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CHAPTER 18 Piñata

Claire got kind of lost for a while after the miscarriage. That day, when she ended up in the stinking alley, leaning against a rusty green Dumpster, she said she knew she couldn’t go back inside, that she’d never practice law again, that something essential inside of her had shifted, left, disappeared.

“But you love the law,” I said, a tease in my voice because I didn’t know yet that it wasn’t the time for teasing.

“I did.”

“Maybe you went back too soon. You should take a couple weeks off. We could go somewhere, if you like.”

“That won’t change anything.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” she said, with a level of certainty that drove the teasing from my voice.

“Let’s really think about this, Claire. I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”

“It’s not a question of regret. I can’t go back there. I can’t. I’m not sure I ever should’ve been there in the first place.”

“I thought you loved working with your dad.”

“It’s not that, it’s…what I do, it’s so…hard. You have to be so hard, and I’m not that person anymore.”

“You’re the strongest person I know.”

“No. Maybe before, but now, now I’m soft.”

I took her in my arms and held her, but it didn’t seem to help. And the longer I held her, the more I could feel the loss inside, as if an elemental part of her had been taken away.

But I couldn’t tell her that. I could only reiterate my suggestion to take a few more weeks off. She agreed and said that, if we could, we’d try to get away.

But we didn’t go anywhere, only Claire did.

Her departure was a gradual thing, like a watercolor left in the sun, every day fainter until one day the canvas was bare and you had to rely on memory to recapture the image.

The worst thing is, I didn’t notice at first. I beat myself up about that. I could give excuses about how easy it is to miss things that are right in front of you, to take them for granted, and that I was doing my best, that I was grieving too.

But no excuses.

I didn’t notice at first.

I beat myself up about that.

When I did notice, there didn’t seem to be any fixative I could apply. I had nothing in me to keep her steady, steadfast. If I held her too close, she pushed me away. If I kept my distance, I felt her eyes accusing, uncertain. My suggestions that she try, again, to go back to work were met with stony silence or the rational well-reasoned arguments that made me miss her all the more. Because they were so Claire, so the way I knew, deep down, she wanted to be, convincing me why she couldn’t be that way anymore, and why I shouldn’t ask her to be.

Those first few weeks—when we were both still pretending this was only going to last a few weeks—she kept it relatively normal in the mornings. She’d make breakfast, pack Seth’s lunch, and see us out the door. But the rest of the day? The hours between nine and four? When I asked her, she spoke about them like they were as empty as the space between two goalposts.

One day, I went looking for her on my lunch hour, thinking I’d take her out to eat for something different. She wasn’t home, so I drove around the neighborhood and eventually located her in a park a few blocks from our house.

She was sitting far enough away from the jungle gym to catch the drift of the children’s laughter. She was smoking a cigarette—something I thought she’d given up years ago—and I couldn’t help feeling like I didn’t recognize her. Like how you look at your own face in the mirror sometimes and it feels as if there’s a stranger looking back at you.

I sat in my idling car, only fifty feet away from her, but she never noticed me. After a while, I just drove away and went back to work. I didn’t tell her I’d seen her. I pretended I didn’t know about the smoking, the lost hours. I stopped expressing how helpless I felt, how I didn’t understand what had started this and that I wished I could fix it.

We spoke about it less and less, but as the weeks became months my worry was growing like a physical thing. It was this barrier between us, thin at first, but thickening by the day. Eventually, even when I tried, I didn’t have the strength to push through it.

And then Tim came home.

It was about six months into Claire’s dark period. She’d started taking antidepressants a couple months back, and they finally seemed to be working. There were a few smiles, fewer tears, even a laugh or two. As spring turned the corner into summer, I felt her turning that corner with me. Her recovery was fragile, like a bluebell pushing through last year’s grass, hoping there won’t be another frost.

The ostensible occasion of Tim’s visit was our parents’ fortieth wedding anniversary. At least, that’s what he told me when I found him on my doorstep, travel satchel in hand.

When I got over the shock of seeing him unannounced and ten years older, I invited him in. Claire was out running errands—another good sign.

I brought Tim into the living room and went in search of some beers. When I came back, I found him standing in front of the mantelpiece, his eyes wandering over the usual collection of family photos. Our wedding photo was tucked in there among school shots of Seth and a great day on the beach. We looked young and happy, but if you got in close enough, you could see a slight smudge of dark under my left eye, where I’d rammed into a tree after Tim left me in the Woods. A mar on the day, and a reminder too.

“When did you get in?” I asked.

“Just now.”

I handed him a beer. “You didn’t go to Mom and Dad’s?”

“Nope.”

“But you’re staying there, right?”

He shrugged and raised the bottle. When he finished his long pull, half of it was gone. He let it swing loosely between his fingers.

“Is Claire around?”

“She should be back soon.”

He sat on the edge of the couch and downed the rest of his beer. I watched him sitting there, tanned, and relaxed in his jeans and pullover, a fully grown man. He seemed both intensely familiar and strange, like hearing your own voice on an answering machine.

I sat across from him. “So you’re really back for the anniversary?”

“Sure enough.”

“Why?”

“Pardon?”

“You’ve been home twice in the last ten years. Why now?”

He took a beat. “Forty years together is a serious thing. It should be celebrated. Proper respect should be paid.”

“If you’re implying—”

“I’m not casting stones. I know you’ve been stressing about the party.”

I wanted to protest, but he was right. I had been stressing about the party. Mostly because it was something to stress about that wasn’t Claire but also because basically the whole town was coming, and I was shit at organizing things.

“How did you even find out about it?” I asked.

“The usual way.”

“So forthcoming, as always.”

“Mom told me. How do you think I found out?”

“Right.”

He looked around the room. “Nice house.”

“Thanks.”

“And Seth…well done there.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You should meet him. You know, since he’s your nephew and all.”

“Now who’s casting stones?”

“What the fuck, Tim? Honestly, what the fuck?”

He looked at me for a long moment, a look I might’ve understood twenty years ago but which was impregnable then.

“Maybe I’m here to make amends…”

The front door slammed open.

“Jeff?” Claire called in a voice that rang out like it hadn’t since before.

“We’re in here,” I answered, but my throat felt dry, and I knew it wasn’t loud enough.

“Jeff?” she called again, walking through the house. “You’re never going to believe this! I’ve got the perfect idea. The perfect thing.”

I heard her voice trail off at the same time as I felt her presence behind me. Tim shifted his dark gaze from me to her, and something about him softened.

“Tim.”

I was ready with a sarcastic “Tim’s here, honey, isn’t it awesome?” which was always how we spoke of this possibility, the few times it had come up. But something in her expression stopped me.

“Hello, Claire.”

“When did you get here?” she asked.

“A few minutes ago. Jeff and I have been…catching up.”

“Great, great. You’ll stay here, of course?”

“I’d be happy to.”

We fought that night. In low voices, through clenched teeth. A half year of disappointments and things unsaid came pouring out, filling up our bedroom until it felt like a window had to be opened or there wouldn’t be room for one of us anymore.

It was Seth who ended the fight. His soft rap at the door was like a fork hitting a glass at a wedding.

“Yes?” Claire said, her voice shaky.

“Had a nightmare,” Seth replied, his own voice wavering.

I stood up quickly and was at the door in an instant. Nine-going-on-ten Seth stood there in his footy pajamas that Claire wasn’t ready to give up, his round face streaked with tears.

I picked him up. “You’re getting so big.”

“Not that big. Not as big as you.”

“You will be soon, little man.”

“Can I kill the bad guys, then?”

“Were you playing that video game at Cory’s?” Claire asked from the tangle of sheets where she’d retreated as my words got angrier and angrier.

Seth nodded. “I lost.”

I kissed the top of his head and walked him over to Claire. He slipped from my arms and into hers with a lack of hesitancy that struck me. When was the last time I’d taken Claire in my arms without thinking about it, or sought comfort in hers?

I sat down on my side of the bed as Claire settled Seth in between us. He lay on his back, the covers pulled up to his chin.

“Will you stand guard?” he asked.

“Of course we will, honey.”

Claire met my eyes over his head and we each propped ourselves up on an elbow, forming a wall of family around Seth.

“That’s good. That’ll teach ’em.”

“Shh, now. Close your eyes.”

He obeyed her in a way that was becoming rare and was almost instantly asleep. We stayed like that for a while, listening to him breathe.

“What were you saying when you came home?” I said eventually, speaking low.

“About what?”

“When you came into the house, you seemed all excited about something.”

Her face cleared. “I figured out what I want to do.”

“What’s that?”

She told me. That she was thinking of opening a daycare, that she thought it might be what she needed right now. It seemed to me like the opposite of what she needed—to be surrounded by other people’s babies—so I stayed silent while she talked more than she had in months. I knew her well enough to know that the more I protested, the more she’d dig in her heels. I thought if I gave noncommittal “hmms” at appropriate moments, the thought would pass, sink back into her brain, and be gobbled up.

But apparently not.

Apparently, I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.

But I didn’t think about that then, because Claire was smiling at me, and our son was warming the space between us, protected by the fort that was our family.

I never did get a clear answer from Tim as to why he chose that particular moment to come back. In truth, I spent a lot of time avoiding him over the next couple weeks. It was the company’s year-end and I’d just been promoted, and that provided enough of an excuse to spend longer hours than usual at work.

Tim, to his credit, spent a lot of time with Seth, trying to get to know him. He took him to the local single-A ball team’s spring training sessions, and helped him become proficient at riding the new bike we’d bought him. These were things I should’ve been doing but were good for Tim to be doing too. Seth had always been curious about Tim, and I was happy that he was there to fill in.

Claire was also busy. She was serious about the daycare thing, and seeing her sense of purpose, her determination, made me rethink my earlier opposition. Some of the color had come back into her face, and the circles around her eyes were fading. I even heard her singing in the shower once, a few bars that she cut off suddenly, as if she’d surprised herself.

When I wasn’t at work, I was planning my parents’ party. I’d originally intended it to be a small affair, but now that Tim had made a big show of coming all this way, I had to take it up a notch. Rent the town hall, have it catered, though the thought of the hole it was going to make in my credit card kept me up at night, listening to Claire’s regular breathing.

It was one of those nights when she had what I can only describe as a wet dream. Her breathing got shallow and her hips rose and then her whole body tightened and released. It had been so long since we’d had sex, watching her made me hard, but all thoughts of waking her and bringing some reality to whatever fantasy she’d been experiencing disappeared when I saw the peaceful smile crawl onto her face and take up residence. Instead, I went to the bathroom and took care of myself, feeling like a furtive teenager as I came into a washcloth, then rinsed it out.

The town hall was located in an old grain silo that had been converted years ago, but still smelled of wheat and chaff if you breathed deeply enough. My parents made appreciative noises about the long buffet tables groaning with food, the small votives flickering on the tables for eight covered in light blue fabric, and the DJ who knew not to play anything past ABBA’s heyday.

After dinner, Tim rose from his seat by my mother and tapped his glass. A hush fell over the room.

“Some sort of toast at these kinds of things is inevitable. And so, on the long flight here, and off and on for the last couple of days, I thought to myself, what should one say at a moment like this? How does one pay proper homage to the commitment you see before you? Forty years. That’s a beautiful thing.” His eyes scanned the room and found a place to rest. “A beautiful thing. And what more can you say than that, really? I can’t think of anything. So raise a glass, mates. Stand up even. To Mom and Dad. To forty years.”

We all stood and drank and mumbled what he told us to, and I felt both diminished and like I wanted to punch him in the face. That was my speech to give, damn it, even though I hated giving speeches.

“One more thing,” Tim continued. “I also want to say thank you to my brother, Jeff, who’s the reason you’re all drinking and eating so well this evening.” He held his glass held out to me like a peace offering. “I haven’t been around, and you’ve been doing more than your share. Thank you.” He raised his glass again as the room chorused, “To Jeff!”

Goddamn Tim. Right when you want to hate him forever, he goes and does something unexpected. Something that had me feeling way more emotional than I thought possible.

Claire took my hand and leaned into me.

“You did a good thing. A really good thing.”

“Thanks.”

