Come Home (4 page)

Plunging herself into darkness.

Chapter Four

Jill answered email from her patients, working in bed, her laptop warm on a pillow she’d set on her lap, an improvised desk. Sam slept with his back to her, Beef slumbering near his feet, and the room was quiet except for the snoring of man and beast. She felt tired but she couldn’t sleep until she’d answered the questions that came in before the weekend:
how many drops in a teaspoon, do I give it again if he throws it up, it’s finally yellow and that’s good, right?

She answered them all, but her thoughts kept straying to Abby, William, Megan, and Victoria. She remembered back to the beginning, the very first day when they all began, a sunny flash of beach and sand and boogie boards at the Jersey shore. She had been seeing William for a while, having met him when she worked at her old pediatric group. All but one of them were women, and William was the handsome pharmaceutical sales rep who called on them every Friday, the one they all buzzed and joked about, and some of them, like Jill, nursed secret crushes, none of them immune despite their advanced degrees, so that even their happily married office manager put up a sign in the ladies’ room that read,
TGIW, THANK GOD IT’S WILLIAM
. He charmed them all with his dark good looks, breezy confidence, and easy smile, but more than that, he was a widower, alone with two little girls.

The hearts of every woman in the office went out to him, they all wanted to hold him, comfort him, and ease his pain, and what they didn’t know about him, they filled in with their imagination, projecting onto him all kinds of qualities he’d never showed, assigning to him all of their own values and emotions, fleshing out their fantasy. He began to pay special attention to Jill, the only single doc and a widow to boot, and he struck up conversations about their mutual daughters, listening thoughtfully to her answers until his sales calls became a sort of date, with Jill putting on a little extra eye-makeup, making up a story of her own about a lonely widow and a lonely widower meeting for a last chance at love, like an announcement in the wedding section of the Sunday
New York Times,
so that by the time she and William had the girls meet each other for a day at the beach, she was stone in love.

With a fantasy.

William played his character to the hilt, and Jill marveled at how rough-and-tumble he was with Abby and Victoria, letting them jump off his broad shoulders into the crashing surf, diving under the biggest waves with them, even dunking them underwater, so different from the way Jill played with Megan, which was protective and careful, mindful always of the undertow. Megan watched William and the girls for a long time, hanging back, taking in the scene of the laughing daughters and the hunky, handsome daddy, so that by the time William turned around to grin at the fatherless girl, jerking his head back to flick his wet hair from his forehead, twisting his strong body from his tapered waist, reaching out to her a tanned and muscular arm ending in a large hand with its fingers extended, offering her a chance to be with him, the shy little girl would have begged to go.

Come on, come in, I won’t bite!

Jill had watched delighted, seeing her daughter thrilled in the company of this unusual and exotic creature known as a man, and the five of them bobbed into the water together, Megan migrating to William, who played the father she had never known, and for her part, Jill took naturally to being a mom to the motherless Abby, who clung to her like a girl barnacle. Victoria took her time coming to Jill, always the closer daughter to her father, not wanting a rival for his attention, but she had no such problem that day with Megan, who carried with her the promise of a sibling without the rivalry.

Looking back now, Jill could visualize all of them in the water, seeing their heads from the back so that they were faceless, as if she were watching her younger self from the shore, which was exactly the vantage point her mother Conchetta had had that day. Her mother was her best friend, and the three of them—Jill, her mother, and Megan—had been on vacation when William and the girls had joined them. Her mother had always come to the beach after the hottest part of the day, sitting in her plastic lattice chair, and she’d read a book under the yellow-striped umbrella.

But this time, when Jill went back to check on her mother, her book remained unopened in her lap. Her mother had frowned up at her, her gnarled hand shading her hooded eyes, an uncharacteristic scowl replacing her usually welcoming smile, her lined features collapsing into deep, unhappy fissures, as if her very face had folded up as tight as her beach chair.

I don’t like him,
her mother had said.

Jill had been astonished. It didn’t occur to her that her mother still hadn’t warmed up to William. Everybody liked William, and her mother liked everybody, so it should’ve been a natural. Jill had asked her why.

