“You’re just in time for our party,” Maurie said, and Justine knew her mother was not her ally. She’d decided she liked Patrick.
Patrick’s grin faltered, then recovered. “Party?”
Justine shut the closet door. “We’re having the neighbors over.”
“Don’t tell me other people live out here.” It was a joke, but it sounded forced. Justine watched him closely. He hadn’t planned on other people being here, and it threw him. She wasn’t sure if that worked to her advantage, or against it. It could go either way.
“Two old men live in the lodge.” She went to the kitchen, avoiding Melanie and Angela, who still sat at the dining room table. Patrick followed, Maurie close behind, and as Justine washed the dishes they leaned against the counter and talked—about his drive, the weather, and the relative merits of Motel 6’s and Travelodges—until the doorbell rang at seven.
Matthew stood there alone, with a loaf of pumpkin bread and a bottle of wine. “Abe isn’t up to coming,” he said, without looking at Maurie.
“This is Patrick,” Justine told him. “He’s a friend from San Diego.”
Patrick gave Matthew his salesman’s handshake, two quick pumps. Justine took the pumpkin bread and the wine to the kitchen. Patrick followed her. While she sliced the pumpkin bread, he opened the wine and started pouring drinks. Just like any other couple with people over, she thought. Except they’d never had people over. Unlike Francis, for whom mysterious men were always leaving cryptic messages, Patrick had slipped into her insular, friendless world as though it was exactly the sort of place he was used to.
“That guy’s kind of creepy,” he said. His tone was light, but it had an edge to it.
“He’s okay. He’s helped us a lot.”
He set down the wine bottle. “Helped you how?”
That had been the wrong thing to say. Patrick hated it when anyone helped her but him. She shrugged, like it was no big deal. “Just little things. Like plowing the road so the girls can get to school.”
He gave a short, hard laugh. “Jus, do you hear yourself? You’re living so far in the middle of the backwoods, down a road that’s not even a road, that you have to ask some geezer to plow just so you can get out.” He pointed at the stain on the ceiling. “In a house that’s falling apart around you.”
“You’re right. It’s not what I expected,” Justine temporized. That mollified him, and he went back to the drinks. She picked up the sliced pumpkin bread and returned to the living room, where everyone else was sitting. She pulled another chair from the dining room and turned on the radio. Now that it was Christmas Day the stations were all solemn orchestras and reverent choirs singing hallelujah. She missed Bing and Aretha.
Patrick came out with the drinks on a serving platter he must have dug out from one of the cupboards. He passed them around and raised his glass in a Christmas toast. The testiness of the kitchen had vanished; now he was the picture of gracious bonhomie, and a part of Justine had to admire him. He hadn’t planned on Matthew Miller being here, and he felt threatened by him, but somewhere between the kitchen and the living room he’d pivoted, neatly and quickly. That’s what a good salesman did, he’d told her many times. He changed his script to meet the circumstances.
“I bet you’re wondering how I know Justine,” he said to Matthew.
“A friend from San Diego, she said.” His deep-set eyes were noncommittal.
“I saved her life.”
Justine’s cheeks grew hot. Matthew’s eyebrows lifted, but he didn’t say anything. Maurie leaned forward, her breasts rounding over the neckline of her black wool dress, and gave Patrick what he needed. “Really? How?”
“Well, let me tell you. I was walking to work one day when I saw this little slip of a girl step off the curb right in front of a bus. It’s a good thing I used to play football, because all those instincts came right back. The bus missed her by this much.” He grinned at Justine. “I saved her, and then she saved me, is what I always say.”
Everyone looked at Justine. Patrick’s grin was brittle; he was wound tighter than he wanted to be, and trying not to show it. Justine said, “It’s true. That’s how we met.”
Patrick’s grin widened. Maurie made the appropriate congratulatory exclamations. But Melanie’s face pinched with a bitter contempt that made Justine look down. She picked up Angela’s glass of apple juice, even though she’d barely touched it, and took it to the kitchen, where she leaned on the counter and forced herself to breathe slowly. Melanie was right. She was doing it again; that complicated waltz with Patrick’s fragile ego and his moods that she’d done for almost a year. Still, she reminded herself, she only had to do it for a couple more hours.
She took her time topping off Angela’s glass. When she came back, Patrick had moved on to other stories. The Indiana farm. The Mustang. The Office Pro. All the stories he’d told her at their first lunch date, all told with that same easy charm, but as she listened to him now she saw why, despite his gregariousness, he didn’t have any friends. He talked only about himself, and he didn’t let anyone else talk at all. He didn’t notice that Melanie listened with open distaste and Matthew with weary politeness, or that no one but Maurie laughed at his punch lines. He just talked, on and on, for over an hour, until, during a small break in the monologue, Matthew said he had to go.