She took my face in her hands and kissed me. “I mean it. I love you.”

“I love you too.” I kissed her back until there were a few whistles and catcalls telling us to “get a room.” We broke apart. Claire gave me her crooked smile and excused herself to go to the bathroom.

“Good show tonight,” Tim said to me a few minutes later, catching up to me at the bar.

“Right,” I said, taking a sip of my drink. “You too.”

“Sorry, did I steal your thunder?”

“No. Forget it.”

“Damn.”

I looked at him. His tie was askew and for some reason he looked younger than me. Or younger than I felt.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Stealing your thunder was kind of the whole point.”

“Is that right?”

He laughed. “Jeff, Jeff, when did you get so serious? I came over to apologize. I thought I was doing you a favor. I remember how much you hate public speaking, but when I saw your face I realized…anyway, sorry.”

I sipped my drink, trying to figure out if he was being genuine. It made me feel empty that I couldn’t tell anymore.

“Do you really mean that?” I asked lamely.

He cocked an eyebrow. “And everyone always said you were the smart one.”

“No one ever said that about me. You’re the one they said that about.”

“Then why do you have all this?” He waved his hand around. “How’d you get so fucking lucky?”

I rested my hands on the bar. “I ask myself that all the time.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I do.”

“See you around, brother.”

He started to leave and I grabbed his arm. “Don’t do that.”

He shrugged me off. “I can do what I want. Whatever I have, I have that.”

“Why’d you come home, Tim? Just tell me.”

“You know Claire’s not doing well, right? You at least know that?”

My heart started to pump. “Don’t tell me about my wife.”

“But you asked me to,” he said, and then he walked away.

CHAPTER 19 Swing Low

It’s only when he’s sitting across from me in the den, holding the plastic bag full of Jeff’s effects, that I realize the police officer is Marc Duggard, a guy who was a few years ahead of me at Springfield Prep. The fact that I never realized who he was the day Jeff died underscores how out of it I was. At least now, it only takes me five minutes to recognize someone I was in school with for a decade. A baby step of progress.

“Sorry to have to do this, Claire,” he says. “But we have to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s. You understand.”

“Yes,” I say mechanically.

“I’ll need you to sign this form,” he says, handing me a release form in triplicate.

I sign the copies, and then he sits there, staring at me, as though I might hold the answers he’s presumably here to give me.

“We’ve concluded our investigation,” he says eventually.

“There was an investigation?”

“Standard procedure with vehicular homicide.”

“Yes, of course. I remember.”

More echoes of my past life. They’d have to make sure the driver wasn’t drunk, or high, or reckless. But careless was okay. Careless was just a part of life.

“We’ve concluded it was an accident,” he says. “With the sun in her eyes, and Jeff walking into the street suddenly like that, well, it could’ve happened to anybody.”

I’ve always hated that expression. It didn’t happen to anybody. It happened to Jeff.

“What’s her name?” I ask.

“Pardon?”

“The driver. Do I know her?”

“She’s from out of town. Passing through. Terrible luck. Terrible luck for everyone. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you…”

“What?”

“She’s still here. In the hospital, actually.”

“Was she hurt?”

“No…a mental hold. It’s common in these types of cases…well, you can imagine, I guess.”

“I guess.”

He slaps his hands on his thighs. “I should be going.”

“Okay.”

I shift in my seat and the plastic bag slips around in my lap, tinkling. Is it Jeff’s keys? Loose change? Am I ever going to be able to open it?

Marc stands and pauses. He seems to be expecting me to thank him, for Jeff’s effects, for the information about the woman who killed him, such as it is. Instead, I give him back the thousand-mile stare he’s been giving me.

He holds it for a moment. “I’m real sorry about all this, Claire.”

“Yes.”

“I can see myself out.”

I nod but rise anyway. Out in the hall, there’s a line waiting for the bathroom. Tish is at the head of it. She looks like she wants to say something to me but before I can ask her what it is, Tim’s at my side, leading me to the back of the house.

We come to an abrupt stop in the solarium that overlooks the backyard.

“Wait here,” he says, as if I had anywhere else to go, then takes the plastic bag from my hands and places it on the counter.

He leaves the room and I’m alone. Seth’s yellow rain jacket is hanging by its hood over Jeff’s larger red one. Their baseball gloves are resting on the bench, a mud-caked baseball half slipping out of Seth’s newer glove. When was the last time they played catch? Was it this year, during a thaw? Or have the gloves been sitting there all winter, waiting, waiting, waiting?

“Come with me,” Tim says from behind me. He reaches over my shoulder and pushes open the creaky screen door. The sound of a million summers.

We go outside. It’s late afternoon, the sun is low, and the air is heavy with the smell of impending rain. He directs me toward the rusting swing set tucked into the corner of the lot. Jeff spent hours assembling it, cursing, sweating, even slicing his hand open, resulting in a long wait in the emergency room. But when it was finished (slightly off-kilter, the swings always listing to the left) and he revealed it to six-year-old Seth, all the stress and toil were worth the expression of pure joy on his face. Jeff hoisted him into the seat, and Seth swung and swung, too high for my liking. Later, he and his friends scampered up the slide, dangled from the crossbeam. For a while I always knew where to find him, but then he grew, and the swing didn’t, and Seth moved on to other things.

I used to find Jeff out here sometimes a few years ago, and again lately, stuffed into a swing, his arms wrapped around the metal chains, staring off into space.

Tim sits in a swing and motions for me to sit in the other. The stiff rubber gives under my adult weight, cutting into the backs of my thighs, reminding me of the scratchy dress I’m still wearing. The itch of grief.

Tim’s swing creaks back and forth, screaming for oil. Last year’s leaves are gathered under our feet, rotting into earth. A chore we never got to.

“You want some?” Tim asks as the grainy smell of alcohol hits me. He’s holding out a fifth of something dark, wiping his mouth with the back of his other hand.

“I’ve been looking for that.”

“How could you be? I brought it with me.”

“No, I mean something like that. All the alcohol seems to be missing.”

“I noticed.”

“My mother,” I say, and he nods in agreement.

He passes the container to me and I take a swig. Jim Beam, I realize as soon as it hits my throat. An old flavor, full of memories.

“That’s awful.”

“It was the only thing I could find at my parents’ house.”

“You think they keep it to dissuade guests from drinking?”

“Maybe.”

“Sometimes I think it wouldn’t take much to turn this town into the one in Footloose.” I take another burning swallow. “Anyway. Thanks.”

“Wasn’t that town called Bomont?”

“It’s not about the name, doofus.”

“Put a girl in a swing and suddenly she’s using terms like ‘doofus.’ ”

“If the swing fits.”

I twist the creaking, rusting chains, like I used to do as a child. I twirl and twirl and twirl—and release! I’m twirling in the opposite direction. The world blurs, my brain goes dizzy and feels loose in my skull.

“What did he want?” Tim asks when I come to rest.

“Who? Marc Duggard?”

“The one and only.”

“To give me Jeff’s effects, and to tell me that they’ve closed their investigation. Accident. Unavoidable. ‘One of those things.’ Did you know the woman who did it is in the hospital?”

“Was she injured?”

“They’re worried she’s going to kill herself.”

“Maybe they shouldn’t try to stop her.”

“Tim!”

“What? You don’t think she should pay for what she did?”

“What’s it going to change?”

“That’s a weird thing for you to say. Whatever happened to ‘light ’em up’?”

“Did I ever say that?”

His feet push at the ground. He sways slowly. “Many times.”

“That was a long time ago. Another lifetime.”

“We only have one lifetime.”

“Right.”

“Do you know who she is?”

“He wouldn’t tell me. Someone from out of town.”

I look down at my own feet. I raise my toes up and try to dig them into the mud, but the ground won’t give.

“Are you going to forgive her?” he says.

“I can’t think about that right now. I’m still trying to forgive myself.”

“What does that mean?”

I look at him. His face is flushed from the alcohol and the cold breeze.

“Do I have to say it?”

He holds my gaze for a minute, then takes another drink.

“It’s not the same thing, Claire. It never was.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he gives a big push backward, leaving the ground, arcing through the air, then jumps from the swing, landing gracefully on the ground, sticking the landing like a gymnast.

He stands in front of me, blocking the wind. And now, for the first time, the day feels warmer than it is.

When I get back inside, I decide it’s time to finally get out of these clothes. And the thought of climbing into bed, pulling the covers over my head, over this day, is there too.

And Seth. I want Seth.

I pull Beth aside and let her know where I’m going, ask her if she can handle the people who don’t seem to want to leave. She agrees to see that the guests get out of here eventually, sooner rather than later.

Upstairs, I go first to our room, my room, and change into an old pair of flannel pajamas Jeff always used to make fun of me for wearing.

“But they’re so comfortable,” I’d say.

“You look five,” he’d reply, then nuzzle his face into my belly. “And you smell like the cottage. Like mothballs.”

The pajamas did date from our cottage days, a rickety old house thirty minutes away that wasn’t winterized and seemed to be slowly sinking into the ground. Everything in that house smelled like beach towels that had never quite dried, and the occasional mothball we found in the back of a closet, left over from its grander days when my grandmother kept fur coats there for special occasions.

We played dress-up in those coats, Beth and I, wrinkling our noses against the mothball tang, ladying around in our mother’s high heels while our parents bickered downstairs. These pajamas smell like memories, mostly good ones. Ones from before life became something too complicated to be fixed by a juice Popsicle pulled fresh from the freezer.

Seth is in his room, lying on his car bed that was super cool when he was seven, and has now become almost kitsch. Something a hipster might choose if he was discovering irony. Only Seth is twelve and his father’s just died and I doubt he’s thinking much about irony these days. Either way, he needs a new bed.

His back is propped against the headboard, a pillow at a weird angle, and he’s reading a book. A slim volume I don’t recognize.

“What you got there, buddy?” I ask as I sit down next to him, my feet in the same direction as his.

“Dad’s book.”

I lean my head against his shoulder. “What’s that?”

“That book of Dad’s. You know, the one I got the poem from.”

“Oh, right. Where’d you find that again?”

“In his bag.”

“His golf bag?”

“Nah, his travel one. He never unpacked from that trip he took a couple of weeks before…Anyway, just like Dad, right?”

I smile. Jeff’s the worst unpacker in the world.

“What’s the book about?”

“She seems to have a thing for trees. And snow. She likes snow.”

I take the book from him. It’s called Just This Side of Childhood and contains about fifty poems. On the back is a black-and-white picture of a girl about Seth’s age—the National Spoken Word Champion of the previous year. She has long dark hair and a pale face, and something about her straight-on stare seems familiar. Only with more confidence, if that makes any sense.

Zoey Underhill.

What was Jeff doing with this book?

Seth takes it from me and goes back to the page he was reading.

“You enjoying that?”

“Dunno. Makes me feel a bit better.”

“Because it was Dad’s?”

“Maybe.”

“You want me to leave you alone?”

“No, you can stay.”

“Okay, then, I’ll stay.”

I pull up the covers from the bottom of the bed and tuck them around us. I close my eyes and listen to Seth slowly turning the pages, muttering a word or two out loud.

The wind is rattling against the panes, and maybe it’s my imagination, but I think I can hear the creak of the unoiled swing.

CHAPTER 20 Hold the Phone

Will you play a game with me? Jeff wrote to me about a month after we’d come back into contact.

Since those first few email exchanges, that first phone call, I’d felt a fizzy excitement, carbonated, letting loose little bubbles of happiness. A crush, a work crush, I’d tell myself when I opened his profile to figure out the exact color of his eyes, or when he’d race through my thoughts at odd moments. He was fun, and I needed that. And I was different with him, I felt different with him, and I needed that too. Friends, we were friends, and if our interactions had secretly become the best part of my workday, that was play, pretend, nothing to worry about.

What kind of game? I wrote back.

Word association.

Like in Psych 101?

Nah. Well, maybe. There’s this thing I read about on the Internet and I thought…I’m curious what you’ll say.

You were reading a women’s magazine, weren’t you?

I smiled as the email floated away from me, imagining his indignant snort.

If you’re not going to play nice…he wrote.

I’ll be a good girl, I promise. How does it work?

