Just Breathe

by Susan Wiggs

  “You are the prettiest girl in the whole world, and I’m not just saying that to be nice.”

  “You’re my dad. Of course you’d think that.” Her voice softened. “Thanks, though.”

  “It makes me wonder why you paint over yourself with makeup every day.” Even without looking at her, he could feel her bristle and held up his hand. “Remember, you’re the one who wanted to know what was on my mind.”

  “I don’t paint over myself,” she said. “It’s called putting on makeup.”

  “You don’t need it. You are prettier just the way you are.”

  “You always yell at me about makeup,” she complained.

  “Why not leave it off and I’ll keep my mouth shut?”

  “Dad—”

  “We’re here.” Relieved, he pulled onto the gravel drive of his parents’ place. He didn’t want to argue with Aurora. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings by saying that all that makeup made her look too grown-up, like someone he hoped she would never become.

  “Saved by the bell, huh?” She swung her legs sideways and jumped down from the truck. As she slipped to the ground, he caught a flash of skin between her top and the waistband of her jeans.

  “Aurora.”

  She clearly knew what he was talking about. She tugged at the bottom of her shirt but failed to close the gap. “Come on, Dad—”

  “Cover up,” he said. “We’ve been through this before.”

  “I didn’t bring another shirt.”

  “Do as you’re told, Aurora. I don’t know why the hell everything has to be a fight with you.” He started taking off his jacket to offer it to her.

  “I just remembered,” she said, rummaging in her bag. “I brought a sweater.”

  “Smart-ass,” he said. “You already came prepared for my objections.”

  Ted and Nanny, his parents’ border collies, barked as they ran to greet them. Leaning against the porch were the bikes belonging to Birdie and Ellison. His sister and her husband rode everywhere, always in training for some race or triathlon.

  Will’s aunt Lonnie, who ran a small air cargo service, came to say hello. For at least two decades, she had been in charge of transporting flowers from the farm and other local produce to wherever they were needed. “I’d like to stay and catch up,” she said, “but I have my weekly delivery to that hotel in Vegas.”

  “Las Vegas?” Aurora perked up. “Hey, can I come?”

  “Sure,” Aunt Lonnie said with an easy smile. “I’d love the company.”

  Will tried not to let the exchange worry him. Aurora occasionally went flying with her great-aunt in the DeHavilland Beaver. When it came to her mother, the kid clung to hope, even though Marisol didn’t even bother calling on her birthday anymore.

  Shannon Bonner came out on the porch to greet them and to tell her sister goodbye.

  “Grandma!” Aurora ran. In a split second, she changed from pretty baby to regular kid.

  Will wished like hell she would stay that way. Kids were his favorite type of human being. As she spoke animatedly to her grandmother, he said goodbye to Lonnie, then stopped to pet the dogs. Nanny was way past her prime, fourteen years old now, and skinny. Ted was half her age and infused with a border collie’s seemingly inexhaustible energy. He whirled in circles and leaped at Aurora until Will’s mother commanded him to stay down.

  His parents fit the profile of West Mariners to an almost embarrassing degree. They had met at Berkeley, graduated with honors and made their escape to Marin, wanting to live close to the land. Armed with advanced degrees in political science and sociology, they subscribed to the Mother Earth News and Rolling Stone and became farmers.

  Not very successful ones, not at first. By refusing to use chemicals or artificial stimulants on their crops, they suffered numerous setbacks.

  At last, facing foreclosure, they found a cash crop that was both legal and profitable—flowers. The climate and soil turned out to be perfect for Easter lilies, Stargazers, Amaryllis and a rainbow array of specialty blooms. With the crazed growth of the Bay Area, they found plenty of demand. Although the Bonners would never amass a fortune from their enterprise, they managed, most years, to make ends meet, which was all they ever asked for.

  Birdie and Will grew up organic, enlightened and unconditionally loved. Each in their own way had a stellar high school career and a bright future.

  When, instead of going to Stanford or Berkeley, Will chose to settle down in Glenmuir with a wife and child, people shook their heads in sympathy. Poor Angus and Shannon Bonner, they said. Will had the whole world at his feet, and he’d blown it all in a single rash act. His parents must be devastated.

  People who thought that way didn’t know the Bonners. They didn’t understand that having trophy children had never been on their agenda. Angus and Shannon did not go to cocktail parties to brag about their children’s achievements, academic, athletic or social.

  What they wanted for both Will and Birdie was so simple it was incomprehensible to most ambitious Marin parents: happiness.

  Rather than seeing Aurora and Marisol as a burden, the Bonners saw them as a blessing. As far as Will could tell, his parents never thought wistfully of what could have been. They never reminded him pointedly about the future he could have had.

  There were teachers, counselors and coaches at the high school who would never forgive him for turning his back on full scholarships, sports contracts, the chance to compete against the best. Fortunately, Will felt no obligation to anyone but his family.

  He was so freaking lucky, he thought, watching his mother and Aurora. Holding hands as they went inside, they looked more like best friends than grandmother and granddaughter. His mother wore her hair long, and she was dressed in jeans and a hand-knit Cowichan sweater.

