He reached into her car and touched her cheek, wiping off a tear. “Katie, I’m sorry. I’m acting like an ass.”
“I shouldn’t have shown up here like this.” She sighed. “I don’t think things all the way through … sometimes.”
“No, sometimes you don’t.” He shook his head, but that astonishing grin never left his face. “Thirteen years ago, I let you leave. Not this time. I don’t really understand why you’re here or why I’m asking you to stay. But I am.”
Kate smiled at him. “Really?”
He nodded. “Just a little while. We can talk and catch up. Caleb is gone all weekend and it would be nice to spend some time together.”
“Yes,” Kate said. “Really nice.”
* * *
March 20th, 1998
Dear Katie,
Happy First Birthday to Luna.
Thank you so much for writing to me. Yearly letters are a great idea: we can’t wish our daughter a happy birthday, but we can say it to each other. It seems terrible for us to never talk again, but we’ve also got to move on with our lives, and this is a nice in-between.
I’ve been wondering where you are and how you are. I admit though that I haven’t tried very hard to find you. Right away, I will be honest and answer your first question—do I hate you? Of course not. It was deeply terrible, but we agreed. You asked, in your letter, for forgiveness, but you don’t have to ask because I gave it to you a long time ago. I gave it before you asked. And of course I must ask for your forgiveness also. I know we both did the best we could do, but I also know that I hurt you.
The pain had to go somewhere and for a while I tried to hate you, but I just couldn’t. Like you, I wonder about Luna and where she is. I hope she’s safe. It’s the not-knowing that is the hardest. Don’t you agree? All that not-knowing. There is so much of it.
You asked what I’m doing now: I’m a lawyer at my father’s firm in Birmingham, watching my life turn into something I never thought it would. Soon I’ll probably do something ridiculous and become an artist living in Bali. (Not really, but does that make me sound more exciting than I am?)
Maggie is doing great and really loves Birmingham. I thought it would be hard for her because she’s always lived on acreage (her family farm), but she’s already made a million friends and she loves the convenience of being so close to downtown.
I hope your family is well.
So, I’ll stop writing now because really I’m terrible at it.
Jack
* * *
ten
BRONXVILLE, NEW YORK
2010
Bronxville was small. Small enough for almost any kid to walk from the junior high school to almost any house. That’s what Emily wished she was doing that particular afternoon. Walking home. Instead she was walking with Chaz, Sissy, Mattie, and Lisa—the group she had been assigned for her volunteer work. It was also the group designated The Cool Crowd by the other kids, the ones who stood outside it. The cool crowd was part of an old familiar ritual of teen deference, the same one their parents performed and their parents before them. As if some bloodline picked the character and coolness of any child in Bronxville or anywhere else for that matter.
Lisa and Sissy were the ringleaders and they were as interchangeable as their names. Blond and slender, they were overly sexy for their age as if they’d watched too many music videos. Mattie was the quiet one, part of the group because she was Sissy’s cousin and that made it difficult for Sissy to leave Mattie aside. And then there was Chaz, who was the cutest boy God had ever made into human flesh. And yet, he defied any definition of junior high cool. He didn’t play football. He was shorter than the average boy. He had acne that flared at the worst times. And yet … something about him drew everyone in. Everyone, including Emily.
Usually this crowd ignored her, and Emily was proud as she was walking with them in the spring afternoon, discussing their volunteer work for the afternoon: cleaning out the storage shed at First Presbyterian. They walked toward the church and Chaz picked up a stone from Mr. Forester’s front yard, throwing it toward the flowerbed. “Mean old man,” he hollered.
“He’s not mean. Just crazy. Wack-a-doodle,” Emily said in a rush. Words often went from her mind to her mouth, crossing a bridge that shouldn’t have been built (at least that’s what her dad told her). Right before she’d left for the afternoon, she’d looked at her mirror-self and said, think before you speak. And there she was doing the exact opposite.
