Suddenly

by Barbara Delinsky

  “Did you ask?” Angie prodded.

  He grew defensive. “It wasn’t my business. She was in a hurry. When did you see her last?”

  “Midday.” She turned to Paige. “I stopped her in the hall to ask about the Barnes case. She’s been fighting to clear coverage of an MRI with the insurance company, and they’ve been giving her a hard time. How was she? Tired, but not necessarily distracted. She knew just what I was talking about and gave me a perfectly good answer, and there was spirit in it, just not as much as usual. It was like she was running on fumes.”

  “Great analogy, Angie,” Peter said.

  Paige pictured Mara’s garage, willed down the sick feeling that came with the image, and forced her mind on. She had a desperate need to reconstruct Mara’s last day on the chance that might offer a clue. “Okay. Each of us saw her at different times. When I saw her in the morning she was fired up; when Angie saw her midday she was tired; when Peter saw her late in the afternoon she was distracted.” She paused. “Did either of you sense depression?”

  “Not me,” said Peter.

  Angie grappled with that one. “No. Not depression. I’m sure it was fatigue.” She looked at Paige sadly. “When she turned away and went into her office, I let her go. There were patients to see. We were booked solid for the afternoon.”

  She was rationalizing. Paige knew they were all doing it, making excuses for their lack of insight, and it was fine up to a point. If Mara’s death was accidental, they were in the clear. If not, well, that was something else.

  The bitch of it was they would never know.

  While Peter and Angie picked up the slack at the office, Paige worked out the details of the funeral. She gave intent thought to every choice, desperate to do the things Mara would have wanted for reasons that went beyond love and respect. The extra effort she gave was by way of apology for not having been a better friend.

  She talked with the priest about what he would say. She arranged for a local a cappella group to sing. She picked out a simple casket. She wrote an eloquent obituary.

  She also chose the clothes in which Mara would be buried. In that this entailed going through Mara’s things, it was a more painful task than the others. Mara’s house was Mara through and through. Being there was to feel her presence and doubt once again that she was gone. Paige found herself searching for clues—a farewell note Mara might have left on the mantel, a cry for help tacked to the cluttered kitchen chalk board, a plea for salvation scrawled on the bathroom mirror—but the only things that could be remotely interpreted to reflect undue upset were the Valium in the medicine chest and the messiness of the house. And it was messy. If Paige had been the paranoid type, she might have suspected that someone had rifled the place. Then again, of Mara’s strengths, housekeeping had never been one. Paige neatened as she went, on the chance—in the hope—that Mara’s family might want to see her home.

  The O’Neills arrived on Thursday. Paige had met them only once before, in their home in Eugene, at the tail end of a trip that had taken Paige and Mara so close to Eugene that Mara hadn’t been able to find a good reason not to stop—not that she hadn’t tried. Her family was unpleasant, she said. Her family was parochial, she said. Her family was large and opinionated and xenophobic, she said.

  Paige hadn’t found them to be half-bad, though, granted, her perspective was different from Mara’s. Having been an only child, she liked the idea of having six brothers, their wives, and a slew of nieces and nephews, and compared with her own parents, who never stayed put for long, the fierce rootedness of the O’Neills was rather nice. Paige decided that they were simply old-fashioned, hardworking, devoutly religious people who couldn’t for the life of them, understand what Mara was doing.

  That had been true when Mara was a child with an insatiable curiosity, a soft spot for the wounded, and a fascination with social causes. It was true when she decided to go to college and, faced with her parents’ refusal to pay, raised every cent herself, and it was true again with medical school.

  It was still true. The O’Neills never understood why Mara had settled in Vermont. Even now, viewing their surroundings from the security of Paige’s car during the drive from the airport, one would have thought they were in a foreign country, and a hostile one at that.

  Only five of them had come, Mara’s parents and three of her brothers. Paige told herself that financial constraints kept the others at home. She hoped Mara believed it.

  They pulled up to the funeral home in the same silence with which they’d made most of the drive. After guiding them inside, Paige left them alone to say their good-byes. Back on the front steps, she tried to remember the last time Mara had mentioned her family, but she couldn’t. It was painfully sad. True, Paige didn’t see her own parents often, but she regularly saw her grandmother, who lived in West Winter, a mere forty minutes away. Nonny was spritely and independent. She had been mother and father rolled into one when Paige had been young and was more than enough family for Paige now. Paige adored her.

  “She looks pretty,” came the tight voice of Mara’s father. A tall, stocky man, he stood with his hands in the pockets of tired suit pants, and iron-hard eyes on the street. “Whoever set her out did a fine job.”

  “She always looked pretty,” Paige said in defense of Mara. “Pale, sometimes. Hassled, sometimes. But pretty.” Unable to leave it at that, she spoke with a certain urgency. “She was happy, Mr. O’Neill. She had a full life here.”

  “That why she killed herself?”

  “We don’t know she did. It may as well have been an accident as suicide.”

  He grunted. “Same difference.” He stared straight ahead. “Not that it matters. She was lost to us long time ago. This never would’ve happened if she’d done what we said. She’d be alive if she’d stayed back home.”

