Spencer was taken aback. He couldn’t imagine how his neighbor knew anything about Zelda.
“Be sure to tell me about any wildlife that you see. Over the years, I’ve had two different people tell me they saw a catamount up near the rock face.”
“Yes, sir, I sure will. Mom swears she saw one up there, but it must have been twenty years ago. It wasn’t a bobcat—she’s sure of that because it had a long tail—it was a mountain lion. I’ll let you know about everything that we discover. Mr. Boudoin. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your faith in me.”
There was an extended silence. When, after a moment, he answered, Armand sounded uncharacteristically moved. “Why wouldn’t I have faith in you? Spencer, one mistake long ago is not the measure of a man. You remember that. I’ve known you since you were in diapers, and I would take anything you told me on trust. I’m doing this because it sounds like a great idea, and you would make a fine partner. I’ll talk to you when you get back.” He hung up without further words being spoken.
Spencer looked at the phone, and a smile spread across his face. As soon as he had recovered a bit from the kind words, he called Zelda. “We’ve been cleared to head out on our expedition. I want you to go with me; I want you to be the first person to envision this project the way I do. Are you free this weekend?”
She was delighted, but cautious. “I have to ask my father about this. You know I’ve been a lot of trouble to him in the past. The last thing that I want is to have him think that I’m hiding something from him. I think it only fair that he be consulted, but, yes, I’d love to go. What kind of equipment will we need to pack?”
“Listen, you talk to your dad. I’ll plan to pick you up at one today. We’ll sit down and make a list of all the things we think we’ll need. After the trip is over, we should reflect on what worked and what didn’t. Were there things we should have brought and didn’t? Any stuff we could have left behind? This is the way we’ll be able to predict what our clients really need. We can use the information to refine bulky packs into lighter and more practical kits.”
“This sounds like so much fun, Spencer, I really look forward to it. I’ll see you at one.”
The unusually fine morning was lost on Kenny because he was still reeling from a nightmare. In it, someone called him from the hospital the night of the accident. The woman on the other end of the line said Zelda was all right, but her friend Spencer was going to lose his arm. Kenny had held his breath and sat up straight in bed as he fought for breath. There couldn’t be that big of a coincidence in the whole world, certainly not here in the sparsely populated state of Vermont. Spencer had to be the same boy who was driving that night. He tossed and turned, uncertain as to what it meant. He’d honestly forgotten the part of the phone call where the woman said Spencer’s name, but apparently, his subconscious hadn’t. Or perhaps she had never spoken the name, and he’d finally put two and two together.
He heard footsteps in the hallway, and Zelda walked into his office carrying a glass of water. She sat down in the red upholstered wingback chair across from his desk. He appraised the contented look on her face, really hating that he had to spoil her good mood. As evenly as he could manage he said, “When you and Spencer met a few weeks ago, you acted like you didn’t know each other.”
Based on the way Zelda jolted, Kenny deduced that she was shaken by his statement. “Dad, it was such a shock that Spencer was there. I knew he’d had a brain injury, and I didn’t think he remembered me. But when we went in to see the pregnant mare, he told me he was happy to see me again. We’ve been having such a great time. Dad, I’m sorry. I just put off telling you. He says the mistake we made, we made together. I told him everything. He knows everything. Still, he says we are bonded by the fact we were both there that night. It’s so good to have somebody I can really talk to about it.”
Kenny shook his head like he was trying to clear out his brain. “Zelda, I’m having a hard time keeping up. Do you like this kid?”
“Yes, I like him. The very first night we met, we just hit it off. Even after all this time and all we’ve been through, it hasn’t changed. You remember the night a couple weeks ago when Spencer and I stayed in the barn to help his mare Clarice have her foal? It was life-changing for me.” She took a sip from her water and looked up at him. “I used to think using drugs was exciting. That they made me a risk-taker. Well, horses weigh a thousand pounds, and they could kill us if they wanted to. When that baby was being born, I thought my heart would stop when one hoof appeared and then another.”
