Things Remembered (31 page)

She still hadn't heard from Grace. Karla had had her hand on the phone to call a half dozen times in as many days. If she'd known what she wanted to say, she would have completed the calls.

Every morning she told herself that she would contact the bank about Grace's car that day. And every night she reviewed the reasons she'd put it off one more time.

Finally, she stopped trying to come up with excuses and decided to wait for Monday, her day off, when she wouldn't be distracted by work.

Grace called Sunday night.

“Have you talked to anyone at the bank yet?” she asked by way of greeting.

“No.” Karla ignored the ice coming through the phone. “I wanted to discuss it with you first.”

“I need a couple more weeks, but I'll have the money to make the payment by then. If you don't want me messing up your credit rating with a late charge, you can take care of it yourself this month and I'll send you a check as soon as I get paid.”

Instead of relief, Karla felt sick to her stomach. Where was Grace going to get that kind of money this soon? “You got a job?”

“What do you care? You made it pretty clear you weren't interested where the money came from as long as I made the payments.”

Nothing Karla could say was going to undo the years she'd spent catering to her sister. Instead of being grateful for what had been done for her, Grace now felt entitled. “Just out of curiosity, how long was I supposed to continue supporting you without ever saying anything about it?”

Grace didn't bother answering and said instead, “You have no idea what it's like to want something so badly you'll sacrifice anything to get it.”

“What you don't seem to understand is that it hasn't been your sacrifice, Grace. It's been mine—and Anna's.”

“So you gave me some money once in a while. Big deal. I'm the one who has to go to lessons every day and then sit in some fucking restaurant so the right people can see me. I'm the one who has to buy clothes that leave me juggling credit card payments every month. And I'm the one who has to go on auditions where they talk about me as if I'm some product on a shelf that doesn't come up to the standards of the national brand. I'm the one who does this day after day and then you expect me to listen when you give me your self-righteous shit about how you've supported me all these years?”

“My, God—do you have any idea how self-centered you sound?”

“Do you have any idea how
old
you sound—and, I might add, how old you're looking lately? I didn't tell you this before because I didn't want to hurt your feelings, but the last time you were here, one of my friends asked me if you were my mother.”

To Grace there was no bigger insult. “And now that I've cut you off financially, it suddenly doesn't matter if my feelings get hurt?”

Grace didn't say anything for a long time. “I'm mad at you, Karla. I thought you were the one person I could count on, the one person who understood me, and you let me down. What do you expect?”

“Isn't that interesting—I could have said the same thing about you.”

“There's no reasoning with you. You hear what you want to hear. Are you going to wait for the payment, or not?”

“I need some time to think about it. Call me in a couple of days.”

“Why are you doing this to me? Is it because you're jealous?”

“Oh, Grace, I know you're not going to believe this, but whatever I decide it will be because I love you.”

“You're right. With love like that, I could use a few more enemies.”

“Okay. I've heard enough. I want you to pay attention to what I'm about to tell you, because—”

“I'm through listening to you, Karla. There's nothing you have to say that I want to hear.” She hung up.

The empty line hummed in Karla's ear a long time before she replaced the receiver, stared at the phone, and said, “Thank you, Grace. You've just ended my last bit of uncertainty about what I should do.”

Chapter

23

W
hat can I bring?” Karla asked, the standard question in her circle of friends when asked to a dinner party.

“Just yourself,” Monica said cheerfully. “Come at seven and wear that spectacular red number you wore to the art show last year.”

Karla gritted her teeth. Monica had lined someone up for her. Again. “Who is he?” she said without enthusiasm.

“A friend of John's. Great prospect. He's been married twice, but John says both of the women were losers and it wasn't this guy's fault the marriages broke up.”

“What happened to your promise not to do this anymore?” Karla hadn't held much hope that Monica had actually listened to her when she said she wasn't interested in John's single friends, so she had no real right to be surprised now.

“You weren't serious, were you? I thought that was just something all single women say so they don't sound desperate.”

Tonya opened the supply room door and signaled to Karla. “Hang on, Monica.” She put her hand over the receiver. “You need me?” she asked Tonya.

“We could use your help. It's like a tour bus just drove up and announced we were serving free coffee.”

Karla signaled that she would be right there. “Gotta go, Monica. I'll see you Wednesday night.”

Slipping into her work vest, Karla opened the door and was taken aback at the number of people in the shop. She sincerely hoped one of them wasn't the fire marshal. She smiled and said, “May I help whoever is next?”

At two-thirty, she sold the last of the gift baskets she'd put together to replace the ones Amy had made. In all the years she'd owned the shop, she'd never had a Christmas like this one. She'd sold more high-end coffee appliances in the week she'd been back than she'd sold the entire year. Mugs she'd had since she and Jim opened the shop that she threatened to toss every time she dusted sold for full price. She'd even had one woman ask to buy the toys under the tree.

As soon as the customer flow slowed down enough to turn the shop back to Tonya and Margaret, Karla started calling her suppliers to restock the near-empty shelves.

She didn't get home that night until after midnight. Tired and hungry, she took one look at the boxes of Christmas decorations that had been cluttering the living room floor for almost a week, decided what she didn't put up she didn't have to take down, and shoved everything back in the closet.

