Things Remembered (29 page)

“She's putting up a good front, but she's exhausted, and that's not good for her or the baby.”

A warning chill went through Karla. “I thought everything was all right with this pregnancy.”

“That's what Heather wanted you to think. She didn't see any sense in having the whole family worried over something they couldn't do anything about.”

“Is it the same thing she had last time?”

“Yes.”

“Then she lied to me.” Karla had asked Heather the result of her ultrasounds, and Heather had told her that the placenta was where it should be with this pregnancy. With Jason it had been low, between him and the birth canal. She'd damn near died before they could get Jason delivered by cesarean section and stop her hemorrhaging. Another few minutes and they would have had to perform a hysterectomy. Now Karla wondered if that wouldn't have been better. No pregnancy was worth her sister's life.

Karla didn't look at Bill. If she saw confirmation of the fear she heard in his voice, she wouldn't be able to keep up the pretense if Heather happened to look their way. “I can't believe the doctor let her come. Or that
you
did.”

“She'll be furious if she finds out I told you.”

“I won't say anything,” she reluctantly promised. What she'd like to do was give them both hell for taking such a foolish chance with Heather's life.

“I don't understand why she put herself at risk again when she knows how much you and Jason and Jamie need her. It doesn't make sense.”

“I've said the same thing to myself a hundred times. I can't believe I agreed to have another child, but you know how persuasive Heather can be when she wants something. At the time it made a crazy kind of sense, now I can't imagine that I fell for it.”

“What could possibly matter more than her health?”

Bill rubbed the back of his neck as he considered how to answer her. “Heather heard about a DNA strand, or something like that. Only women have it, and it's passed from mother to daughter. If the link is broken, it's gone forever. She became obsessed with not letting that happen. She talked to the doctor and convinced him—and me, I should add—that she could manage one more pregnancy. If it was a boy, she promised she wouldn't try again, but she wanted this one chance for a daughter. She kept reminding me that it wasn't a hundred percent that she would have the placenta previa again.”

As much as Karla wanted to vent her frustration over the risk they'd taken, in the end, it was their decision. She had no right to tell them they were wrong. “And one of the things she's not supposed to do is get overly tired.”

“She's actually supposed to be in bed as much as possible,” Bill said, relief heavy in his voice.

“Give me a few minutes to come up with something.”

“Thanks, Karla. I owe you one.”

“If there's a debt to be paid, it's mine.” Heather was carrying the baby she so desperately wanted. The deed was done. She and Bill needed her support, not her criticism. “I couldn't ask for anyone better to love my sister. You've given her everything I could wish for her, and a love I never imagined.” She desperately wanted to tell him to take care of Heather and to keep her safe, but knew the words were unnecessary. Heather couldn't be in better hands.

Chapter

21

Y
ou want to tell me what we're really doing on this trip?” Anna said, her hand resting on the padded shoulder strap.

Karla wasn't surprised at the question, only that it hadn't come sooner. “I told you, I wanted to give you an early Christmas present.”

“The
real
reason.”

Anna wasn't going to let go, nor would she accept a pat answer. “Bill thought Heather was overdoing it and figured the only way to get her to rest was to take her home.”

“Now that makes sense.” Anna's fingers moved in a waving motion to the child in the car next to theirs. The little boy giggled and ducked out of sight, then popped up again, his tongue stuck out. Anna stuck her tongue out, too.

“Whatever the reason we're here, it's nice to get away for a while.”

Karla had packed a lunch and brought a blanket and pillow for Anna's afternoon nap, planning to bed her down in the back seat if she refused to fall asleep sitting up. She'd never intended for her and Anna to actually take the trip over to the ocean, it was simply a way to get Heather to leave. But once set in motion, the idea had taken on a life of its own. Anna had been up and ready to leave that morning before Karla had poured her first cup of coffee.

“You do realize your sister is a little put out with you,” Anna said. “She had a whole list of plans for today.”

“I expected as much.” Heather's possessiveness where Anna was concerned would have been laughable if she weren't so serious. “She'll get over it.”

“Have you heard from Grace?”

Karla was tempted to lie, nothing big, just enough to ease Anna's mind. “No, but then I really didn't expect to. She knows the one sure way to get to me is with silence. She's probably sitting there waiting for me to call.”

“Can you just cut her off like that?”

“I don't know.” Karla glanced in the rearview mirror to check traffic before exiting for Petaluma. “I feel like I'm caught in one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situations. No answer feels like the right one.” She glanced at Anna. “What do you think?”

“Remember, I'm the one who sent Grace all those rent checks. I helped create the problem.”

“What is it with us? I don't think anyone would ever consider either one of us a soft touch, and look what we did.”

In spite of the context, the “us” pleased Anna. It was another example of the small, daily gifts Karla unknowingly gave her. Like this trip. She didn't mind in the least how it had come about. Karla could have found a dozen different ways to accomplish her goal of getting Heather to go home. Instead she chose one that meant something special to Anna. She would see her ocean one last time. She would feel the wind against her face and smell the salty air. And she would create a memory with her beloved first granddaughter that maybe someday Karla would look back on as a gift in return.