I send you a word, you write back the first thing that comes to mind, and so on.

Is there some kind of scoring mechanism?

Sure, that comes at the end.

I put my phone on do not disturb.

All right. Hit me.

Distill.

Moonshine.

Really?

I shook my head as I typed.

Aren’t you just supposed to ask me the next word?

Right. Okay. Sunshine.

Day.

Off.

Crazy.

Your current score is crazy.

I thought you could only check the score at the end?

Yeah, yeah.

I glanced at his picture. It felt like he was smirking at me.

This was your idea, remember? I typed.

Motherfucker.

Excuse me?

Sorry, he wrote. That’s really the next word.

Where did you find this thing?

The Internet, I told you. Answer please.

My answer is: Really.

Totally.

Seriously.

Yeah.

Wait, I wrote. Are we still playing?

We are. Yeah is the next word. Promise.

Okay. That’s my next word, for clarity.

A long pause while I drummed my nails on the desk.

Hello? You still there? I wrote.

I’m still here.

Is there no next word? Or does the computer say that I’m an axe murderer?

No…there’s a next word.

Well, what is it then?

You sure you want to know?

Of course.

Another pause. Then: Sex.

Sex? Really?

Really.

Huh.

What?

I never would’ve thought you could get from distill to sex in so few words.

His answer felt instantaneous.

I might’ve gotten there sooner.

My heart was suddenly racing.

What’s that supposed to mean?

Just…God. Forget it.

What were you going to write?

The pause was so long I was about to type another prompt.

Probably better left unwritten. Unsaid.

Oh, right. Yes. Probably.

Unsaid, but not unthought?

It was my turn to pause.

Not unthought, I wrote eventually, my fingers sweaty on the keys.

When the cab from the airport drops me at home, the windows are fogged from the unrelenting rain that feels like it’s been falling for days. The storm drain outside our front walk is clogged with last year’s leaves, and a puddle that looks like it has ambitions to be a lake is blocking the way.

The cabdriver helps me navigate the walkway, along with my hastily packed suitcase, but without an umbrella I’m soaked through to the skin before I get to the front door.

Brian must hear me fumbling with the keys in the lock because he has the door open and is pulling me into the house before I can do it myself.

“Where’s Zoey?” I ask.

He looks like he hasn’t changed clothes since yesterday, or shaved. And though he hides lack of sleep well from many years of experience, I’m guessing he hasn’t had much of that either.

“She’s upstairs in her room. Sleeping, the last time I checked.”

I move toward the stairs, the water running off me forming puddles on the hardwood floor.

“Let her be. She needs to sleep.”

My hand rests on the banister. The adrenaline that’s been propelling me since Zoey’s tearful voice came through my revived phone dissipates. I feel like I could sleep for a week.

“Is she okay?”

“I’m not sure. Why the hell weren’t you answering your phone?”

“I’m sorry. I told you. I forgot to charge it. You can’t imagine how bad I feel.”

“You have to be reachable, Tish, if you’re not going to be…If you’re not going to be there, you have to be reachable.”

“It won’t ever happen again. Forgive me, okay? Please?”

He looks at me for a minute. Water drips from me like a leaky tap.

“Why don’t we get you out of those clothes,” he says eventually. “Go to the kitchen. I’ll get you some things.”

I nod. When I get to the kitchen, there’s a full bottle of liquor sitting on the table, an empty glass next to it. These must be for Brian, but we have other glasses.

I pour an inch of vodka and toss it back. My empty stomach protests, but the rest of me welcomes it.

“Will you pour me one of those?” Brian’s holding a towel, an old pair of sweats, and a T-shirt I used to sleep in in college that I thought I threw out years ago.

“One finger or two?”

“Surprise me.”

I pour him two fingers, hand him the glass, then strip down, letting my clothes slap to the floor.

“Aren’t you worried the neighbors might see?”

I dry myself with the towel quickly, then slip the T-shirt over my head as I take in the shadows in our spotless backyard. The daffodils are up, though the rain seems to be trying to drown them.

“I doubt the little perv across the way is going to get too excited about seeing me naked.”

“You underestimate the teenaged boy’s mind. Besides, if it gets me excited, why not him?”

I smile as I climb into the sweatpants and take a seat across from him. His glass is empty. He looks like he wants another.

“I’m guessing not today. So what happened?”

“Zoey passed out onstage.”

“I know, but why? Is she okay or was it nerves?”

“Zoey doesn’t get nervous.”

He picks up the bottle and pours himself another couple of inches, but doesn’t drink it down.

I reach across the table and rest my hand on Brian’s arm. The hair on it is smooth, familiar.

“What’s going on? Is something wrong with Zoey? You’re kind of…you’re scaring the shit out of me, to be honest.”

“I’m sorry. I’m scared too.”

“What is it? Please tell me.”

He shakes his head, looking lost. “One minute she was fine, excited, you know how she gets right before she goes on. Keyed up, distant. Then that kid, that Ethan kid, he screwed up, not in a big way, but enough of a stumble that I was thinking she’s got this sewn up, and then before she could even say her name she was on the ground, out like a light.”

“Did she eat breakfast? You know sometimes she forgets to eat if you don’t remind her.”

“That’s not it. Tish…she was out for five minutes.”

“What? That video on the Internet was only a couple of—”

“Wait, what?”

“Jeff’s kid, Seth…he was watching it on his computer and—”

“A video? What are you talking about?”

The wind picks up outside, pushing the branches of a tree that’s always been too close to the house against the glass. It screeches and moans in a way that would signify monsters coming if this were a horror movie. Which it might be.

“You don’t know about the video?”

“Are you saying that Zoey’s mishap is on the web?”

“I guess they were taping the event?”

He thinks about it. “I forgot. They were.”

“I think they were streaming it out live, and when Zoey fainted…”

“Jesus. Thank God Zoey doesn’t know.”

“What’s wrong with her, Brian? What’s wrong with our daughter?”

He finally picks up the glass and downs it in one gulp.

“I don’t know.”

I spend the night in Zoey’s room, curled up in the old squashy chair from our first apartment that ended up in here somehow, missed by my mother-in-law’s decorator, who tore through the house in a burst of color wheels and fabric swatches right after we moved in. I doze fitfully, my brain stuck on the possibilities I finally pried out of Brian, but that won’t be confirmed, or unconfirmed, please God, until we see the specialist on Monday.

Another weekend to face without knowing what’s going on in my life. Another Monday where my worst fears might come true.

Brian passed out in the living room around eleven. When his beeper buzzes an hour later, I let it go unanswered. Somebody else can take care of whoever’s calling him tonight. I tuck a pillow under his head and put the spare duvet over him. Judging by the depth of his snores, he’ll be out for a solid eight hours.

When the sun’s thinking about rising, I realize Zoey’s gone still, assuming the position of someone who’s only pretending to sleep. I walk across the room on half-asleep, tingling legs. I climb into Zoey’s bed and wrap myself around her back.

“I’m sleeping.”

“I know, honey.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You don’t have to.” I breathe in her smell, loving how she still uses Johnson’s baby shampoo on her thick tangle of hair. I can pretend, sometimes, that my baby is still a baby because she smells that way.

“Dad’s freaked.”

“Cut him some slack. He worries about you. We both do.”

She pulls the covers up over our shoulders.

“There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“Well, I really hope so, but we’re going to do some tests to make extra sure, okay?”

She goes silent and I realize after a moment that she’s crying. Her hot tears splash against my arm.

“Why are you crying, sweetie?”

“Because I ruined everything.”

“What? Of course you didn’t.”

“I fainted in front of…in front of everyone. I lost. Ethan won.”

“It’s only a competition. There’s always next year.”

“Mmooomm.”

“I know, I know. That’s so not the point.”

The tears are still falling but, despite herself, I can feel her smile.

I eventually persuade Zoey to get up and into the shower. I go downstairs to make her the greasiest, most tempting breakfast I can make in a house where a health-conscious doctor lives. Bacon is out of the question, but I’m pretty sure there are eggs, and some full-fat cheese hidden in the meat drawer.

Brian’s up, sitting at the kitchen counter with his laptop open. A quick glance confirms he’s watching the video. Zoey standing, Zoey going gray, Zoey on the ground.

“Can you believe they’ve put it to music? What the hell is wrong with people? Can you tell me that?”

“Put it away, Brian. Zoey’ll be down in a minute.”

“We’re going to have to tell her about this.”

“I want to get some food into her first. Maybe let her have a few minutes where she doesn’t have to think about it?”

He glances up from the screen as he closes the laptop. “Do you think that’s possible?”

I look at him. At the concern in his eyes. At the pure certainty I feel that he’d do anything, anything, to keep her happy. To keep her safe.

I did a good thing here. In my whole life, this is the best thing I have done. Brian. Zoey. My family.

“I hope so, Brian, I really do.”

He nods and stands. “I went to the store. I got bacon.”

“Bacon?” Zoey says behind me, her voice carrying almost the right amount of enthusiasm.

Her hair’s loose and wet from her shower. She looks thin, thinner than she should be. Maybe that’s the explanation? Maybe we’ve been missing what she’s been silent about because silence isn’t her thing? But she’s always been thin. I was all knees and arms until I was thirteen, and then I was knees and arms with hips. Zoey’s the same.

“Doctor’s orders,” Brian says. “It’s a little-known fact that bacon’s a natural cure. In fact, Native Americans introduced the first settlers to it, only they called it salt pork.”

“Daad, you are so full of…”

“Shit,” I say, laughing. “Your dad is full of shit.”

Zoey’s mouth makes an O. “You are so going to get in trouble! Did you hear what she said, Dad?”

“I heard it all right. She challenged my knowledge of history. And natural remedies.”

He tries to keep his face serious, but he barely gets the words out before he breaks into a full belly laugh. Then I’m laughing and Zoey’s laughing and the room, the house, is filled with laughter.

The phone rings.

I’m closest to it, so I pick it up. “Underhill residence.”

“Hey, um, Mrs. Underhill?”

“Yes?”

“This is Ethan. Ethan Zuckerberg?” His voice rises at the end, like he’s questioning who he is.

“Oh. Hi, Ethan. And…congratulations.”

Zoey’s laugh cuts out like she’s been unplugged. Her whole body is tense with focus.

“Um, thanks, I guess? Can I…talk to Zoey?”

“Let me see if she’s free.”

I cover the mouthpiece with my hand. “It’s Ethan. Do you want to talk to him?”

“You don’t have to,” Brian says.

“No, it’s fine. I’ll take it in the other room, okay?”

“Of course.”

I hand her the portable phone and meet Brian’s gaze over her head. He raises his eyebrows, and I can see the fear of a thousand generations of fathers in his eyes. Boys. Boys! Our daughter is talking to a boy.

I smile at him. “Why don’t we cook that bacon?”

“That’s probably a good idea.”

He walks to the fridge. I’ve got one ear on the mumble of Zoey’s voice in the other room.

“No…it’s all right…what? What!”

And now the fridge and breakfast and bacon are forgotten, and Brian and I are through the door to the dining room, but not before Zoey hits the ground.

CHAPTER 21 Falling

Two weeks after the “sex conversation”—as I’d taken to trying not to call it in my head—Tish was standing across a conference table from me, her hands resting on a lectern.

“So, we’ll be starting off with module 1 today: How to identify staff that ought to be considered for termination,” she half-read her notes with a bored tone of voice. She was wearing the woman’s work uniform: a dark blue skirt, a white Oxford shirt, and discreet earrings. Her hair was parted in the middle and loose around her face.

One of the guys from marketing put up his hand. “Mrs. Underhill?”

Her jaw clenched. This was already his fourth question of the day, and we were only five minutes into the meeting.

“Yes, Mr. Dunn?”

“You skipped the Safety Minute.”

Her eyes fluttered closed. “So I did.”

“Would you like me to do it?”

“Sure, go right ahead.”

He stood up. The left side of his shirt had come untucked, and there was a pen stain blooming from his breast pocket.

Thirty. Still eager.

I gave him six months before he’d be on the receiving end of module 3: Firing.

That, or he’d be the next CEO.