Kenny leaned forward and asked her softly, “How so?”
“Clarice stopped pushing for a bit to rest and looked at us with complete trust. Her eyes were pleading with me to do something. Next thing that I knew, her newborn was lying on the ground silent and soaking wet. I was terrified, Dad. Honestly. When it finally gasped for breath, I was so relieved I thought I would cry.” Kenny tried his best to understand what Zelda was trying to tell him, but he didn’t speak. “Helping bring a foal into the world while the mother depended on us—now that was a real thrill. The kind that makes you a better human being, and that’s the kind of thing Spencer shares with me. What I have in common with him is the best part of me.”
Kenny let silence fill the space between them. He remembered well that he’d felt the same way when he met Sharon. It’s just like Zelda said, what we shared was the best part of me. She made me a better man. “I’m glad you are being honest with me, so I’m going to be honest with you. We’ve got to do some damage control and soon. I’m going to call Yvonne and Rolland right now and invite them over for dinner. I think I’ll talk to Georgia about this and invite her, too.” He waited until Zelda nodded her assent. “We’re going to have to break the news to Spencer’s parents that you’re going to have a baby and that you were the girl who supplied the Ecstasy or whatever it was to the other kids at the party. I want you to brace yourself. I’m not sure how his parents will take it, but Zelda, no matter what, I’m proud of you. Somewhere your mother is looking down at you and thinking what a wonderful woman you’ve turned out to be.”
Tears pooled in Zelda’s eyes. “Thanks, Dad.”
Twelve
“It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else.”
—Erma Bombeck
Yvonne’s dark hair had white streaks at the temples, so when the color in her face drained, she resembled the bride of Frankenstein from the 1930s horror film classic. Her chalk-white pallor alarmed Georgia, but Rolland didn’t notice. With a gasp, he shot up out of his chair, left the room, and stood on the front porch facing out. They could all see his back through one of the living room windows as they watched him light a cigarette in his right hand and drag on it until it settled into a small ember glow. Spencer and Zelda assumed he could hear everything being said, as the window was wide open. They exchanged uncomfortable looks from seats across the sitting area where the two families and their friend Georgia were gathered.
As a teacher who was used to directing discussions, Georgia cleared her throat and tentatively asked, “So, Zelda, when you went over to the farm the first time, you had no idea that was where Spencer lived? You hadn’t seen him or heard from him since the night of the party?”
“I’d heard from friends he was in a coma. You have to understand, after the ordeal and on the heels of my mother’s death, I got lost in drugs. It was like I dove in headfirst to a pool of darkness where I didn’t hear anything more about Spencer. We didn’t have mutual friends back then. We grew up in towns thirty-five miles apart. Our schools hardly interacted at all. I think their lacrosse team was the only one that competed in the same league as ours.”
Georgia took a deep breath. “This really is a small world.”
Kenny explained further, “We felt we had to get all this out in the open. Shine some light on it. The kids have been having a lot of fun together. Zelda loves working at the farm, but the more days passed, the harder it was to explain the situatio
n.”
“Did you know the whole time, Kenny?” Georgia asked.
“No. In fact, I had a nightmare last night where the boy driving the night of the accident was named Spencer. I put it all together about three this morning.”
Yvonne inhaled abruptly and then exploded, “I wish you would stop calling it an accident. The pills they took that night contained bath salts, LSD, and methamphetamines. They all showed up on Spencer’s toxicology report. It was a lethal concoction designed to make people high to the point of psychosis.” Yvonne’s face had turned from white to nearly purple. “It wasn’t an accident my son took it. Your daughter was the drug dealer who brought them. She flirted with him and persuaded him it would be fun. She made a profit when she sold him her goods, and apparently, she was very convincing. That drug cocktail cost my child five years of his life, a big chunk of his long- and short-term memory, and his arm. What did you think was going to happen here tonight, Kenny? Did you think we could all sit down after you revealed the truth and then break bread together? In your fantasy, did you have us saying grace together, too?”
