Read What's Left Behind Online

Authors: Lorrie Thomson

What's Left Behind (4 page)

Rob bounced Phoebe on his knee. She clutched his shirt and squealed with laughter.

Good with kids. Another fine quality on Abby’s ideal-guy list.

Celeste wiped her hands on her apron, poured and capped a large decaf, and delivered the coffee to Rob. “I see you’ve met my new old neighbor,” she said to Abby.

“Hey,” he said. “I’m not that old.” He aimed a teasing smile at Celeste, and Celeste returned the favor.

A pang ran through Abby, as if she were some teenage girl who’d laid claim. As if she and Celeste were in a competition for Rob’s attention. Irrational, since Celeste was happily married and her business-friendly banter shouldn’t bother Abby.

These days, Celeste and Charlie were competing for Abby’s attention.

“Rob liked his office upstairs so much he decided to move in full time,” Celeste said.

“Can’t beat blueberry muffins every morning for breakfast. Thanks to Celeste, I think I’ve gained ten pounds.” Rob patted his belly, conspicuously flat beneath his fitted T-shirt. Phoebe slid from his lap, and Celeste lifted her onto her hip.

“You live upstairs?” Abby said. “Is that even legal? It’s zoned commercial.” Really, she’d no idea, but Rob inspired teasing. “I could turn you in. I could have you arrested.” She could enact a citizen’s arrest and frisk him herself.

Celeste was right. Going without sex made you think crazy thoughts. But after the last time Abby had allowed a man in her bedroom, she’d vowed to padlock the door.

“Why do you think Celeste’s getting a deal with the PTO project?” Rob asked.

“Don’t let him fool you,” Celeste said, a phrase she’d used many times in reference to Charlie, and Abby tensed. “He donated the time and gave us a deal on materials before he moved in.”

“I work for muffins.”

“Oh! Muffins! Almost forgot.” Abby shook her empty straw tote and turned to Rob. “Excuse us for a moment?”

“Sure thing.”

When Celeste started across the room, Phoebe wriggled from her arms and ran behind the counter. Elijah gave Abby’s arm a pat, sighed, and followed after his little sister. Celeste was right. Seven going on seventy.

Abby set her tote on the counter’s worn butcher block, and Celeste dashed behind the glass bakery case. “Hannah told me last night you’d be coming by for her,” Celeste said.

“She hadn’t even asked me yet!” A mere two hours ago, Hannah had leaned against the doorjamb to Abby’s office, sighing with anticipation for her date and their plans to listen to the blues at the Chocolate Church in Bath. Abby doubted the girl knew the difference between blues and jazz, or cared to learn, for that matter. At nineteen, a date was all about the boy.

At any age.

“Hannah knows you’re a softie. Besides, how can you deny her one true love?” Celeste wove her fingers together and pumped them back and forth, heart beating out of her chest.

“You mean her boyfriend of the week?” Abby said.

“Same difference.” Hands inside the bakery case, Celeste scooped muffins into two brown boxes and then secured them with pink-and-white twine. Elijah fit his hands over Phoebe’s and helped her cut the twine with the heavy-duty scissors.

“Why, thank you,” Abby said, and dropped the boxes into her tote.

Celeste leaned across the counter, lowered her voice to girlfriend-personal. “Talk to Charlie last night?”

Abby’s shoulders ached, as though Celeste and Charlie were engaged in a tug-of-war and she were the rope.

What was so wrong with Charlie calling to check in? Their son had died. Abby both looked forward to and dreaded the day when the hard truth of their loss ceased to color their every breath. Sometimes she and Celeste had to agree to disagree, but arguing with Celeste drained her. “You’re not the boss of me, sistah.”

“You’re right. I’m not the boss of you. Charlie is.”

Abby blew out through her lips. “Now, I know you don’t mean that.” Abby held Celeste’s gaze. In the periphery, Elijah handed Phoebe a picture book, and then sat down beside her with the hardcover copy of
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Abby had given him on his birthday.

Celeste blinked first. “I’ll call you later,” she said, and kneeled to straighten a line of perfectly straight rum balls. As much as Abby hated being at an impasse with Celeste, Celeste hated it even more.