The group stopped. Lisa was the leader, and if it were possible, she would wear a crown or tiara to prove it. “What?” Lisa asked.
Emily attempted to keep walking, moving along the sidewalk as if she’d never spoken, as if she didn’t need to answer Lisa, which of course she did.
“Oh, you know.” Emily lifted her finger and made a swirling motion at her temple. “He’s crazy like a worm on hot pavement.”
“Now that’s funny. Worm on hot pavement,” Chaz said and laughed with that low, vibrating sound that made Emily’s insides expand and reach for something unnamed.
“No, she’s not funny at all,” Lisa said.
“Like you get to decide who I think is funny?” Chaz stepped closer to Lisa.
“Let’s go,” Mattie said. “This is stupid.”
“How do you know old Mr. Forester?” Chaz asked Emily.
“I don’t really,” Emily said. “I hear my aunt Mitzi talk about him. She feels all sorry for him, so I know it’s not that he’s mean, but ‘not right.’”
“Sad,” Chaz said as they walked toward the church where some grown-ups were waiting to show the kids what to do with the storage shed.
After the adults had vacated and left the five kids their instructions—empty the storage shed, sweep it out, then put everything back in a very organized manner—they all stood staring into the dusty space.
“This sucks,” Lisa said.
Chaz stepped inside, pulling on a string that turned on a bright overhead light bulb. “Let’s get this over with.”
They split up, each taking a small corner of the shed.
Sissy stood next to Chaz as he swept the back corner, twirling her hair around her fingers. He pointed the broom toward the ceiling, poking at the corner. Dust, cobwebs, and dirt fell, raining down on them. “Ew, gross,” Sissy screamed, backing up.
“That’s what you get for flirting instead of working,” Mattie called out from the center of the room, where she was stacking plastic chairs.
“I’m working,” Sissy said. “See?” She lifted a sewing machine from the corner and set it on a table.
“Whatever,” Mattie said.
Emily handed a roll of packing tape to Lisa. “Let’s tape these boxes and we’re almost done.”
“I have an idea,” Lisa said. “Why don’t you tape up those boxes and we’ll be almost done.”
Chaz threw a deflated basketball toward Lisa. “Throw that in the trash, Lisa, along with your meanness.”
“Ha, ha,” Lisa said. “You’re just so funny, Chaz.” She flipped on a light in the back corner. “Oh, cool, everyone look at this.” Together they stopped to stare at a disheveled manger scene with the big spotlight shining down like a dim star of Bethlehem.
Manger scenes were something of a competitive sport in Bronxville, which of course is the last thing a manger scene should ever be, Emily thought. There were the wooden carved ones, the plastic ones, and the live-animal ones (which always had a disastrous outcome one way or the other). This particular manger scene was definitely on the list of most pitiful and yet it was Emily’s favorite. Emily was the girl who’d pick the runt of the litter, the girl who felt sorry for the losing team, so her affection for this mismatched manger was to be expected. Something sad and beautiful filled the faded faces of the plastic kings, Mary’s bowed head with her now-yellowed but once-white veil hanging over her face so you could see only her chin and half smile. Not to mention the crouched, cracked animals (the donkey was missing a hind leg).
<
br /> There’d been a scandal of manger donkey–stealing the previous year. Every ass from every manger scene in town had been taken, and then on Christmas eve they’d all appeared on the high school principal’s lawn—a statement not one person missed.
“So we get to clean the holy family,” Chaz said.
“I have an idea,” Sissy said in a whisper that sounded more like a hiss.
“No,” Mattie said. “No more ideas from you.”
Chaz laughed. “I love your ideas. What is it?”
“Let’s start our own manger tradition.”
Emily’s stomach flipped over. She wanted to speak, to avert whatever idiot thing was about to happen. But she stalled.
“The Marys. We’ll steal all the Marys this year. I mean, really, every year it should be someone or something from the manger scene right? Last year, the donkeys, this year Mary, next year Joseph.”
“But never the baby Jesus,” Tara said. “We would never do that, right?”
