands in her lap, and her face turned a deep shade of pink. She looked up at Kadin, and he nodded slightly, as if giving her permission to speak. She smiled shyly at everyone and bit her lip.
“It’s been a secret the last couple of months, until we could be sure things were going well. And they are, so we can tell you. Kadin and I are expecting our second child in the spring.”
“What? Congratulations!” Eris exclaimed. She burst up from the table and ran around to hug Theresa and Kadin. He smiled distantly. Congratulations were dispensed all around, and even I got up to hug Theresa and Kadin, although I had only just met them. I was happy for Theresa, happy for her good news, but her pregnancy also accentuated my own emptiness. My throat felt parched, but I kept smiling—what else could I do?
Johnny smiled in his magnetic way and raised his wineglass. “A toast,” he said grandly. “To romance, new neighbors, and happy family surprises.”
“A toast,” everyone said and raised their glasses in unison.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When I arrived at Harriet’s house in the afternoon, the neatness had fallen victim to the whims of a little girl who had spilled juice on the carpet, left a sprinkling of crumbs on the countertop, and pulled picture books off the shelves. Her greasy fingerprints had christened every available surface, including the remote control for the television, doorknobs, and the kitchen table. A dusting of flour on the countertops hinted at a recent baking experiment. Puzzle pieces were scattered on the coffee table, a jungle animal tableau beginning to form from chaos.
Harriet had left in a hurry, late for her appointment, with vague instructions to let Mia take a nap if she needed one, to give her animal crackers and juice if she got hungry. She sat on the living room carpet, a jumble of crayons laid out on the coffee table, scribbling in a Disney princess coloring book with her tongue protruding from her mouth. Her hair looked more jaggedly cut today, as if a miniature lawnmower had gone berserk on her head.
I sat on the couch, distracted. When Johnny and I had returned to the cottage the previous night, I’d mentioned the note in the hydrangea, its phrasing similar to the words we had shared for nearly three years. Johnny had denied knowing anything about the flower delivery. Why would he? He’d apologized for not sending me flowers, and in the morning, he’d brought me coffee with plain soy milk. He knew exactly what I liked. Browned toast, never burned. Smooth, creamy peanut butter, no salt added.
“Look, the queen’s eyes are . . . purple!” Mia was coloring outside the lines, creating new shapes beyond the Disney boundaries.
“Good for her,” I said.
Mia dropped the purple crayon, picked up indigo, began coloring in the princess’s gown. “And blue.”
“You know your colors.”
“This picture is for my mommy.” Mia ripped the page out of the coloring book and held it up for me to see.
I smiled sadly. “Beautiful.”
Mia turned the page to the outlines of happy bunnies and fawns. “This one is for my daddy.”
“It’s nice that everyone gets a picture.”
“Nana, too,” Mia said solemnly.
“Nana, too.” Monique survived in the flourish of Mia’s arm as she reached for a green crayon to color the trees. She drew a little heart and a few squiggles above the forest. “And one for you.”
“Thank you,” I said softly.
She pointed to the squiggles. “It says ‘I love you.’”
“I love you, too, sweetie.”
She grinned at me, then flipped the page again. “One for my teacher.”
“You can’t forget your teacher!” With a sting of tears in my eyes, I got up and organized the books on the shelves, straightening up. Harriet’s room, right across from Mia’s, was still tidy—frilly rose bedspread, pink curtains, even a dressing table with a rose carving on the wood above the mirror.
In the guest room across the hall, a single bed was pushed up against the wall, a sewing table and machine in the opposite corner, fabric and patterns piled on a chair next to a desk and a filing cabinet. I checked back on Mia again. She was still coloring, so I returned to the guest room, drawn by the stack of papers, sympathy cards, and files on the desk. Aware of my nosiness, and touched by guilt, I nevertheless looked through the cards from doctors, teachers, Harriet’s old friends, her family on the East Coast. A manila folder caught my eye. It was labeled “Mia.” Inside were copies of Mia’s medical records, and beneath the medical records, a copy of her birth certificate. Mia had weighed seven pounds, one ounce. She had been born at 2:35 a.m. at Cove Hospital on February 13. Her mother was Monique Beaumont, but no father was listed. Not even a blank line for the father’s name.
Nothing at all.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
On the drive back to Shadow Bluff Lane, I found myself making a detour, turning into Eris’s driveway. I tried to process what I had just learned about Mia. I’d assumed Chad was her biological father, but what if my assumption had been wrong? Monique had mentioned a quick wedding four years ago, which meant Mia might have already been born when Monique and Chad had tied the knot. In any case, Mia’s parentage was nobody’s business.
