Retreat (18 page)

    
Clara stayed quiet.

    
“Oh my God,” Josie said.

    
“I saw her an hour ago in the parking lot,”
Clara said evenly.

    
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Josie said,
jumping up from the chair, her dress tangling on the arm rest.
 
“I’ve been sitting here wasting time. Where
is she now?”

    
Clara looked at her mother and wished she
hadn’t said anything. The hope in Josie’s eyes was almost too much to bear.

    
“I didn’t invite her in so I don’t know
where she is now,” Clara said.

    
“There is a difference between tough love
and just plain cruelty, Clara.”

    
“Fine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when you
got here,” she relented. “I just knew you would react this way.”

    
“She’s my daughter, Clara, no matter what
you might think of her and I owe her the same courtesy I give to you. You need
to remember that. You have your father to lean on – she only has me. If she’s
reaching out I’m going to be there for her. I’m going to see if I can find her.
If you run into her again don’t let her leave until I talk with her.” Josie was
already half way out the door.

    
“Okay. But Mom?” Clara called after her.

    
“What?” she said, spinning around
impatiently.

    
“She has a kid with her. I think she’s
about two years old.”

    
Josie stared at Clara, her eyes wide.

    
“Okay,” Josie said, shaking her head and heading
down the hall. “Okay.”
    

CHAPTER
9

    
Clara tried not to think about Rebecca or
her mother as she listened to her voicemail and returned her customers’
calls.
 
At lunch she called the cable
company and set up an appointment for installation the following week. She also
changed her address on all her bills and went online to put in her forwarding
address at the post office. Finally, she called and left a message at Marcy’s
apartment, giving her the new cell phone number and the address at the
bungalow.

    
She spent the rest of the afternoon
studying the pricing structures for alternative fuel systems that ultimately
put electricity back on the grid, giving Spritzer & Spritzer’s residential
customers who installed solar or geothermal systems a credit with the electric
company. She quickly realized that making it work was a lot more complex than
it sounded, that only certain enlightened souls at the mammoth electric company
understood the process of customers receiving credit for generating and sharing
their own environmentally sound energy, with local township supervisors even
more clueless. Every job meant hours of education and face time with a varying
slate of bureaucrats in order to get even the simplest of projects to go
through. She found herself with more questions than answers, and a lot to
discuss at the retreat, assuming they ever got around to business. She’d been
on enough corporate outings at Freedman’s to realize how little work usually
got done at these multi-day cheerleading sessions.

    
When she finally emerged from her office at
6:30
, the late-day sun had
sunk below the roof of the post office across the street. The late spring
weather was comfortably warmer than it had been even that morning. Clara breathed
deeply to capture the essence of the spring evening as she walked toward her
car. She decided to take a walk around the lake when she got home if it wasn’t
too dark.

    
 
She
was unlocking her car door when she saw them in the beat-up Toyota parked across the lot.

    
Clara walked over and knocked on the
window.

    
“What are you doing?” Clara asked when
Rebecca rolled it down.

    
“What does it look like?” her sister said,
scowling and reaching to crank the window back up.

    
“Look, Beck, I’m sorry, okay?” Clara said.
“I shouldn’t have sent you away this morning.”

    
“I don’t need a handout.”

    
Clara could tell she was fuming. “I know. I
was just afraid …”

    
“That’d I’d screw things up for you again,
I know,” Rebecca retorted, sitting up in her seat. The girl was curled up in
the passenger’s seat under a pink fleece blanket.

    
“Who’s this?” Clara asked, smiling down at
the little girl when she peeked up at her.

    
“This is my daughter, Elizabeth,” Rebecca said,
with a look that challenged Clara to even dare to ask more questions. The
little girl buried her face into the back of the seat.

    
“You don’t have anywhere you can go?” Clara
asked, still looking at the girl, who was really not much more than a baby with
her tiny little hands.

    
“We walked down to the shelter on Pine but
they said it was full. They were willing to take Elizabeth into foster care temporarily, but I
didn’t want to do that, to make her part of the system.”

    
Of course not, Clara thought. Once a child
got sucked into the foster care system it was hard to get her back out and
nearly impossible to expunge the record that she’d been there. Rebecca, who
spent a year in a foster home on and off during one of Josie’s jags, would know
that better than anyone.

    
“I don’t want that, either. But, come on,
you can’t stay in your car,” Clara said, surprised at her own insistence. This
morning she’d been fine to let Rebecca rot.

    
It was the little girl, Clara decided. She
wanted to help her. She lifted her gaze from Elizabeth’s golden hair and caught Rebecca’s
eye. “What if someone sees you out here?”

    
“Then what would you suggest?” Rebecca
replied caustically. “This seems like the best alternative to me. We can go
into the old hotel in the morning, wash up and pretend we’re staying there so
we can get the free continental breakfast. No one will question us.”

    
Clara had to admit it was a smart plan. The
hotel staff was less than observant about who came and went. She remembered
that from her brief stay there with David. They could have stayed a week in
that room instead of two days and no one would have known the difference.

