Chapter
17
Lee had done well in Boston, but what I felt best about was James’s involvement. So I called on the way home to give him an update. He picked up right away, both then and when I called again that night at ten, though in the latter instance he sounded groggy. I had woken him up.
“Oh, hey, I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
He made a stretching sound. “Nah. Gotta work.”
“Are you at the office?”
“Home. Kitchen. I must have dozed off.”
“With your head on the counter.” And his laptop pushed aside, his arms on the granite, and his neck crimped. He’d done that before. “Oh, James. You need a bed.”
“I need you,” he said, and yawned. “I need—need a longer day.” He swore. “Yeah, I’m goin’ to bed. I’ll call you in the morning.”
But I was the one who called Tuesday, right after I heard from Sean. “We have a hearing Friday afternoon.”
“Will Lee testify?” James asked.
“Yes. We’ll prepare her by phone, but he doesn’t want to overdo it. He wants her lack of guile—his words—to come through. She’s terrified, but she did agree.”
“Have there been any new incidents?”
“No. They’re making her wait. Suspense is part of the terror. How’s it going there?”
“Unh. Okay.” He didn’t sound as enthused as yesterday. “Something’s up. I was at Bedford Hills this morning interviewing Denise Bryant, and got back to have Mark all over me about getting three different briefs done. He—he keeps telling me I’m behind because I’ve been skippin’ out, and—and I keep telling him I’m behind because I don’t have the help I need, and he keeps insisting I’d be able to do it myself if I—if I kept my focus on work, which means he’s not talking about Denise Bryant but about us. What do I say to that?”
I had an answer, but it was crude.
“I think someone’s all over him, too,” James mused. “I’m guessing the figures coming in for the month aren’t good, but—but worse than the first quarter? If firm management is freaking out, things are bad.”
“How bad?” If James was laid off, we were in trouble. Or not, according to the silver-lining theory.
“Good question. The associates are the last to know. It’s about suspense here, too. Keep us on edge. Like Lee.”
“I’m sorry, James,” I said quietly.
“Well. That’s the game. It’s why I need this partnership. The vote’s in October. I can hang on until then.”
I texted him an hour after that to let him know I was thinking of him, and I did it again in the middle of the afternoon. We went back and forth each time. It was nice, though I imagined him texting under the edge of his desk, where Mark couldn’t see.
Vicki saw. I was helping set up for tea, after insisting that she sit. She looked tired. Like James, she needed more help, but the economics of the Red Fox didn’t allow for it, so I was glad to fill in. I kept my BlackBerry in my pocket, texting between runs from kitchen to parlor.
“What happened to the woman who swore off electronics?” she asked as I typed another reply.
“This is palatable,” I said, returning the BlackBerry to my pocket, “because I’m mixing it with arranging tea bags, washing pans, and eating cookies. James would be jealous.”
“Would he?”
She was right. “Maybe not. He’s so into work right now. But the channel of communication is open, and I don’t want to close it again. My day is better when I’m in touch with him.”
“That sounds like dependence.”
“No. It’s choice.” And very clear to me now. For this alone, my escape had been productive. “I like hearing his voice. I like sharing things. Maybe I feel guilty being here, while he’s going through a hard time at work. But if he needs to vent, I want to listen.”
“You want him dependent on you,” she teased.
Better me than Naida, I thought, but said, “What I really want is the hope. Our talking means we’re alive—us—as a couple. It means there’s something else besides work, something that no one can take away. We used to have this. I like that it’s back.”
“Does that mean you can take New York again?”
I considered. “It means I love my husband. It means I want to be with him.”
“What about New York?”
“I don’t know.” I did feel the weight of decision. “I should be thinking about it every minute, right? I should be doing things to help me decide. But maybe that what’s changed. I’ve always had a clear image of where I was headed. I never just went with the flow. But I feel like I have to do that now. I can’t force the issue. It’ll come to me.” When my cell rang, I pulled it out, fully expecting it to be James. I was surprised to see the local area code. Jude? Amelia?
“Hello?”
“Emily? It’s Katherine from the Refuge.”
“Katherine,” I said. I wouldn’t have recognized her voice. It was taut. “Everything okay?”
“Your kitten isn’t doing well.”
“Not doing well.” I felt instant dread.
“Could you take a ride over?”
“Now? Of course.”
After two more minutes of setup, I ran out of the Red Fox. I hit sixty on the straightaway, not a wise thing, but I felt the urgency that Katherine hadn’t quite expressed. Threatening clouds filled the sky, mirroring my fears. With the receptionist gone for the day, I ran right in.