Abby nodded and went over to Rob. “Very nice to meet you.”

“Same here,” he said.

Abby headed for the door.

“Abby,” Rob said, and she liked the way her name sounded sweet and sure coming from his lips, as though he’d known her forever. “If you need an architect for that labyrinth project . . .”

Her landscaping skills were amateurish at best. But as far as hiring a professional, did she really have the funds? What with Luke’s—

She was no longer helping her son pay for tuition, room, and board. No college, no future, no Luke.

Her baby was gone.

Her eyes misted, and she drew her mouth into a grin to ward off the railing in her head. Unpredictable, random, and completely unfair.

“Do you have a card?”

Rob dug a business card from his laptop case and held it out to her. She read the inscription’s crisp lettering:
CAMPBELL LANDSCAPE DESIGN.
Nothing flowery. Direct and to the point.

“I can come by to take a look at the site you have in mind, get started on a plan, work up an estimate.”

Abby nodded, hoped he didn’t notice the slight tremble to her bottom lip. “When?” she said, thinking of her office computer and the calendar she lived by, her endless scheduled hours.

“Now works for me.”

“Now?” She admired Rob’s fast talking, his not wanting to lose potential business. She got that. But she couldn’t help but wonder whether the trait carried through to his personal life. Not that she minded, exactly. She flicked her gaze to his bare-of-a-band ring finger.That meant nothing. Some men worried about getting their rings caught while working with their hands. Some worried about getting caught, period.

Rob probably didn’t have a wife squirreled away above the bakery. What he more likely had was baggage, like the rest of mankind.

“I don’t want to steal you away from Celeste.”

“I believe we’re done for today,” he said loud enough for Celeste to hear.

Celeste popped up from behind a pastry case. “Oh, yeah. I’m done with you,” she said, infusing her words with a playful lilt.

Once again, that irrational pang of girlhood competition hit home.

 

Rob Campbell traveled light.

The walk back to Briar Rose passed more quickly than Abby’s lone walk into town, as if the half mile had shortened in her absence. A gentleman, Rob walked on the poison ivy side of the walkway. He carried a legal pad in one hand, a pencil in his back pocket. All he’d claimed he needed for an initial sketch of the labyrinth site. The laptop, he’d run up to his apartment. The coffee, he’d forgotten at Celeste’s.

“This is it,” Abby said, gazing from the backyard of Briar Rose out to the ocean.The sun set low in the sky, a pretty pink ball lowering itself into the water and forecasting another hot-for-June day.

“Wow. I wouldn’t even need to regrade.” Rob’s face glowed, as if he’d swallowed the sun. “Mind if I do a little exploring?”

Abby sat on the grass, one hand resting against Luke’s third stepping-stone, the warmth evaporating with the day. Rob set down the legal pad, paced with his long-legged stride. He whistled to himself, totally comfortable in his work, and completely off-key. Seven times he circled before her, seven circuits to a classic labyrinth, seven passes in front of Luke’s stepping-stones.

“Huh,” Rob said, and plunked himself down on the brink of her personal space, arms slung over his knees. His nearness tingled her cheeks with warmth, tightened her throat, tweaked her pulse. He picked up the legal pad and slid a pencil from his back pocket. “First up, I always ask my clients their goals for the project. So . . . Abby, what do you want from the labyrinth? What sort of experience?”

“For real?” she said, because what kind of a man asked you what you wanted and then took notes?

Rob shot her a high-cheeked grin with a twinge of mischief. “Why not?”

She shook her head, thought of her hopes for the desk toy, the sand flung on the floor, the frisson of energy trapped in her body. “Peace.” She took a breath to shore up the unexpected ache in her voice. Flip of the switch, she revised her focus, and the constriction in her throat eased. “A mind-quieting peaceful place for my guests to relax,” she said, as though she had no needs of her own. As though her grief weren’t lurking a fingernail’s scratch beneath her skin. “A feature that would enhance their stay.”

Rob touched her shoulder, waited until she looked him in the eye. “No, Abby. What do
you
want?”

Her vision blurred, like gazing through privacy glass. Without thinking, she reached down to the stepping-stone, slid a finger across Luke’s name.