“Right, so, okay, I thought I’d talk about opening doors in closed conference rooms…”

I tuned him out, letting my gaze wander around the high-tech room until it came to rest on Tish. She shifted her body, and I swear we locked eyes for a moment. I gave her a slight eye roll. The corner of her mouth lifted in what seemed like an answering smile. For a moment, I felt like I could read her thoughts, that they were echoing my own—What the fuck am I doing here?

Then she turned her head away.

The lights flickered.

An error line flowed through her image, and the illusion was gone.

Around when the company made our email into Facebook, they also installed a high-tech conference room with the latest in two-way video technology. Part of the consultants’ motivation—what, you thought this didn’t have something to do with them?—was to provide a more cost-efficient way of firing people without making it too impersonal. We’ve all seen Up in the Air; Skype-firing has its drawbacks. But, apparently, a roomful of technology that makes it seem like someone who’s actually five hundred miles away is sitting across the table from you is enough to trick the brain. Kind of like how Luke falls in love with Princess Leia after seeing her in R2-D2’s fluttery blue light projection.

At least, until he realizes she’s his sister.

Of course, the system had other applications too. More effective cross-company meetings, a flashy recruiting tool, and a good way to train incoming managers in the art of not being a wimp and firing your own people.

Which is how I found myself watching Tish’s image, trying not to focus on the increasing amount of time we now spent in communication with each other, how much of a fixture she’d become in my life so quickly.

Because something that felt this good couldn’t be wrong, could it?

And anything that might skip across my brain like a flat rock thrown sideways, well, we’d agreed not to say those things, to push them down.

So, no harm, no foul.

When I got the meeting invite, I felt a frisson of…something else I pushed down. But I certainly dressed more carefully than usual that day. I wore my favorite shirt. I got a haircut I told myself I needed anyway. I gave myself an attentive shave. And when Claire said something about me looking good at breakfast, I pushed the stab of guilt down too.

The funny thing was, neither of us spoke about it in advance. I mean Tish and I. We’d been debating about best movies off and on for a couple days, and when I got to the office there was an email from her containing the case for High Fidelity.

John Cusack while he was still hot. A seamless transition from book to movie. The Beta Band. “Is that Peter fucking Frampton?” John Cusack while he was still hot. Need I go on?

Is the John Cusack point supposed to be determinative for me?

Not sure. Are you a guy who can appreciate male hotness from an aesthetic point of view?

I’m about three on the Kinsey scale.

Interesting that you’d go there.

?

Just that you’d take that as a sexual orientation question.

It wasn’t?

Men.

That’s not an explanation.

Sure. Right. Now why don’t you love this movie? Lack of light sabers?

I laughed out loud and glanced at the Han Solo figurine on my desk, which was a present from Seth for my last birthday.

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

It’s amazing how convincing you are.

Anyway, I have this meeting…

Right. Me too.

I sat staring at the screen, waiting for some acknowledgment that my meeting was with her, wondering why neither of us had brought it up.

Whether our silence was speaking for us.

Then my computer chimed, reminding me that I had a meeting with Underhill, Patricia, in five minutes.

I stood, looking around my desk for something to bring with me for luck.

My eyes came to rest on the Han Solo figurine. I reached out and tucked it into my pocket.

I think I’m falling, I thought.

I know, little Han Solo replied.

When Dunn the Corporate Drone finished his safety stupidity, Tish resumed her lecture. As I bent my head over my notes, I tried to rid myself of the disappointment that our meeting wasn’t just the two of us. But although we weren’t alone, I felt acutely aware of her presence. Like how you do sometimes in a crowd of people. How you can tell exactly where they are at any given moment, even though you haven’t looked in a while. Like some thread connected us.

Two hours later, the meeting was over and I looked up from my doodle/notes to meet Tish’s eyes again. I smiled and started to wave at her, stopping in the middle as it struck me that it might come off as weird to my colleagues. She nodded her head and clicked a button, and then she was gone.

We all stood and made our separate ways out of the room. Marketing Guy was talking to someone I didn’t know about the list Tish should be on, if she wasn’t already. I smiled, but I felt restless, like there was somewhere else I was supposed to be, something else I was supposed to be doing.

I got back to my desk, and there was the usual host of emails waiting for me, but also one from Tish. The Re was:

Strange?

I clicked it open.

Well, that was strange, she had written.

Strange good?

A moment, two, then ping!

Strange good.

We used the conference room a lot.

CHAPTER 22 It’s Not What It Looks Like

I wake up next to Seth with an almighty crick in my body. When I look over at him, I suppress a laugh. He’s fallen asleep with the book he was reading across the bridge of his nose, his book light still on. I guess it’s a measure of how tired we both were that we slept despite the cramped quarters and illumination.

I lift the book from Seth’s face as gently as I can and leave his room, letting him sleep in, sleep yesterday off, if that’s possible.

Beth’s already up and downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table, working away on her laptop. Amazingly, there doesn’t seem to be anyone else here, only their detritus, which I’m sure my mother will be here to start cleaning up as soon as she gets my father out the door.

“There’s coffee,” Beth says, not looking up.

I put the book down on the table and help myself to a large cup, keeping it black, though I generally don’t drink it that way. Yesterday feels like it’s clinging to my brain, and Beth’s black tar might scrub it away.

“You don’t have to stay,” I say to Beth, “if you should be getting back.”

“Ha!”

“What?”

She grins at me. “You don’t really mean that. At least…I hope you don’t.”

“I don’t, but I’d understand if you have to. If you’re needed elsewhere.”

“I can’t think of anywhere else where I’m needed more than here.”

“Are you trying to make me cry?”

“Little bit.”

I reach for a Kleenex. “That’s not really a challenge these days, you know.”

“How about making you laugh?”

“That might be harder.”

“I’ll work on that.” She picks up the book from the table. “What’s this?”

“What? Oh, it’s the book Seth got that poem he read from. Jeff had it.”

Beth starts flipping through it and I read the title again. Just This Side of Childhood by Zoey Underhill. Why did Jeff have this book? Underhill, Underhill…

“Who’s Tish?” Beth asks.

“She’s…she worked with Jeff. She was here yesterday.”

“Why would she give him this? Were they good friends?”

“I don’t…I don’t think so. She gave it to him?”

Beth holds the inside cover of the book open to me. Written on it, under a date from three weeks ago, are the words To Jeff, I’m a proud mama! Tish.

“This must be her daughter’s book.”

“Okay.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Forget it.”

“Beth.”

“Don’t you think it’s…weird that she’d give it to him?”

“They worked together. Maybe she gave them to a bunch of people?”

She stays silent.

“You don’t think—”

She shakes her head. “No. I really don’t. I’m sure it’s fine.”

“But that might explain a few things. Like how distracted he’s been. And I found her crying outside—”

“No,” she says firmly. “Don’t go there.”

“Why? Rick did it. Why not Jeff?”

“Yeah, my asshole ex-husband cheated on me, but it was only a one-time thing. It’s not like he was leaving me for her or anything. He only told me because he wanted forgiveness.”

“As if.”

“I know, right? Only…”

“What?”

“When he’d moved out and I’d calmed down, I missed him. And I got to thinking that I wished I didn’t know about it. If he could’ve kept it to himself, then we’d probably still be together.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because sometimes it’s better to leave well enough alone.”

“You really think that?”

“Yeah, I do.” She rises, taking her dishes to the sink. “I guess I should get started on this mess.”

“You don’t have to. I’m sure Mom…”

“I asked Mom and Dad to cool their heels for the day. For the weekend actually.”

“And they agreed?”

“Yup. I think there’s some big golf tournament on or something.”

“The Masters.”

“The whatsit?”

“The Masters? One of the four majors…”

She smiles. “Jeff knowledge?”

“Yeah. I bet he’s pissed as hell that he’s missing it.”

“You mean, up in heaven.”

“Ha, ha.”

She hugs me quickly. “I’m only poking fun. Besides, if there really is a heaven, I’m sure they have cable.”

Amazingly enough, my parents keep their word (or the golf is so riveting they’re sufficiently distracted; either scenario is just as likely), and it’s only the three of us for the weekend. Even Tim seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, but since that’s hardly new, I don’t remark on it.

Monday rolls around as Mondays always do, and it’s back to work for real now. Not that I couldn’t take more time off if I needed to, but Playthings made me feel more like myself the other day. It always has.

I get there in time for morning drop-off, marveling, as always, at the long line of SUVs waiting to disgorge the tiniest of cargoes. Our parents had a Ford LTD growing up, and the backseat was just big enough for Beth and me to have to lean slightly to land a really good blow on the other during the cross-country family vacations my parents insisted on taking. If ever there were two people (or four, for that matter) who didn’t need to be cooped up in a four-door sedan, we were those people. But my parents have never been the most self-aware of couples.

Outside my office, Mandy Holden’s got LT firmly by the hand, the sweater of her pale blue twin-set knotted over her shoulders.

“Oh, Claire, hello. Great to see you.” She says this like the last time she saw me wasn’t at my husband’s wake.

“You too, Mandy. What can I do for you?”

She holds her finger to her lips, then points down at LT, who, as far as I can tell, is plotting how to get the Fruit Roll-Up out of Sara Kindle’s little paw and couldn’t care less about whatever it is his mother wants to keep quiet.

But I nod and motion for her to enter my office, our pantomime confirming that she’ll come see me when she’s done depositing LT in the toddler room and giving whatever today’s instructions are to the way-too-patient staff.

The message light on my phone is still blinking away like it was last week. I can’t believe it still has the energy. I dial into my voicemail and skip through the messages. All sympathy, all the time. It occurs to me after I erase the tenth one that I should be keeping a list for the thank-you cards my mother’s going to start bugging me about writing any day now, but I can’t be bothered. Instead, I hit the buttons to erase them all; if someone wants to say something other than how sorry they are, they’ll call back.

Mandy enters my office as I hang up the phone.

“So, um, sorry, again, for your loss.”

“Thank you. What’s up?”

“We haven’t found a way to tell him yet, but it’s important that the staff know, and you’ll probably have to implement some new food guidelines—”

“What are you talking about?”

“LT’s gluten sensitivity, of course.”

“LT has celiac disease?”

“Of course not! It’s only a sensitivity. I told you on Friday.”

She sounds genuinely annoyed that I don’t remember this. As if something she told me after I put my husband in the ground should be top of mind, or in my mind at all.

“Right. Of course.”

“So you’ll make the changes?”

“No.”

“We’re talking about LT’s health here, Claire.”

“We went over this when you found out LT was allergic to pollen. We can’t implement a whole set of rules because of one child’s sensitivity. Not unless it’s life-threatening.”

“But—”

“LT’s not the only child who isn’t eating gluten. I’ll let the caregivers know and we’ll make sure he only eats what you provide him with, but that’s as far as we can go.”

She holds her enormous purse to her chest. “But on Friday you said—”

“You’re not seriously trying to hold her to something she said on Friday, are you?” Tim says from the doorway.

Mandy looks startled, then smiles brightly at Tim. “Well, I…No, I guess I understand. But, Claire, I want to continue to dialogue about this.”

“Why don’t we see how it goes this week and we’ll take it from there, all right?”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Tim says.

“Oh, well, yes…” Mandy stands and I can see the blush creeping up her cheeks. Tim is throwing her off her game, but not completely. “And who are you?”

“I’m Jeff’s brother, Tim.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

She holds out her tanned hand, diamonds flashing. Tim takes it briefly, and I swear she’s batting her eyelashes at him. Maybe those rumors of LT’s father sleeping on the couch are true.

“You have a minute, Claire?” Tim asks.

“I’m sure she does. I’ll be running along. Ta.”

Tim watches her leave, shaking his head. When she’s maybe out of earshot he says, “ ‘Ta’? Does she think she’s a queen?”

“In the furthest reaches of her mind? Probably.”

“What did she ask you to do when she found out her kid was allergic to pollen?”

“Cancel all field trips. Have the windows sealed. Have special HEPA filters installed in the ventilation system.”

“Why not just put him in a bubble?”

“I thought about suggesting that, but I think it would’ve been too much trouble for her. I mean, if someone came to the house, and LT wasn’t in the bubble, or there wasn’t even a bubble, people might talk.”

