by Wendy Wax
“Mom!” Lily’s in my arms before I know how either of us got there. I squeeze her to me, cupping her head to my shoulder, breathing in a shuddering sigh of relief. She’s here. She’s wet and bedraggled beneath the towel around her shoulders. Her face is mud streaked, but she’s alive and intact. I hold her and we sway back and forth. Both of us are crying. I bow my head in thanks that turns to fury as she sobs out the whole story before I have the strength to ask the first question.
“He told me it was a house party. Only no one else ever came.” Her words are tangled up with her tears. Both land on my shoulder.
She lifts her head and I look into her filthy tear-streaked face to the horror shining starkly in her eyes. “I thought he liked me. He acted like he did. But then when we were alone all he cared about was . . . you know. Only . . . I . . . I couldn’t do it. When he went out to move his truck, I locked myself in the bedroom and pushed the dresser in front of the door . . . and . . . the electricity went out and that whole place shook in the storm. I was so scared.” She takes a shuddering breath. “When it finally slowed, I begged him to take me home but he . . .” She’s crying again. “He called me names. And he, he said that he was going to tell everybody I did it whether I did or not so I might as well come out and stop acting like a baby.” She sobs and trembles in my arms.
“How did you get here?”
The tears continue to spill. Her voice wobbles. “When the wind finally started dying down I crawled out the bedroom window as quietly as I could and I ran.”
I can barely breathe as her words tumble out. I picture the ugly sneer on Shane Adams’s face and my anger spirals higher. I wish we’d left him lying in the mud like the pig that he is.
“Shh . . . it’s all right.” I smooth her hair as I try to calm her, to calm us both. “It’s over now. We all do things that don’t turn out the way we expect. See people the way we want them to be instead of the way they really are.” This last one hits a bit too close to home. “I wish you’d never put yourself in that situation. But you were strong. You did what you needed to to get out of there.”
Her tears slow but we’re still locked in each other’s arms. I don’t know how I can ever let go.
I raise my head and pull the towel more tightly around her as I continue to soothe and murmur how much I love her. Lauren comes inside and it feels completely natural for her to walk up and put her arms around both of us. We hold on to one another and sway.
* * *
Lauren
Locked in a hug with Lily and Bree, I feel Lily begin to calm as she listens to the person she trusts most in this world. The person who would do anything for her, give up anything for her. The woman who would have gotten into a tin can of a car on her own if she’d had to and raced through a raging storm to find her.
Because that’s what mothers do. Or at least mothers like Bree. And . . . like mine. How many times did my mother dry my tears, tell me everything was going to be all right, that she loved me no matter what?
Lily’s tears finally begin to hiccup to a stop. We’re still swaying, the elderly woman behind the counter smiling compassionately, when the front door opens and footsteps sound on the floor. I look up and see my mother watching us. I know that if this was before my father’s appearance she would already be here swaying and holding us. Our eyes meet and I have this urge to walk—or possibly run—into her arms and rock and sway without any thought of who might be watching or who did or didn’t do the wrong thing or why. But it’s Lily who breaks up the hug and runs to throw her arms around Kendra. My mother smooth’s Lily’s hair and whispers in her ear. Just like she always did for me.
Then Jake comes inside and that moment when I might have silently and effortlessly healed our breach is gone.
By the time Clay arrives Bree has already hugged and thanked Sue, who ushered us to a Formica-topped table to which she delivered food that none of us can eat. Lily sits, hollow eyed, her hands wrapped around a foam cup of hot chocolate that Sue placed in front of her.
Bree freezes when Clay walks in. But when Lily gets up and rushes to her father Bree follows. Whatever drove Lily into Shane Adams’s lair, whatever confusion or anger she felt, whatever she has or hasn’t blamed her parents for, don’t seem to matter. In this moment, she clearly needs them both.
Bree’s shoulders remain tight, her smile frozen, when Clay pulls her up against him. It’s clear that she’s furious with him—and possibly herself—even as they form their own small circle of comfort.
“I came straight here,” Clay says as the three of them take seats at the table. Bree’s arm goes around Lily’s shoulders. “But I’m tempted to pay a visit to Shane Adams.”
“He’s already been taken care of,” Bree says, aiming a small smile at me. “He’s probably still lying on that porch trying to get up. Lauren martial-arts’d him.”
“You knocked him down?” Jake asks in disbelief.
I nod humbly. “I did. He was practically begging for it.”
“God, I’m sorry I missed that,” Clay adds.
“It was a complete knockout,” Bree says. “He didn’t know what hit him.”
“Really?” Lily asks.
“Really,” Bree says. “I wish I’d taken a picture of him lying there, but we were in a hurry to get here.”
“Thank you,” Lily says quietly. “I’m so sorry for everything. But . . . thank you.”
“Oh, believe me. It was my pleasure.” I reach for her hand and a lighter tone. “If he gives you any trouble or tries to shoot his mouth off, tell him we took pictures and that you’ll be glad to post them to social media. He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who’d want to admit to being knocked down by a woman.”