Rob followed her gaze, read the inscription. “Luke Connors is your son?” he said, and she nodded.

“We could easily work the stepping-stones into the design. Is Luke eighteen now? My daughter, Grace, is eighteen. You know, my imaginary friend? Did Luke graduate this year? Luke Connors from Hidden Harbor. The name sounds familiar.” He tapped pencil against paper, chuckled. “I thought the name—”

“Last year,” she blurted out. “Luke graduated last year.”

Abby watched the realization settle down on Rob. A crease formed between his brows. His head tilted. She read a flicker of understanding in the slight widening of his eyes, a micro-twitch of his lips, and then,just as fast, the deliberate forced return to a neutral expression. He searched her face, and heat flamed her cheeks. She wished she could disappear.

“Your son,” he said, the tone somber, the volume set at one notch above a whisper. “The boy who . . . ?”

She traced the
L
in Luke, down-across-back up, pressed her fingertip into the rough edge until pain shot up her hand. “Passed away.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” he told her, the words you said when there was really nothing more to say. “I can’t begin to imagine.” His lips twisted, his eyes turned down at the corners. The look on his face shifted from pity to empathy, as if, in fact, he could understand the vastness of her loss.

A couple of years ago, she’d given a talk at her local B&B association about chatting with guests. No Debbie Downers, positive spin, and for heaven’s sake, lighten up. They’re on vacation. She straightened, cleared her throat, and willed her tone to strengthen. “Tell me about your daughter, Grace, your recent graduate. Is she going away to college? I believe I heard you say something about taking stuff with her . . .”

Rob gave her a sideways look, and his mouth clenched. Unsure whether he should allow her to change the subject or relieved? “Going to Plymouth State to study outdoor ed. My little girl wants to be a forest ranger.” Rob took on the same loving tone as when he’d spoken to his daughter at the bakery, and his gaze relaxed. Abby’s hand splayed against the stepping-stone. “Totally my fault,” he added.

“You sound like a proud papa gearing up for day trips to New Hampshire. White Mountain National Forest, right? Planning on bagging a few peaks?”

“You know it.”

“Moosilauke, Liberty, Franconia Ridge,” she rattled off, another innkeeper fringe benefit. If you paid attention to your guests, you learned about people and places vastly different from your world. And added to your really long bucket list.

“Oh, yeah, Franconia Ridge. Incredible views. Stayed at the Greenleaf hut with Grace and her mother. Long time ago.” He swung his pencil above the legal pad, batting the air. “Anyway. The labyrinth.” He gave his head a slight shake, as if to clear the memory. “Where were we? Goals for the project!” With a flick of the wrist, he tapped the paper three times with his pencil. “Give me a minute,” he said, and a shiver laced her shoulders.

Rob glanced out to the bay, the day melting into the ocean. He let out a breath, nodded, scratched pencil against paper. “Every design tells a story, conveys a theme with subtle details. What do you say, Abby?” Rob turned the legal pad in her direction so she could read the side-by-side words:
Peace
and
Luke
.

“Is this what you want?” he said.

More than anything.

She skirted his gaze, swallowed, studied the lupine. The sturdy purple cones pointing to the sky would wither by summer’s end. Day in, day out, she served breakfast to bleary-eyed guests, taking into account half-a-dozen different dietary restrictions, their random preferences. She answered the phone and made reservations with a smile in her voice. She laundered white cotton sheets, ran her hands across the smooth heated fabric, warmth missing from her own life. The two-sided longing never left her. And yet no one saw. No one saw her.

Peace and Luke.

She raised her gaze to Rob’s. He’d never looked away.

The ability to withstand life’s storms without flinching earned Rob a third check for Abby’s ideal-guy list.

Did he see that, too? “Where do we start?” she asked.

Rob patted Luke’s stepping-stone, as though inviting her to sit down, take a load off her feet, and settle in for a long stay. “This, right here, is where we begin.”

C
HAPTER
4

E
ver since eighth grade, Tessa Lombardi had always wanted whatever her best friend, Dina, had. Two parents who lived in the same house, slept in the same bed, and never bickered. A mother who gave a shit. A boyfriend who didn’t cheat.

For a few short months, she thought she’d finally gotten the boyfriend part right.

