by Sarah Jio
I thought of Daniel and the predicament I faced with the rent payment. I couldn’t string Mr. Garrison along very much longer. We’d be out on the streets in a few days, maybe a week if we were lucky.
“Gwen,” I muttered, “you don’t happen to have twenty dollars I can borrow, do you? It’s for my rent payment. I’m in a terrible bind.”
“I wish I did, honey,” she said, her kind eyes sparkling with compassion. I felt a pang of guilt. How can I expect her to bail me out when I know she’s in the same boat? “Here,” she said, handing me two crumpled bills. “My last two dollars.”
“I promise, I’ll pay you back,” I said.
“Don’t worry about it,” she replied, pointing to the bed. “Let’s get started on stripping down these sheets. I’ll even let you have all the tip money we find in the rooms. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
“Maybe,” I said.
By five a.m., we’d finished the floor, even the enormous penthouse suite, and I had raw, cracked hands to show for it. Gwen yawned, handing me a bottle of discarded face cream she’d pilfered from an empty room. “Put some of this on,” she said. “It’ll help.”
I smiled at the kind gesture.
“Want to stop at the diner before heading home?”
“I can’t,” I said. “I have to get back before Daniel wakes.”
Gwen put her hand on my arm. “It’s hard to leave him, isn’t it?”
I nodded, aware of every second wasted. Daniel was waiting. “It’s unbearable, actually.” My eyes stung a little and I looked away.
“This isn’t forever, you know,” she said. “You’ll find your way. You’ll meet someone. Someone wonderful.”
I wanted to say, But I already did, and look what happened, but instead I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “My ship has to come in one of these days, right? And yours, too.”
Gwen winked. “That’s right, honey,” she said, giving me a squeeze. “Now, how’d you make out with tips?”
I shrugged. “Four dollars.”
Gwen smiled. “Combine that with my two and Lon’s tip and you have—”
“Not enough to pay rent,” I said, defeated.
Gwen sighed. “Well, it’s a start. Give that handsome boy a kiss for me.”
“I will,” I said, opening the door to the street. A cold wind hit my cheeks, pushing its tendrils into the cracks of my sweater and sending chills through my tired body. As I stepped onto the sidewalk, I gasped when my feet sank into at least four inches of fresh, white snow. Good heavens, snow? In May? The weather matched the uncertainty, the cruelness of the world. I sighed. How will I get home now? The streetcar can’t be running—not in this weather.
I knew I’d have to walk, and fast. The apartment wasn’t far, but in snow, and with a hole in the sole of my right shoe, it might as well have been miles. But it didn’t matter; Daniel was my destination. I trudged along, steadfast, but a half hour later my feet ached, and I winced in pain at the stinging intensity of the exposed patch of flesh. I hobbled into an alley, tore the lining of my dress free from its seam, and wrapped it around my foot. A man with a sooty face hovered near a trash can. He tended a small fire under a makeshift shelter, poking the embers with a stick. My hands felt icy and I longed for warmth, but his unwelcome gaze told me to press on. Besides, there wasn’t time to stop; Daniel waited. I climbed one hill and then a second. The swath of linen only dulled my frost-kissed skin for a moment before the sting returned, throbbing with fierce pangs. Two more hills. Keep going. I could be home by sunrise, to greet him with a kiss the moment he opened his eyes. I owed him that.
By the time I reached the apartment building, I could no longer feel my feet. Even so, I hurried inside, dragging my numb limbs up the stairs. Though unheated, the stairwell’s ten-degree rise in temperature warmed me.
“Well, hello there, good-looking,” a man called to me from the hallway. I hated living above the saloon. It meant pushing past a half-dozen drunkards—some unconscious in the hallway; others angry, looking for a fight; and still more looking for a woman. A bold one reached out and grabbed my hand, but I broke free long enough to make my way up the stairs and barricade myself inside the apartment. As I locked the door, I panicked for a moment. In my state of exhaustion, I couldn’t remember if I’d let myself in with a key or if the door had been unlocked. Surely I locked it before leaving for work last night? Fatigue was playing tricks on me.
