Noelle swallowed hard. ‘What else did Daddy tell you?’ It was an effort to speak normally.
‘That I’m s’posed to stay with him till you come home.’ Emma’s pinched little face was almost more than Noelle could bear. ‘Mommy, when
are
you coming home?’
‘Oh, sweetie.’ With a low, choked cry, Noelle pulled her daughter to her, hugging her tightly. ‘You remember when Nana had trouble getting to the bathroom by herself, and I had to help her?’
‘Like when you used to wipe me?’
Noelle smoothed her hair. ‘Not exactly, but sort of. Right now, Nana needs me to take care of her.’
‘I know how to help.
I’ll
wipe Nana.’
‘You’re a
big
help,’ Noelle agreed, her heart breaking.
‘That time I found Nana’s medicine under the bed? She gave me a whole dollar and said I was the bestest finder in the world.’
‘You’re not just the best finder. You’re the best
everything.’
Noelle’s voice wobbled. ‘And I’ll still see you. Every chance I get.’
‘I know.’ Emma crawled off her lap and went back to arranging Barbie’s hair, humming contentedly under her breath. But no sooner had Noelle breathed a sigh of relief—dear God, what a weight off her mind to know that, at the very least, her daughter’s fears had been put to rest—than Emma once more asked, ‘Can we go now, Mommy?’
‘You mean back to Daddy’s?’
Emma shook her head vehemently. ‘I want to go with
you.’
A petulant note crept into her voice.
‘I’m sorry, sweetie, but you can’t. As soon as Nana’s better, I promise I’ll come get you.’
Noelle recalled Lacey’s warning. At the time, she’d thought nothing could be harder than resisting the urge to run after her daughter. Now she knew better. Leaving her was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do.
‘I want to come
now.’
Emma started to cry.
It began with sniffles and quickly escalated to full-blown sobs. As she held her daughter’s small heaving body in her arms, rocking from side to side in a useless effort to calm her, Noelle felt certain her fractured heart would break.
Hours later she sat motionless on a bench in the town square. Somehow the entire afternoon had slipped by unnoticed. She had a vague memory of leaving the courhouse and of feeling the need to rest a bit before driving home, knowing that if she didn’t, she might not make it in one piece. Now she saw that all the children scampering over the jungle gym had gone home. Shadows were beginning to creep out from under ladders and slides to slither over the churned-up sand below. Even the surrounding benches were mostly empty.
Noting the clerks and secretaries making their way down the steps of the courthouse, she glanced at her watch and saw that it was a few minutes past five.
Do they know?
she wondered with a dull ache.
All the forms they staple and punch and stamp, all the duplicates and triplicates stuffed into files and envelopes—do any of them have the slightest notion of the impact it can have on someone’s life?
Probably not. The men and women hurrying past were concerned with little else besides beating the quickest path possible to home. No one cared about a little girl named Emma. While they thought about what they were going to have for supper or if their favorite TV show was going to be a new episode or a rerun, Noelle sat dying a slow death at the prospect of each visit with her daughter ending like this last one—with Emma having to be pried from her arms. Mrs Scheffert, the old biddy who’d seemed so nice at first, had shot her a reproving look over Emma’s head, as if it all were Noelle’s fault somehow.
It felt as if something vital had been torn from her. What she wanted was so natural its very simplicity was a cruel irony, like a trick mirror fooling you into thinking there was a doorway where there wasn’t. She wanted her daughter. Nothing more, nothing less. She wanted to be among the mothers who’d stood calling to their children through cupped hands that it was time to go. She wanted to walk along the sidewalk with her daughter’s small hand in hers. She—
‘Mind if I join you?’
Startled, Noelle glanced up. A man stood before her, the sun at his back throwing his face into shadow. It was an instant before she recognized him. In chinos and a short-sleeved shirt, minus his doctor’s coat, Hank Reynolds might have been just another passerby, a man of medium height, with light brown hair, whose muscled arms and shoulders suggested regular workouts at the gym. Except for his eyes, which caught the sun as he lowered himself onto the bench—eyes the dark amber of tea laced with brandy.
‘I’m afraid I’m not very good company right now,’ she warned.
Hank smiled warmly. ‘I’ll take my chances.’