Now, Luke was dead, it was all her fault, and her life was over.
Be careful what you wish for.

It totally pissed Tessa off that one of her mother’s favorite sayings had actually come true, like a broken clock, right twice a day.

That was one of her father’s favorite sayings.

Tessa swung her legs over the edge of the bed, planted them on the apartment-issue rug, and gazed wide-eyed through a skim of tears. The room appeared magnified, the walls canting, the dresser looming, as though she were swimming through salt water.

Since Luke had been gone, she cried every day, and not just about stuff that made sense either. The endless stream of posts on Luke’s Facebook wall did her in. Girls Luke hadn’t really known, or cared about, posted dumbass stuff like,
I’m going to wicked miss you,
as if Luke were spending a semester in London and would return in the fall, sporting a cockney accent and a fondness for clotted cream. All the girls who posted were pretty, if you believed their duck-face profile photos, which Tessa did not.

She knew better than anyone how you could put on a different face during the day to trick the world into thinking you were someone other than who you were and then wash it off at night. Luke had known that, too, without needing an ounce of makeup to pull off the prank.

Or maybe she wanted to believe the worst. If she believed the worst, then she wouldn’t have to remember all she’d lost.

Tessa waited until her sight cleared and then tiptoed across the bedroom. The apartment was a bargain, as long as management didn’t find out they’d crammed two beds and three people into a one-bedroom.

Morning light sneaked through the blinds of the off-campus summer rental and threw flickering leaf patterns across the blue-blanketed mass.Two figures crammed into a single bed no bigger than the twins from the dorms. Dina’s linebacker boyfriend, Jon, lay with his broad back to the room. One large hairy leg flung atop the covers and clamped around Dina.

Nestled against Jon’s arm, Dina looked like a little girl with her face awash in a golden-glow night-light, rather than a nineteen-year-old sleeping off strains of last night’s birthday beer bash. Dina’s hands clasped together beneath her chin, and she sighed, not a care in the world. If only.

In a snap-quick slip of the wrist, Dina-and-Jon and Tessa-and-Luke had become Dina-and-Jon and tagalong Tessa.

Tessa closed the bedroom door behind her. At least Dina and Jon had the decency to sleep, only sleep, when she was in the bedroom.

Since Luke had been gone, Tessa hardly slept at all.

Not due to weekends of staying up late, after-hours dance-till-dawn parties. That used to be her thing. Now, at the end of a beaten-down-tired day, she’d slide into bed early, only to find herself awake again three hours later, Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” playing over and over in her head, Luke haunting her. He’d introduced her to the band, musical taste he’d claimed was handed down from his father. Tessa and Luke had sat on his dorm bed, backs up against the painted brick wall and legs out in front of them, holding hands, at first zoning to the music and then tuning into each other.

Bags of chips gaped open along the coffee table, a dank smell tainted the air, and red plastic cups a quarter filled with beer decorated the kitchen table. Tessa’s cup sat at the table’s head, her name spelled out in black Sharpie, the beverage completely drained.

Since Luke had been gone, Tessa had lost her taste for beer.

Tessa yanked open the porch slider and stepped into the fresh air. Her hand grasped the wrought-iron railing. “Same shit, different morning,” she mumbled.

“Kiss your mother with that mouth?” Dina stood on the cement balcony, her hands jabbed on her hips. Dark-blond hair tumbled around her shoulders, as though she’d arranged it that way. Jon’s favorite football T-shirt came to the top of Dina’s knees. White letters stood out against the black background.
How do you want to be remembered?

Tessa tried to glare at Dina before tears sprang to the corners of her eyes.

“Oh, God. Sorry, I’m an idiot.”

“You said it,” Tessa said, but she’d no fire behind her words. And when Dina came in for a hug, Tessa didn’t resist. She never talked about her mother with anyone but Dina, so even a momentary lapse stung. She supposed it wasn’t Dina’s fault she couldn’t relate. She didn’t have to rely upon thrice-yearly cards sent from Europe, on Christmas, Easter, and Tessa’s birthday, to pinpoint her mother’s latest location.

Last birthday, Tessa’s mother had thought she’d turned eighteen for the second year in a row.