The fire I’d lit in the fireplace the night before had long since died out. The air felt cold. Bitter cold. Poor Daniel, with only a thin quilt to warm him. Was he chilled last night? I shuddered at the thought of the city’s wealthy—warm and comfortable under millions of down feathers, eating cake at midnight—while my son shivered in his bed in an apartment above a rowdy saloon, alone. What’s wrong with this world? I set my purse down and peeled off my snow-covered sweater, dotted with bits of ice that sparkled in the morning light. I walked to the compartment under the stairs and pried open the little door, pulling out my bracelet from its secret hiding spot. Daniel loved running his little fingers along the gold chain. I fastened the clasp, knowing how happy he’d be to see it on my wrist again.
I suppressed a yawn as I climbed the stairs to Daniel’s room, but my exhaustion was unmatched by the excitement I felt to see my little boy. He’d be giddy about the snow, of course. We’d make snowmen, and then cuddle up together by the fire. I’d get an hour of sleep in the afternoon while he napped. A perfect day.
I opened the door to his room. “Daniel, Mommy’s home!”
I knelt down by his little bed and pulled back the quilt, revealing only crumpled sheets. My eyes searched the room, under the bed, behind the door. Where is he? “Daniel, are you hiding from Mama, love?”
Silence.
I ran to the washroom, and then downstairs to the kitchen. “Daniel!” I screamed. “Daniel, where are you hiding? Come out, right this minute!”
My heart pounded in my chest with such intensity it muted the sound of the men engaged in a fistfight on the floor below. My eyes scoured every inch of the apartment, and I prayed it was only one of his little jokes. Surely, in a moment, he’d pop out from behind the pantry door and say, “Surprise!” the way he did when we played games together?
“Daniel?” I called once more, but only my voice echoed back to me in the cold, lonely air.
I pushed through the apartment door and ran down the stairs. I hadn’t stopped to put on a wrap, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t feel the cold; only terror. He has to be close by. Maybe he woke and saw the snow and decided to go out to play.
I ran past the men loitering around the saloon, and out to the street. “Daniel!” I screamed into the cold air, my voice immediately muffled into a hush by the thick layer of snow. “Daniel!” I called out again, this time louder. I might as well have been screaming through a muzzle of cotton balls. A suffocating silence hovered. I looked right, then left.
“Have you seen my son?” I pleaded with a businessman in an overcoat and top hat. “He’s three, about this tall.” I held my hand to the place on my leg where Daniel’s head hit. “He was wearing blue plaid pajamas. He has a teddy bear with a—”
The man frowned and pushed past me. “Some mother you are, letting a three-year-old out in this weather,” he muttered as he walked away.
His words stung, but I kept on, running toward another person on the sidewalk. “Ma’am!” I cried to a woman shepherding her young daughter along the sidewalk. Both wore matching wool coats with smart gray hats. My heart sank. Daniel doesn’t even have a warm coat. If he’s out in this weather…I looked directly at the woman, my eyes pleading, mother to mother. “Have you seen a little boy wandering around here, by chance? His name is Daniel.” I barely recognized my own voice. Desperate. High-pitched.
She eyed me suspiciously. “No,” she said without emotion. “I haven’t.” She pulled her daughter closer as they walked away.
“Daniel!” I screamed again, this time down an alley, where I sometimes l
et him play hopscotch or jacks with the other children while I knitted in the afternoon. No answer. Then it occurred to me to look for footprints in the snow. His feet were small enough that I could distinguish their impressions. But after searching for a few minutes, I realized my efforts were futile. The snow, falling so hard now, covered any trace of his tracks with its cruel blanket of white.
I walked a few steps farther, and this time, toward the back of the alley, a fleck of blue caught my eye. I ran to it and fell to my knees, sobbing, shaking my head violently. No. No God, no! Daniel’s precious bear, Max, lay facedown in the snow. I picked it up and held it to my chest, rocking back and forth the way I might have comforted Daniel after a nightmare. I trembled from a place deep inside. My little boy was gone.