When Harriet had returned home, she’d asked me to take Mia for the night the following weekend. She had to return to the hospital for more extensive tests. She’d looked drawn and tired, like a walking wisp.
I had agreed. But we didn’t own any toys or books, and there was no place for Mia to sleep in the cottage, so I’d called Eris to ask if we could borrow an extra bed, and now, when I approached the newly painted porch, I found Todd Severson working on the railing, hammer in hand. His dark hair, the angles of his face, seemed to absorb the sunlight.
“Go on, she’s upstairs exercising,” he said. He gave me a long, penetrating look.
“Thanks,” I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t disturb her?”
He sat back on his heels. “You gonna carry the bed yourself?”
My cheeks flushed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s heavy. She said I should help you out.”
“I appreciate that. I wanted to ask you what you meant—”
“About what?”
“You were about to tell me something before.”
“Nope. Don’t remember that.” He returned to hammering again.
Fine, then. Maybe he had nothing to tell me. I opened the heavy front door and went inside. Eris’s house felt cool, drafty. The overwhelming smell of orange polish wafted through the air, a reminder of Sunday mornings on Sitka Lane, when I’d made freshly squeezed orange juice. The memory followed me up the wide staircase to the second floor.
A thumping, repetitive drumbeat came from a room at the end of the hall. Several framed photos lined the walls. Landscapes—forest and ocean vistas—and a photograph of Eris as a teenager, standing between a man and woman with kind faces, probably her parents. Soft, classical music emanated from a room to my left. I knocked, but nobody answered. The door was locked. I waited a moment, listening. Opposite kinds of music were coming from the other end of the hall.
The drumbeat stopped, and Eris emerged. “Sarah! I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Sorry—I—Todd said to—”
“Of course. The bed.” Eris smiled as she strode toward me, springing on the balls of her feet. She nodded at the room with the locked door. “That’s my quiet room. I was in my Zumba room.” Her skintight Lycra exercise pants shone, a sweatband around her forehead. “Come on. Follow me.” Eris led me across the hall, into an extra bedroom that had become a storage room. She dragged out a cot from behind a large framed photograph of the Seattle Space Needle. “Camp cot, see, folds out.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I appreciate this.”
“I was saving this for my boyfriend. I think he would love camping.” She winked at me as we maneuvered the cot past obstacles toward the door.
“Oh? A boyfriend?”
Eris gave me a conspiratorial look. “Don’t tell anyone. I’m still in the middle of my divorce. I know, I move fast.”
I smiled. “Good for you. Congratulations.”
“He’s still caught up in difficult entanglements. But the pieces will fall into place, and we’ll be together.” She reached the door, shouldered it open.
“I hope everything goes smoothly.”
“So do I.”
We carried the cot downstairs and out onto the deck. The bed felt surprisingly heavy. Todd hoisted the cot over his shoulder and strode to his blue truck.
“I could meet you over there later, if you have time for a walk in the woods?” Eris said. “I could show you the trail to the river.”
“Great. I’ll see you there.”
I waved good-bye to Eris and drove back to the cottage, with Todd following in his truck. He took the cot inside and set it up for me in the extra bedroom. He picked up a photograph from the table. It was a picture of Monique, Chad, Johnny, and me skating on the only ice rink in town, two winters earlier. I’d forgotten about the photo. Johnny had kept it in his wallet. Todd stared at the picture and frowned, sadness in his eyes. “The fire burned so damned hot.” I could almost see the flames reflected in his eyes. Then his face crumpled, and a tear slipped down his cheek.
I had no idea what to say. A stranger had never fallen apart in front of me. “I’m sorry” was all I could manage. “You did the best you could.”
“Yeah.” He wiped his eyes and strode to the door, his face red with embarrassment. “Sorry. That was crazy.”
“Don’t worry. It’s okay. We’re all human.”
He opened the door, then looked back at me. “You got a house yet?” He looked toward the Minkowskis’ A-frame, then back at me.
“No. Why?”
“When you get a house, move as far from this town as you can.”
“Why would we want to do that?” Numbness spread inward from my fingertips. “Do you know something about the fire? Why would we want to leave town?”
He seemed to snap out of his trance. He looked at me, his eyes bloodshot, haunted. “If I was you, and I knew some crazy asshole was trying to burn me down, I’d want to get the heck out of Dodge.” He strode to his truck, and I ran after him.
“Is that what you wanted to tell me before?”
He got in, started the engine with the door still open. “Don’t tell anyone I said that, okay?”
“But why?”