“She’s a piece of work.”

“She is. How come you’re here?”

He frowns. “I hadn’t seen you for a couple of days, and I thought…I wanted to see how this place turned out in the end.”

I wave my hand around. “Here it is, in all its glory. What do you think?”

He does a full 360, taking in the primary colors, the handprints on the wall from every class I’ve had since I started the place, the massive jar of pennies the kids are collecting to buy books to send to kids in Africa, then back to me.

“I like it very much,” he says. “Very much indeed.”

When I thought of the idea of Playthings, I clung to it like a piece of driftwood that crosses the path of someone lost at sea, just about to give up. And then, because more pieces floated by, I started constructing the pieces into a raft that would take me back to myself, home.

It didn’t really surprise me that Jeff was skeptical about it. I was skeptical myself. Was I really ready to give up something I’d worked toward for years? Do something that was going to disappoint so many people, my father in particular? Losing the baby had nothing to do with my job. Why was my brain connecting the two and making it impossible to disentangle them?

But six months of haunting playgrounds and feigning normalcy hadn’t given me any answers. My brain was playing tricks on me, sucking me inward, away from my life, my family, myself. I might’ve clung on to anything that floated by. If I’d been hanging out in a coffee shop instead of a playground, I might be the proud owner of a Starbucks knock-off right now.

All I knew is that I could see land for the first time in months, and if the wind didn’t change, I’d be ashore soon.

So I threw myself into the project. What it would’ve been prudent to take six months to do, I did in one. I scouted locations, researched licensing requirements, started seeking out disgruntled staff at other daycares to steal them away when the time was right. I even fomented dissent among parents I knew about their current daycares. Did they have a sign-in system? No? Really? Oh well, I’m sure it’s fine…

There was a sense of unreality about the whole thing. I might’ve been on the raft, paddling in the right direction, but I didn’t expect it to last. Like a fat person who’d gotten thin, I couldn’t see the real me in the mirror yet. And also, Jeff wasn’t on the raft with me. I wanted him to be, he wanted to be, but I didn’t know how to make any room, and he didn’t know how to climb on board.

The reappearance of Tim made it more complicated. Things were so tense between him and Jeff and me. As far as I knew, they hadn’t talked since the wedding. And it had never really been normal between Tim and me since we broke up and he left.

Our breakup had been sudden. Or maybe that’s not right. Maybe the truth is that the seeds of it had been there the whole time, but we were concentrating on the bright blooming things and not the choking weeds that were getting bigger by the day. But I’d promised my father I was going home, and Tim wanted nothing to do with it. So when he proposed Australia or Phuket or anywhere but Springfield, we’d finally said the things out loud that we thought we’d said before, but never had.

“I always told you I was going home,” I said.

“And I always told you I wasn’t.”

“But I thought—”

“I thought it too, but I guess neither of us is going to compromise, are we?”

There were other words. Angry ones. A few desperate weeks where we argued, and were silent, and had frantic sex where I’d cry afterward, trying to muffle my tears with my pillow while Tim pretended to sleep. Neither of us would bend. Each of us expected the other to.

In the end, that’s really all it came down to. And if we regretted it after, neither of us was willing to be the first to say so. Maybe it was for the best. No, it was. It was.

Tim seemed to be making an effort this time. He spent a lot of time with his parents. He took an interest in Seth, filling in when Jeff and I were absent. He made overtures to Jeff. They shared a beer, went on a night out with the boys, played a round of golf. And he kept his distance from me. He acted like a polite, distant brother-in-law who barely knew me. Which was, on many levels, the truth.

Then I found the perfect place. This place where I am now, where the children are laughing in the other room, where despite the Mandys of the world I was able to paddle my raft to shore, get back home and almost forget what it was like to be at sea.

After all the papers were signed and I got the keys from the realtor, I left a quick note for Jeff on the kitchen table telling him where I was and made a beeline for this building. It had been a gymnasium before and the previous tenants had left lots of useful equipment behind. An enclosed space full of balls for the kids to jump around in, bright colors on the walls, those mats we used in high school for sit-up drills, which would be perfect for the kids’ naps.

I walked into what I already knew would be the toddler room, pulled a couple of the mats to the middle of the floor, and sat lotus-style, letting the room tell me what it wanted to be, letting it become my home away from home. It was pelting rain outside, the drops making a soothing hum as they plinked against the metal roof.

“Are you meditating?”

“Jeff, you came!” I opened my eyes. “Tim. Sorry—”

“I sound like him?”

“You do.”

He motioned to the floor. His hair was wet from the rain and he carried a sodden jacket over his arm. “There room enough for two on there?”

“I guess.”

He draped his jacket over a tiny plastic chair and sat next to me. He tried to emulate my position but stopped halfway, grimacing.

“Not as flexible as I once was.”

“No way you could ever do that.”

“You don’t know, maybe I could.”

I shook my head. “How’d you know I was here?”

“Saw your note for Jeff. Thought I’d take a spin by. See what all the fuss was about.”

“What do you think?”

He looked around him. Not a cursory look, but really taking the place in.

“You going to have two kids’ rooms?”

“Yes, exactly…how did you know that?”

“Makes sense.”

“Right.”

“The place is awesome, Claire. I’m really proud of you.”

I don’t know what it was, his tone, the word proud, but in an instant I was crying. Crying like I hadn’t in a long time.

“Claire? Are you all right? Claire?”

I couldn’t speak, could only shake my head. Tim’s arm went around me and he held me to his chest. He smelled like he always smelled, like a boy at bath time after he’d been playing in the rain. His other arm went around me and I gave in to his embrace, burying my face in his chest, soaking his shirt.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but at some point the tears dried up, as they always do, as they have to.

Tim kept holding me, though, stroking my hair, making small comforting noises like I did when Seth needed them after a skinned knee, a toy taken away, a bad childhood day. And then, I don’t know why, or how, or why, but then I was looking up at him and he was looking down at me, and his lips brushed mine, once, quickly, and then again, for longer. And though my brain was screaming that I should pull away, that I had to stop this now, immediately, I didn’t.

The clang of the front door did it for me. We sprang apart and I bolted to my feet, knowing, somehow, that it was Jeff, that he had seen, oh God, that he had seen.

I rushed to the front door. It was still rattling on its hinges, but when I got it open and made it outside, all I found was the driving rain and the certainty that I was too late.

CHAPTER 23 Let’s Pretend You’re at the Beginning of Your Career

Zoey comes around before the ambulance gets to our house, but two fainting spells in two days is enough to worry the most sanguine of mothers, which I am not, and send Brian into a worst-case-scenario level of hypochondria that I haven’t seen in him since I was pregnant.

We spend the weekend ferrying Zoey back and forth to the hospital, where she’s put through a battery of tests. She has a headache that won’t go away, and her vision’s a bit blurry she says, but each test tells us nothing, only scratches one more archaic possibility off the list, like on an episode of House. And maybe it’s the influence of television, but I keep expecting Zoey to get worse, for more symptoms to appear. Instead, all she does is submit to each blood sample, body scan, and pupil-dilating exam with an uncharacteristic silence, and no answers emerge.

On Sunday, while Zoey’s with an eye doctor to check if her problems are optical, Brian and I see the neurologist. He’s come in on his day off, and though he claims to be happy to do so, the fact that he’s dressed like a teenaged boy sends a different message.

We thank him for taking the time, and I sit quietly while he flips through Zoey’s charts and tests results, and Brian reels off possibilities like answers in a multiple-choice exam. Dr. Coast shakes his head at each of them, and eventually Brian runs out of suggestions. The clock on his wall ticks loudly, a reminder of each second passing by.

Dr. Coast finally puts down Zoey’s file. “I understand that this must’ve been a trying few days for you, but I think that everything that can be done has been done.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Zoey.”

I hear the words, but they don’t bring relief, not yet.

“But how can that be? She fainted twice in twenty-four hours. And her headache? The blurry vision? That’s not normal, is it?”

He leans back in his chair. The hood of his brown sweatshirt reminds me of a monk’s cowl.

“I understand your confusion, and if I were at the beginning of my career I’d be running a whole battery of tests to be a hundred percent sure. But I think Zoey’s had enough tests, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” Brian says, concern edging out his usual professional medical tone, “but we need to be absolutely positive. Surely you understand.”

“I do. Unfortunately, we often have to live with uncertainty in these kinds of situations. We know so little about the brain, really, despite our efforts. But if I had to give you my best guess, I’d say it was stress related.”

“She’s eleven,” I say. “There’s nothing stressful going on with her. She…she’s a good kid. Things with her are good.”

“The beginning of adolescence can be a very stressful time. Surely you remember?”

Brian makes a frustrated noise. “She’s not like other kids. She takes things in stride. And with her IQ…”

“Yes, I’ve seen that in her file, but that might just mean she’s better at hiding things. And those competitions she does must be stressful.”

Brian’s jaw clenches and I reach for his hand. He squeezes it and glances at me as if to ask, Are we on the same page?

We are.

“She likes those competitions,” I say. “We don’t push her to do them. And she’s been doing them for years without incident.”

“Perhaps she’s changed the way she feels about them?”

“She would have told us.”

“Maybe she didn’t realize it herself.”

“So that’s it? We take her home and…what?”

“Monitor the situation. Make sure she eats well and exercises and makes time for things that are relaxing. Talk to her. If she’s experiencing anxiety, I can recommend someone, but I don’t think that’ll be necessary. My bet is that this won’t happen again.”

“This is crap,” Brian says. “We know her. I was with her right before this happened. And I’m telling you that if she’d been ‘stressed,’ we would’ve known. No.” He leans forward, resting his hands on the front of the doctor’s desk. “No. I’m afraid we’re going to have to insist that you pretend like it is the beginning of your career.”

A couple of hours later, we’re standing in the sterile viewing room for the MRI machine, watching Zoey being loaded in.

The technician sits to the right of us in a white lab coat, her eyes on the screen. Thin slices of Zoey’s brain appear like they’re coming out of a deli cutter. The whole room feels like the future, and it is husha-husha silent except for the clicks and whirs of the machine.

Zoey looks pale and skinny and small in her washed-out blue hospital gown, the soles of her bare feet the only thing less than pristine. I can feel the tension seeping out of Brian next to me. I place my hand at the base of his neck and begin rubbing gently. Something that’s always calmed him in the past. The muscles in his neck start to unclench.

“You don’t blame me, do you,” he asks, “for the competitions?”

“Of course not. And I agree, Zoey loves them. She always has.”

“She really seemed okay. Everything was like it always is. If those damn TV cameras weren’t there, no one would’ve had to know about it.”

“Were they there last year?”

“It’s something they were trying this year because of how popular those spelling bees have become.”

I nod. I’ve watched them myself sometimes. Some of the same kids from the spoken word circuit are involved in them too. But Zoey’s never shown any interest.

“I want to kill the little bastards who put that video up,” Brian says. “When this is resolved, I’m going to figure out who did it.”

“I don’t think that will solve anything.”

“Might make me feel better, though. Might make Zoey feel better.”

“I’m guessing Zoey would prefer to pretend this never happened. And then there’ll be a poem about it. Diving for the floor / for all the world to see / words failing me.”

“Yes. That sounds like her. And like you.”

“No, she’s better. She’s braver.”

“You always discount your talents. I don’t know why you do that.”

“Years of practice?”

He shakes his head. “Apropos of nothing, and sorry I didn’t ask before, but how was your thing?”

“My thing?”

“The funeral.”

I suck in my breath. “You know, in all of this, I’d forgotten about it.”

And this is true. I’ve barely thought about Jeff from the moment I got Zoey’s tearful phone call. Maybe an aftershock is coming, but for now my mind seems to be fixating on the right things. The right now.

“It was…sad,” I say. “Do you blame me? For not being there? At Nationals? Maybe if I had been…”

“You’re here now. That’s what counts. And like you said, this wasn’t our fault. There’s no one to blame. Dr. Coast is probably right. Not about the stress, but about it being nothing. He has to be right.”

“He does. He really does.”

