The Lost Daughter (46 page)

The man scrutinized her, then broke into a smile. “I can’t believe I haven’t bumped into you again,” he said. “I’m your old boyfriend, remember?”

Brooke’s hand froze in a moment of wild confusion.

“Tad Horgan,” he said, squeezing and then releasing her hand. “And this is Jason? You said I reminded you of your old sweetheart. My legs did, anyhow.” He made a lame attempt to pull up the cuff of his pants.

“Da-ad,” said the boy.

“I remember now.” Instinctively, Brooke put a hand on her belly. No one but Shanita would be able to tell yet that she was pregnant. But the slight swelling reminded her how far she had traveled since August. “You must have thought I was flirting with you.”

“Can’t blame you, with these legs. Made a point of covering up this time.”

The laugh Brooke tried to hold in came out as a snort. “And is this guy following in his dad’s footsteps?” she said when she had recovered.

“Playing soccer? You bet. In fact, I think we’ve seen that champ of yours on the field.”

“Dad, she’s on my team!” Jason shook his father’s elbow. “She passed the ball to me last Saturday, remember? And I scored?”

“Scored, huh?” said Tad. “Cooties gone, I guess.”

“So what brings you to Lorenzo’s, Tad?”

He sighed. “My wife wants landscaping. And she wants it before the pool season opens and I disappear.”

Pools, Brooke remembered—Tad installed swimming pools.

“And
I
said no pansies!” Jason added.

“Well, we’ve got a lot of pansies,” Brooke admitted. “But there’s dianthus, too, and snapdragons, and of course the spring bulbs, but you’re too late for those.”

She took them around the grounds. She
had
flirted with Tad Horgan, last summer. How far away it seemed, that time when a pair of muscular legs put her in mind of Alex Frazier. Tad seemed a nice guy, quick to let things pass. And when she thought of Alex, she no longer thought of his teenaged body but of the e-mails she’d started getting, every couple of weeks since January. Brussels, he wrote, was a strange, twisted place in a disguise of dullness. He was brushing off his high school French in hopes of getting away from the Americans. He had a little place in the Ixelles district, near some good jazz haunts. If the rain ever let up, he might check out the old-men’s soccer scene. He struggled with depression, sometimes. But he was happier than he had been in Boston; he could imagine settling—he did not say marrying, but the hint was dropped—in Belgium. He did not mention the money he was sending Najda, and Brooke did not ask. She did report what she had heard from Ziadek about Luisa’s coach, and she described Najda’s victory over the school system, her new life at Crosby. To these updates Alex never responded directly. But the e-mails kept coming, like green shoots emerging in springtime,
hints of a garden they might one day call friendship. Soon, Brooke thought, she would divulge her pregnancy. And she would tell Sean—yes, she would—that she was writing Alex.

She waved Tad off with a trunkful of sweet William, snapdragon, and even some macho-looking dark pansies. With Jasper and Eddie, she covered the flats of flowers against the night cold. Before she locked up, she called home. “Mommy, Mommy,” Meghan said when she picked up. “Katarina called. And Daddy says I can take piano lessons instead of ballet.” Meghan had lost another tooth and had trouble with
s
.
Lessons
came out as “lethenth.” Brooke adored it.

“I thought you liked ballet,” she said. “Why did Katarina call?”

“I don’t like it anymore. Madame made me sit on the piano. Daddy plays the piano, he says he’ll teach me to start. In case I don’t like it. Jackie plays the violin. She goes to Suzuki. When are you coming home?”

“That’s why I called. I’m meeting a friend after work. I’ll be home a little late. Are you and Daddy okay?”

“Daddy’s doing homework. Can I take piano?”

“If Daddy’s willing to get you started, sure. Why did Katarina call?”

“I don’t know. Can we call the baby Katarina? If it’s a girl?”

“I’ll have to think about that. Why do you like the name Katarina?”

“Because she’s strong. And she has red hair. Or else we could call her Tiffany.”

“If it’s a girl. Can you get Daddy to the phone a sec?”

Katarina had called, Sean explained, to report that Ziadek would visit Najda one last time, then go into hospice. He could last as long as a month; he could be gone in ten days. He had asked to see Brooke. “She wasn’t thrilled to be relaying any of this,” Sean said. “But she loves her dad. She’s carrying out his wishes.”

“I’ll go then. Over the weekend maybe. You?”

“He didn’t ask for me. I’ll stay here with Meghan. She’s got soccer.”

Brooke sat on the stoop of the flower shop as the sky darkened. The smell of spring hung in the air—old molds unearthed, thawed manure, upturned soil. She had begun, just barely, to believe in her good fortune. What a resilient daughter she had in Meghan—a kid who spoke out, who acted out, who let you know what she wanted, even if that changed from hour to hour. And Sean. She had sat at the back of the hall during the chorale’s last rehearsal before tech week, when Sean as the Evangelist led the rest of the singers through the Bach oratorio. What courage he possessed, and grace. And he loved her. With all her failings and flaws, he loved her beyond measure.

Then there was Najda, who might forgive her one day and the next bring her to judgment. But she had hope, a future, a chance at happiness. Who was it, who had said the past wasn’t dead—that it wasn’t even past? The spring stench of living things waking from the fetid earth made that truth plain enough. The same held for the way Brooke felt, in moments like this, when her thoughts floated and came to rest on the daughter she had discovered. The ache in her heart never went away. It visited her again and again. It would occupy its wounded space as long as she lived, as long as she and Alex and Najda held the past in their bodies.

And in her own body, tiny life. There were no spirit children. She knew that now. They neither waited to be born nor hovered in the ether, making judgment calls. There were only children, rushing into this world in a tumult of blood, seizing their brief season.

A sliver of moon appeared above the line of spruce at the edge of the nursery. Brooke rose and started her car, to visit Shanita at her new home.

READERS GUIDE

T
HE
L
OST
D
AUGHTER

NOTES

Notes

Notes