He sighed, closing the door. He rolled the window down. “All’s I know is, if it was me, I would be gone.” And then he was.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“But you and Johnny can’t leave town!” Eris had come over to take me for a hike. She wore a heavy knit sweater, hiking slacks, and boots. Even in outdoor gear, she looked perfectly dressed, like a catalogue model for L.L.Bean.
“Why do you think Todd would say that?” I felt ordinary in a heavy red sweater, jeans, and running shoes.
“He knows arsonists try again. Happened once on his watch. Jealous boyfriend tried to burn down his girlfriend’s house, succeeded the second time, before they caught him. Todd was called out on that incident.”
“That might explain things. But who knows what the motive was for the fire on Sitka Lane?”
“He’s being protective. He has a soft side to him. The day after the fire, he didn’t come over to work on the deck. He said he wasn’t feeling well.”
“The poor man. He shouldn’t feel responsible.”
“He shouldn’t, but
. . .
it wears on him.”
“I left a message for the fire marshal. I thought he should know about my conversation with Todd.”
Eris nodded thoughtfully as she led me across the street, into the cool, crisp day. The edges of the clouds glowed, but there was still no sign of rain. We passed the Minkowskis’ house, the garden strewn with toys and a small bicycle. The cars were gone. Then Eris veered right, into the thickest part of the woods.
“The trail widens a ways down,” she said, “but for now, we have to walk single file.”
I followed her, watching her jerky, athletic strides, her determination, as if she were late for an appointment.
As the road disappeared behind us, we seemed suddenly to enter deep wilderness, miles from civilization, the birds twittering, clicks and chirps beneath the huckleberry bushes. The smells of the forest pulled me back to childhood, when I’d spent much of my time in the woods, looking for wildlife, little field mice and caterpillars, writing notes in my journal. In my new journal, a postfire diary, I’d started jotting notes, emotions, impressions.
The rush of the river grew closer, louder beyond the thick forest of firs and cedars.
“This whole area is greenbelt,” Eris called over her shoulder. “The Shadow Cove reserve right down to the river.”
“Beautiful!” I shouted back. The trail was wide enough now for me to catch up and fall into step beside her. The air smelled of leaves and moss, sweet and clean.
“What happened with Todd’s wife?” I asked.
“Up and left him. He was so in love with her when they first met, he said, but then she changed. Do we change after we’re married?”
“Johnny and I stayed pretty much the same, I think.” But did we?
“How did the two of you meet?” Eris stopped at the high bank of the river. The dark water flowed below in complex currents.
“Annual polar bear plunge. He’s got a T-shirt commemorating the occasion.”
Eris grinned, her face lighting up. “I love the plunge. I’ve done it twice, got a T-shirt, too.”
“You’re brave. I never had the guts to make the leap. The water’s too cold. But I watched other brave souls dive in.” I shivered at the memory. “I gave Johnny a beach towel. He’d forgotten his. Can you believe it? That was how we started talking.”
“Over ice water. Romantic. I met my ex-husband at the county fair on the hippo ride. We squeezed into the same booth. The other booths were all taken. I held on to him as the darned thing swung around and around.”
“That’s quite a story; trumps mine.”
“I specialize in trumping.” We followed the meandering trail along the high bank, the occasional path branching off down toward the river. “In the end, stories didn’t help us,” she continued after a bit. “We’re still mired in our nasty divorce.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s better this way. We weren’t meant to be together.”
Were Johnny and I meant to be together? I’d accepted his marriage proposal after much thought, after we’d fallen deeply, irrevocably, fiercely in love. But now I wondered, had I waited long enough? It would not do to entertain any questions. Not when we’d lost everything and needed to be strong together.
Eris led me to a spectacular waterfall. A spray of white water cast a mist through the air, a faint rainbow hovering in the sky. The river dropped off precipitously here, churning at the bottom of the rocky falls, then grew calmer a distance downstream.
She pointed out a narrow trail offshoot up on the right. “That way goes to the Minkowskis’ place. You have to remember all the turns. I accidentally went that way once and eventually got dumped into their garden. I’ve practiced retracing the route. Easy to get lost on the way.” The entrance to the trail was marked by a lush wild rhododendron.
“Johnny would love this trail,” I said.
“Oh, he already knows it. This is where I saw him that day he was running.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I was a ways behind him. Couldn’t catch up. But when I got to the end of the route, there he was, in the Minkowskis’ garden, chatting with Theresa.”
“Maybe he had gotten lost. You know, guys hate to ask for directions until it’s too late.”
We both laughed, but my laughter felt forced. The air grew colder, the breeze turning into a strong wind. Yes, Johnny had done exactly what Eris had done. He’d gotten lost, wandered off onto the wrong trail, the one that circuitously led to the Minkowskis’ yard, entirely by accident.