Brian takes my hand, and we twine our fingers together as another slice of our daughter’s brain thunks into place on the screen beside us.

CHAPTER 24 One Minute in a Thousand

I never wanted to quit my accounting practice. I loved everything about it, really: the little old ladies with their shoeboxes of receipts; the local cash businesses that wanted you to help them circumvent the tax man just enough so that they could still feel honest; the puffed-up businessmen who were expecting you to be impressed with the size of their bank accounts, and were quietly infuriated when you refused to give in to their satisfaction.

The problem was, I couldn’t make a living at it. Not really.

It held together, after a fashion, when Claire was working and we were happy living in my condo. But things got tight once Seth was born, even though Claire went back to work sooner than she wanted to. We were cramped in the condo, the three of us, Seth’s colorful toys staking out more and more territory, but neither of us wanted to take up the offers of financial support from our parents.

We bumped along, staying barely on the right side of debt—I’m an accountant after all—but we wanted more kids. We needed a house. I wanted Claire to be able to take as much time off as she wanted when our next baby was born, or to stay home even, if that was her choice. And further down the road there was summer camp, and school trips, and college tuition to think of.

So I knew what I had to do. It had been selfish to resist the inevitable for so long. And if I could be happy everywhere else, I thought it wouldn’t matter much if my nine-to-five wasn’t everything I wanted it to be.

There was only one place that could solve my problem. Johnson Company—maker of widgets and whatchamacallits—was the biggest employer in town, and the only business that had an accounting department. It occupied a low, sprawling campus that was trying to pretend it was located outside of San Francisco, and before the consultants got a hold of it, it wasn’t that bad a place, really. When the Art Davieses and the Don-What’s-His-Names were running the show, I bet it was even fun on a regular basis.

You know, office fun.

I knew before I started that it wasn’t for me, but it was a path to other things. We could buy a house. Less working on the weekends trying to balance the books would mean more time for the family, for me, for golf. And kids should have a house, right, with a sandbox and a swing set in the backyard? With friends on the same street whose houses they could run in and out of like Tim and I did as children?

The last remnants of the idyllic parts of my childhood were still to be found in the shaded streets in the neighborhood we’d now be able to afford to live in if I took the job, and I wanted to give that to my family.

I wanted it very much.

So I wrapped up my practice and we went into escrow. I started working for Art and found my rhythm. Then Claire got pregnant, even though we’d stopped trying, and it seemed to confirm my decision, a pat on the head from the universe telling me I’d done the right thing.

And right up until the moment our doctor was moving a wand around Claire’s stomach in primordial goo searching for something that wasn’t there, I really thought I had it.

I thought I had it all.

After I ran away from Claire’s daycare, and Claire, and Tim, and the Kiss, I still couldn’t quite believe that what I’d seen had taken place. I spent a couple hours walking around in the rain, letting it seep through my clothes till they clung to me like skin. When I stepped into the Woods, looking for a place to hide, the rain’s clatter and the rustling leaves blocked out everything else but the wish that I hadn’t run, that I’d stood and fought.

Fought for Claire.

Fought for the life I held in my hand for a minute.

But I’d relaxed my grip. I’d taken my eyes off the ball—just for a second—and my club was whistling through the air with no purpose. A whiff, they call it in golf, after the windy sound your club makes when you swing and miss.

That windy sound was in my head, my heart, my lungs.

That windy sound felt like the soundtrack to taking a swing and missing my life.

I had to go home sometime, I knew, even if it was only to pick up things to change into before I slunk off to some hotel room, or wherever it was husbands whose wives were cheating on them with their brothers spent the night. There had to be some place that fit the bill, right? There was probably even a greeting card for it, but greeting cards don’t tell you how to feel; they assume it. Happy on your birthday. Sad someone died.

Black and white.

White and black.

But how are you supposed to feel, really, when all your worst fears, things you’d never even imagined could happen, actually do happen, actually do come true?

Hearts don’t come with an owner’s manual.

Someone should do something about that.

It must’ve been a couple hours before I got back to our house. I don’t know what I expected to find there, but what I found was Tim sitting on the front steps with his suitcase by his side. He was smoking a cigarette, and I was fighting the urge to ask him if he’d gotten that from Claire too when he said, “About time you got here.”

“Excuse me?”

He stood up. “You’re taking me to the airport. My flight leaves in an hour.”

I wanted to tell him to go fuck himself, that he could get his own self to the airport. But then it occurred to me that driving him to the airport would be an excuse to not have to face Claire yet, to not have that conversation, whatever it was going to be.

I nodded and slopped in the puddles that were my shoes toward my car.

Inside, I could feel the wet dripping off me like I’d stepped out of a shower. Claire would’ve been pissed if she knew I was in the car in my present condition, and that gave me a small measure of petty satisfaction.

Tim shoved his suitcase into the backseat and climbed in next to me. I started the engine, started the wipers, and listened to them slap against the glass as I pulled out of the driveway.

“Jeff—”

“No. I’ll drive you to the airport, but that’s it. I don’t want to hear it. And if you don’t like it, you can get there on your own.”

He paused. “All right. If that’s what you want.”

I turned on the radio, putting it up full blast, like I hadn’t done in years, and certainly not with someone else in the car. It was some stupid ’80s station, playing a Rush song I hated—there’s never any need for Rush, really—and I could tell by the way Tim was clenching his hands that he wanted it off.

Denying him this, even if I was cutting off my own nose to spite my face, was another notch of satisfaction in a day where every notch counted.

If I could’ve made the radio play “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” through sheer willpower, it would’ve made my day.

I took the airport exit. “What airline are you flying?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Are you going to check your ticket or should I drop you wherever?”

“It’s not that big an airport. I’ll figure it out when I get inside.”

“You don’t even have a ticket, do you?”

“Of course I do.”

“Right. Whatever. Asshole,” I muttered under my breath, but not, you know, that quietly.

He cleared his throat in a way that let me know he’d heard me despite the computerized crap screaming from the car’s cheap speakers.

“Pull over,” Tim said.

“The terminal’s right ahead.”

“I mean it, pull over here.”

I slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder. The front wheel bumped against a large rock.

“Suit yourself.”

Tim got out of the car, and I sat there, waiting for him to get his suitcase out of the back, thinking that it was par for the course that he was going to get the last word.

My door swung open.

“Get out,” he said.

I looked up at him. He loomed large as always but also, in a way, he looked small, like Seth when he was trying to act like a grown-up.

“Just go, all right?”

“No. Get out. Let’s do this right for once.”

I got out of the car. It was still raining, but it was more of a foggy mist. A perfect setting for a duel, or whatever Tim had in mind.

“Are you saying you want to fight?”

“Not exactly. I want to tell you something first, and then I want you to hit me.”

“You want me to hit you?”

“That’s right.”

“What the fuck, Tim?”

“Just…” Trust me, he was going to say. “Will you do it, already?”

“All right. Fine.”

I raised my fists, trying to remember the last time I hit someone in the face. Trying to remember if I’d ever hit someone in the face.

“Hold up,” Tim said. “Listen to me first.”

“I don’t need you to say something to make me hit you.”

“That’s why I need to say this first.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m going to give you some advice, Jeff, and then you’re going to hit me and I’m going to fly out of here.”

“Get on with it, then.”

“One minute doesn’t erase a thousand.”

“Of all the…what the…maybe it does.”

“No, not unless you let it.”

“How would you know, anyway?”

“I know, okay? Let’s leave it at that.”

“No, I need you to tell me.”

He sighed. “I let one moment, one idea, ruin my thousand moments, all right? And I’ve regretted it ever since.”

“And what? That’s supposed to make me forget about today?”

“It should.”

“What do you know about it?”

“I don’t know anything. That’s my whole point. She was sad, Jeff. She was vulnerable and I took advantage. And I’m a complete asshole for doing that, but that’s all it was. It didn’t mean anything. Not to her. And I’m sorry, okay, I’m sorry I had anything to do with it.”

“You’re sorry.”

“Yes. I’ve been feeling like a jerk for a long time. Ever since I found out about you and Claire. Before that even. And when you feel like that…well, let’s just say it’s not much of a stretch to start acting like one. I fucked up. I’ve been fucking up forever. And I’m sorry. You’re my brother, and I’m sorry. Now hit me, and go home to your wife.”

I stood there staring at him, a foot away, as wet as I was now. My brother. Someone who knew things about me I’d forgotten. Someone who I betrayed, and who betrayed me in return.

Hitting him wasn’t going to solve anything.

But I did it anyway.

When I got home from the airport with grazes across my knuckles and a dull ache in the joints of my hand, I felt like Grady Tripp at the end of Wonder Boys. Too many things had happened in too short a time span. Did people’s lives really change this quickly? Years of sameness, and then a few hours, a few moments, and everything’s different? But, yes, of course they can. It happens all the time.

My clothes had dried on me in the way that only happens after you’ve been soaked to the bone, and they felt stiff and uncomfortable. I wanted to strip them off, climb into a steaming shower, and then sleep, but I knew that might be a long way off.

When I walked through the front door, Claire was sitting on the couch in the living room under the reading lamp with her feet curled under her, staring off into space. Her eyes were red and puffy, and the wastepaper basket nearest to her was full of balled-up Kleenex.

“Where’s Seth?” I asked.

“Upstairs. Asleep, last time I looked.”

I checked my watch. It was seven, early for him to be in bed.

“Does he…is he okay?”

“He has a slight fever. He actually asked to go to bed.”

She stood clumsily, then fell back to the couch, clutching her foot.

“Foot cramp,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Ouch. Sorry.”

“No, I deserve it.”

“Claire—”

Her fingers worked at the knot in her foot, which I knew from long experience could be excruciating. “No, I do.”

I wanted to go to her, put my arms around her, and wait out the cramp like we’d done so many times before, but the image of her in Tim’s arms held me back.

“Will you sit for a minute?” she asked. “You’re making me nervous, standing there like that.”

“How am I standing?”

“Like you’re wondering if you should pack your things.”

I let that hang there as a deep weariness settled over me. I closed my eyes for a beat, two, then Claire was there, at my shoulder, leading me to the couch.

“You shouldn’t walk on that. You’ll make it worse.”

She grimaced and I could see her fighting the instinct to fall to the floor and cradle her foot in her lap until the cramp passed. Sometimes it was fast, but a few times I’d found her in the hall, or the bathroom—wherever she was when the cramp hit—where she’d been stranded for half an hour or more.

She pressed on and we were on the couch, both worn out and gripped by pain.

“Can I talk? Will you listen?” she asked.

I looked her in the face for the first time. Her eyes were the color they only were when she’d been crying. They always turned this amazing shade when she was particularly upset.

“We don’t have to do this now. We can wait till you feel better.”

“I’m not going to feel better until I put this right. If I can.”

“What did you want to say?”

She blew out a long breath. It reached my face, a sweet smell I always associated with kissing her. And in thinking this I knew—I was going to forgive her.

Probably.

Assuming that’s what she wanted.

“I’ve screwed everything up, haven’t I?” she said.

“Do you really want me to say?”

“I guess I meant it more rhetorically, but I wanted to tell you I was sorry. I mean, of course, you know I’m sorry, so desperately sorry. I won’t insult you with the details, unless you want to know—”

“No!”

She started. “No, of course you don’t. And there’s nothing to tell. You saw everything there was to see.”

“Did I, Claire? Did I really?”

Did I see what’s in your heart? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.

“You did. And Tim’s gone.”

“I drove him to the airport.”

“You did?”

“You didn’t know?”

“He packed his stuff and left. Said he wouldn’t be back. Did he…you drove him to the airport?”

“I did.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to hear what he had to say for himself. And punch him in the face, though that was his suggestion.”

“You what? You’re not making sense.”

“No. Nothing is.”

She fell silent, her hand massaging her foot idly. I could tell by the way the muscles in her neck loosened that the worst of the cramp had passed.

“Is that it?” I asked.

“No. I’ve been sitting here, trying to think of a way…trying to make you believe me. I know it’s always been hard for you that Tim and I were together. I know you’ve wondered about him, about us.”

I didn’t deny it. How could I?