Next year.

The house felt cold and as forlorn and lonely as she did. It was too late to turn on the heater, and she was too tired to care that no one was there to ask her about her day. Sorting the mail as she moved to the kitchen, she abruptly stopped and looked closer at one of the envelopes. She smiled when she saw CINDY written in childish printing in the left-hand corner.

Just like that she was warm again.

Karla dumped the rest of the bills and Christmas cards on the counter and opened Cindy's letter. Inside was a drawing. Karla studied the picture for several seconds, looking for clues to help her figure out what or whom the picture represented. Finally, as she made out cups sitting on a table and a woman next to a counter with a box that could pass for a cash register, it came to her. Cindy had drawn Karla in the coffee shop.

What Karla had come to think of as her real world, the one she'd built for herself in Solvang, disappeared and she was back in Rocklin again. The friends she'd had for years became secondary to the ones she'd made that past month and had only known weeks. Somehow they'd become more real to her, closer to her heart.

She knew now what was wrong with her, why she'd felt as if pages were stuck together in the book she'd been living. She was homesick for a place she'd never allowed herself to think of as home.

She opened the envelope again to see if there was a note from Mark. Her disappointment at not finding anything was out of proportion to how she felt about him. Or how she'd told herself she felt.

The disappointment turned to joy when she spotted a note on the back of the picture, and her self-delusion eroded like Los Angeles hills in a rainstorm.

Karla looked up from the note and saw Anna's candlesticks on the dining room table. So much had happened in the past two months she didn't know which feelings were real and which were triggered and magnified by fatigue. She had distance; now what she needed was time. Next month, when she wasn't operating on five hours' sleep a night, when she wasn't spending half the day on the phone tracking missing orders or trying to place new ones, when the customers weren't five deep at the cash register, and when she wasn't making obligatory appearances at parties four nights out of every seven, maybe then she could spend some time figuring out why her body was in Solvang and her heart was in Rocklin. Reasonable, even logical, precisely the way she'd lived her life for the past thirty-two years. But instead of heading for the kitchen to fix dinner, she picked up the phone and dialed Mark's number.

Knowing how needy she would sound if she left a message the way she was feeling, Karla listened for the fourth ring and started to hang up.

“Hello?”

“Mark?”

“Karla—is it really you? Finally.”

She sank into the chair next to her and brought the phone closer to her mouth as if it somehow brought him closer, too. “You sound out of breath.”

“I was outside when I heard the phone ring. I had a feeling it might be you, and there was no way I was going to miss the call.” He paused to catch his breath. “How are you? God, I've missed you. I think about you all the time.”

“Me, too,” she admitted.

“You know we're going to have to do something about this sooner or later.”

“I do know. I just haven't been able to figure out what yet.”

“Have you decided what you're going to do about Christmas?”

“Heather really wants us to come there. . . .”

He let out a frustrated groan. “We need to talk. Are you home?”

“Yes.”

“Can I call you there later? I was on my way to the clinic. There was an accident on the freeway that involved more animals than humans and we've got everyone we could reach coming in to handle it.”

“I'll be here. Call me when you can. I don't care how late it is.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Karla?”

“Yes?”

“Never mind, I'll tell you later when I've got more time.”

After she hung up, feeling better than she had since she came back to Solvang, Karla hung Cindy's picture on the chandelier so that she could see both sides. The future was still a mystery, but she was closer to believing it just might have a happy ending after all.

Drawing herself up from the depths of sleep, Karla rolled over in bed to turn off the alarm. But it wasn't the clock ringing, it was the phone. Mark. She smiled as she picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Karla, it's Bill. I'm sorry to call you so late, but I knew you'd want to know.”

Her happiness disappeared and she immediately grew sick with dread. “It's Anna, isn't it?”

“No . . . it's Heather. They had to take the baby.”

“Oh, my God.” She sat up and ran her hand through her hair. “What happened? Is she all right? What about the baby?”

“The baby's little—three pounds, twelve ounces, but the doctor says that's normal for thirty-one weeks. They have her in the neonatal intensive care unit. She's hooked up to a lot of machines, but not a respirator, but the doctor says that's normal, too. Of course I was told there were a lot of things that could go wrong, but for right now, she's doing okay. Even though she's tiny, she's beautiful, Karla. There's not much of it, but you can tell her hair is going to be a soft brown. And—”

“What about Heather?” she almost shouted. She was glad the baby was okay, but right now she cared more about her sister, and it terrified her that Bill was trying to avoid the subject.

“She lost a lot of blood before we could get her to the hospital.”

“We?”

“I had to call 911. She got up to go to the bathroom . . . and then just started bleeding. . . . Jesus, it was everywhere. I've never seen so much blood.”

“
How is she now?
”

“She just came out of surgery a few minutes ago. They're setting her up in intensive care and wanted me out of the room while they worked on her. I decided I'd better call you while I could.”

“What can I do? Just tell me. I'll do anything. Who's taking care of Jason and Jamie?” She had to focus on something concrete or go out of her mind.

“My mother has them.”

“Then what else needs to be done?”