He had a newspaper tucked under one arm and a grocery sack balanced in the crook of his elbow. He lowered the sack onto the grass at his feet. ‘I usually take the short way home, but it’s such a beautiful day I decided to walk through the square instead.’ He nodded in the direction of her foot. ‘Looks a lot better than the last time I saw it. How does it feel?’
Noelle shrugged. ‘All I can say is, it’s the least of my worries.’
Hank was silent for a moment, looking out over the lawn where a couple of teenage boys were tossing a Frisbee. ‘If you feel like telling me about it, fine,’ he said at last. ‘If not, we can just sit. I’m in no particular hurry.’
‘As you can see, neither am I.’ Her voice cracked, and she abruptly found herself on the verge of tears.
He glanced at her in concern. ‘That bad, huh?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
Hank touched her arm. ‘Try me.’
He’s just being nice,
she told herself.
Nice Dr Hank, beloved of children and old ladies alike.
‘I’m afraid it’s a bit out of your bailiwick,’ she said with an attempt at an airy laugh that fell far short of its mark.
‘You’d be surprised. In my line of work I’m exposed to pretty much everything—even the stuff that isn’t catching.’ A rueful smile tugged at one corner of his mouth.
In the old days, she would have said,
Thank you, I appreciate the offer, but I’ll be fine.
But that was the Noelle of before. The dutiful daughter who from age ten through eighteen had smiled her way through the rounds of parties, openings, and premieres her mother had dragged her to. The company wife who’d found refuge amid the bright clamor of cocktail parties, in the wineglass that was never empty and never quite full. At this moment, the woman emerging from the too-tight skin of her former self didn’t seem to have any such reservations. Without further ado, Noelle burst into tears.
‘I’m sorry.’ She gulped when she could at last trust herself to speak. ‘I’m making a fool of myself. You should go home. Your ice cream will melt.’ She gestured toward the pint of rocky road poking from his grocery sack.
‘I can always buy more.’
To her profound gratitude, Hank didn’t pat her on the back or murmur false reassurances. He merely handed her his handkerchief, a neat pressed square that smelled faintly of fabric softener.
They sat together in silence while Noelle mopped her face and struggled to regain her composure. Finally she said, ‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m a good listener.’
She studied him out of the corner of her eye. He might not be the kind of man who inspired strange women to slip him their business cards—home numbers scribbled on the back—as regularly happened with Robert. Hank’s appeal wasn’t so overt. But it was undeniable nonetheless. Even the slight overbite that reminded her of Pete Caswell, an altar boy at St Vincent’s whom she’d had the biggest crush on back in the fifth grade. Despite her mood, she felt her heart quicken.
‘Maybe another time,’ she told him.
‘In that case, I’ll treat you to a cold drink instead.’ He reached into the sack, pulled out a Seven-Up, and thoughtfully popped the tab before handing it to her.
‘Thanks.’ She tilted her head back and drank deeply. She thought she’d never tasted anything so delicious.
Long brushstrokes of orange and purple tinted the horizon, where rooftops twinkled in the golden rays of the setting sun. From where she and Hank sat, as companionable as an old married couple, the distant slamming of car doors had dwindled to an occasional thunk. A breeze had kicked up, stirring the stagnant air and rustling the leaves overhead. Noelle became aware of Hank’s hand, curled loosely on his knee. Against the tan fabric of his slacks, it looked large and capable. Unexpectedly she felt a stab of longing—for what exactly, she couldn’t have said.
She pointed toward the fountain at the center of the square, featured on postcards sold at Gleason’s Pharmacy, a graceful Art Noveau nymph ringed with spouts in the shape of lily pads. ‘If that girl could talk, think of the stories
she’d
tell.’
Hank smiled, the creases at the corners of his tea brown eyes flaring. ‘Maybe that’s why she spends her days weeping instead.’
She shot him a sharp glance. ‘Crying isn’t always the answer.’
‘No, but it sometimes helps.’
She looked into Hank’s kind face and saw something she hadn’t seen before: a quiet strength that seemed to rise from a place deep within. He reminded her of her father, of that look Dad sometimes got: of an immovable object meeting an irresistible force.