I glance outside and notice that the sky is beginning to clear. It’s almost six P.M.
“So, what happens now?” Jake asks.
“If Lily’s up to it we’ll drive to ORF to turn in the rental car and pick mine up. Then we’ll caravan home,” Bree says. At Lily’s quiet nod Bree turns to me. “Any chance you could come back down for a few days? Or do you want a ride to the airport?”
Jake and my mother exchange glances before he says, “I just checked the weather and it looks like the storm has moved up to DC. But there’s some indication that it could stall out over the northeastern seaboard. I’m not sure anything’s flying in or out of New York over the next few days.”
He looks at my mother again. She nods as if she’s afraid that the sound of her voice will cause me to say no. And I hate that she’s right.
“There’s something your mother and I would like to show you in Richmond. It’s just an hour drive from here. We could stay over and then get you to the Richmond airport in the morning if flights into New York resume.”
I’ve barely thought about home other than to let Spencer know we made it here and that Lily’s safe. And I can’t seem to marshal my thoughts or my will.
“You know what?” Bree gives me a look I once knew well. “I think I need one last potty break before we get on the road.”
“Right.” I give a small nod. “I mean, yes. I could use the bathroom, too. I’ll come with you.”
In the bathroom neither of us makes a move toward a stall. We stand in front of the mirror as we have a million times in the past. She reaches up and puts her hands on my shoulders. Our foreheads touch, which requires her to go on tiptoe and me to lean down. We commune in silence for several long moments. Slowly, almost regretfully, she pulls back.
“I just wanted to thank you again for today. I would have come myself if I’d had to—but I’m so glad we made the drive together.” She doesn’t break eye contact. “And I’ll be forever grateful that you drop-kicked Shane Adams.”
We share a smile of satisfaction. Hers goes crooked and then disappears.
“I hope you won’t be mad at me for saying this, but I think you should take Jake and your
mother up on their offer.” She swallows and her eyes fill with tears. “Today was awful and I can’t help thinking how much worse it might have ended. Life is short. We’re all doing the best we can. When we love someone and especially if they love us, we need to cut them some slack. No one’s perfect, Lauren. Maybe not even you.”
She watches my face. I know she’s afraid that I’m going to huff out of here and turn my back on our friendship that finally seems to be back on track. But I can’t be mad at her for speaking the truth. That’s what best friends are supposed to do.
She smiles in acknowledgment and understanding, having clearly read my face, if not my mind. “Good. And if you can spare a couple more days, come back with them. Maybe we can brainstorm a new career path for you. And another book for me.” Her smile deepens. “I’ve been working on Heart of Gold for so long I’m not sure I’ll have the nerve to start something else. Whitney and Heath might think I’m cheating on them if I take up with new characters.”
We find the others outside. Jake has a protective arm around my mother’s shoulders. I walk toward them, my steps slow and measured. I still feel the anger inside me, but it’s such a small and pitiful emotion next to the love I feel for her and that she’s always showered on me. My parents look so right together. I’m not certain exactly where I fit.
“Are you sure you have room for me?”
“Absolutely,” they answer without even glancing at each other.
“Let me get your bag out of the rental car.” Jake walks to the Ford Focus.
My mother smiles but still seems afraid to make the first move.
I climb into the backseat. Like a forty-year-old child going on a family vacation. For the very first time.
Forty
Kendra
There’s not a lot of small talk on the drive to Richmond. I can’t quite believe that Jake and I are driving home in a car with our daughter in the back. I refuse to let myself think of all the years we could have been doing this.
I keep checking on Lauren in the rearview mirror, thinking I need to say something, though I’m not sure whether that something should be another apology or an explanation of where we’re taking her. Each time I look, she’s dozing. Or at least pretending to.
Jake’s the one who suggested this trip down memory lane and now as we get close to the eastern edge of the city my nerves jangle for too many reasons to count. I haven’t been back since I left to have Lauren at my aunt Velda’s forty years ago.
I barely recognize my hometown. It’s so much bigger, so much more crowded than I remember. It’s only when we turn onto Monument Avenue that I begin to recognize homes and, of course, the monuments that have now become so controversial but at the time simply were. When I was growing up some of the Gilded Age mansions had been subdivided into apartments. Some blocks were more run-down and less impressive than others. Our two-story brick on the corner of Monument and Tilden wasn’t even close to one of the grandest but my father, who’d “pulled himself up by his bootstraps,” was inordinately proud of it and what it said about him.
The breath catches in my throat as Jake pulls up to the curb in front of the family home. The shadows are lengthening, but the details of the house are not yet blurred.
Built in the ’20s and wedged between two other large homes it still has Doric columns supporting the curved portico. Dormer windows line the top floor.
My gaze flies to my former bedroom, where I used to sit on the window seat. As a little girl I spent hours reading there, so as not to disturb my “resting” mother. When I was older I stared outward in search of a first sight of Jake.
I feel his eyes on my face now. “I’ve never driven by without picturing your face pressed against that window. Or remembering the time I actually climbed up that trellis to reach you.”