“Of course not. Stop being so scared of everything. Really.”
Chaz laughed. “You up for it, Emily?”
“Only after we do the cleanup. We can take her then, I guess. But won’t they know it’s us who took her?”
If Emily told them this was her favorite manger scene, if she told them it made her want to cry to think about taking Mary away from baby Jesus, if she told them they were idiots, they’d make fun of her.
Glancing out the door, Lisa grabbed Mary around the waist.
“What are we going to do with her?” Lisa asked, holding Mary without lifting.
“Hide her in the back woods until I can carry her home and put her in my daddy’s shed,” Chaz said. With that he took the five-foot Mary, slung the plastic statue over his shoulder, and ran out the door. The girls ran after him, disappearing into the dark shadows. Emily was stuck in the storage shed as firmly as if she were a figurine, as if someone had to take Mary’s place and she was chosen. The teens didn’t miss Emily as they ran into the woods, hiding Mary amongst the tangled ivy.
Emily stood under the spotlight of the now-clean First Presbyterian storage shed. She didn’t understand the need to take baby Jesus from his wooden trough, but she knew she couldn’t leave him without a mother. Emily closed and locked the storage doors. With Jesus wrapped in a moldy tarp, she walked away
She’d walked halfway home by the time she wondered what she would do with the baby Jesus. Guilt tasted like metal in the back of her throat and instead of home, Emily ran to Sailor’s house.
It was Sailor who saved the day. It was Sailor who went with Emily into the poison-ivy infested woods and retrieved Mary, delivering both to the storage shed before anyone knew they were gone, reuniting mother and child. And it was Sailor who whispered, “Now we have to get you and your mom together.”
* * *
March 20, 1999
Dear Katie,
Happy Second Birthday to Luna.
I wonder how you are. I can’t wait to read your letter and find out where you’ve been in this wide world.
Oh, you ask, the places I’ve been? That should take about fifteen seconds to tell you. Birmingham. Atlanta. New Orleans for Mardi Gras. And the thrilling convention in Cincinnati where I thought I lost my nose to frostbite. The hours I’m working are insane, truthfully. Dad wants me to take over the firm in the next two years, and I’m not sure how to tell him it might not be in the cards. I do love the job, but running the firm? I don’t know. On top of it, Maggie wants us to move to her family farm. Between Dad and Maggie, I should be two people.
Well, that’s more than you probably want to know, but it’s something anyway. I think about what it must be like for you on this day, on this day that you’re opening this letter. What do you think about all day? Do you think about saying good-bye? Do you get drunk? (I do.)
Every single day, at least once, I wonder where Luna is. I believe she’s doing great. I think, or I hope, that I’d feel it if she weren’t.
Tell me about you. Something. Anything. A story.
* * *
eleven
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA
2010
Jack’s house was warm and spacious, the living room filled with scattered pillows and sports magazines. Kate looked up at the coffered ceiling, at the carved woodwork and limestone fireplace, at the buffed hardwood floors and the plank walls painted dove grey. Baseball cards sat in piles on the coffee table. “Welcome,” Jack said and held out his hands. “You never did see the house finished.”
“It’s gorgeous,” Kate said. “Really. Have you ever thought about doing this for someone else?”
He laughed and held up his hand. “No way. I could never do this for someone else.”
“I like the colors.”
“Maggie chose those,” he said. “She wanted to be an interior designer for a little while. That was before she wanted to be a photographer and then before she wanted to work on her family farm, forming a gourmet goat cheese business.” Jack smiled and Kate followed him toward the archway she remembered would take them to the kitchen. The hallway walls had the same plank board. Framed photos of Birmingham landmarks hung on the wall.
“These are hers?” Kate asked.
“Yep.” Jack said without turning around. “I’ve always loved them. Great photos. She was good at it.”
Kate reached forward and touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry you went through that terrible time,” she said.
“Thanks, that’s sweet,” he answered softly.