Chapter 4
CLAIRE
We all behave differently in the face of trauma and anguish, or so says my therapist, Margaret. Some people act out; others act in—bottling up their pain and holding it deep inside, letting it brew and fester, which had been my way since the horror of last May. Ethan, on the other hand, seemed to deal with his grief by acting out. Throwing himself into his work. Drinking copious amounts of scotch. Staying out late with friends—friends, I might add, who had meant nothing to him last year. Even the red BMW he’d bought on a whim in March. It was all tied to his pain, Margaret said. When I’d seen him stepping into the convertible outside the office, my eyes had welled up with tears. It wasn’t the expense that bothered me, but the choice. Ethan wasn’t a flashy red BMW sort of guy.
I’d tried to get him to go with me to my weekly appointments. I thought that if we could talk about the past together, we both might stop pretending it had never happened and learn to face the new normal, whatever that was. But he had shaken his head. “I don’t do shrinks,” he said. And so our paths had diverged. Love still lingered—I felt it in the unspoken moments, the way he’d leave the floss out on the bathroom counter in the mornings because he knew I had a habit of forgetting; or the way his eyes would linger on mine every time I said good night. But the emptiness grew like a cancer, and I feared it had spread too far to control. Our marriage, it seemed, was verging on a terminal diagnosis.
“Morning, Claire,” chirped Gene, our building’s doorman, as I stepped off the elevator. “Can you believe this weather?”
I cinched the belt of my lightweight trench coat tighter, considering whether to return upstairs for a wardrobe change. Gloves and a scarf, for starters, and—I looked down at my calf-high leather boots—maybe a pair of snow boots. I should have opted for something with a little more traction, but I couldn’t bear to lace up my tennis shoes. I hadn’t worn them since the accident, and I didn’t have the confidence to put them on again. Not yet, anyway. “A blizzard in May,” I said to Gene, shaking my head in disbelief as I looked out the building’s double doors. “Why do I live here again?”
Gene grinned. “Do you think you’re dressed warmly enough?” He pointed toward the street. “That’s arctic air out there.” Ever since the incident, he, and everyone else, it seemed, looked after me like a lost little bird. Are you too cold? Too hot? Will you be safe walking out to the corner market after dark?
I appreciated his concern, but it annoyed me just the same. Do I have an enormous sign attached to my back stating, ATTENTION: I’M PHYSICALLY AND MENTALLY UNABLE TO CARE FOR MYSELF. HELP ME, PLEASE?
Still, I didn’t fault Gene. “I’ll be fine,” I said confidently, revealing a strained smile. “I may be a California transplant, but I’ve been through enough Northwest winters to avoid frostbite on my way to the office.”
“Just the same,” he said, pulling a pair of mittens from his pocket, “wear these. Your hands will freeze without them.”
I hesitated, then accepted the scraggly marriage of blue and white yarn. “Thank you,” I said, putting them on only to please him.
“Good,” he said. “Now you can throw a proper snowball.”
I walked out the door, sinking my feet into a good three inches of snow. My toes instantly felt the cold. Why didn’t I wear wool socks? The streets were vacant except for a group of young boys hard at work on a snowman. Will Café Lavanto be open? I hated the thought of hiking up several hilly blocks to my favorite café, but hot cocoa smothered in whipped cream would be worth the effort, I reasoned. Besides, I didn’t feel like going into the office just yet, and I could pass the trip off as research. Storm-story research.
Twenty minutes later, when I found the door to the café locked, I cursed my decision, and my boots, which were sopping wet and on the verge of freezing my feet into two boot-shaped blocks of ice.
“Claire?”
I turned to see Dominic, Café Lavanto’s owner, walking toward me. Tall with sandy brown hair and a kind smile, he had always struck me as out of place behind the coffee counter. It was one of those pairings that didn’t quite add up, like my college English lit professor who’d moonlighted as a tattoo artist.
“Thank goodness,” I said, leaning against the doors. “I made the mistake of walking up here in these.” I pointed to my shoes. “And now I’m afraid my toes are too frozen to get back down. Mind if I defrost in here for a bit?” I regarded the quiet storefronts, which would normally be buzzing with people by this hour of the morning. “I guess I didn’t expect the city to completely shut down.”