My kitten wasn’t in Rehab. I didn’t see her anywhere. I was still looking frantically around when Katherine arrived and led me to a small room, where a young man, clearly a vet, stood. Precious lay on her side on the examining table. Her little eyes were open but didn’t look to be registering much.
“Did she fall?” I asked, wanting to believe the most innocent problem. I could nurse her back to health. Katherine must have known I would, which was why she had called. I could keep her with me. There was nothing of danger in the gardener’s shed.
But Katherine looked stricken. It was the vet who said, “She isn’t eating or drinking. Her systems are shutting down.”
“She was okay yesterday,” I protested.
“But weaker and weaker. You saw it.”
“Still,” I resisted, “shutting down? Can’t you do something? Give her fluids, maybe?”
“They’ll just run through her,” he said apologetically.
I didn’t like what was not being said. Frightened, I looked at Katherine.
“At best, we’d buy a week or two,” she said, “but I’d hate to have her suffer.”
I looked around, frantic for a solution, but all I saw were two syringes. My eyes filled with tears.
“She won’t feel pain,” the vet promised. “The first shot will sedate her. It’ll be quick. She’s halfway there now.”
My throat grew thicker, but even if I’d been able to argue, what he said made sense. Yes, I’d been told Precious could live a long life, but deep inside I had worried from the start.
“Can I hold her?” I asked, knowing that was why I’d been called.
As soon as we were alone, I put my face to her tiny one, feeling the soft fur, the fading warmth. Ignoring the antiseptic smell of the table, I focused on the smell that I knew. “I’m here, baby,” I whispered, touching her head. Her eyes closed, opened, found mine. That was all the encouragement I needed. Lifting her gently, I cradled her and sat in the only chair in the room. It was metal, with a padded seat and back, but I would have sat on burning coals for this poor thing that had never really had a chance.
Bending over her, I murmured soft words of love as I rocked back and forth. She stretched out a paw, moved her head against mine, then grew still. And I knew. She had been waiting for me. Rising up only enough, I touched the velvet of the ears she had never grown into. As I watched, the pink drained, little veins no longer pumping blood. I held her close, preserving her fading warmth until Katherine and the vet returned.
His stethoscope confirmed it.
None of us spoke. I held her a moment longer, before burying my face in her fur and silently telling her I would always remember. Then I watched the vet carry her down the hall.
Katherine looked drawn. “Thanks for coming.”
Unable to speak, I nodded, raised a hand in goodbye, and headed back outside. The clouds had let loose a deluge. Though I ran, I was soaked by the time I reached the car, and once inside, I burst into tears. I wasn’t sure why I was so emotional—whether it was dredging up other losses, like the deaths of my dogs—whether, like my taste buds, my emotions were suddenly roaring back to life—or whether it was just wanting so desperately to have something living to love.
But I sat in my bucket seat and cried with my hands over my face. Five minutes passed, maybe ten before the passenger door opened. I barely had time to react—and then only to shift my fingers to see—when Jude scrambled in and slammed the door.
“Wow,” he said, leaning forward to peer up through the windshield. “I haven’t seen rain like this since Seattle. Not used to driving in the wet, city girl?” he asked, gently teasing. When I didn’t answer, he looked at me. My hands still covered my nose and mouth, but my eyes were free.
“Are you crying?” he asked, unsettled.
“My kitten died,” I said. Even muffled by my hands and the rain on the roof, my voice was nasal.
“You mean, a kitten here?” When I nodded, he reached out and cupped the back of my neck. His gold eyes were understanding. “It’s the way of nature, Emmie.”
“I know. The strong survive. But she could have been strong. Why didn’t she have that chance?”
His eyes remained gentle, fingers kneading my neck. “Some don’t. I’ve always admired the people here who live through that every day. It’s hard to watch.”
“Is it ever.”
“She’s in a better place,” he offered.
My throat was tight. I could only nod.
“You’ll see her someday,” he added.
“You’re just saying that to make me feel better. You don’t believe in heaven.”
He smiled sheepishly. After a minute, he said, “Want to take a ride? Get away from it all?”
I gave a shrill laugh. “I thought I was doing that!”
“No. A fifteen-minute drive.”
I thought of my kitten. I did like the idea of seeing her in another life, but I couldn’t see her now. The poor little thing was alone. Me, I didn’t want to be.