“I’m not saying that I don’t understand how you feel. I’ve always known, really, and it’s something I should’ve worked harder to correct.”

“Because I was totally in left field?”

“Not totally, but not in the way you mean.”

“So you haven’t been harboring some secret wish that he’d come back? Declare his undying love for you? Beg you to take him back?”

She smiled uncertainly. “Of course I have, or a small part of me has, anyway. Just like I bet what’s her name—Lily—is wishing that same thing about you sometimes, no matter how happy she is right now.”

“But the difference is, I haven’t shown up in her life.”

“Right, but you have to let me have that, Jeff. That’s the part of girl-Claire that was hurt by the first person…it’s not real, is what I’m trying to say. It’s revenge. And revenge isn’t sweet. And it isn’t the point.”

“What is your point?”

“Do you remember why I told you I came back here? Why I wouldn’t move away with Tim?”

“Because of your dad? That promise you made him?”

“Right. I know it sounds stupid, and part of me was probably just testing Tim, but it was important to me to do what I said I was going to do. But if I’m being perfectly honest, if Tim had shown up in those first few months, I probably would have left. My dad would’ve been hurt, but Beth had already broken his heart. He would’ve gotten over it. Anyway, all this to say that he might be the reason I came home, but he’s not the reason I stayed.”

“What’s the reason, then?”

“Do you really not know?”

“I only know what you tell me.”

“I hope that’s not true, but I will say it. I’ll say it if you promise to believe that I’m telling you the truth.”

I looked into the gloom beyond the puddle of light from the reading lamp. Little balls of it reflected off the photographs on the wall leading up the stairs to where our son was sleeping, oblivious to the chaos in his own house.

“All right. I promise.”

She placed her hand on my arm. “I came back for my dad, but I stayed for you, Jeff. I stayed for you.”

And because I’d promised, I believed her.

And in the end, I stayed too.

CHAPTER 25 Amateur Detective

After Tim leaves the daycare, I receive a curt email from Connie that I know will be followed by a Chinese water torture of communication until I comply. So I let the staff know I’ll be gone for a couple of hours and walk from Playthings to the conservatory.

On my way, I wonder, as always, what it is about this woman that removes my free will. She’s had my number since the first time I met her, both figuratively and literally, and I’ve never known how to keep her from using either.

“Because you like it,” Jeff would say. “She pushes you. And it feels crappy at first, like the first round of golf after winter, but by the back nine, you’re loving it.”

He was right, of course. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost the ability to push myself, to get outside myself, inside myself. Music was the way I’d always done that in the past, and Connie pushed me hard enough to realize that it still worked after all these years. It was still something I needed in my life to feel whole, happy, connected. It was a fundamental part of me and always had been.

And as I walk down the quiet side streets, empty and abandoned by the parents at work, the children at school, I realize that this too has been missing since all this happened. There hasn’t been any music. None coming from the radio I won’t turn on, the iPod I will not play, and the piano I have not touched. As a result, it’s too quiet up there in my head, and this has let the noise in.

So after I do a few scales and runs to warm up my fingers, and Connie puts a new piece in front of me, something modern and dissonant, I dive into the score. I play it clumsily and loudly, these off-kilter notes, until they work their way inside my brain and the volume’s loud enough that there isn’t room for anything other than the music.

When I get home from the day, there’s glue in my hair and a tiredness that’s familiar, workable. Beth’s left a note that she’s gone to the gym, but Seth is there, and I make dinner for him for the first time since that Friday. Less than two weeks ago on the calendar, but we’ve been through a time machine since then. And like in the Stephen King novel I was reading shortly before all this happened, the time that’s elapsed since I stepped through the wormhole bears no relationship to real time. Two weeks, two minutes, two years. Any of these is a possibility.

I throw together a mismatch of foods left by our friends and neighbors, who I still have not thanked, my mother’s voice reminds me. There’s chicken curry, chickpea salad, and rosemary potatoes. As Seth picks at his food (the Tupperware crew really didn’t have a twelve-year-old boy in mind in their act of kindness), he tells me that two women he didn’t even know dropped off the latest batch when he wasn’t-watching-TV after school.

“Thought you’d slip that in there, did you?”

“But I wasn’t.”

“Of course not. You’re a good kid, Seth.”

He scowls.

“Did I say something wrong? Being a good kid not cool or something?”

“No one says ‘cool’ anymore, Mom. Jeez.”

“What do they say, then?”

“I don’t know? We don’t talk about it.”

“So you’re saying that kids today all get along, and there are no cliques, no geeks, no loners. It’s a real utopia over there?”

“No…I…what does utopia mean?”

“It’s like an ideal place, the perfect place.”

“I don’t think that’s right.”

“That’s what it means.”

“No, I mean that’s not what school’s like.”

I ruffle his hair. “Of course it isn’t. It never has been. But it’s not worse than usual, right? Are people—”

“Everyone’s being fine, Mom. Like I told you. Nicer than usual, even.”

As if to confirm this, the phone rings. Seth skips over the floor to answer it. I can hear the high tones of a teenage girl’s voice coming out of the receiver.

“Hold on a sec.” He lets the phone dangle. “Gonna take this upstairs. Can you hang up?”

“Sure.”

He bounds from the room and I pick up the phone, slammed by the déjà vu of a thousand similar instances from when I was Seth’s age. Back before Twitter and Facebook and IMs and texts, all I had was the phone, pressed against my ear for so long after dinner every night that it took on my body temperature. If I had a fever, the receiver might’ve melted.

“I got it!” Seth bellows from upstairs.

I raise the phone to put it back in its cradle slowly. A few words tumble out, a giggle, a how are you? Seth’s voice a little deeper saying he’s all right, you know? Considering.

“Are you eavesdropping?”

I jump and put the receiver down louder than I meant to. I’m busted now, and Seth’ll probably have something to say about it, as he should.

“A mother’s prerogative.”

Beth smiles through her red face. Her hair’s slicked back, like she’s just had a shower, and she’s wearing a loose pair of sweats. She leans on the counter and stretches her legs behind her.

“That did me some good. You should join me at the gym sometime.”

“And run like a rat in a cage? I don’t think so.”

“There are lots of other things you could do. Besides, they say that…”

She bends over quickly, touching her toes, like that was her plan all along.

“That exercise is good for depression?” I ask, more aggressively than I should. But the thought of it, the thought of falling back into that dark place with no joy and no light, and no light even at the end of the tunnel, makes me feel like fighting. I have to fight that, no matter what, with everything I’ve got, and then some.

“I, well…”

“I’m not depressed, okay? I’m sad. I know the difference.”

She straightens up. “I only meant, if you were looking for something to do…ah, hell. Forget I said anything, all right?”

“Okay.”

She moves to the fridge and asks me about work. As she assembles some of the same food we just ate, I tell her about how crazy Mandy was being, and about Tim stopping by.

“What did he want?”

“To see the place. He didn’t stay long.”

“I see.”

“What?” I ask, though I know what. I’ve never been able to keep anything from Beth, and she knows all about that rainy day. She barely spoke to me for months after I told her; having been on the receiving end of deception, she had trouble forgiving me. I’m still not sure she has.

She brings her plate to the table and sits, and picks up the newspaper, though that doesn’t mean she’s done talking. That’s my sister, always doing three things at once. “I’m surprised he’s still here.”

“I think he feels like he should be here for his folks. And this has been hard for him too.”

“Losing a brother he’d barely spoken to in twenty years?”

“That’s not fair, or accurate. They’d…they’d been in touch again these last few years.”

Beth gives me a skeptical look, but it’s true. Though I hadn’t spoken to Tim since that day until he came home last week, he had something to do with Jeff forgiving me, with him agreeing to see if we could try to get past it all.

And though I don’t know the details (because part of our tacit agreement for trying to put it behind us was that the only relationship Tim had with our family was on Jeff’s terms), I know they’ve been communicating off and on over the last couple of years. That Tim had reached out, and Jeff had responded. Gifts arrived sporadically for Seth. Always age appropriate and something Seth had been hankering for. And Jeff’s casual references to Tim in conversation, every once in a while, were an acknowledgment that his forgiveness was real, and remained.

“Holy shit!” Beth says.

“What?”

“Have you seen this?” She hands me the paper, her finger stabbing at a small article whose headline reads: DRIVER IN ACCIDENT THAT KILLED LOCAL HOSPITALIZED.

“Oh. Yes. Um, what’s his name, Marc Duggard, told me that when he came to give me…Jeff’s effects.”

My eyes track to where the bag’s still sitting on the kitchen counter, half hidden by unanswered mail. A growing pile of things I cannot face yet.

“And you didn’t mention it to me because…?”

“I haven’t thought about it that much.”

“Seriously?”

“What’s the point?”

“If it were me? I’d be insisting they press charges.”

“I’ve never been you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. As Seth would say, jeez.”

She smiles, but she doesn’t let it go. “Okay, but still. Aren’t you bothered by this?”

“Of course I am. I…can you imagine? What it must be like for her? I mean, she killed someone. I’d be on suicide watch too.”

“I don’t give a shit about her, and you shouldn’t either.”

“It was an accident, Beth. It could’ve happened to anyone.”

“But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to you.”

“It happened to Jeff, actually.”

She stands. “That’s my cue to leave.”

“Why?”

“I have some work to do, but mostly because I don’t feel like fighting right now.”

“I’m not trying to fight.”

“That’s why I’m leaving.” She gives me a quick hug, and then I’m left alone in the kitchen. I try to keep busy with little tasks but find myself pulled to the pile of mail and the bag sitting behind it. I lift it in my hand. Jeff’s wedding band clicks against his cell phone, his watch, the only things he had on him. Where are his keys? I wonder. Did he lose them? Is that why he was walking home?

I reach for what I think will cause me the least amount of harm, his cell phone. The ring and the watch are things I gave him, things that are connected with me, with us. His cell phone is all him. Our house has been so silent since he left, and silly as it might sound, this broken cell phone is part of the reason. There are no longer any dings or buzzes or swooshes of texts being sent and received. He spent so much time on his phone that sometimes I felt like he was lost in there. And the mystic part of me wonders if he still is, if that’s where he’s really gone.

I sit at the table, holding the smashed device in my hand. I plug it into the charger and press the power button, not expecting anything to happen, but after a few moments it starts to whir. The screen flashes and then goes dark, flashes again. It feels warm, as if it’s been placed in a microwave, and it’s emitting some kind of current that makes my teeth hurt. Then it vibrates and the screen comes briefly to life. A message pops up. It’s a notification of a text message from Patricia Underhill. I tap the notice with my finger, but the text doesn’t open.

I lean forward, confused, trying to make out what I’m seeing, when the phone vibrates again and a black line begins crawling across the screen, eating up the pixels in its way like Pac-Man. It eats and eats until the phone goes dark and cool.

It all happens so quickly that when I’m staring at the black screen, moments later, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve imagined the whole thing.

CHAPTER 26 Imagine Them Naked

He caught me at the right moment.

That’s what I always remember thinking of Jeff in the days after we started speaking, emailing, spending time together in the ways that we could. When I was trying to figure out what I was doing. What it was about him, about me, that was pulling us together and holding us in place. Why I let him in.

He caught me at the right moment. That much was clear.

But what I still wasn’t sure of a year later was what made the moment right in the first place?

The MRI shows what Dr. Coast expected it to, a normal, functioning brain with no mistakes in it. When we get the results on Monday, I can tell that Brian’s both relieved and unsatisfied, but I’m only relieved. When he says she’s going to be fine, my heart feels like a too-full balloon that’s been popped. All my anxiety rushes from me in a few, brief seconds, and I collapse in on myself, a shrunken parody of what I once was. But then I take a deep breath, and I look through the glass of Dr. Coast’s office at my bored daughter slumped in a plastic waiting-room chair, who is going to be okay, she is, and my heart starts to expand again, taking a shape that can withstand being batted about.

There isn’t always an explanation for everything, I say to a still-unconvinced Brian, parroting back what he’s told me plenty of times about his own patients. He nods and agrees, but he’ll be spending nights up late surfing the Internet, researching her symptoms. When I’d punched them into WebMD myself, it gave too many possibilities to count, but the first one was something called “vasovagal syncope,” a fancy way of saying that it’s the body’s way of reacting to emotional or physical stress. Dr. Coast’s explanation, which I hoped he’d gotten from somewhere other than WebMD.