Patrick followed him with the tail end of one of his football stories while Justine got Matthew’s coat. He looked exhausted as he put it on. After the effort it had taken to dress up and navigate the slippery road, the evening must have been a sad comedown from Christmases past. Impulsively Justine put her hand on his arm. “Thanks for coming,” she said.
Matthew’s face warmed with the hint of a smile. Out of nowhere Melanie had her arms around him and her face buried in his coat. He touched her head lightly before he walked out. The wind had picked up, tossing the snowflakes like confetti.
After she closed the door Justine stood for a moment with her hand on the doorknob. Then she turned around. “Patrick, you have to go, too. I need to get the girls to bed.”
She expected him to plead and wangle, but he played his trump: “Can’t I watch them open my presents first?” Justine rubbed her arms in the cold air that had come through the front door. She couldn’t deny him that. But it wouldn’t take long. Then, somehow, she’d make him leave.
They went back to the living room, where Patrick laid his presents on the coffee table. Melanie arched her nose in the air, as though he were laying dead fish in front of her.
“Go ahead, open them,” Justine said.
Angela’s gift was a pink Hello! Kitty tee shirt covered in spangles. She loved it, and the conflict that raged in her face was sad to see. Justine said, “You’ll look pretty in that. You should thank Patrick.”
Angela nodded, relieved. “Thank you, Patrick.”
“Now you, Mellie,” Patrick said. Melanie opened her package to reveal a San Diego Padres shirt. As it fell into her lap she drew her hands back as though it were electric.
“It’s so you can remember that time I took you to the game,” Patrick said, smiling.
Melanie raised her eyes to him. They were utterly opaque. Justine reached over and took the shirt. It was just an ordinary child-size Padres shirt. But Melanie’s hands still hung motionless over her lap, and Patrick was still smiling at her. Justine felt a tremor of unease. The Padres game was one of the best memories she had of the four of them together. Patrick had bought the girls Red Vines and ball park dogs. The grass was greener than any grass she’d ever seen. Now Melanie stood up, and her face was pale. “I’m going to bed.” She walked out of the room without looking back. The inside of Justine’s mouth felt like paper as she watched her.
“Angie, go up with your sister.” When both girls had gone she said to Patrick, in a voice she hoped struck the right notes of pleasant and firm, “You really should go now.”
He got up and looked out the window, then shook his head. “I don’t think I can dri
ve back up that road.”
She pushed back the curtain and saw that he was right. The snow was up to the fenders of his truck. This explained the nervous energy he’d hummed with all night, and why he’d waited until evening to come: he’d seen the snow and hoped for this. For a wild, desperate moment she thought about asking Matthew to plow the road, but it was so late. And he’d been so tired; he was probably already in bed. “You can sleep on the couch,” she said, her jaw tight.
“Thanks.” He smiled his wide smile. It made the house seem very small.
Maurie said, “Well, if you’re staying, I’ll get the bourbon.” She went to the kitchen and reappeared with her Jack Daniel’s. Patrick raised one hand.
“Maurie, do you think I could talk to Justine alone?”
Don’t go, Justine pleaded silently. Maurie looked from Patrick to Justine and back again, and for a moment Justine thought her mother’s reluctance to be left out of anything would make her stay. Then her hand tightened on the neck of the bottle. “Of course.” She took the bottle upstairs with her.
A tenor crooned “O Little Town of Bethlehem” as Patrick sat on the sofa. Justine took a chair, keeping the coffee table between them. She was keenly aware of the snow all around, pressing on the roof, creeping up the walls.
“I have a present for you, too,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t give it to you. But I want you to know where I stand.”
Justine had no doubt what it was. She took the small package with fingers that fumbled with the red wrapping paper and the black velvet box. The ring was gold and the diamond small and bright.
“It was my mom’s. My dad said if it was for somebody Mom would have liked, I could have it. And Mom would have loved you.”
This was what he’d been doing these past three days, she realized. He hadn’t been in Williamsburg at all; he’d driven to his father in Indiana and gotten this, his dead mother’s ring, to offer her. For a moment her trepidation gave way to a pity so profound that she almost wept. It was such a beautiful, sad, desperate gesture, and it held everything she loved about him, and everything she needed to escape.
The colored Christmas lights danced on the facets of the little stone. It was a simple thing, a farmer’s ring for a farmer’s wife. Justine touched it. Seven weeks ago, this would have been everything she wanted. Marriage. Security. A man who would never leave. She would have taken it without question, grateful for everything it promised.
He leaned forward. “Jus, come back with me. I’ll get a job selling cars, and in no time we’ll have enough for our own house. A new one, where we can make our own family.”