Spencer stood up with clenched hand and jaw although he didn’t say a word.
Georgia put an arm around Yvonne. “Obviously, this is a terrible shock. You are going to need time to take it all in. Let’s try to keep our heads. We don’t want to say anything we’ll regret later.”
“Regret? This girl is a drug addict. She is pregnant with an absent father’s baby. Am I supposed to welcome her into my life? Into my family? She almost killed my child.”
Zelda’s ivory skin burned with shame. “Mrs. Paquette, I am so sorry about everything. I had lost my way back then. There are no excuses that suffice, but please understand drugs make people do stupid things.”
“You, do not speak to me!” Yvonne bellowed at her.
“Mom. Mom! Calm down. Okay, okay. Come here. I know it’s a lot to digest.” Spencer put his arm around his mother and hugged her. “We all survived, Mom, and we’re here for a reason. Take it easy. Give yourself some time to think about this.” While tears were running down Spencer’s face too, his mother was inconsolable. He rubbed her back and whispered to her. Finally his father walked back into the room.
“Dad, Mom needs to go home. This has been too much for her. Look, we’ll all talk more about this when everybody gets used to the idea.”
His father growled at him, “What idea?”
“That Zelda and I are dating.”
Georgia saw the look on Yvonne’s face when she turned toward the young people and she feared Yvonne might snap and physically attack them. “Dating. That’s ridiculous. You are not to see her ever again.”
“Mom, we’re adults. There are good reasons why we want to be together.”
“Spencer, I’m not going through this again. You are not going out with a junkie.”
“Yvonne. Hold on a minute,” Kenny interjected. “Zelda has been clean for almost a year.”
Yvonne’s voice was cold as ice when she responded, “How impressive.”
Rolland made an abrupt decision. “We’re going home. There won’t be any dating. Spencer, you will see this from our point of view when you’ve had time to think about it. We’ll see you back at the house soon. Kenny, thank you for the dinner invitation. I hope you understand why we can’t stay.”
Although both Rolland and Yvonne were shaking with fury, they closed the door softly behind them as they left.
Spencer took Zelda by the hand, but he spoke to her step-father. “Kenny, I have to go after them, and I know you’ll take good care of Zelda. This isn’t over. I promise. Zelda works for me now, not my parents. I’ll pay her out of my business expenses. She is welcome at work in the barn tomorrow morning. We have a lot to do.”
Georgia spoke up. “Spencer, I know it isn’t my place to weigh in right now, but I think you’re making a mistake. Can’t you give Yvonne a few days? You kids have known everything for weeks now, but she just found out about your . . . well I’m sorry to say it . . . but to her it surely feels like deception.”
“We didn’t have a chance to go over this with you yet, but we are going on a scouting trip Friday. We have big plans and we have to get started, no matter how my mother feels about things. We are going to create a destination resort for people who travel with their horses and want a great adventure. This weekend will be the start of something big. I’m not going to let them stop us because they don’t like my girlfriend. I mean, come on, I’m twenty-two years old, Georgia. I swear to you, if we start out with good intentions and we just keep doing the next right thing, it’s all going to work out fine.”
Zelda agreed wholeheartedly. “You know what they say about falling off a horse. I’m going to get right back in the saddle and keep going. This isn’t the first time that I’ve had to make amends and prove myself. It probably won’t be the last.”
Thirteen
I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle.
I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.
—Mother Teresa
Georgia was back in bed with her coffee, thinking, and watching the sun come up, illuminating Alese Peak with a warm orange glow.
Holy moly. The scene that unfolded last night at Kenny’s house was brutal. Poor Zelda. She made one disclosure, another, and then another. She was completely composed, although the flush in her cheeks grew brighter and brighter. I couldn’t even look at Kenny. How had he endured all Zelda described to us? He has seemed every moment the doting father. I had no idea how he had been tested.