We sprinted from my car to his, a Range Rover that Amelia had recently bought and for which, despite having mocked my BMW, Jude made no apologies. With the wipers working double time, he backed around and sped off. We didn’t say much. I was recovering from crying, and he—well, I had no idea what he was thinking and didn’t have the wherewithal to ask. We headed away from town through unabating rain.
Ten minutes out, he turned onto a logging road that I would never even have seen. The SUV handled the bumps better than my BMW, though I still held the hand bar for dear life as we bounced up the mountain. Time and again we skidded on mud or wet leaves, but Jude recovered easily. Having a good time, he stopped only when boulders blocked the way. Then he ran around the car and opened my door.
“I’d offer an umbrella,” he said, grabbing my hand, “but this is a trip down memory lane, and we didn’t have umbrellas back then.”
I was trying to see through the rain. “Memory lane? I don’t think so. I haven’t been here before.”
“You have. Wait.”
I had to scramble to keep up, but less than a minute later slithered to a stop beside him on the far side of a granite wall. And there they were—Jude’s falls—a wild cascade of water tumbling over a ledge ten feet above and hitting the brook with a raucous spray before pulsing downstream.
If it hadn’t been raining, I’d have heard the falls sooner. But my disbelief now had a different cause. “Excuse me.” I yanked my hand free. “We drove here?”
“Yeah.”
“You knew there was a road?”
“Yeah.”
“So last time—and those other times—why were we scrambling for three hours up vertical rocks to get here?”
Rain dripped over his smirk. “Because that’s the side of the mountain that’s fun. I had to drive today, because I promised you fifteen minutes.”
“That’s not the point.” I remembered scratched hands and knees, and legs that were sore for days. “It was dangerous. I risked my life. You never said there was a road.”
“You never asked. Did you not get a sense of accomplishment hiking up?”
“It was hard.”
“Most good things are,” he drawled with a brief, telling look, but before I could think up a fitting reply, he had his shirt over his head. “I’m going under.”
I’d have argued if his jeans had followed the shirt, but he left them on—they were soaked anyway—and felt his way carefully over the slick rocks until he could stand under the falls. Despite the sheer volume of water, he held his head high. The skies remained dark but his face was lit with pure joy.
How to sustain anger? This was Jude at his best—in his element and a pleasure to watch. He might be insensitive to the extreme, but he was the epitome of rugged.
In time, he opened his eyes and backed out of the torrent to a narrow alcove. Balancing carefully, one stone to the next, I joined him there. Once I was safely settled, I closed my eyes. The smells were clean, the sounds loud but natural. There was something primitive here, something exciting that had nothing to do with coyotes.
We were sitting wet thigh to wet thigh with our backs to the rock, when he said, “Remember?”
“I do.”
“You wouldn’t stand under the falls then either. What are you afraid of?”
“Drowning. I can’t bear so much water pounding on my head.” I did like sitting on this ledge, though. I was drenched but sheltered. And Jude was all daredevil beside me, perfectly able to keep me safe.
“What else?” he asked.
“Snakes.”
“Still?” His eyes were mellow, conducive to talk.
“Always.”
“What else?”
I didn’t have to think long. “Losing my job. Losing my husband. Losing my future.”
“How could you lose your future?”
“By losing James.”
“He’s that good?”
“For me, he is.”
“Is that a message for me?”
“No. Just a statement of fact.”
Jude studied me for a minute before putting his arms on his knees and his chin on his arms and looking out through the sheeting water at the forest. He was silent for a time, and then his voice barely made it past the roar of the falls. “I’m afraid of failure.”
Startling, hearing such a confession from Jude. I looked at him, but he kept his eyes ahead. Gently, I said, “We all are.”
“It’s worse for me. When you set yourself up to be invincible, you have a problem.”
“That’s insightful.”
He turned his head. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“No. I completely understand. You like being seen a certain way. What are you most afraid of failing at?”
“Family. I’m bad at it.”
“And that bothers you?”
“Definitely sarcasm there.”
“Maybe, but it never bothered you before.”
He looked out again. “I’ve always done what I’m best at—physical things—things other people can’t do. I’d be a great captain of a fishing boat. I’d be great climbing Everest. If I they ever offered it, I’d be first in line to walk on the moon.”
I didn’t doubt that. And he would be great at that, too.
“Relationships are something else,” he went on. “I can’t muscle my way through.” He shot me a self-effacing glance. “No one understands why I haven’t seen Noah yet.”
What could I say? I didn’t understand it either.
“I’m trying to consider the boy,” he explained. “Should I be coming into his life if I’m just gonna leave it again?”
It sounded like he was looking for an excuse not to try, which was a switch. “Last time we talked, you were considering custody.”
