A Light at Winter’s End

by Julia London

  A curious prickle went up his spine.

  Wyatt figured he’d make another trip over here in a day or two and see if she was still around, maybe bring her some firewood. If she was, maybe he’d ask her about the Fisher place and what they intended to do with it. He felt a sale in his bones.

  Providential. Relating to or determined by Providence. As in, he’d just made a providential acquaintance in Holly Fisher.

  Chapter Seven

  Holly’s life was utter chaos, and now she had Hop-along Cassidy riding the fence line, peeking in. He probably thought she was a lunatic, anyway, because really, who tried to burn green wood?

  Someone who was desperate for a little heat, that’s who. Holly wasn’t exactly an expert in building fires, and while she knew green wood was hard to burn, she didn’t know it would smoke up the entire county.

  She shouldn’t have come out here. It had never occurred to her that the house might need things, like wood. Or propane! She didn’t even know where one acquired propane.

  She certainly had not wanted to come here. In fact, she could say confidently it was the last place she’d wanted to be. There were a lot of memories within these walls: Her mother’s cancer was still fresh, like a new coat of paint. And lurking beneath that were older, painful memories of her teen years.

  Plus, she was impractically far from Austin—so far that she might as well be in New Mexico. None of her friends was going to come out all the way out here just to hang out. One of her best friends, Ossana, had made that painfully clear. “Do they even have a Starbucks there?” Ossana had asked when Holly told her she was moving out here for a while. Ossana, like Holly, enjoyed her creature comforts.

  But Holly had run out of options. She’d had Mason for a little over three weeks now, and everything she’d known—her lifestyle, her work, her friends—were floating off into the ether, and Holly couldn’t seem to grab any of it back.

  The first twenty-four hours with Mason had been a nightmare. Holly loved Mason, but she knew so little about babies. That first night it seemed she would sleep only minutes before he would begin to cry, and cry so loudly she worried he would wake the neighbors. She had had no idea what was wrong with him. She’d changed him, she’d tried milk, she’d walked the floor with him, and nothing had calmed him down. She’d worried that he was missing his mother—that a hole was forming in his little tiny heart and growing deeper with every moment of Hannah’s absence.

  By morning, she and Mason were lying on their stomachs in her bed, both exhausted from the sleepless night.

  By mid-afternoon of the following day, Holly had discovered baby poop in her hair and cereal on the shoulder of her new white T-shirt. But by the end of the second day, Mason had stopped crying. He’d banged her bar with a measuring cup, completely delighted by the sound of it, and Holly could not help but be delighted with him.

  Nevertheless, having to care for a baby was exhausting in a way Holly had never known she could be exhausted. Mason wasn’t walking yet, but he was definitely mobile, and she was constantly chasing after him to remove things from his hand and mouth, and to block access to things such as electrical outlets and floor lamps and the cords around her musical equipment, which attracted him like chocolate attracted her.

  Unaware that her life had been so dramatically altered, Holly’s friends had called, wanting her to come out. Ossana had called twice that first week. “Ry Cooder is playing at Stubb’s Bar-B-Que. You know him, right? See if you can get us in,” she’d suggested excitedly.

  “I can’t,” Holly had said as she peeled dried SpaghettiOs from her shirt. “I am keeping Hannah’s baby.”

  “Who?”

  “Hannah. My sister.”

  “Oh,” Ossana had said, sounding disappointed. “How long?”

  That was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. “A few days,” Holly had said.

  When Ossana had called again later in the week, Holly had accepted the fact that Mason would be around at least for a while, and told her it would be indefinite.

  “I don’t understand. Is your sister sick?” Ossana had asked.

  “Yes. She’s sick. Really sick,” Holly had responded with conviction. Sick in the head at the very least.

  Ossana had seemed confused by it all, and Holly had been too embarrassed to tell her friend more. At that point, she’d still believed Hannah would come back.

  By the end of the week, however, Holly had had to quit her job at the Java Hut. Just as she had sworn to Lucy, Holly had tried very hard to find a babysitter. She had. But she’d not admitted to Lucy that she’d actually found a sitter but was too afraid to leave Mason when it came right down to it.

