Beneath the Night Tree (23 page)

“I’ll go along,” I conceded, noting the air of satisfaction that settled around my grandmother like a soft fragrance. “Why don’t you come too? You could sit in the clubhouse with a cup of coffee and enjoy the festivities.”

Grandma patted my arm. “No, you kids just go. Since the house is going to be quiet, I might take a nap.”

“You feeling okay?”

“A little bug.” Grandma brushed off my concern, wiping it away with long, easy strokes as she smeared butter on both sides of the last bun. She tucked the roll back into the bag and secured it with a twisty tie. “You want to peel some carrots?”

“Sure,” I said, “but while I’m doing it, I want to hear more about this bug. Do you need to go in?”

“To my doctor? It’s just the flu.”

“You have the flu?”

“No.” Grandma shook her head quickly. “I’m just feeling a little under the weather. Achy, tired, chilled . . . You know.”

“How long has this been going on?” I paused as I bent over the vegetable drawer of our refrigerator and studied her face. Grandma was no liar, but I could tell when she was stretching the truth.

“A couple days.”

Her eyes slid away from mine when she said it. I knew her so-called flu had been going on for longer than that. “How long?” I asked again.

“A week or so.”

“Two?”

“Maybe.”

I yanked the bag of carrots out of the fridge and heaved the door closed. “Grandma,” I chided, “you need to see your doctor.”

“For a little virus?”

“You don’t know that you have a virus.”

“My dear, when you’ve been around for as long as I have, you get to know your body. I have a winter bug. I’ll be fine.”

She sounded so sure of herself, but I couldn’t quiet the voice inside my head that distrusted her easy explanation.
Press her,
I thought.
Make her listen.
But as wise and wonderful as my grandmother was, she was also stubborn. I didn’t have to speculate about where my greatest strength and weakness came from, nor did I have to continue questioning her to learn that as far as her health was concerned, her lips were sealed.

* * *

Parker arrived right on time. In fact, he knocked on the door exactly one minute before noon, our agreed-upon hour of rendezvous. I glanced at the clock on the wall and wondered if he had intentionally sped up and slowed down on the two-hour drive or if he had stood on the porch for a couple of minutes so that his entrance would be punctual, precise.

I was grateful that Daniel and Simon were waiting at the door so I didn’t have to be the one to welcome Parker back into our house. It had been three weeks since we had last seen him. Since he had shown up out of the blue, bearing a puppy and nearly ruining everything by running into Michael.

Michael.
Just the thought of my future husband made me fold my lower lip between my teeth. I was startled by the faint taste of metal on my tongue, a reminder that I needed to break the nasty nervous habit of lip biting. But it was subconscious, and as long as Michael didn’t know about Parker, I knew I was destined to keep doing it. Grandma had warned me that it was past time to fill in my fiancé about the reintroduction of Patrick Holt into my life, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. At least, not over the phone. That sort of serious conversation deserved face-to-face contact, at the very least.

But I didn’t have time to think about that now. Parker was in my mudroom, unlacing his snowy boots and laughing with my kids.

In less than a minute they had all spilled into the kitchen, a trio of shoving, laughing boys who seemed far too at ease with each other to betray the infancy of their untried relationships. All the same, there was something endearing about the easy way they delighted in each other’s company, the almost-coltish play as they pushed and pulled, half-wrestling, half-embracing.

“Hi, Parker,” I said as I put the last plate on the table.

He had Simon and Daniel in matching headlocks and looked up at me with a sheepish grin. “Hi, Julia. It’s nice to see you again.”

I should have said,
You too,
but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to. Though I appreciated what he did for my boys, how he made them feel, it was hard for me to separate our history from this more recent, happier plotline. I simply wasn’t there yet, and I didn’t know if I would ever be.

“You’re just in time,” I told him stiffly. “Lunch is ready.”

“Smells delicious.” Parker sniffed the air and released his hold on the boys. “You’d better go wash your hands,” he told them. “Something tells me your paws are far from clean.”

“You too!” Daniel shouted, taking him by the hand.

I was grateful that my son questioned Parker’s cleanliness. I wasn’t comfortable with the thought of being alone with him in the kitchen, even if it was for only a few minutes.