They walked into the kitchen with the stainless appliances, the stone countertops, and vintage lamps hanging over the island.
“Wow. This is amazing.” Kate touched the countertop.
Jack pulled a bottle of wine from a small refrigerator under the counter and poured Pinot Grigio into oval stemless glasses, handing one to Kate. “You know, I never told Maggie about Luna, or about you. I meant to. A million times I meant to. Even when we had Caleb, or I snuck off to mail those letters to you, I promised myself I’d tell her. I’ve never forgiven myself for that deception. But I was afraid that it would change everything.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to forgive and I don’t think there’s a right way to do these things. She still doesn’t know?”
“No.”
Katie took a long sip of wine. “I haven’t told Rowan.”
“Rowan?”
“The guy. The guy I’m dating. The guy who has an engagement ring in his bedside drawer. The guy I love, but panic every time I think about anything that sounds like ‘forever.’”
He nodded. “Ah, that guy.” He smiled. “Yes. Forever has always tangled you up.”
“That’s not true,” Kate said, following him out.
He ignored her comment and they entered the living room, holding their wineglasses and sitting on opposite chairs. They faced one another over the baseball card–laden coffee table and thirteen years. Comfortable, Jack prodded Kate forward with questions about her life.
“Enough about me,” she finally said. “I mean, aren’t you tired of hearing about me? Don’t you want to change the subject?”
Jack leaned forward. “I’ve wondered about you for years. So no, I don’t want to change the subject.”
She smiled, warming inside as if the sun had just risen instead of fallen. “Do you want to go get dinner?”
“Good idea.” Jack stood. “Come on. I’ll take you to my favorite restaurant.”
* * *
Highlands Bar and Grill overflowed with people on a spring night, spilling out onto the sidewalk in Southside Birmingham and then into the bar where not a single barstool sat empty. Jack greeted the maître d’ with a firm handshake. “Burt, I know I didn’t make reservations and it’s a Saturday night, but my dear friend surprised me and of course I want to show off my favorite restaurant. Any chance you could find us a table?” Jack introduced Kate.
Burt, in his crisp white shirt and skinny black tie, looked like he was in a Frank Sinat
ra cover band in his spare time. He nodded. “Nice to meet you, Kate. Let me show off Birmingham’s finest.” He motioned to a table snuggled in the back corner by a window. “That should be available within fifteen minutes. Why don’t you two go get a drink and I’ll come get you in a few.”
“Thanks, Burt. Seriously. I so appreciate this,” Jack said.
Burt smiled. “It’s not for you.” He nodded at Kate. “For the lovely lady.”
Jack placed his hand on Kate’s lower back and guided her to the bar. She’d changed into a summer dress, one of her favorites from the new Show Me Your MuMu line. It was made of the finest pale blue linen, and fell slightly off her left shoulder to form a low V down her back where Jack’s hand now touched skin. Warmth spread from his hand in every direction. She wondered, did he feel the heat also? Or was she conjuring the old magic on her own?
“What would you like?” Jack asked.
“What do you usually get here?”
“They have a drink called the Orange Thing. It’s made with fresh-squeezed orange juice, vodka, and some secret ingredient that causes addiction.”
“Sounds perfect,” Kate said.
To the bartender, Jack made a motion with his hand, which must have been sign language that only the two of them understood because within a minute, two drinks appeared. “You must come here a lot,” Kate said.
“Yes,” Jack said, and then stared at her. Kate turned away with heat rushing, a river, underneath her skin. “You are really beautiful, Katie. I remembered you that way, and it’s nice to see I was right.”
“That’s so sweet. Thanks. You’re making me blush, and I don’t blush easily.”
He lifted his glass and she did hers. They clinked their drinks together in a toast. “To renewed friendships,” she said.
Jack smiled and they both took a long sip.
Kate leaned against the bar and dug into her purse for her cell phone. “I need to make a hotel reservation. I decided quickly to come here and didn’t know where I’d stay, or if I would stay, so I need to do that. Any ideas?”
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