  “But then she wouldn’t have been a doctor,” Paige said, because much as she realized that the man was in pain, she couldn’t let his declaration stand. “She was a wonderful pediatrician. She loved children, and they loved her. She fought for them. She fought for their parents. They’ll all be here tomorrow. You’ll see.”

  He looked at her for the first time. “Were you the one told her to go to medical school?”

  “Oh, no. She wanted that long before I did.”

  “But you got her up here.”

  “She got herself up here. All I did was tell her about the opportunity.”

  He grunted and stared at the street again. After a minute he said, “You look like her, y’know. Maybe that was why she liked you. Same dark hair, same size, you could be sisters. Are you married?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever been?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever had children?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’re missing as much in life as she was. She tried with that fellow Daniel, but he couldn’t take his wife being gone all the time, don’t know what man could, and then when she didn’t get pregnant, well, what good’s woman like that?”

  Paige was beginning to get a drift of what had driven Mara from Eugene. “Mara wasn’t to blame for Daniel’s problems. He had a drug habit well before she met him. She thought she could help, but it just didn’t work. Same with getting pregnant. Maybe if they’d had more time—”

  “Time wouldn’t have mattered. It was the abortion that did it.”

  “Abortion?” Paige knew nothing about an abortion.

  “She didn’t tell you? I can understand why. It isn’t every girl who gets pregnant when she’s sixteen and then runs off to get rid of the child before her parents have a say in the matter. What she did was murder. Her punishment was not being able to get pregnant again.” He made a sputtering sound. “Sad thing is, having babies would have been her salvation. If she’d stayed back home and got married and had kids, she’d have been alive today and we wouldn’t have had to spend half our savings flying to her funeral.”

  At that moment Paige wished they hadn’t com
e. She wished she had never spoken with Thomas O’Neill. Mostly she wished she had never learned about the abortion. It wasn’t that she condemned Mara for it—she could understand the fear a sixteen-year-old must have felt in as intolerant a house as hers—but she wished Mara had told her, herself.

  Paige had thought they were best of friends, yet in all the talks they had had about Mara’s marriage and its lack of children, about the foster children she had taken in over the years, and the child she would have adopted had she lived, never once had she mentioned an abortion. Nor had she mentioned it in any one of the many, many discussions they had had on the issue as it related to the teenage girls in their care.

  Paige was heartbroken to think that there were important things she didn’t know about someone she had called a close friend.

  Friday morning dawned warm and gray, the air heavy as though with Mara’s secrets. Paige found some solace in the fact that the church was packed to overflowing. If ever there was proof of the number of lives Mara had touched and the esteem in which she was held, this was it. Particularly in light of the presence of the family that had never recognized her achievements, Paige felt vindicated on Mara’s behalf.

  But that small, victorious kernel came and went quickly, buried as deeply in the grief of the day as Mara in the dark hole in the ground on the hillside overlooking town, and before Paige could quite catch her breath, the cemetery was left behind, the lunch at the Tucker Inn for all who cared to come was consumed, and the O’Neills of Eugene, Oregon, were delivered to the airport.

  Paige returned to Mara’s house, a Victorian with high ceilings, a winding staircase, and a wraparound porch. She wandered from room to room, thinking that Mara had loved lighting the narrow fireplace, putting a Christmas tree in the parlor window, having lemonade on the back porch on a warm summer night. The O’Neills had told Paige to sell the house and give the proceeds to charity, and she planned to do that, but not yet. She couldn’t pack up and dispose of Mara’s life in a day. She needed time to grieve. She needed time to get used to Mara’s absence. She needed time to say good-bye.

  She also needed time to find a buyer who would love the place as Mara had. She owed Mara that.

  She left the kitchen through a bowed screen door that slapped shut behind her and sank onto the back porch swing, watching the birds dart from tree to tree and feeder to feeder. There were five feeders that she could see. She suspected others were hidden in the trees. Mara had enjoyed nothing more than to sit on that very swing, holding whatever child was in her custody at the moment, whispering tidbits about each bird that flew by.

  I’ll feed them for you, Paige promised. I’ll make sure that whoever buys the house feeds them. They won’t be abandoned. It’s the least I can do.

  Mara would have taken Paige’s kitty, no doubt about it. She had loved wild things, weak things, little things. And Paige? Paige wasn’t as adventurous. She loved needy things, too, but in a more controlled environment. She thrived on constancy, order, and predictability. Change unsettled her.

  Leaving the swing, she wandered into the yard. The birds flew away. She stood very still, held her breath, and waited, but they didn’t return. She was very much alone.

  I’ll miss you, Mara, she thought, and started back toward the house, feeling empty and old. The house suddenly seemed it, too. It needed a painting. I’ll have it done. The door needed new screening. Easy enough. A shutter had to be replaced by the upper left bedroom window. No sweat. And by the upper right bedroom—the upper right bedroom—Oh, God…

  The doorbell rang, distant but distinct. Grateful for the reprieve, Paige returned to the house. She guessed that a friend might have seen her car and stopped, or that one of the townsfolk who hadn’t made the funeral wanted to offer condolences.