Jon stumbled into view and tickled Dina from behind, making her jostle against Tessa.

“Quit it,” Dina said, batting a hand behind her. Tessa untangled herself from her friend so she wouldn’t have to feel Dina let go first.

“Uh, sorry,” Jon said, as if he hadn’t noticed Tessa, and lumbered into the kitchen. How could she simultaneously be both the talk of the campus and invisible?

“What are you going to do?” Dina asked, same thing she’d been asking Tessa daily.

“I have no clue,” Tessa said, and headed for the bathroom with her cell. Behind the door, she reviewed the text from her father, philosophy professor Noah Lombardi, requesting her
presence
for a breakfast date. The message was no small feat considering her father’s newest phone was an old-fashioned flip job where every letter required three jabs of the thumb. Tessa tapped in,
ok,
and hit the shower. She must’ve been desperate to resort to talking to her dad, but what choice did she have? Even she was sick of hearing herself talk to Dina. The same conversation wound in mazelike circles with no way out.

Fifty minutes later, Tessa sat across from her father at Dad’s favorite Amherst haunt, Lone Wolf. Midmorning, and the restaurant was packed with students Dad ignored, sprinkled with a few faculty members he acknowledged with a lift of his chin. The din of conversations, the clang of silverware against plates, created a buffer of privacy. The server placed Dad’s regular order on the table before him, lox and latkes, his way of remembering his Jewish mother. Tessa’s order came next, challah French toast, because she was so hungry she thought she might hurl.

Tessa slathered the toast in butter and drenched it in maple syrup until the sticky liquid pooled around the stack. She shoved the first bite in her mouth, smiled through sweet relief.

Dad took his time, slicing and dicing lox and latkes, and examining Tessa in preparation for stabbing philosophical inquiry. “Present,” he said. Her father’s way of asking her to lay out her opposing arguments totally threw her off, since all she could think about was the past and the future.

“I can’t do this,” she said, and burst into tears over her French toast.

Her father became Professor Lombardi. He tilted his head and blinked at her, as if she were one of his freshmen who’d failed to grasp the basics of debate. The way he chewed his lox—steady and sure—made her want to tear the breakfast from his lips.

He took off his glasses and folded them beside his coffee mug. “Tessa, Tessa, Tessa,” he said. “It’s a little late for tears, don’t you think?” He let out a put-upon sigh. His gaze softened, as if he were about to, for once, talk to her like an adult. “Just like your mother.”

That only made her cry harder. Did he honestly think he was being helpful?

“Life is a matter of priorities and proper focus. Your mother’s
artistic
attitude”—Dad said, pausing to draw a set of quotes in the air—“doesn’t work in the real world. We all have to get up at a certain time, go to a job or school. And when you have a child, he or she is your main priority. I blame myself for thinking your mother was ready for motherhood at twenty-two. Some people’s temperaments aren’t suited for the job, no matter the age. Simple as that. Stop overthinking. Right now, college should be your priority.”

Tessa remembered Dad focusing his nails-on-blackboard logic at her mother in response to Mom’s last great rant about needing the richness of foreign soil to grow creativity. Tessa remembered Mom’s final summation that her father was heartless.

“Meredith, Meredith, Meredith,” Dad had said. “One
can
have everything, just not necessarily at the same time.”

What he’d meant was, not necessarily with a husband and a kid.

Her father had met her mother’s tirades with calculated logic, her heat with ice.

No wonder Mom had left him. But why did she have to leave Tessa? What had she done wrong?

The last time she’d seen her mother, Mom had stood in the doorway to Tessa’s bedroom, her face blotchy with spent tears. Dark eyes shining, she’d offered up her usual bedtime rhyme. “Sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite, see you in the morning light,” she’d chirped.

“Promise?” Tessa had said, and Mom came to sit on the edge of Tessa’s bed. She’d gathered Tessa’s hands in hers. She’d looked Tessa in the eye. She’d promised.

She’d promised.

Tessa had never again seen her mother in the light, morning or otherwise.

Dad scrubbed a fist across his close-cropped dark beard, and set down his fork. “Have you registered for fall classes yet?” he asked, as if she had a choice. She could already see him formulating his arguments, his gray gaze drifting from hers, lengthening the distance between them.