Our shared meal was uneventful but far from peaceful. Hearing Daniel and Simon giggle and talk over each other and make crazy plans for their afternoon of outdoor fun was enough to make me forget all about my discomfort in Parker’s presence. I think even Grandma regretted her decision to stay home as the boys continued to strategize more and more elaborate feats of daring.

“Be careful,” she warned, the wrinkles in her forehead deepening in worry. But the boys weren’t paying attention, so she gave me a hard look filled with meaning. A look I took to mean,
It’s on your shoulders
. Wasn’t everything?

When we got to the sledding hill, it had just started to snow, a soft, light curtain of flurries that made filigree patterns in the sky like a sheet of gauzy crochet. The parking lot was nearly empty, and the hill all but abandoned, I assumed because parents were worried about another storm. It was perfect. We had the place to ourselves and a fast-accumulating layer of fresh snow to gentle every fall.

I stood at a distance as Parker unloaded a cache of sledding equipment from the trunk of his car, a stockpile of sleds and disks so new, they still had the price tags on.

“Did you buy these just for today?” I whispered as he handed Simon a molded piece of plastic that looked like a cross between a snowboard and a spaceship.

“Does it matter?” he muttered back.

“Well, you didn’t have to do that. The boys have sleds. . . .” But I doubted that he heard a word I said. The three of them were each armed with their weapon of choice, and before I could issue my favorite “Don’t do anything stupid” speech, Simon let out a whoop and made a mad dash for the top of the hill. Daniel giggled and followed, with Parker only steps behind.

I watched as they launched, one by one, over a barely visible edge of white on white. There were three puffs of snow like subtle explosions of flour and three rowdy, boyish cries of elation. Then they were gone.

Alone in the golf course parking lot, I raised my palms to the sky and watched snowflakes collect on my mittens. The crystals fell in arabesque patterns, gathering in concert to rise like fairy-tale castles from the dark contours of my palms. They were all the same, I decided. Castles made of sand and snow. They were pretty, but they didn’t last. They never did.

I knew it was a matter of the heart. That this careful construction of imaginary landscapes was a wild, secret thing. Days like today were a sanctuary, a magical world where anything seemed possible but nothing truly was. As I watched the turrets slowly take shape in my hands, I realized that we did this to ourselves. Our searching souls pursued happy endings. And the heart was capable of great and deceiving beauty.

I sighed and brushed my palms together, loosening the snow, ruining the fantasy. Suddenly I was exhausted and sad, concerned that the daydream my boys were experiencing was destined to be short-lived. It would end in heartbreak. How could it not?

The worst part was, I was encouraging it.

By the time they trekked back up the hill, I was morose. I had convinced myself that reaching out to Parker was a huge mistake, a colossal blunder that I might spend the rest of my life trying to overcome. But the boys were immune to my mood, and when Daniel saw me still leaning against Parker’s car, he came screeching across the snow.

“You have to come down with us!” he yelled even though he was standing right in front of me.

“I don’t know, honey. I don’t want to make you miss a single turn.”

“You won’t have to,” Parker said, coming up behind Daniel and putting a gloved hand on his shoulder. “I bought four sleds.”

“Four? But you were supposed to take the boys alone. I only decided to come along this morning.”

Parker lifted his shoulder as if to shrug off the implications of my words. “Always be prepared.”

“Here, Mom.” Daniel handed over his sled and raced around me to the gaping trunk of the car. He lifted out a final, flat disk and jumped to close the latch. But he couldn’t quite reach it.

“I got it, buddy,” Parker said. And without warning he leaned in and brushed past me to shut the trunk.

I don’t think he realized how close we would be when he slanted toward me to slam the latch home. How we would, for the briefest of seconds, be connected. Blessedly, it was all over in a flash, a mere instant of contact, but when Parker backed away, I was dizzy with the warm memory of his breath on my cheek, the weight of his chest against mine. Michael was all that I knew, all that I remembered, and I was shaken by my own reaction to Parker’s proximity.

“Uh, sorry about that,” he mumbled, as red-cheeked as I must have been.