She'd taken this drive a hundred times and never tired of the journey. The coastal mountains between Sacramento and Bodega Bay were benign cousins of the Sierra, no more than softly rolling hills by comparison. But they provided the valleys and slopes that produced the grapes made into wines known around the world.

A thick carpet of green grew beneath the brown of last summer's grasses. By February, the hills would be on their way to spring, the mustard showing promise of the brilliant yellow soon to take over the fields and vineyards. As they neared the coast, the grapes gave way to pastures and dairy farms, the sunshine to fog.

“You may not get to see the ocean after all,” Karla said.

“We'll find a clear place. And if not, we'll enjoy the fog. I'm content just to be here. I don't need vistas.” She reached up to touch the soft pad that rested on her shoulder, not because it was in the way, but because she liked knowing why it was there. “Did I remember to thank you for buying this for me?”

“You did.”

“There's something I wanted to talk to you about before everyone got to the house, but it never seemed the right time.” What she would say was hard because it would put Karla in an awkward position, but she'd told the lawyer that she had one more part of the will to finish and it couldn't be completed until she talked to Karla. “I know you started out telling me you didn't want to be in my will.” She chuckled softly. “Of course that was back when you thought I had something of value to leave.”

“I'm sorry you had to sell your house, but you have no idea how much easier that makes all of this for me. I only wish you'd told me a long time ago.”

“For Grace, you mean?”

“For me. Mom used to say there were two kinds of people in the world, givers and takers, and that they both needed each other to survive. A marriage worked best if there was one of each. It could survive with two givers, but was doomed with two takers. You're a giver, and I've decided I am, too. I've taken the long road to a short point, but if I'd known you were going to sell the house, I would have stopped you. More important than that, even, I would have known about the money and I like to think I wouldn't have wasted all this time being angry.” She glanced at Anna. “Does that make sense?”

“I thought we decided we weren't going to dwell on the past.”

“See, there you go, giving your forgiveness before I'm done with my apology.”

“There's a way you can make everything up to me.”

“I'm almost afraid to ask.”

“There are some things at the house that I want you to have. They belonged to my mother. Some of them were given to her by her mother. I've saved them for you, even knowing you probably wouldn't want them.”

“What kind of things?”

“Useless for the most part. Linens and glassware. Nothing of any value except for the hands that touched them over the years.”

“Why me? Why not Heather or Grace?”

“You know the answer to that already. But if you need to hear the words, I'll say them for you.”

“Maybe I do.”

“You are the link between the women in this family, the only daughter who remembers her mother, the one who cares even deeper than Heather, the one whose heart will be touched when you open a cupboard and see something that you know once belonged to the women who came before you. I had already given some pieces to your mother, who promised to give them to you.”

“The blue bowl,” Karla said, excited. “Mom loved that bowl, and Dad never understood why. He said it was the ugliest thing he'd ever seen. I remember it always sat in the middle of the dining room table and Mom would put flowers in it whenever we had company.”

“I have the matching candlesticks.” There had been plates, too, but one by one they'd been broken over the years.

“Are they ugly, too?”

“Hideous.”

“Then, yes, I'll take them. And whatever else you've saved for me. I'll even make you a promise. When the time is right, I'll pass everything on to Anna Marie.”

“You're assuming you won't have a daughter of your own.”

“I don't think that's in the future for me or Grace.” She thought for a minute. “But if it turns out I'm wrong, and I do have a daughter, you can be sure I'll start indoctrinating her about these things early, the way my mother did me.”

“Think of yourself as a shaman who passes magical stones on to the next generation.”

“Why, Grandma, that's downright poetic. I didn't know you had a bent for that kind of thing.”

As they made the final sweeping turn north and climbed to the top of the hill, the fog cleared and Anna could see the ocean. She held her breath for several seconds and then let it out with a soft sigh. “I'm home again.”

Karla called Jim the next morning and told him she was staying one more day and that it was all right to close the shop until she got there. She thanked him and promised to take him to dinner at the best restaurant he could find the next time she saw him. He insisted he'd give her another day, and they made arrangements to meet at the shop instead of the house.

She could have used another month. Anna had a story for each piece of crystal and linen, some of them funny, some sad. Karla planned to write them all down as she unpacked them again and told Anna she believed that finally, after seven years, her house would at last feel like a home.

Karla cried when she left, but not until she was past the driveway and Anna couldn't see her. For lunch she'd packed a turkey sandwich, the last of the leftovers from Thanksgiving. Her jeans had moved from tight to uncomfortable and she'd already decided it was back to fifteen hundred calories a day when she returned to work. But while she was on the road the calories didn't count, or so she told herself. She picked up a container of milk when she stopped for gas and over the next two hundred miles ate every one of the persimmon cookies she'd saved in the freezer to take to Jim.

Almost as nervous about seeing Jim again as she had been about marrying him in the first place, Karla stopped by the shop before going to the house to unpack. He'd said he would wait for her there no matter how late she arrived.

The day she'd left, the shop windows were painted with leaves and pumpkins; now there were snow scenes with trees and houses and snowmen. Only the artistry was far better, the talent beyond pedestrian. She took a moment to look at the footprints in the snow, her gaze following them to a couple watching their children sled down a hill. The man and woman were holding a steaming mug cupped between their hands. Clever. Holiday, happiness, and coffee.