My smile is pure reflex and tinged with sadness. I’ve spent so many years trying not to think of this house, of my parents, and of Jake. Now that we’re here memories race through my brain, one blurring into another, like flipping through the pages of a picture book.
Lauren rouses in the backseat. “Where are we?”
“Thirty-two-twenty-three Monument Avenue.” I twist around so that I can see her face. “This is the house I grew up in.”
Her eyes fly all the way open. She rubs them as she slides across the backseat. We leave the car and stand on the sidewalk shoulder to shoulder. The family that never was. But that I hope can still be.
The air is warm and still, heavy with moisture. The grass and sidewalk are damp. Water drips from the leaves of the trees and from the FOR SALE sign. My heart races as I imagine my father coming outside to demand what I’m doing here even though I know my parents are long dead.
“My mother planted that magnolia when I was born.” I point to what is now a towering giant of a tree that dominates half the small front yard. It’s dotted with large white saucerlike flowers. “She planted those roses, too. And the confederate jasmine.” In my mind’s eye I see her in the floppy straw hat that protected her pale skin from the sun, cutting and trimming and digging. The basket she’d put the fresh flowers in, on the ground beside her. The smile on her face when she arranged them in vases and set them around the house. “Gardening was one of the few things she seemed to enjoy. When she was well enough to go out.
“Jake lived just a few blocks over on West Franklin.”
I see her trying to process this and I hold my breath, not sure if she’ll want to see and hear the details of the past I’ve never mentioned. Jake looks far less uncertain than I feel, but then he always has.
“Who owns it now?” Lauren asks, looking pointedly at the FOR SALE sign that my eyes keep skittering past. “Do you think we could go inside?”
“My father wrote me off when I refused to give you up. According to Aunt Velda it was left to some distant cousin. I don’t think he ever lived in it and I’m not sure how many times it’s changed hands.” I don’t add that I made it a point not to know.
“There’s a lockbox on the front porch, so I’m assuming it’s empty,” Jake said. “We could probably peek in a few windows without anyone calling the police.”
Lauren does exactly that. I follow along, but I can’t bring myself to look. Not looking doesn’t stop the rush of memories.
“I loved the backyard the most. Mama . . .” I freeze at the sound of the word. I can’t remember the last time I said it. Or even really allowed myself to think it. “She planted a big flowering dogwood back there. Sometimes . . . I’d almost forgotten, but sometimes she’d have Beulah bring us iced tea and lemon bars out there. Just the two of us.”
We walk around the side of the house while things I never knew I remembered fill my head and pour out of my mouth. All the things I could have shared with my daughter but kept locked away instead. So that I wouldn’t miss them? Or so that she wouldn’t know that her grandfather didn’t even want her to exist?
“Oh, this is so pretty,” Lauren murmurs when we come to the brick patio beneath the branches of the dogwood. “It’s so much tamer here than Nags Head and the Sandcastle.”
“Yes.” My eyes blur with tears. “I guess choosing something entirely different was no accident.”
Jake puts an arm around my shoulders as Lauren peers in the French doors.
“Don’t know what you folks are doin’ back heah, but you really need to call the Realtor before you go poking around.”
The voice not only startles it dredges up more memories. It’s weaker than I remember and so is its owner, but the old-school Richmond accent is unmistakable. “Mr. Burke?”
“Yeah. Who’s askin’?”
“It’s me.” I walk closer. “Kendra Munroe.”
Lauren blinks up at the name I walked away from when I left Richmond. The name that had meant so much to my father that he’d rather lose his daughter than have it besmirched.
“Well, no
w.” He peers at me through Coke-bottle glasses. “It is you, isn’t it? I don’t suppose either of us looks exactly like we used to.”
“No, I don’t suppose we do.”
He looks at Jake. “Aren’t you the Warner boy?”
Jake laughs. “Guilty. Though it’s been a while since anyone called me a boy.”
“And who’s this pretty woman?” He nods to Lauren.
“This is my, our, daughter, Lauren.”
“Well, now. Isn’t that something?” His smile is tinged with memories of his own. “Your father never mentioned you after you . . . left. He always was a right tough nut to crack.” His sigh is weary. “Never knew him to change his mind or stop worrying about what others thought of him in all the years we were neighbors. Course, I guess he had his hands full what with your mother’s illnesses and all.” He shakes his head slowly with what looks like real regret. “I didn’t know they had a grandchild. Damn shame how they died so young. Most usually we get a might smarter with age.”
When he departs the three of us stand staring at one another. I’m not sure what should happen next.
* * *
Lauren
I stand on the back patio of a house I’ve never seen or even heard of, staring at my parents and into a past I can’t believe is mine.
I’m exhausted from Bree’s and my race to reach Lily and from the glut of adrenaline and emotion that have been slamming into me like meteors crashing into the earth. Witnessing the power of a mother’s need to protect her child is something I’ll never forget.
My life has already changed and expanded since I let Bree back in it. I’m not sure how much more I can take. I can tell where my mother’s headed. But am I ready to go there? After refusing to forgive her for keeping things from me, can I refuse to listen to whatever she chooses to share?