I don’t trust him. Don’t trust him. He’s no good for you. He’ll do you wrong.

And Jill knew now, her mother had been right. Her mother had looked at the scene and had seen what was really happening, not the projections and the roles and the acting that had fooled Jill. Jill would turn out to be William’s sucker, not his wife, and the only saving grace was that when it all came to light, her mother had already passed away. Because it would have broken her heart.

Jill blinked away tears that she hadn’t realized were there, looking down at the laptop, and she found herself opening her My Pictures file and navigating to the older files. She clicked, and a photo of Abby popped onto the screen, one Jill had taken on the front steps of another house, in another town, in another time. Abby had just gotten her braces adjusted, and other kids might have whined, but Abby made the best of it, sporting red rubber bands in honor of the Phillies. She was thirteen, the same age Megan was now, still what Jill’s mother used to call a tomboy. Her hair was in a messy braid, and she had on her swim-club jersey, its white letters forming a half-circle, Strafford Strokers.

Jill had encouraged her to join the school team and had loved teaching her to swim, and Abby had run to her with open arms, willing to learn anything, needing a mother like a wildflower needs sunshine. Victoria had come around only slowly, and Jill had built a relationship with her during silent car trips to the mall and awkward greetings after school plays, the cameo appearances of the suburban stepmother. Jill had saved every greeting card the girls ever gave her, and the dearest to her was a Mother’s Day card from the both of them, given the first Mother’s Day after she and William were married. Victoria had handed the card to her, and it was covered with pink lace, so Jill knew Victoria had picked it out. Jill had opened it up, and she’d never forget the message, written in Victoria’s perfect penmanship:

It’s official. You’re our Mom now.

Jill felt a pang at the memory, bittersweet because it had been so hard-won, and now was lost just the same, and the wound still felt acute, defying the very powers of nature, to heal. Jill knew there was no stronger bond than between mother and child, and she didn’t feel like an ex-mother, nor were the girls her ex-children. She had lived long enough to learn that families didn’t dissolve or reconfigure neatly, but left debris lying everywhere, and it was human debris. And sometimes, like tonight, she felt as if she were tripping over the bodies.

She pressed a key and advanced to the next photo, taken after Megan had mugged her way into the picture. She was eight years old at the time, and she and Abby had become best buddies. They could have passed for big-and-little sisters because Megan had big brown eyes and dark blonde hair, too, which she wore in a copycat braid.

Jill thought ahead, to having to tell Megan about William’s death. Megan was a year old when she met William, and he’d been in her life until the divorce, when she was ten. He hadn’t been especially doting or attentive, never fulfilling the promise of that day on the beach, but he’d been there, more father figure than father, and sometimes for kids, that was enough. Even now, Jill could remember trips they took as a family, one to Linvilla Orchard to pick pumpkins, or another to Great Adventure, screaming down the roller coaster. It looked like family fun on the surface, but you didn’t need a microscope to see what was really going on. Jill would be having fun with the girls, and William would be off to the side, on the phone, or complaining about the long lines or the cold French fries, or withdrawn, lost in his own thoughts.

Jill hit Start Slideshow and watched Megan, Abby, Victoria, and William flash by in a continuous stream of swim meets, DQ Flurries, and guinea pigs. The divorce ended the pictures of the five of them, and the following photos were of her and Megan, like leftovers, only of family. It hadn’t been an easy transition, then Jill met Sam, who turned out to be real in all the ways that William was false, and in time, the three of them had moved forward as a new family, with a second stepfather stepping into the shoes of the first stepfather, who’d stepped into the shoes of the father who had died.

Jill froze the slideshow on a photo of Sam, Megan, and Steven, who looked like a younger version of his father. Tall, lean, and brainy. Steven wouldn’t replace Abby and Victoria, because nobody was ever replaced in life, no hole completely filled or loss totally healed. You didn’t need a medical degree to know that the human body really wasn’t stronger in the broken places. Like any bone, the cracks would always show if you looked hard enough.

“Babe?” said a voice, and Jill looked over, startled. Sam had turned over and was propped up, squinting against the lamp light. His brow furrowed, and his fine nose had two permanent pink indentations from his glasses. “You all right?”