    
“You can do that,” Clara said, taking a
deep breath, hardly believing what she was about to say. Apparently the little
girl was working on her subconscious or Josie’s admonishment had sunk in more
than she suspected. “Or you can come home with me.”

    
“I don’t think so,” Rebecca half-laughed,
shaking her head. “Not after the way you treated us this morning.”

    
“You have no place else to go,” Clara said
pointedly.

    
“But …”

    
“No. It’s okay. You can stay with me
tonight and then I’ll bring you back here tomorrow,” Clara said, wondering why
she was even making the offer.

    
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Rebecca
asked, casting a sideways glance at Elizabeth.

    
“Technically, yes, I do,” Clara said,
shrugging. “But if I don’t give you a place to stay Josie will kill me. She’s
been out searching for you all day. She may kill me anyway for not driving you
over to her house right now.”

    
“I can’t …” Rebecca started.

    
“You will. Come on.”
 

    
“Do you live far away?”

    
“Three miles. In Grammy’s bungalow.”

    
“She wasn’t my Grammy,” Rebecca said dryly.

    
“Right, I guess she wasn’t,” Clara said as
the breeze whipped her hair into her eyes. She brushed it away and studied
Rebecca.

    
Clara’s relationship with Grammy had always
been a sore spot for Rebecca. “So are you coming with me or not?”
    

    
“I’ll follow you,” Rebecca said.

    
“Okay.” Clara walked back to her car and
backed out. She waited for Rebecca to pull up behind her. As the old Toyota rumbled up she
realized that the little girl – Elizabeth – was still lying on the front seat
of Rebecca’s car.

    
Clara put the Acura in neutral and pulled
up on the emergency brake to keep the car from drifting out of the parking lot.
She got out and walked back to Rebecca.

    
“I can wait if you want to put her in the
car seat,” she said.

    
“Oh,” Rebecca said uneasily. “I don’t have
one.”

    
“What do you mean you don’t have one?”
Clara asked, glancing into the back seat.

    
“Hey, don’t start with me already,” Rebecca
said defensively. “It’s been a rough couple of months.”

    
“We’ll need to get her one,” Clara said. “I
need to run out tonight to pick up some groceries anyway and I can run to the
department store to pick one up.”

    
“I don’t need your charity.”

    
Clara sighed. “Yes, apparently you do. Will
you at least put her in the back and buckle her up? The airbags, Beck.”

    
“This car doesn’t have them on the
passenger’s side. It’s too old. She’s fine,” Rebecca sneered.

    
Clara looked at her sister and shook her
head. She walked back to her car and got in, driving just below the speed limit
all the way to the bungalow, petrified that Rebecca would crash with Elizabeth un-tethered in
the front seat.

    
Rebecca pulled in next to her on the grass
on the side of the bungalow. Clara got out of her car and waited for Rebecca,
but she didn’t get out. Clara walked over to find her sitting behind the
steering wheel staring straight ahead.

    
Clara leaned down and gazed into her
window.

    
“Are you coming?” she asked.

    
Rebecca shot her a dirty look. Then she
flung the door open, making Clara quickly step away.

    
“Do I have a choice?” Rebecca asked.

    
“Yes,” Clara replied, shrugging her
shoulders.

    
“I’m not an idiot you know,” Rebecca said.
“I know she needs a car seat. I just left in such a hurry that I didn’t have
one.”

    
“You don’t have a car seat in your car?”
Clara asked.

    
“Of course I do,” Rebecca said, as if Clara
were the biggest idiot going. “Usually. But this isn’t the car I normally
drive. That one broke down and I had to grab this one fast.”

    
“Whatever, Beck. Come on, let’s get you
settled in and then I’ll go to the store.”

    
Rebecca went to the trunk and unlocked it,
while Clara walked over to the passenger’s side of the car and opened the door.
Elizabeth
appeared so small sitting on the seat with her legs crossed like pretzels.

    
“Hi honey,” Clara said gently. “I’m your
Aunt Clara. Everything’s going to be okay.”

    
The little girl stared up at her.

    
“Mommy?” she called, her big brown eyes
growing wide.

    
Clara’s heart skipped.

    
“She’s right here, honey,” Clara said,
reaching down and picking her up. Her bottom felt wet.

    
“I think she may need a diaper change,”
Clara said.

    
“She doesn’t wear diapers,” Rebecca said.

    
“Well, maybe with all the excitement from
the trip she’s had a little accident,” Clara suggested.

    
“Oh,” Rebecca said. She looked at Clara and
sighed, for the first time showing signs of exhaustion. “I have some clothes
here for her.”

    
Rebecca carried two small bags up to the
porch, while Clara followed behind holding Elizabeth.

    
“You have some packages,” Rebecca said,
watching Clara maneuver up the porch steps trying to hold Elizabeth without getting her new brown suit
wet. “Three of them.”

    
Clara’s stomach lurched when she saw the three
packages there, lined up against the screen door.