When we tell her we’re all done, Zoey seems happy to be done with the tests and anxious to put it behind her. When we get home, she wants to go back to school today, even though the day’s already half over.

“Let’s wait till tomorrow, all right?”

“But I have to, Mom.”

“I’m sure the teachers will let you make up whatever work you’ve missed.”

She chews on the end of her hair.

“What is it, Zo? What can’t wait till tomorrow?”

“The longer I stay away, the bigger deal it’s going to be when I get back. Like, ooh, Zoey was all hiding because of that video. Check out the Freak Fainting Girl.”

Goddamn that little shit who posted the video. He should count himself lucky that Brian’s been too distracted to carry through on his promise to track him down and teach him a lesson.

“But won’t it bring more attention if you show up in the middle of the day? Why not start fresh tomorrow in homeroom, like it’s any other day?”

“It doesn’t work like that. There’s no reset button. Unless some kid decides to shoot up the school, or something…”

“Zoey!”

“I’m just saying.”

“Okay, but it’s already lunchtime. You need to shower and eat, and by the time you do all that the day really will be almost over. Let’s relax this afternoon, take it easy. One more day isn’t going to make a difference.”

“Don’t you have to go to work?” she asks hopefully.

“One more day isn’t going to make a difference there either.”

And if I have my own reasons for avoiding the office, that’s my problem, not hers.

She shrugs, giving in, and clomps up the stairs. I call after her that I’ll make us some lunch, maybe with that bacon we were supposed to eat the other day, but she doesn’t answer.

Brian emerges from his study, telling me he’s had a call from one of his patients, he’s needed, do I mind if he goes? He looks guilty for asking, but I reassure him. Everything’s all right here. I’d like a bit of time alone with Zoey, anyway.

He gets his medical bag and kisses me good-bye, and I go to the kitchen to assemble lunch things. I stop in front of the fridge. My flight itinerary’s tacked to it, held fast by a Cabo San Lucas magnet, right where I left it.

Springfield to Springfield and back again.

Oh, Jeff.

I hear a thump from upstairs, and then another and another.

“Zoey? Zo?”

Now there’s a crash, and more thumps. Something being pulled over, something being thrown. I take the stairs two at a time and find Zoey in her room on the floor surrounded by a tipped-over bookshelf, binders and notebooks, all full of her writing. Zoey’s room has always been a reflection of her pinwheel mind, but never like this.

“Zoey?”

She looks up at me like she doesn’t know how she came to be in the middle of this hurricane. Her face is wet with tears.

“Are you all right? What is it? Why did you…?” My eyes dart around the room and come to rest on her flickering laptop. A video’s playing, the video of Zoey stepping up to the mike, going pale, falling to the floor, and then up again as it happens all over again. And now I understand. Although Ethan told her about the video, we’ve kept her from watching it, which was easy to do these last couple of days. I should’ve known she’d make a beeline for it the moment she was alone.

I maneuver around her things till I get to the laptop and shut the lid. “You shouldn’t watch that.”

“Ha! Too late.”

I sit down on the edge of her bed, still unmade from the day she left for the competition.

“It’ll blow over, Zo—”

“I want to throw this stuff away.”

“No, Zoey. No.”

“Yes. I don’t need it anymore. I’m not going—”

“Honey, please. You don’t have to do the competitions anymore if you don’t want to, but trust me. You don’t want to throw this stuff away. It’s a part of you. And you’ll regret it if it’s gone.”

She pulls her knees up to her chest. She looks so thin.

“Have you not been eating, Zo? Is that what this all is?”

“No, it’s not, I promise.”

“Because it’s normal, you know. Lots of young girls—”

“Mmooomm, I’m not some stupid ana girl, okay? That’s so dumb.”

“Then what?”

She looks down at the floor. One of her earliest notebooks is open in front of her, from when she was maybe six or seven. Her green period, we called it, because so many of her poems were about grass and trees and the soil they suck up through their roots.

“You’re going to think it’s stupid.”

“I could never think that.”

She hesitates, a few tears still falling, wetting the slightly yellowed pages.

“It was the people.”

“The people in the audience?”

“In the cameras. All those faces I couldn’t see…” She shudders.

“Will you tell me?”

“If you mess up where you can see the people, you can make it all right again, because of that connection? Like, when I’m up there, in the lights, onstage, I can feel the people in the room. Especially when I’m speaking. There’s this, I dunno, link, between me and them, and I can make them feel things. What I want them to feel. Like magic.”

“Is that why you love it?”

She nods.

“What was different this time?”

“I don’t know, but I could tell, when I saw the cameras on either side of the stage with their red lights blinking, that something was wrong. And I was right. In the earlier round, the semis, it was awful.”

“But Dad said you did well. You scored the highest score.”

“Maybe, but it didn’t feel good. It felt like…you know how when you go into a room that you’ve lived in and everything’s packed away and it’s all echoey?”

I thought about it. “Like at Grandpa’s house, you mean?”

When my father died a few years ago, we’d all gone to the house I grew up in to pack everything away. As we were leaving, Zoey’s hand slipped from mine and she ran from room to room, shouting her name at herself as it bounced off the empty walls. When we got in the car to drive home, she was quiet. Sad. Grandpa was really gone, she said when we pressed her. The house had told her.

“Yeah, like that. Only, it felt like that in my heart. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. And when it was my turn in the finals, I looked into the camera and it was so black in there, I couldn’t see anything but me. A tiny little me. And that’s the last thing I remember.”

“So it was a kind of stage fright?”

“I guess.”

“But, if that’s what caused it, then what happened when you were on the phone with Ethan?”

She flushes. “Don’t be mad, okay?”

“I won’t.”

“I kind of…freaked out when he told me the video was online, and I tripped on the sideboard and hit my head. I was so embarrassed, but when I was lying there on the floor and you and Dad thought I’d fainted again, I thought…I thought that if I had fainted again, when the cameras weren’t there, then I could say it was some medical thing, like low blood sugar or something, and Ethan and everyone wouldn’t have to know the truth. No one would know it was because I was scared.”

This truth pulls me from the bed to the floor, the precious notebooks be damned. I take her into my arms, holding her close, holding her up.

“Thank you for telling me, sweetheart. That couldn’t have been easy.”

“You won’t tell Dad?”

“Oh, honey, he’s been so worried. He’ll be relieved. Not mad.”

“You’re not mad?”

“Of course not.”

“How come? I caused so much trouble.”

“Come with me and I’ll show you.”

An hour later, Zoey and I are standing between the peeling white pickets of our local driving range. A hundred chipped and dirty range balls sit in a wire basket waiting for us to hit them. The course is mostly deserted (it opened only a few days ago) and the grass is barely green. Giant oak trees line the range. A few birds twitter and screech from their still-bare branches. Where is everyone? maybe they’re asking. Did I get to the party too early?

Zoey’s holding one of my old clubs in her hand clumsily, like she doesn’t quite know what to do with it. I offered to teach her a few times before, but she never showed any interest, and even today I had to insist.

I set a ball on a tee, narrating my actions for Zoey. Hold the club like this, swing back slowly, arc down through the ball like you’re scooping something off the ground, follow through, follow through, turn your hips, let your wrists snap so the club is over your shoulder.

The club feels heavy and raw in my hands. They haven’t healed properly from the other day, but I make good contact anyway, and the ball arcs away and up and lands within feet of the flag a hundred and fifty yards away.

I breathe in the scent of new grass and warming air and feel a piece of satisfaction, deep inside. I try not to think about the last time I was on a golf course. Or the time before that, either.

“That’s awesome, Mom. You’re good,” Zoey says when I’ve repeated the exercise a few times with the same result.

“Thanks. Now you try it.”

She looks skeptical but turns gamely to her own ball, perched on its tee. She brings the club back too quickly and stabs at the ball. She’s not looking where she should, and I know what will happen a second before it does. Thunk. Her club stutters into the ground behind the ball and stops. The ball teeters, then falls over in defeat.

“I missed.”

“That’s okay. Happens all the time. Let’s try again.”

I spend the next twenty minutes breaking her stroke down. The backswing. The follow through. Showing her how to keep her eyes on the ball. On the thirtieth try she makes pretty good contact, though her shot slices badly and lands in the tall, dead grass left over from last year.

“Nice one, Zo.”

“It didn’t even go near the flag,” she says, feigning disappointment, though I can tell she’s pleased to have made contact at all.

“No, you’re doing really well. It usually takes much longer than that to make good contact.”

“How long did it take you?”

I hesitate but decide to tell her the truth. “I don’t remember, really, but your grandpa said I got it on my first try.”

“Wow.”

“He thought so.”

“You were like…a child prodigy, right? Dad told me.”

“He did?”

“Sure. He said that’s where I get it from. What I do. Not just the writing, but the timing of it.”

“When’d he tell you that?”

“Dunno. More than once. He doesn’t understand why you gave it up, though.”

“Mmm. You want to know a secret?”

“Okay.”

I flick a ball into place. “I’ve never really told anyone this, but I quit because I was scared.”

“You were?”

“Yup.”

“What were you scared of?”

I swing at the ball. It hits the sweet spot on the face and curves away, landing next to the first ball I hit. Like it always does. Like it was nothing.

“Same thing you were.”

“People watching you?”

I nod. “Invisible people. You’ve seen golf on TV, right?”

“Were you on TV?”

“A couple of times. In college.” Another ball teed. Another shot at the flag. “I was there on a scholarship, a sports scholarship, and I was…good.”

“Like, how good?”

“Good enough to get to Nationals. Good enough for people to be talking about doing it for a living.”

“Cool.”

“Sure, for a while. Then my first big tournament was televised. And I totally blew up. Not cool.”

“You were probably nervous.”

“That’s what I told myself. And the next tournament I played in was a normal one, no TV, only a few spectators, and everything was fine, and I won. But then I had to go to Nationals.”

“TV again?”

“Yup.”

“Did you pass out?”

I lift my head and smile at her. “No, honey, but I played awfully. I couldn’t hit anything.” I point to the divots surrounding her tee. “It hurt when you hit the ground before, right?”

“Kind of.”

“My arms were aching by the end of the day. I almost quit.”

“But it was only twice. Maybe you could’ve gotten over it.”

“That’s what I thought, but it was the same thing every time. In practice, even in small tournaments, I was fine. I won. Everyone would talk about how I was the next big thing. But when it came time to perform for real, when anybody was looking, I tanked.”

“What do you think it was?”

“My coach thought it was a lack of ambition, that I didn’t have that killer instinct. But listening to you today, I think it was more what you said. When no one was watching, I could play for me. I connected to the ball and the course and the breeze and the birds. I hardly noticed who I was playing with. It was like magic. But when I knew people were watching, I couldn’t feel that anymore. I felt empty.”

“In your heart?”

“In my heart. So I gave it up.”

“Is that what you think I should do?”

“No, Zoey, that’s not why I told you that.”

“Why, then?”

“Because I wanted you to know that I made a mistake. What my coach thought was also true. I didn’t care enough to work through the problem. It had always been easy for me, and the minute it became hard, the minute I really had to work at it, I gave up and walked away.”

I cross into her practice zone and click my club against hers, tapping out a sound like a hollow gong.

“You’re better than that. You’re better than me. You can quit if you want. If you hate it. If it isn’t fun anymore. I’ll back you with Dad. But you can’t quit just because it’s hard. Things are hard for most people. Life is hard.”

Zoey watches me silently for a moment and then she starts to laugh.

“What is it?”

“Man, Mom, did you sign us up for some reality show without telling me?”

I almost ask her what she means before I get it. And then I’m laughing too.

“Okay, okay. I wasn’t trying to be all melodramatic. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t mean what I said, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And you’ll think about it?”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“I hear imagining the audience naked helps.”

“Mom!”

“Try it.”

She shrugs and squares herself to the waiting ball. Her arms swing back and for a moment I see a video of myself at eleven.

And I know the shot will be perfect, even before it is.