“Sure, yes.” Jill hit a key to stop the slideshow.

“What are you up to?” Sam lay back down, his eyes a calm blue now, like the sea without waves, and he regarded her with an unhurried air that told her he really wanted to know. “You upset about your ex? Or the kid?”

“Both, but mostly, I was thinking about my life.”

“What about it?”

“Just that there’s so much of it.” Jill felt oddly embarrassed. “I have a lot of past.”

Sam chuckled. “Not as much as I do.”

“But my past is so much messier than yours. Two marriages, and two ex-stepdaughters. It’s a mess, isn’t it? Have I made a hash of things?”

“No, it’s life, that’s all.” Sam smiled. “Is that what you’re fretting about? I was worried that you’d been looking up Temezepam in the PDR online.”

Jill hadn’t been, but she’d thought about it. “I feel for her.”

“I know you do.”

“And it does seem strange, about the drugs. Not like William.”

“You don’t know what he’s been up to the past few years.”

“True.”

“So?” Sam lifted an eyebrow. “If they found drugs on his tox screen, he took them.”

“They could all be dissolved and put in a drink. Temezepam is a capsule.” Jill knew because she had teenagers in her practice on various meds.

“You think somebody made him swallow the drugs, in a drink? He’d taste it.” Sam ran a hand through his hair. “If you really want to help the kid, I’ll call Sandy. She owes me a favor and she’s the best psychiatrist in town.”

“Thanks,” Jill said, grateful. “Also, I think we might go to the memorial service, after work. Abby’s the one who found William, dead. That’s a trauma, and I can’t just send her on her way tomorrow, alone.”

Sam pursed his lips. “What about Megan?”

“She’ll want to go.”

“How do you know?”

Jill felt awkward, spelling it out. “I just think she’ll want to go.”

“Is going the best thing for her? She’s only thirteen, and she’ll be hurting, too.”

“We should go.”

“Then go, if you want to.” Sam shrugged, and Jill touched his arm.

“Do you mind that she didn’t invite you? I guess she felt that she didn’t know you as well.”

“No, I get it.” Sam shifted back down onto the pillow. “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.”

“Thanks.” Jill leaned down and gave him a light kiss.

“It’s late.” Sam smiled, softly. “Come to bed.”

“I am.” Jill closed the laptop and set it on the cluttered nighttable, edging aside her to-be-read pile of books, a jar of Cetaphil, and her gold hoop earrings, linked together like Venn diagrams in a math textbook. She remembered helping all three girls with their math, especially Abby. She would sit with her at the kitchen table for hours after practice, their heads bent together, working the practice problems in the textbook, with a king-size bag of M&M’s at hand. By the end of middle school, they’d both hate M&M’s.

I’ll never understand geometry!

“I won’t get fresh,” Sam said.

“Huh?” Jill asked, confused a moment, caught in mid-thought, betwixt and between.

“Trust me.”

“I do.” Jill smiled and switched off the lamp, and just before it went off, Beef raised his head, his eyes clouded at the edges. It struck her that the golden had lived through more of her lives than Sam had, and she couldn’t imagine losing him. She reached over and patted his ample butt. “Let’s have Beef in our ceremony.”

“Fine with me. I thought you didn’t want to.”

“I changed my mind. If he jumps up on people, they’ll have to deal. He’s family.”

“Done.” Sam smiled, tugging up the covers. “He can be my best man. He’s better looking than Mort.”

“Aw, Mort’s a sweet guy.” Jill slipped under the sheets, which felt cool on her bare legs.

“Agree, but he never grew up. Not like me. I was born grown up.”

Jill smiled. It was part of Sam’s charm, to her. She’d felt an ease with him from the start, which was a blind date set up by an endocrinologist they both knew, who thought Jill’s bookish side would find common ground with a doctor in academic medicine like Sam, and she’d never felt more herself with any man, except Gray. She shifted over and rested her head on Sam’s chest. His cotton T-shirt was soft against her cheek, with the iron-on Penn faded out of existence.

“Okay?” Sam held her close.