  She was small, not much bigger than Aurora. People always wondered how a petite woman like Shannon could be the mother of strapping, six-foot-five Will Bonner...until they met Angus. Then they understood.

  “Hey, big guy,” boomed Angus when Will came into the house. “How have you been?”

  They fell into a conversation about the usual topics—weather and politics—over a dinner of lasagne and a salad of homegrown greens.

  “Aurora’s bored,” Birdie said. “I can hear her rolling her eyes.”

  Aurora blushed, but she didn’t deny being bored. “Current events and weather. Two things you can’t do anything about.”

  “What would you like to discuss?” Shannon asked agreeably enough.

  Aurora shrugged. “I hate being the only kid.”

  “You know you can always invite a friend to come with you,” her grandmother said.

  “That’s not the same.” She pointed her fork at Birdie and Ellison. “You guys should have a baby. My friend Edie’s aunt had a baby, and it’s the cutest thing ever, and she gets to babysit it all the time.”

  “Works for me,” Birdie said.

  Ellison spoke at the same time: “We’re going to wait.”

  They exchanged a glance, and Will could tell it wasn’t the first time the topic had come up.

  “I think you should go for it,” Aurora said.

  Will wondered if she knew more about Sarah Moon’s situation than she let on. Despite having Sarah’s permission to tell Aurora, he had not mentioned the pregnancy to his daughter, but maybe she’d figured it out on her own.

  “So you like babies,” Shannon said.

  “As cousins. Not all the time.”

  “Funny thing about babies,” Ellison said. “Once you have one, it’s around all the time.”

  * * *

  After dinner, Aurora and Birdie rushed through the clearing of the table so they could watch American Idol. Will, his parents and brother-in-law steered clear of the TV room, not understanding the appeal of the sho
w that held the others spellbound. They were card-carrying members of a club to which he could never belong—thank God.

  Leaving his parents and Ellison with their coffee and conversation, he went to the study adjacent to the living room. The study, which doubled as the company office, housed a thousand books and was furnished with pieces reclaimed from the town library after it was remodeled.

  The room breathed with memories; they were stored on the shelves alongside the Compact Oxford English Dictionary and the complete works of Ewell Gibbons.

  Growing up the son of intellectuals and political activists had not seemed like anything out of the ordinary to Will. He had spent many an hour at the long, oaken table doing homework while his parents labored over the company books at the rolltop desk nearby. He still remembered the fall of light from the green shaded lamp, the scratching of his pencil on the coarse, recycled notebook paper.

  Feeling unsettled, he went to a bookshelf and pulled out a volume of the high school yearbook—Cosmos. The book was from his senior year. He set the thick book on the table and flipped through it. Many of the pages were scrawled with greetings from people he barely remembered—Skye Cameron? Mike Rudolph?—and sprinkled with references that had long since faded: “Don’t forget Lala land, dude!” He had indeed forgotten it. “FriendZ 2 the endZ” declared someone named JimiZ, whom Will could not recall seeing after graduation day.

  There was one photo he remembered quite clearly—a shot of him with five other guys from the baseball team. The night of graduation, the six of them had made the journey that altered Will’s life plans forever. Laughing and filled with cocky confidence, they had headed south of the border to celebrate the milestone of graduation.

  Coming back from that road trip, Will’s friends had told him he was insane. He was ruining his life for the sake of two strangers.

  Will hadn’t seen them as strangers. They were his wife and child.

  He flipped the pages to the front of the book—the senior portraits. Will’s was a shot of himself in silhouette, at the top of a craggy ridge with the sun behind him. He was holding up his arms as though supporting the sun itself. Show-off, he thought.

  Turning the pages, he found the entry for Sarah Moon. It was weird, how his heart sped up in agitation when his gaze fell on her name. Then he frowned as he studied her photograph, a portrait of an unhappy girl with spiked hair, a fiery glare and her arms folded resolutely like a shield in front of her.

  Beside her picture, instead of a list of accomplishments, she had drawn a partially opened oyster with nothing but two eyes peering from the darkness and a thought bubble that read, “I may not be much, but I’m all I think about.” She had been the silent observer, lurking in the shadows, cataloging the nuances of human behavior she would later exaggerate in her art.

  From his perspective now, Will clearly sensed she was probably the most interesting student in the book. Yet, sandwiched between cheerleaders and class clowns, she all but disappeared.

  He wondered what it might have felt like, being the target of loud, sarcastic idiots like he had been. Now that Aurora was fast approaching that age, he found himself wondering how she would do when she reached ninth grade.

  Ever since rushing Sarah to the hospital, he’d had her on his mind. For no reason he could name, he kept thinking about her. It was probably because of Gloria and all her talk. Those starry-eyed observations had lodged in his mind like an annoying kernel of corn in his teeth.

  Find someone...

  An arsonist, that was who he needed to find. Not a damned date with a pregnant woman.