‘My husband has temporary custody of our daughter,’ she began, the words coming easily now, rising like the water bubbling to the surface of the fountain. ‘I have supervised visitation three times a week. Today we sat in a room with the door open so a social worker could keep an eye on me, to make sure—’ She broke off, staring down at the grass and imagining the look of pity she was certain Hank wore—pity mixed with wariness perhaps. Suddenly she didn’t want his sympathy. What she wanted,
needed,
was simply for this nightmare to end. ‘It’s all so unbelievable, the very idea that I would ever neglect my little girl
…
.’ She cleared her throat. ‘When she was a baby, I made all her food from scratch. I wouldn’t have dreamed of feeding her from a jar. It might sound paranoid, but I even kept the cleaning supplies on a high shelf. I didn’t trust those safety latches.’
‘I see plenty of kids who’d have been spared a trip to the hospital if their mothers had been as paranoid,’ Hank observed mildly.
‘The worst of it is that I can’t protect her
now.
She’s suffering, and I can’t do a thing to prevent it.’ Noelle paused to blow her nose into Hank’s wonderfully voluminous white handkerchief. When she lifted her head, she felt cleansed somehow, the soggy gray weight of her sorrow drained away and in its place a gleaming blade of anger. ‘I’m sure you hear a lot of women say their husbands are evil, but mine really is. I used to believe he loved his daughter, but now I’m not so sure. He’s using her to crush me, and the awful thing is, it’s working.’
‘From where I sit, that’s not how it looks.’ Meeting his gaze, she saw that Hank didn’t pity her. His expression was coolly assessing, even admiring.
‘What—what are you saying?’ she stammered.
‘That the woman I see is perfectly capable of kicking down any door that stands in her way.’
Noelle smiled reluctantly at the image of herself as Xena, Warrior Princess. ‘Emma’s five,’ she said softly, ‘that age when every other sentence is a question. I just wish I had all the answers.’
‘Then you’d be like that guy over there. They’d erect a statue of you in some park.’ He gestured toward the one of Luther Burbank, a gray squirrel perched like a miniature aide-de-camp on one bronze shoulder.
Noelle laughed, watching the squirrel scamper back down to retrieve an acorn from the grass below. With the toe of one sneaker she nudged a wet spot on Hank’s grocery sack. ‘Looks like you’re too late to save that rocky road.’
‘Story of my life.’ He shrugged and stood up. He hoisted the groceries under one arm before offering her the other. ‘Will you allow a fellow wayfarer to walk you to your car?’
This time, when Noelle rose to her feet, her legs didn’t threaten to collapse. She found she could walk quite steadily, one arm resting lightly in the crook of Hank’s elbow. Her fingertips brushed the fine hairs along his muscled forearm, and she was acutely aware of the heat of his skin against hers. Nana and her mother would be wondering what was keeping her, she thought. They’d be worried. But at that moment, for the first time in days, Noelle felt safe and strong.
CHAPTER 7
E
VEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS,
Mary could have found her way to the Lundquists’ in her sleep. The old farmhouse, with its deep porch and kitchen garden out back, stood at the junction of Blossom Road and Route 30A. As she pulled into the driveway behind a fire engine red Ford Bronco that could belong to none other than Jordy Lundquist, the youngest of Corinne’s three brothers, who from the time he was old enough to drive had favored flashy cars in lipstick shades, she felt a low bittersweet ache. She’d heard that Jordy was married with two kids and was struck anew by the tragedy of Corinne’s not having had a chance to do the same: grow up and get married, have children. Memories hovered like the butterflies flitting in and out of the tall grass on either side of the drive.
Stepping from her Lexus onto the dusty drive, Mary could almost see her best friend perched on the shady top step of the porch, elbows propped on her knees, her head sprouting a dozen fat curlers. She could almost hear her yell out,
Hey, Ma-ary Ca-a-a-ther-ine!
Corinne, who’d loathed nicknames—due to years of being teased by her three older brothers, otherwise known as the Triassic Trio—had been the only one besides her parents to call her by her full name.
Mary lingered a moment, inhaling the sweet scent of alfalfa and fresh mown hay. A big chocolate lab unfolded itself from the shade of a slippery elm and ambled over to greet her. He looked like a grown-up version of the puppy she’d gotten for Noelle when they first moved to Manhattan, a sweet-natured dog no more cut out for city life than her daughter, which after a few months and several hundred dollars worth of damage she’d been forced to give away. Luckily, the Lundquists had been only too happy to take him, saying a farm could never have too many dogs. Mary bent to pet his head, releasing a cloud of dust that made her sneeze.