“I still am. I guess. But I can’t do it alone. Help me, Emmie.”
I drew back, startled by the panic in his eyes. “Uh, with what?”
“I’m meeting him tomorrow. I don’t know what to do. It’d be easier if you were there.”
I doubted that. Besides, I had no desire to mix with Jude, Jenna, and the child they had conceived together. “Why me?”
“Moral support. You’re my talisman.”
“Last time, you said I was your conscience. All I am is a piece of your past. I can’t be your future, Jude,” I fairly sang.
“I’m talking present.”
“Uh-huh. You always are.”
“Okay. I deserved that. What I mean, though, is your present. There’s a reason why you needed to leave New York now. Don’t you think it’s awful coincidental that after ten years away, we both end up here at the same time? You’re here as a gift to me.”
“That is totally egotistical.”
He shook his head. “There was a greater purpose.”
“And that is?”
“Helping me. Look, I know you’re married. I get it. You’re married, and you love the guy, and he’s probably better for you than I am, though there’s still the question of why you’re here and he’s there. But what kind of guy is he if he’d mind your helping an old friend?”
“Forget James,” I argued. “This is about me and your son. I won’t be part of his future either. So why should I be there?”
“Because he’ll like you,” Jude said with feeling.
Fear wasn’t something I associated with Jude, not even when he used the word. But it was in his voice now. He was afraid of Noah.
“Just give me a start,” he begged. “That’s all I ask. You don’t have to say anything. Just be there for moral support.”
“Oh, Jude.” I felt pulled in opposite directions, not wanting to be sucked into his life but not wanting to be responsible for having a little boy not know his dad.
And then he had the audacity to say, “You should have been the one having my baby, y’know. If you’d gotten pregnant that summer, my life would have been different.”
Same with mine, though not for the better. “Don’t go there,” I warned softly.
When he took my hand and fingered my wedding band, I repeated the warning. “Unless you’re going to tell me how beautiful this is, don’t say a word.”
His fingers stilled. After holding my hand for a minute, he set it down with deliberate care. It was a watershed moment. Just as Jude accepted what he couldn’t change, I accepted what I didn’t want to change. The Jude I saw here held no power over me. Rather, the power was in the life that teemed around us. Such was the rare beauty of this place.
By the time we left the alcove, the rain had let up. The falls continued to rush, but the sound was muted once we reached the other side of the granite wall, and farther past the Range Rover, a break in the trees showed a dramatic layering of gun-metal gray and flame.
“The coyotes are gone,” Jude remarked as we stood admiring it. “Haven’t been here since I left.”
I might have told him otherwise if I hadn’t been thinking just then of my kitten, a bright little spark in that fire, winging its way to a place where it wouldn’t wobble.
And that night, when the coyotes again serenaded me with their howls, barks, and yips, Jude was off somewhere and none of my affair.
That said, I did go to Noah’s game the next day, though I was doing it less for Jude’s sake than for Amelia’s. I couldn’t be with Jude the way she wanted, but this was something. And who was I to predict Jude’s behavior? He might just be mercurial enough to take one look at the boy and be the best dad in the world.
None of the local towns had enough children to field a team, so the draw was regional, with games played at a park just south of Bell Valley. Since Jude was in Concord again, hence coming from the opposite direction, I drove myself there.
The teams were warming up when I arrived. My eye immediately found Jenna. Blond hair nearly white in the sun, she stood apart from the other parents, wispy against a waist-high chain fence near third base. She was clearly startled to see me.
“Jude asked me to come,” I explained, joining her. “He didn’t tell you?”
Of course he hadn’t. He would still be thinking that Jenna and I were rivals, though I no longer felt it at all. “I’m just a spectator,” I assured her. “He wanted the moral support.”
“Wonder why,” she muttered. She didn’t look happy, though I sensed it had less to do with my showing up than with her son meeting Jude. When a man appeared at her side with Dunkin’ cups, she introduced him. “This is my husband, Bobby Horn. Here for moral support.”
“And to see my kid play,” Bobby added, quietly possessive. I looked out at the boys on the field. “Which one is he?” They wore uniforms and ball caps, one identical to the next.
“Number fourteen,” Bobby said, pointing at a group near the coach. Once directed, I’d have picked him out even without the number. Seeing Jude’s face in miniature, I felt the same tiny jolt I had seeing his picture on Jenna’s desk at the Refuge.
The warm-up ended. The teams gathered at their benches. I glanced back at the cars, looking for Jude, but he hadn’t arrived. Pulling on my ball cap to get my hair off my neck in the warm, humid air, I must have looked like just another one of the moms, because when Noah grinned at his parents, he took no notice of me.