  That sudden surge of maternal instinct had surprised Holly. Until that point, she had been showering with Mason in his playpen in the bathroom with her, her eyes full of tears because suddenly her life was no longer her own. She had woken up each morning as the sun rose—an hour she’d not seen in many years—listening to the happy chatter of a drooling toddler. She had been exhausted, emotionally spent, and angry.

  She’d alternated between fear of what had happened to Hannah and anger with her sister for completely uprooting her life. Hannah had essentially tramped all over it, as if Holly’s life weren’t worth her consideration when she’d gone off to do whatever the hell it was she was doing. It was grossly unfair, and Holly was so determined not to let Hannah win, in fact, that she’d dressed a happy Mason in a little University of Texas Longhorns tracksuit and, armed with a small bag of animal crackers, had marched down to the offices of the apartment complex where she lived.

  “Hi, Holly!” the manager, Barb, had chirped when Holly entered, carrying Mason. “Oh, who is this?” she’d exclaimed delightedly at Mason.

  “This is my nephew, Mason.”

  “He’s a cutie!” Barb had trilled. “Look at those big blue eyes. How old is he?”

  “Ah … he’ll be one soon.” Next week, she’d realized. Surely Hannah would be back for that. Who missed their child’s first birthday?

  “Is he walking?” Barb had asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “He will be any day now,” Barb had said with all the authority of an oracle, and Holly had felt another tic of panic. She’d imagined him tottering around her apartment and things crashing on the floor behind him.

  Holly had asked Barb if she knew anyone at the complex who could babysit.

  “Lemme see,” Barb had said thoughtfully, obviously wanting to be helpful. “I think the Hernandez girl babysits for her mother. Let me call them.”

  Ten minutes later, as Holly had stood looking out the office window, a girl came loping across the interior lawn, with a pink swath through her hair, her pants riding low and tight, and some chains of some sort hanging from them. Her belly was exposed and spilling over the waist of her jeans.

  As the girl strode up to the office door with her cell phone clipped to her jeans, Holly had looked at Mason and could not imagine leaving him with a stranger—not after what he’d just been through. Not for a single moment.

  Barb had been perplexed when Holly had suddenly announced that Mason was not feeling well. If the Hernandez girl cared, she certainly hadn’t given Holly any indication. She’d merely shrugged and loped back home, the cell phone pressed to her ear and the sparkly design on her pockets catching the sunlight.

  Holly’s problem of what to do, exactly, with Mason was only one of her accumulating problems that presented themselves in that first week.

  There was the problem of Quincy, who was eager to work on their songs. Holly was too. She and Quincy had tried to work in her apartment, but Mason had wanted to play the piano, and when Holly tried to put him in his portable playpen, he’d howled. It had been impossible to hear the music, much less to compose.

  “Maybe we ought to wait until your sister picks him up,” Quincy had suggested after they’d aborted their session. He’d been on the floor, playing with Mason, who had squealed with delight every time Quincy hid
his face behind a pillow then surprised him.

  “I’m sorry, Quincy.”

  “Hey, it’s all good. When is she picking him up?”

  “Ah … I’m not really sure,” Holly had said, and Quincy had looked mildly perplexed and annoyed by her answer.

  There was the issue of Mason crying. The boy cried a lot. Holly was always trying to figure out if he was hungry, or wet, or tired. Without the benefit of nine months to read up on babies, and at her wit’s end, Holly had called her friend Belinda, the wife of a musician Holly knew. Belinda and Mike had two kids who were now in elementary school.

  Belinda hadn’t believed Holly when she’d explained her situation. “What do you mean, she left him indefinitely?”

  “I mean, I’m not certain when she’ll be back,” Holly had admitted.

  “What sort of mother does that?” Belinda cried. “You should call the police.”

  “Yeah,” Holly had said, but she had no intention of doing that. She feared they really would take Mason from her and put him in foster care, and she could not abide that. “What do I do, Belinda? He cries all the time.”