“You know Seattle,” Dominic said with a grin. “A few flakes and it’s mass pandemonium.” He reached into a black leather messenger bag to retrieve the key to the café. “I’m the only one who could make it in. The buses aren’t running and cars are skidding out all over the place. Did you see the pileup on Second Avenue?”
I shook my head and thought of Ethan.
He pushed the key into the lock. “Come in, let’s get you warmed up.”
“Thank goodness you’re open,” I said, following him inside. “Seattle’s a ghost town right now.”
He shook his head, locking the door from the inside. “No, I don’t think I’ll open today. I could use a day off, anyway. But someone had to check on Pascal.”
“Pascal?”
“The cat,” he said.
“You mean, I’ve been coming here for six years and didn’t know about the resident feline?”
Dominic grinned. “He’s a grumpy old man. But he has a thing for brunettes.”
I felt my cheeks tingle as they began to defrost in the warmth of the café.
“He spends most of his time upstairs in the loft, anyway,” he continued.
“The loft?”
“It’s not much, just a storeroom where we keep supplies. Mario, the former owner, kept his desk up there. I’m thinking about turning it into a studio apartment—live above the shop.”
“Sounds like a nice life,” I said, detecting the vibration of my cell phone inside my purse. I ignored it. “So I hear you recently bought the café, is that right?
Dominic nodded. “I did. And I’ll be in debt until I’m one hundred and five. The gamble is worth it, though. I love the old place. I’m going to be making some changes, though. Starting with a real awning, a lunch menu. And a new name.”
“Oh? What’s wrong with Café Lavanto?”
“Nothing, really,” he said. “It’s just that it has no ties to here—to history.”
“And you’d change it to…?”
He poured milk into a steel pitcher and inched it under the espresso machine’s frother wand. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe you can help me think of something good.” He winked. “You’re a writer, aren’t you? A wordsmith?” Bubbles erupted in the pitcher as the steam hissed.
“You remember?”
“Sure. The Herald, right?”
“That’s right. But if you ask my mother, who sent me through four years of Yale expecting me to emerge as a staff editor at The New Yorker, I’m a hack.” I rubbed my hands together to warm them.
“Oh, come on,” Dominic said, grinning. “Don’t you think you’re being a little too hard on yourself? Surely your pa
rents are proud?”
I shrugged. “I write fluff for the local newspaper—which is what I’m doing today, in fact, reporting on the snowstorm. Not exactly what you’d call substance.”
“Well, I, for one, think your work sounds very interesting, and worthy,” he said, leaning against the counter. “Certainly better than a thirty-five-year-old barista. Imagine the comments I get every year at Thanksgiving.”
I liked his humility. “What did you do before this?”
He looked up from the coffee grinder, which he had just filled with espresso beans, shiny and slick-looking under the café lights. “Just one false start after another,” he replied.
“Failure builds character,” I said.
He didn’t respond right away, and I worried I had offended him. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to imply that you are…” Why did I open my mouth?
“That I’m hopelessly unsuccessful?” he said. “Fine with me. This place wasn’t exactly the wisest business decision.”
I bit my lip. At least he’s smiling.
“But even if I go bankrupt in a year, I won’t regret it,” he continued, gazing around the café with pride. “Sometimes you just have to take chances, especially when it makes you happy.” He sighed. “When I came to work here three years ago, I’d just been laid off from the accounting firm that hired me straight out of college. I had a lot going for me then—a decent salary, a fiancée, an apartment, and a pug named Scruffles.”
I stifled a laugh. “Scruffles?”
“Don’t ask,” he said with a pained smile. “Her dog.”
I nodded knowingly.
“When I lost my job, she left.”
“And she took the dog?”
“She took the dog,” he said, polishing the chrome of the espresso machine with a white cloth.
I half-smiled. “So you got a job here?”
“Yeah, as a barista,” he said. “It was only going to be temporary. Then I realized how much I loved the gig—getting my hands gritty and stained from coffee grounds, pouring perfect foam into ceramic cups. I didn’t miss the long hours at the firm or the number crunching or any of it. Making coffee was cathartic somehow. It sounds weird, but I needed it. And when Mario offered to sell the business, I jumped at the chance, even though my family warned against it.”