  Yet now that the idea had taken root, he had trouble escaping it. His mind kept wandering to that night at her house, the strangely honest conversation they’d had and the shock of desire he hadn’t expected to feel. If he didn’t know better, he’d say he was stalking Sarah Moon. When he was out driving patrol, he found himself going past May’s Cottage, and he paid special attention to a certain blue-and-silver Mini when he saw it parked at the grocery store or post office.

  More than once, he’d spotted her in town. She was always by herself. He came to recognize her light blue windbreaker and her quick, purposeful stride, the way the sea breeze tossed her short blond hair.

  He’d asked—practically begged—her to call him. She hadn’t, which was kind of ironic and quite a switch from high school. Back then, he had been oblivious to everything but the world according to Will Bonner.

  His mother came into the library, carrying her ever-present stoneware tea mug. Almost reflexively, Will flipped the book shut.

  “Everything all right?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  She glanced at the book on the table. “Were you looking someone up?”

  “I was.” He never told his mother anything but the truth. There was no point. She was all but psychic in her ability to detect a lie or evasion. “Sarah Moon.”

  “Oh?” She leaned against the library table, crossed her legs at the ankles. “Aurora told me you drove her to the E.R. Everything all right?”

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “You were never friends with her in high school, were you?”

  Will gave a dry laugh. “I made fun of her for being an oyster farmer. She hated my guts.”

  His mother raised one eyebrow. “Are you sure about that?”

  “I was one of the main subjects of her cartoons, remember?”

  “That means she had a crush on you.”

  “Not that chick. She was weird as all get-out.”

  “And now she’s back.”

  Will took the book back to the shelf. “Do you ever think about it, Mom? About what I was supposed to do with my life compared to what I actually did?”

  “All the time.” She took a sip of tea. “People always question the paths they take in life. It’s human nature.”

  The day Will had brought Marisol and Aurora home, he had been desperate for his parents to tell him what to do. They didn’t, of course. Instead, his mother had asked him, “What does your heart tell you?”

  “Anyway, is that what’s got you so nostalgic?” asked his mother. “The fact that Sarah Moon is back?”

  “Maybe. And...Aurora. Before we know it, she’ll be in high school.” He shook his head. “Crazy.”

  In the gap of silence, they heard a failed American Idol contestant warbling “Unchained Melody.” Through the doorway, Will could see that his father and Ellison had been sucked in, and were now as enraptured as Aurora and Birdie.

  “She’s growing up so fast,” his mother said with a fond smile.

  “Too damn fast,” Will muttered.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “We fight too much,” he admitted. “I never see it coming. Everything’s fine one minute, and the next, we’re arguing about something.”

  “You’re the adult. Don’t be tempted to bicker with a child.”

  “Easier said than done. I don’t get it, though. Aurora’s my heart. I’d die for her, Mom. But lately, things sometimes get weird between us, which sucks, because I raised her. When she was younger, I understood what made her tick. When she was hurting, I made her feel better. When she was mad, I made her laugh. We were always on the same page.”

  “And now she’s like a complete stranger with a mind of her own.”

  “She’s changing so fast, and I’m all alone.”

  “Son, every man who has a daughter goes through this. You’re doing fine. Just remember, girls her age need a father more than ever.”

  “She brought up her mother again the other day.”

  “Do you ever think about contacting Marisol and—”

  “No.” Will made a cutting motion in the air with his hand. “She knows exactly where we are. Our address and phone number haven’t changed since she left.” He ducked his h
ead and wondered if evasion was the same as a lie. What he could never tell his mother—and Aurora—was that Marisol had been in touch. And God help him, he was keeping the contact a secret. There was no point in telling Aurora that Marisol called on a regular basis, because she only ever called about needing money, never about her daughter.

  Another American Idol voice raced up to a high vibrato note and hung there, wavering desperately.

  “How’s Gloria?” his mother asked.

  “As bad as ever.”

  “Still nagging you to go on dates?”

  “Always. She thinks it’d be good for both me and Aurora.”

  For the briefest of seconds, his mother’s gaze flicked to the yearbook. Shannon Bonner never did anything by chance, and Will knew it.

  “Come on, Mom. Not you, too.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “I heard you loud and clear.”

  “She’s from a wonderful family,” his mother pointed out.

  “She’s getting a divorce. Doesn’t sound so wonderful to me.” He thought about Sarah’s predicament and added, “You have no idea how not for me she is.”

  Twenty-One

  “You have an amazing brother,” Sarah told Birdie Shafter at their next meeting.

  “I’ve always thought so.”

  Sarah studied the photo of him and Aurora, which she now realized had been taken at least five years ago. He’d changed very little. Beside him, Aurora looked tiny and fragile, and the contrast brought out Will’s air of gentle protectiveness.

  Birdie cleared her throat, and Sarah flushed. “Did he tell you what’s going on with me?”

  “No.” Birdie leaned forward, folding her arms on the desktop. “Something I should know about?”

  Sarah nodded, even as she felt a wave of appreciation for Will. He’d kept his word about her condition being her business. She crossed her arms over her middle. So far, there was no visible evidence of the pregnancy, but she felt like a different person. Tender and vulnerable, full of wonder.

  “I’m pregnant,” she told Birdie.