A Morning Like This (17 page)

Abby flew off the curb toward her. “Sophie!”

“Hey,” Sophie called out to the driver. “You want to take a few of these roses home?”

The disconcerted man, who’d managed to stop with only inches to spare, turned down the music, stuck his head out the window,
and spit tobacco juice in the street. “How much you want for a rose?”

“Nothing. They’re not for sale.”

“Then why are you standing out in the middle of the road, lady? You’re going to get yourself killed.”

“I’m giving these away.”

“
Giving
them away? Why?”

“Because of what day it is.”

“What day is it?”

“Today.”

“Oh.” He laughed. “I was thinking this was something on the calendar I had missed. Some new Hallmark card or something. They’re
always doing that so they can sell more cards. New things to make you feel guilty for if you forget.”

“How many do you want?” Sophie licked her fingers and tugged one thorny stem from the oasis inside the pot. “I’ve got plenty.”

He thought for a minute. “How about three? Could I take three?”

“Sure.” Triumphant, she found two more pretty ones and handed the stems through the open window. “Just be careful not to stab
yourself. Those thorns can get you.”

“This is great.” He waved out the window as the truck started rolling and the Dixie Chicks began rocking again. “Thanks a
lot.”

All in all, after Abby had charged out into Hall Street and begun to hand out flowers alongside Sophie, they gave every last
rose away. They gave some to a man who jogged past with two kids in a long-distance baby stroller. They gave one to a husband
walking along with his wife and holding her hand. Sophie presented several to a businessman in a Lexus who was in a hurry
to post flyers for a Western-art gallery walk over the July Fourth holiday. And last of all, they detained Floyd Uptergrove,
Viola’s husband from church, who sauntered past them commanding a team of three anxious Chihuahuas.

“You think I need to give Viola roses?” he asked as the Chihuahuas strained to overpower him. Several small, unused poop-bags
protruded from the brim of his fishing hat. “I’ve been taking care of that woman for fifty-nine years now, and look where
it’s gotten me. It’s made me bald as a bedpost and she calls my family outlaws, not in-laws. Oh, and my feet aren’t allowed
on the couch, but the dogs are.”

“Viola’s a beautiful woman,” Abby said.

“You bet she is. Especially when she dresses up for church with that butterfly in her hair. I wouldn’t trade her for anything.”

He accepted a final rose and walked on, so slowly that it took him five minutes to get past the next house after he left them.

“I wouldn’t trade her for anything. Fifty-nine years.”

Sophie and Abby watched him for a long time as he ambled out of view.

David and I will never have anything like they have. I always thought we would, but not anymore
.

Sophie led the way back to the shelter and pitched the pretty urn into the dumpster beside the garage. They both heard it
shatter.

“One afternoon, well lived.” Sophie laughed and dusted her hands together with spirit. “Guess that takes care of that.”

A
s Abby poured Brewster’s kibbles into a bowl, she heard the patio door open, sensed the oppression, and knew David had come
in from his run.

For several dense, smothering moments, he didn’t speak. Neither did she. Then, finally, “Abby—” He spoke in undertones so
Braden wouldn’t hear them.

“No,” she whispered. “Don’t say anything.”

So, for a while, he didn’t try. The two of them went about their morning as they’d done for the six mornings since David had
started sleeping on the sofa. They were insufferably aware of the other’s whereabouts, their backs thrown up as protective
barricades, repelling one another like opposite sides of magnets.

She stayed carefully in the kitchen while he hurried to get his clothes from the bureau drawer.

He stayed in the bathroom while she straightened the bed.

She ducked away when he came in to pour coffee.

He rummaged through the junk drawer to find a pen, refusing to meet her eyes.

Saturday morning, a summer morning, and they had all the time in the world.

He waited until she was sectioning a grapefruit, slicing the fleshy part of the fruit with a knife that had been a wedding
gift, before he said in a hushed tone, “Braden took it all right, Abby. He didn’t ask too much. You would have been surprised.”

Her knife paused. Then, pointedly, she cut one more triangle before she acknowledged what he’d said. “I don’t want to discuss
this right now, David.”

“We have to discuss it sometime. We can’t hide from it anymore.”

“I’m not the one who’s been hiding.”

“Come on, Abby. It’s Saturday. It’s the first time all week we’ve had time to begin this conversation when we could finish
it.”

“I’m not the one who ignored my marriage vows.”

There. Let him have
that
to think about.

Silence settled in again like fog, close and sultry and difficult to navigate. “Look.” He spoke in a low baritone. “We’re
both adults. You’ve got to help a little bit here.” For the first time in days, he came around the table, moved close against
her rigid spine. “Ab.”

“No.” The knife clattered to the floor. Abby jerked her hand to her mouth and sucked the tender skin between her thumb and
pointer before running cold water over the wound where she’d cut herself, her whole body throbbing with the sting of it.

“Don’t push me like this. Don’t do it.”

“Abby—”

“You don’t know how Braden took it. You know how you
think
he took it. You just know what
you
think he knows.”

“This isn’t my fault anymore. It’s yours.”

“His whole world is falling apart and he doesn’t know it yet.”

And David said, very quietly, “It doesn’t have to, Ab, if you don’t want it to.”