It made me think about how close Jack and I had come to putting one of our own sons in rehab. Sebastian was drawn into the same targeted marketing as Zelda when New York gang members came up to a naïve Vermont to expand their drug sales. They sold our kids on prescription pills that they crushed up and snorted. The pills were expensive, but the teens believed they couldn’t overdose on them, and they had faith in the fact that doctors actually prescribed them. Inevitably the young people became dependent on the drug and then, when they started to withdraw from the OxyContin, the same pushers sold them heroin. Back at their territories in New York City and Boston, a bag of the powerful narcotic sold for five dollars. Here in Vermont, they could reap twenty-five. Our young people bought it and their symptoms disappeared, but they were hooked. Compared to eighty dollars a pill, it was cheap, and our children fell like dominoes into a serious addiction. The memory of it made Georgia tremble. She clutched her comforter tightly and rolled over on to her side.
The next thing we knew, our kids had the proverbial monkey on their backs. They needed to score every day just to feel close to normal. For us, it was a shameful secret. Jack and I read in the papers how this was happening across the state, but we were too ashamed to admit that our own child was caught up in the problem. Sebastian told me that once he realized he had a drug habit, he never really got the high anymore, but he needed heroin to keep from getting violently sick. It’s the oldest story in the book; he found himself chasing the dragon. We were so lucky he only did it for a few weeks before he came to us for help. Dr. Gluck got him into a day program right away. As far as I can tell, he’s just a normal kid now. Fragile, sensitive, and extremely careful, but thankfully normal.
No, Georgia didn’t feel in any way superior to Zelda or anyone else. Along with her youngest son, she had her own demons. For years, she had spent many nights alone. White wine had become her companion while she cooked, cleaned up, and then watched TV. Here, sipping her coffee, she tried hard to remember the last time her husband had said something nice to her. She couldn’t, but she did remember four times in the last weeks of his life that he pulled a container out of their refrigerator, interrupted what she was doing, and read the expiration date to her. She recalled that she glanced up from grading papers or paying bills, annoyed, as he threw the container across the room and into the wastebasket with a great dramatic swish.
Yet, God help her, if she discarded one of his hot sauces or sal
sas. He noticed if any of his favorite bottles or jars went missing, and Georgia sometimes felt he would defend the last drops of his condiments to the death.
After he read the expiration dates to Georgia during those final days, she always told him, “Jack, it’s not my job to inventory the contents of the fridge. If you see something out of date, feel free to throw it away without comment. I will do the same if you outline for me the products I’m allowed to touch. For example, the block of cheese we brought back from the North End in Boston is now a block of cement. I think we should toss it.”
“We can grate it. The flavor is still good.”
“I’ll leave it to you then. I did try to grate it because it seemed to mean so much to you, but I’m not strong enough.”
His criticism was a fact of life. With no kind or tender words to balance out his complaints, Georgia braced herself whenever he signaled with a deep breath that he was about to speak.
When he asked, “May I say something?” she winced.
“Go ahead.”
“The windows need to be cleaned.”
“Let’s look in the paper and see if we can find someone to do it.”
“You’re home half the day.”
“Not home. I’m not sitting on the couch for four hours doing nothing. I do all the shopping, cooking, and cleaning. Washing windows on three different stories, especially the exterior, is too much for me to do. The boys don’t want me climbing up and down ladders, especially when I am alone, and, frankly, at my age, I don’t want to do it. I like to use my energy for other things. Things that make me happy. At my age I deserve some happiness.”
He refused to hire anyone, and she didn’t think the exterior glass was that dirty, so Georgia made a mental note to find a professional cleaner in the spring and put it out of her mind. Apparently Jack had not. He got into a new habit of staring out one of the windows and gritting his teeth. He would let a huge sigh out the corners of his mouth, and both his cheeks would puff out. It was an over-the-top gesture. She assumed he wanted her to ask what was ailing him, but she decided not to do it because she really didn’t want to know. Finally, he broke down and said, “The window situation really bugs me.” She didn’t bother to respond.
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