  “Schedule, Holly,” Belinda had said sagely. “Schedules mean everything to babies. Get him on a schedule for feeding, naps, and play. But take him to a pediatrician and make sure he’s not lactose intolerant or maybe has an ear infection.”

  “An ear infection?” Holly had exclaimed.

  “Yep. Very easy for them to get. Could be gas, too. You never know. But get him on a schedule!”

  Holly’s head had spun. “But how do I know what the schedule is?” she’d asked helplessly.

  “Oh, honey, you really are dumb about this,” Belinda had said sympathetically, and had given Holly a schedule and had advised her, “Get a book about babies and their development.”

  Holly had taken Belinda’s advice. As she had no idea who Mason’s pediatrician was, Holly had taken Mason to the People’s Community Clinic, where she’d waited three hours for someone to see Mason, her imagination working overtime all the while. People and the babies who belonged to them had surrounded her, but she had nothing that said Mason should be with her. What would they make of that? Would they call the police?

  As it turned out, the nurse practitioner who saw Mason wasn’t the slightest bit concerned with why Holly had Mason. He’d been too perturbed that Holly didn’t have Mason’s shot records. “Are you certain his vaccinations are up-to-date?” he’d asked more than once.

  “Yes,” Holly had said, but wasn’t certain at all. She just knew Hannah, and knew that she’d have Mason in for his shots the moment they were due. But then again, that Hannah would never have abandoned her baby.

  After babbling on about the importance of keeping vaccination records, the practitioner had pronounced Mason perfectly fine.

  “Really?” Holly had asked. “He cries a lot.”

  The man had given her an impatient look. “Babies cry when they are unhappy,” he’d said, then marked something on a clipboard and left her and Mason to gather their things.

  Schedule. Holly had left the clinic and headed for the bookstore, where she found a whole array of What to Expect books. She selected two and left the bookstore feeling armed.

  But that trip to the bookstore had pointed up another issue for Holly: Mason was not inexpensive to care for. Holly was furious about that; it seemed to her that if someone was going to abandon their baby at one’s doorstep, they ought to at least leave the things one would need for the baby. In the giant duffel Hannah had left, there were diapers and a few changes of clothes that looked as if they’d been grabbed from the dirty-laundry pile and tossed in without regard to how many shirts and pants and pajamas there were. Hannah had also included a very strange mix of toy parts, such as the rubber workbench without the rubber hammer.

  Hannah had left nothing useful with Holly, no emergency numbers, nothing about what to feed him or what to put in his bottles. Certainly no car seat or bed. Holly had coughed up two hundred and sixty-five dollars at Target for those things and more essentials. How in the hell did people afford babies?

  To add insult to injury, it had taken her a good half hour to get the portable crib she’d bought out of its Fort Knox-like box and then get it to stand up on its own. It was supposed to snap into place. The picture on the side of the box showed a smiling mommy in capris and a blue shirt assembling it without breaking a sweat while her happy baby sat nearby. It had taken Holly thirty minutes and a miracle of physics to get the thing to work.

  When she was certain that the portable crib would not collapse, she’d put Mason in it and sat cross-legged on the floor, exhausted but fascinated as she watched him. Mason had grabbed on to the rail and laughed with ridiculous delight as he bounced up and down. He’d inched his way around the perimeter like a drunken sailor, stepping on his own feet and pausing now and then to chew on the railing and talking happy gibberish as he went.

  He was, Holly had thought dreamily, perhaps the most adorable baby on the planet. It was a tragedy that both his parents were losers.

  Exhausted, and her creative juices at an all-time low, it had enraged Holly that neither of Mason’s parents would answer the phone. At Hannah’s workplace, she’d gotten “She’s not in; may I take a message?” At Loren’s she’d gotten “Mr. Drake is not accepting calls this afternoon.”

  Nevertheless, Holly had called them continually as her life had steadily fallen apart. She had been breathless with anxiety, the tears of frustration constantly burning in her eyes, and she had been slowly eating her way through a mountain of chocolate.