Of all the things he’d done—telling Braden before she’d even had the chance to assimilate this, demanding a confrontation
with her by the stream—this subtle shift of blame to her lap hurt worse than anything.

“Oh, no you don’t,” she hissed through bared teeth as she turned off the faucet. “I’ve spent years counseling women who try
to blame themselves when a man wrecks their marriage. I’m not going to let you do that to me.”

“Okay,” he said, backing down quickly. “Okay.”

Sorrow engulfed them, capturing them there, holding them together and apart. There could be no escaping this that had come
upon them while they’d been so settled and smug and serene.

Abby found the tin of Band-Aids on a shelf above her head. As she thumbed through them to find the right size, morbid curiosity
finally got the best of her. She asked the question that had been needling her for days.

Paying full attention to the tiny adhesive strip as she peeled off the wrapper, she asked, “You’ve talked to her, haven’t
you?”

“What?”

“You’ve talked to her. That’s how you found out about the little girl.”

He lifted his head, tossing it high like a stallion. From that one defensive movement, Abby already knew his answer. “Come
on, Abby.”

“Have you seen her, too? How many of her phone calls have you taken? I know you’ve taken one because I answered it. That night
when we grilled outside. And then you lied. You said it was somebody from the bank.”

He took a breath that seemed to go all the way to his Nike running shoes. “Yes. I’ve taken her calls,” he said with great
command. “I have seen her. And I will continue to do so until we get this worked out.”

“When?” she insisted. “I want to know all the times.”

“Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do this to us.”

“No, David. I’m not doing this to us. You are. I’m only asking you to be truthful.”

She’d spent years counseling, and he hated being analyzed. She made him feel so cornered and wrong. He practically growled
at her, “Look, Abigail. There’s a little girl’s life at stake here. You seem to have forgotten that.”

He couldn’t help himself; just the mention of the other child softened his voice. David heard the change himself. Deep within
him, a natural human instinct had taken hold: paternity, as irrevocable as what he felt for his own legitimate son, and impossible
to control or evade.

He had a daughter.

He’d never met her; he’d only seen her face in a photo, but their lives were inextricably bound by generations of family heritage
and ancestors.

She had a right to know he cared about her.

No matter what mistakes he’d made, he had a right to love this new person who had been born of his own flesh and blood.

“You can answer the question or not,” Abby said. “I don’t care.”

“She called me on our anniversary. While we were gone that night and Crystal was babysitting. That’s when I heard from her
first.”

“Our
anniversary?
”

“Yes.”

Another memory gone. One more thing taken away that she’d thought she could hold dear.

“That’s when she told you everything?”

“No. She called so we could meet later.”

“She called so you could meet? She came to
Jackson?
”

“Yes.”

With meticulous attention, Abby stuck one end of the Band-Aid to the outside of her hand and one end to the inside. So she’d
been right. He
had
spoken to that woman, several times. When a phone call would have sufficed, she had traveled hundreds of miles to see him
instead.

For the first time today, she met her husband’s eyes. “It happened because you had second thoughts about marrying me, didn’t
you? The baby scared you and you weren’t sure how to manage so much responsibility. So you did the most irresponsible thing
you could think of.”
Please say that isn’t it, David. This is your chance. Tell me I’m wrong
.

David plunked on the couch, presenting his spine to her at exactly the same stiff, contemptuous angle she’d presented hers
to him. He brandished the remote control like a weapon and turned up the TV as loud as it would go.

At least once a week after practice, the entire Elk’s Club baseball team rode their mountain bikes from Mateosky Field to
Snow King Ski Hill, for a ride on the Alpine Slide.

They would dart in dangerous, unpredictable angles across the streets, their matching black-and-green caps pulled low over
their noses as they shouted to each other. They would fish in their pockets for money to buy tickets and be off up the lift
to the top of the hill. Once there, they would disembark, choose a plastic sled with metal wheels, and plunge headlong down
the winding cement half-pipe. When the mood struck, they would race each other, leaning left on a left turn, leaning right
on a right turn, and bursting with a yell from under the bridge. They yanked hard on the brakes before they smashed into the
rows of tires for safety at the bottom, then started all over again.

It was a nine-year-old boy’s heaven.

Today, halfway up the lift, two abreast and strung out fifty yards from each other, the Elk’s Club baseball team carried on
a conversation.

“Hey, Wheezer!”

“What?”

“Chicken’s butt.”

“Shut up, Jake. Go back to your hole.”

“I’ll race you!”

“I’m in my hole. Jackson Hole.”

“You’re gonna go down!”

“No, I’ll take
you
down.”

In the chair beside Jake Fisher, Braden sat without saying a word. He stared past their dirty, dangling cleats at the ground,
getting a topside view of hikers heading up Snow King. He rode with his lower lip folded between his teeth and his baseball
cap slung low over his eyes.

“Hey, Treasure!” Jake lifted up his shirt to show off his latest bike-wreck laceration with pride. “Look at this. It’s nasty,
isn’t it? Look at the pus.”

Braden didn’t look. “Sweet.”

“I got it on that turn going by Cache Creek. Tire went right out from under me.”

Again Braden didn’t comment.

“I hit the handlebars.”