  The wavy glass panel of the front door revealed a shape that was bulky but not tall. She opened the door to find that the shape wasn’t a single body at all, but a woman holding a child. Neither were locals; she had never seen them before.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m looking for Mara O’Neill,” the woman said worriedly. “I’ve been trying to reach her. Are you a friend?”

  Paige nodded.

  “She was supposed to meet me in Boston earlier today,” the woman hurried on, “but we must have crossed signals. I’ve been stopping along the highway at intervals to call, but she doesn’t answer her phone.”

  “No,” Paige said, studying the woman. She was middle-aged and Caucasian, clearly not the biological mother of the child, who had skin the color of pecans and the largest, most soulful eyes Paige had ever seen. She assumed the two were part of the adoption network with which Mara had become involved.

  “Is Mara here?” the woman asked.

  Paige swallowed. “No.”

  “Oh, dear. Do you know where she is or how soon she’ll be back? This is dreadful. We had everything arranged. She was so excited.”

  The child was looking at Paige, who found she couldn’t look away. It was a little girl. Her size said she wasn’t yet a year old, but the look in her eyes said she was older.

  Paige had seen that look before, in a photograph Mara had shown her. Her heart skipped a beat, rendering the hand that touched the child’s cheek unsteady. “How do you know Mara?” she asked the woman.

  “I’m with the adoption agency. Among other things, it’s my job to be on hand at the airport when adoptive children arrive from other countries. This little one came from a tiny town a distance from Calcutta. She had an escort from the agency in Bombay. Poor thing has been at it for better than three days. Mara must have mistaken the day or the time. Is the office closed? The answering service is taking her calls.”

  “Sameera,” Paige breathed. Mara’s baby. “But I thought she wasn’t coming for weeks!” She reached for the child.

  “We often advise our parents not to speak of dates. Political unrest can delay things.”

  Paige thought of that upper right bedroom with its bright yellow walls and the large, lopsided navy stars that had just now been visible from the yard. Her eyes filled with tears as she cradled the child. “Sami.”

  The child didn’t make a sound. Paige was the one who cried softly, mourning for the mother Mara would have been and the happiness she would have known. The child’s arrival made Mara’s death that much more of a mystery. Mara wouldn’t commit suicide with Sami three days away.

  Still hugging the child, Paige wiped her eyes on her arm. It was a minute before she was composed enough to look at the woman and say, “Mara died Wednesday. We buried her this morning.”

  The woman gasped. “Died?”

  “A terrible accident.”

  “Died? Oh, my.” She paused. “Poor Mara. She waited so long for this child. And Sameera—she’s come so far.”

  “That’s all right,” Paige said with an odd calm. “I’ll keep her.” It made sense, the one thing she could do to make up for all she hadn’t done before. “My name is Paige Pfeiffer. I was Mara’s best friend, a pediatrician also. We practiced together. I was interviewed as a character reference during her home study. If you check your files, you’ll see that my name is listed as the one to call in case of emergency, which is pretty much what you’ve done.” She looked down at the child. The little girl’s thin legs straddled her waist, tiny fingers clutched her sweater. Her head lay on Paige’s chest, eyes wide and frightened. She felt light as a feather, but warm in a pleasant sort of way.

  I’ll take care of her for you, Mara. I can do that.

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” the woman said quickly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because there are rules, procedures, red tape.” The words ran together. The woman was clearly flustered. “International adoptions are complicated. Mara worked her way through it, and even then she was going to have to wait another six months for the adoption to be final. In the meantime, technically, Sameera is in the agency’s care. I can’t leave her here.”

  �
��But where else can she go?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I guess she’ll have to come home with me until we decide what to do.”

  “You can’t send her back to India.”

  “No. We’ll have to look for another adoptive family.”

  “And in the meantime she’ll be put into foster care. Why can’t I be it?”

  “Because you haven’t been approved.”

  “But I’m a pediatrician. I love kids. I know how to handle them. I own a house and earn good money. I’m a totally reputable person, and if you don’t want to take my word for it, ask anyone in town.”

  “Unfortunately, that takes time.” She reached for Sami, but Paige wasn’t giving her up so fast.

  “I want her,” she said, “which puts me up at the top of the list. I want to take her home with me now, and keep her until a better home is found, but you won’t find a better home than mine, I can promise you that.” Mara would be so pleased. “There has to be a way I can keep her.”

  The woman looked pulled in every which direction. “There is, I suppose. Assuming the head of the agency agrees, we could do a quick foster care home study.”

  “Do it.” The impulsiveness was pure Mara, and it felt good.

  “Now?”

  “If that’s what’s necessary for me to keep her tonight. She needs love. I can give her that. I can give her an instant, stable environment. It makes perfect sense.”

  The woman from the adoption agency couldn’t argue with that. After making several calls and getting a preliminary okay, she put Paige through an initial battery of questions. They were basic identity ones, just a start in the study the woman promised, and all the while Paige was answering, she was toting Sami up and down the stairs on her hip, transferring baby supplies from the nursery to her car. She stopped only when the car was full.

  The agency representative, who had followed her up and down, looked exhausted. After giving her a list of phone numbers and the promise that she would be in touch the next day, she drove off.