Tessa struggled to catch her breath, and then blew her nose in her napkin. “I can’t let go of Luke.” As if to prove her point, Tessa’s throat hugged his name. Her heart beat double time, her body working to resurrect the boy she loved.

Dad raised his gaze to the ceiling, a sure sign of exasperation with emotional displays, immature students, her. “Clean breaks are best. You have a chance to move on, get your degree. No need to compound the tragedy.”

Tessa shot her father a questioning look. She knew what he thought about her completing her bachelor’s degree in studio art for the express purpose of painting. If she’d no interest in an MFA and a professorship, she might as well have majored in coloring with flat-bottomed Crayolas, building with Legos, and sculpting Play-Doh.

“Take advantage of your opportunities.”

“I have an opportunity—”

“To do what? Ruin your life? You’re nineteen. I’m not going to support you forever.” His gaze bore into her, the x-ray vision of disapproval simultaneously scorning her outer appearance and assuming all of her mother’s inner faults. Flighty, impulsive, irresponsible. Tessa had heard them all before. She didn’t care to hear them again.

After Luke’s death, her father’s negative opinion of her had solidified, clay in a kiln. Why bother trying to change it? Heat flushed her hairline. It wasn’t her fault she looked like her mother. That much she knew. “Mom was right. You are heartless. I wish she’d taken me with her.” Tessa hated the way her voice sounded, thin and pinched and prepubescent, same as the first time she’d hurled the phrase.

Dad didn’t even flinch. He never did. Instead, he regarded her over the rim of his coffee, set down the mug, and tapped his napkin twice against his lips. Seeing his nostrils flare wasn’t half as thrilling as Tessa had hoped. “Leaving you with me was the only unselfish thing
that woman
has ever done in her life.”

So now he thought Tessa was selfish? She couldn’t untangle that inside-out logic. The din of background conversation rose; the sharp tone jumbled her insides. Not only had she inherited all her mother’s faults, but she’d also managed to sidestep her mother’s single crumb of goodness.

Tessa hadn’t been willing to forget Luke and move on with her life in February. Why should she do it now? She still loved him. That constant would never change.

When her mother had left, her standoffish father had taken a giant step backward. He’d prepared dinners, where the two of them chewed and swallowed without exchanging a word, and she’d assumed he was angry with her. He’d wished her a good night’s sleep, without the benefit of a rhyme or a hug, and she imagined her adolescent development explained Dad’s sudden shyness. A year ago, he’d congratulated her on her art scholarship. Yet, last week he’d refused to visit the Herter Gallery, where her painting hung beside her mother’s, Professor Meredith Lombardi.

Her father might act as though her mother’s leaving hadn’t touched him at all, but Tessa knew better. For once, his little act didn’t fool her. “I have three choices,” she said.

Her father swirled a bite of latke in sour cream, popped it into his mouth, and held up his index finger. He might as well have flipped her off with the middle one instead.

“Luke’s mother would understand how I feel,” Tessa said, remembering the way Abby had dried her tears at the post-memorial reception, one hand resting on Luke’s father’s arm. Luke’s parents had never married, but Abby still loved Luke’s dad. It wicked showed.

Dad shook his head, his slow side-to-side gesture meant to erase the silly misguided thoughts of silly misguided children. “Complications, Tessa. Keep things simple and straightforward.”

A laugh burst out of her. Her life had spiraled way beyond
complications
months ago. “Are you freaking kidding me?”

“Language.” Dad’s eyes jostled from the effort to keep them from flicking around the restaurant. Heaven forbid he looked bad in front of faculty, or worse, his students. One must maintain decorum at all times.

Screw that to hell.

Tessa pushed to standing and yanked her handbag off the chair. She made sure to use her best pronunciation and project across the crowded restaurant sharp enough to slice the heads off conversations. “Sorry, Dad. What I meant to say was, are you
fucking
kidding me?”

Dad’s mouth stopped mid-chew, and Tessa headed for the door, expecting her father to chase her out to the sidewalk and convince her to stay. But when she peered through the glass, her father unfolded his glasses and bent his head to study the bill.

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