“Does he know Jude is coming?” I asked Jenna.
“Does he know Jude’s his dad?”
“Yes.”
“Are your other children here?”
“No.”
Noah played shortstop, and it was uncanny. He was built like Jude and, even at nine, never having seen the man, he had the same moves. When he was key to getting yet another out, I said, “He’s a good athlete.”
Jenna didn’t answer. She was looking back toward the cars.
“Traffic,” I suggested.
But she wasn’t buying that, and rightly so. Maybe, just maybe, there was a tie-up leaving Concord, but Jude wouldn’t have hit traffic after that.
The first inning became the second, then the third. Noah struck out once with a powerful swing typical of Jude, but when he connected—which he did in the bottom of the third—it was a home run. On the other side of Jenna, Bobby hooted his support and returned the fist-pump Noah shot him right after he slid home.
Jude had missed it. I checked my phone for a message. I tried calling him. Nothing.
“Good thing I didn’t tell Noah,” Jenna said flatly.
“He’ll be here,” I replied, though I was starting to wonder. The fourth inning came and went, then the fifth. By then I was apologizing. “I’m sorry, Jenna. He said he wanted to come. He should have been here by now.”
Her eyes stayed on the field. “It’s okay. I don’t want him in Noah’s life anyway. I only agreed to this because Amelia helps us out. He’s my child,” she reasoned. “I want him to have everything he can.”
I searched the parking lot, thinking that Jude might be watching from there, too nervous to approach, but there was no Range Rover, no tall spectator, no blond-haired biological dad.
When the game ended with Noah’s team up by six runs, the boy ran to his mother. “Did you see that last play?” he asked excitedly, and imitated it with his glove scooping the dirt.
Jenna hugged him. “You were great.” But he was already heading back to his teammates.
“He’s a fine boy,” I said.
The pride on her face clouded over. “I worry. Y’know, that he inherits things.”
“Like?”
“Well, his body is like Jude’s. He’s tall for his age, and he’s a good athlete. But he can be cocky. He’s into being cool. There was a … thing with bullying at his school. I don’t think he was involved, and we talk with him about being kind to kids who can’t do what he does. But it’s scary.”
“Maybe it’s just the age.”
She shot me a wary glance. “I don’t want him to be like that. Amelia can give us money, but I won’t let her raise him. Look at Jude. He’s totally irresponsible. Look where he’s been for the last ten years. Look what he did today. Noah thinks his father just lives off somewhere else. Can you imagine if he’d been waiting today? I mean, I knew this would happen. I don’t trust Jude any more’n I can throw him.”
It was the most she’d said to me at a stretch, and she was clearly emotional. I searched the parking lot again, though part of me felt it would be worse for Jude to show up now than not at all.
“He didn’t have the guts,” Jenna said with scorn. “We’re better off without him, right?”
I would have agreed if she’d stayed long enough to hear, but the words were barely out when she went off to join Bobby and Noah. I returned to my car. This time when I called Jude, I left a message.
“Either you have a great excuse, or you were right about bombing as a dad. Where were you, Jude? I was there, Jenna was there, Bobby was there. Noah played a great game, only the guest of honor didn’t show. And you wonder why I told you not to seek custody?”
Jude didn’t return my call. This time he was in Burlington, on what Amelia claimed was not Refuge business. Much as I had felt bad for her before, so I did now. She had no control over him, and he continued to disappoint. I could argue that she had been wrong to push a meeting with Noah—but what man wouldn’t want to meet his own child?
Defective. That was the only word I could use to describe Jude’s character, though I didn’t have to say it aloud. Vicki did it for me, arguing tenaciously when Amelia came over that evening. Where are his brains? Where is his heart—does he even have one? Am I actually related to this man? More noticeably pregnant, she was emotional to match her baby bump. I understood that, but Amelia wasn’t as forgiving. She fired countercharges back at Vicki—Did you ever try to help him?—until they both stormed out, leaving me alone in the kitchen with the remnants of their ill will.
The ill will lingered through the next day, with Vicki grumpy, Amelia annoyed, Jude back as though nothing had changed, and Lee scurrying around with one eye out for a shooter.
There was no shooter. This time it was an arsonist, and the target wasn’t Lee’s bungalow in Bell Valley, but the unoccupied mansion in Massachusetts. The call came Thursday night, early enough for Lee to panic, but too late for any formal declaration of arson prior to the court hearing the next day.