But my son was oblivious to the tension between his mother and his beloved friend. “Let’s go sledding!” Daniel bellowed. He poked us both with his sled, prodding us in turn until we left the car behind and led the way to where Simon was waiting, legs spread wide and arms crossed against his chest. King of the hill. King of the snow castle we insisted on building.

I blinked snowflakes from my eyelashes and determined to wipe my mind clean, at least for the afternoon. No more worries about Michael and Parker, about impossible dreams or awkward moments. Today was not about the heart. It was about having fun.

At least, that’s what I told myself.

* * *

“Grandma, we’re home!” The moment we stepped in the door, Daniel announced our arrival with such gusto, it was as if we had been gone for weeks instead of hours. “It was awesome!”

“Stop shouting,” I scolded him. “Hang up your gear and go find her if you want to talk about your adventure.”

“I can’t get my snow pants off,” he complained.

Of course he couldn’t. They were bunched around his ankles, tangled on the Velcro straps of his drenched boots.

“You have to take your boots off first,” I told him. “Like Simon. Watch how Simon does it.”

My brother was already stripped down to his street clothes, coat and snow pants hung on his hook and mittens and hat positioned over the heat register for efficient drying. It had been a while since he had taken the time to be so conscientious, and I wanted to give him a hug for not abandoning everything in a pile on the floor. Instead, I winked when he caught my eye. Though he didn’t exactly smile in return, I believed he stood just a little straighter.

“I’m going to go find Grandma,” Simon said, stepping around the rest of us as we continued to struggle with damp coats and ice-caked mittens.

“And I’m going to get those boots off.” Parker crouched down to help Daniel. “On the count of one, two, three!” The boot popped off and Parker went flying backward. An affected show if ever I saw one, but it made Daniel giggle, so I figured it was worth it.

“Hot cocoa, anyone?” I asked. “And maybe doughnuts? Would you like to make some homemade doughnuts?”

Daniel’s squeal was answer enough, and I turned from the mudroom with a grin on my face. I nearly ran into Simon.

“Julia!” he wheezed, grabbing at my arms, my shoulders, even the fabric of my worn sweatshirt. His fingers were like claws, hooked with a frantic desperation that seeped into my bones with every touch. “Julia, help!”

My chest tightened and the blood in my veins seemed to freeze over. “What’s wrong?” I cupped his face with cold hands. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“It’s Grandma. She’s . . . she . . .”

Parker had come to stand in the mudroom door, and I thrust Simon into his arms. “Hold him!” I commanded. “Keep them both here!”

The boys were whining, fighting Parker as they tried to follow me, but I could hear the soothing tenor of his voice as he attempted to calm them down. I couldn’t worry about the boys now. I had to find Grandma.

She was in the living room, slumped in her favorite knitting chair. The footrest was up, but one of her legs dangled off the side. A ball of robin’s-egg blue yarn had tumbled to the floor and unraveled halfway across the room, a winding trail of reflected sky that looked like the map of a river against the wood-grained laminate. I took in the details in a single pulse: the crooked blanket across her lap, the way her hand fell over the arm of the chair, palm opened heavenward as if she were waiting for someone to hold it.

Before my heart could beat again, I knew.

Suddenly I was on my knees at her side, her brittle hand tucked in both of mine, my lips on her lined forehead.

“Grandma.” My voice broke on the word—shattered, really—around a sob that tore from my throat.

But she responded. “Julia . . .”

I threw myself back and studied her face. Blue lips, pale skin, eyes that registered pain and confusion, but also understanding. She saw me. She knew me.

“Parker!” I screamed. “Parker! Get in here! I need you!”

He was at my side before I could become completely hysterical. I felt him put his arms around me and pull me away from her, out of the way so he could slide his hands beneath her and hold her close. He lifted her out of the chair like she weighed nothing at all. She was a child in his arms, a delicate little girl as breakable and fine as porcelain.

“I’ll call 911,” I whispered.

“No. We’ll take her. By the time they dispatch an ambulance, we’ll already be at the hospital. You can call from my cell phone when we’re in the car.”

“The boys . . .”

“We have to take them. We can’t leave them here alone.”