  Holly had finally reached her limit. She’d put Mason in his brand-new car seat and driven to Hannah’s house. She hadn’t actually believed she’d find Hannah there, but she hadn’t really expected to find her sister’s Tarrytown bungalow deserted, either. The yard hadn’t been cut, and a clutter of newspapers littered the walk. Holly had picked them up and tossed them into the garbage cans that were on the street, then pulled the garbage cans up to the garage. She’d found the front door locked, so she’d held Mason and walked into the backyard and to the back porch and tried that door.

  “Ma-maw,” Mason had said, surprising her. It was the first thing he’d said that actually sounded like a word.

  “That’s right, Mase. Mama is supposed to be here, but I don’t think she is.” Holly had given the door a good yank, but it was locked. She’d put Mason down and cupped her hands around her face and peered inside. She couldn’t see anything but two brown pill bottles on the kitchen table. Everything else had seemed in place. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just a normal, hyper-clean Hannah house.

  But it had seemed almost too clean, even for Hannah. It looked as if she’d literally walked out of her own life. At that point, Holly had had enough of this strange little saga and left Tarrytown confused and feeling like she needed a big dose of bourbon. She didn’t even like bourbon, but if she’d had a bottle, she’d have drunk it.

  With Mason dozing in his car seat, she’d driven downtown to the Baker Botts Law Firm where Loren worked. She’d had to wake Mason to carry him inside just so that she could confront Loren. Exhausted, Mason had cried, his face red and gaping open, but Holly would not stop until Loren told her what the hell was going on.

  At the reception desk of Baker Botts—a polished, expensive furnishing with chrome trim and leather seating in the waiting area—Holly had asked the man behind the desk for Loren Drake.

  “Is he expecting you?” he’d asked pleasantly.

  “No, I am sure he’s not expecting me,” Holly had said as Mason screamed in her ear. “Please tell him that Holly Fisher is here with his son, and if he doesn’t come out, I’ll walk these halls until I find him.”

  The young man had blinked and almost smiled, as if this were the most exciting thing to have happened to him in ages. Then he’d picked up the phone. “Hi, Kendra,” he’d said a moment later. “A Holly Fisher is here with Mr. Drake’s son to see him.” He paused a moment and glanced u
p. “Mr. Drake is in a meeting.”

  “I don’t care,” Holly had said firmly. Mason had cried louder, and Holly had tried to put him down, but he’d clung to her. “Tell Mr. Drake that his son needs a nap, but he’s going to sit in the lobby screaming until his father comes out and talks to me.”

  The young man had nodded and said into the phone, “Kendra, we have a situation. Mr. Drake needs to come to the front as soon as possible.”

  Loren had appeared a few minutes later in shirtsleeves and holding a file. He’d glared at Holly, as if she had no right to seek him out, as if she were completely out of line. “What are you doing here?” he’d asked, looking self-consciously at the receptionist. He’d clearly been embarrassed by Holly, and that had made her fury soar.

  Upon hearing his father’s voice, Mason lifted his head from Holly’s shoulder and reached out his arms for Loren. He’d cried for his father, a snot-filled wail, and Loren had taken him from Holly. “Hey, big guy, what’s the matter?” he’d asked, kissed Mason’s forehead, then said to Holly, “Follow me.”

  He’d led her into a small conference room directly behind the reception area, shut the door, then glared at Holly. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Are you kidding?” Holly had exclaimed breathlessly, her pulse ratcheting up.

  “What makes you think you can come into my workplace and disrupt things like this?”

  “Don’t pretend I’ve done anything to you. Hannah dumped your son on me, and I have a right to know what’s going on!”

  Loren had sighed. He’d sat with one hip on the table, Mason in his lap, and with his foot had kicked out one of the leather chairs for Holly. She’d ignored it. “Your timing couldn’t be any worse, Holly,” he’d said, conveniently forgetting that she was there because she couldn’t get him or Hannah on the phone. “In three hours I’m catching a flight to California for a week, and when I get back, I have two days before I have to turn around and fly out to San José, Costa Rica. We’re opening a satellite office there, and I am going to be away for at least six weeks.”