She could see it, shimmering in the white-cold heart of the diamond. A small house, in one of the new subdivisions going up east of town. Mountains in the distance, a good school a few blocks away. A two-car garage with Patrick’s latest restoration project inside. Neighbors, barbecues, kids playing kickball in the cul-de-sac. The four of them around the dinner table, and the baby in his high chair. All of it seeming, to someone looking in the window, exactly like the life she’d always hoped for.
When she had looked long enough, she closed the lid. She put the box on the table between them. “I’m sorry.” She raised her eyes to meet his. “I’m really, really sorry.”
He shrugged, a wounded jerk of his shoulder. “I guess I didn’t expect you to take it.” He glared around at the walls of the faded living room, as if it were the house’s fault Justine had said no. Then he picked up the wrapping paper and crumpled it, the sound harsh in the quiet room. “But I’m not giving up. Because you do need me. And the next time I ask, you’ll say yes.” He had that hectic look he’d had in his truck the night of the concert, the night he’d messed with the starter. Justine felt again the wormy unease she’d felt then.
She stood up. “I’ll get your things.”
She brought two blankets from the linen press. While Patrick spread them on the sofa she turned off the radio and took the empty glasses to the kitchen. When she headed for the stairs he blocked her way, towering over her, his shoulders hunched.
“Can I have a kiss?”
For a long moment the only sounds in the room were the pings of the radiator and the faint hum of the Christmas lights. Then Justine lifted her face a little, and he kissed her, tenderly and lightly, on the lips. “Good night, Jus.”
She went to the girls’ room. They were awake under their covers.
“Is he gone?” Melanie asked.
“It’s not safe for him to drive. He’s sleeping on the couch.”
“You said it was going to be just us.”
“It is. He’s leaving in the morning.”
“Is he going back to San Diego?”
Justine was tempted to lie, but she couldn’t. “I don’t think so.”
The house was quiet, but Patrick’s presence filled every corner of it. “Come sleep with me,” she said. The girls got out of their beds without a word. After they climbed into her bed she slipped the deadbolt into place and crawled between them. She didn’t put on her pajamas, and she didn’t turn off the light.
Patrick wasn’t going to leave in the morning. He would find a reason to stay, then another, and another. But it didn’t matter. They were going to go. In the morning Matthew would plow the road, and they’d wait for their chance. Maybe tomorrow night, when Patrick fell asleep. They would be very quiet as they put their things in the Tercel and drove away.
“We’re going to leave tomorrow,” she whispered to her daughters.
She lay awake for a long time, listening to the silence downstairs.
Lucy
I don’t know what woke me in the quiet of that last night. Perhaps it was the front door closing as she left, or the sound of her feet on the path. My eyes opened, and her bed was empty. I went to our window. The clouds of yesterday’s storm still cluttered the sky, but stars glinted, and the moon shone on her slender figure walking up the road. Though she carried nothing, I knew she was leaving.
I put on my shoes and forced myself to move quietly down the stairs, every slow step an agony. I opened the front door by excruciating inches, tiptoed across the front porch with its treacherous, creaking floorboards. When I reached the road I could no longer see her, but I knew where she’d gone. She was on the journey she’d begun on Independence Day, when she’d taken Charlie’s hand: across the bridge, to the road, to California, without me.
I ran, no longer caring how much noise I made. I didn’t know what time it was, but the lodge and all the houses were dark. The only sound beside my hurried footfalls was the soft drip of water from the leaves. The air smelled amphibian with leftover rain.
When I got to the top of the hill, I saw her standing by the bridge, a half-lit shape. She was wearing the dress she’d borrowed for her Boswell Sisters routine. A bag lay at her feet, a small satchel. It must have been soaking wet, for I knew she had hidden it by the bridge that morning, when she rose so early. She’d scripted her exit perfectly. But she hadn’t planned on the rain, and she hadn’t planned on me.
She saw me right away, because she was looking back for someone else. She reached out a hand, and I stopped. “I left you a note,” she said. “You’ll see it in the morning.”
Below us the creek, swollen with rain, rumbled on its way to the lake. The roaring in my ears was louder still. All through this long summer, as I’d watched her move away from me, I’d never thought she’d truly leave me behind. Not this way, by taking the journey alone that we’d always planned to take together. And not now, after I’d finally become a citizen of that strange and terrible country she’d occupied alone for so long.
“You’re supposed to take me with you. That’s what we always said.”
“Lucy.” I heard sorrow in her voice. “You know you were never going to come with me.”
“I will. I’ll leave with you right now.” But even as I said it tears filled my eyes, because I knew she was right. I wouldn’t go. I was never going to go. Even after what Father had done, the tho
ught of the world beyond the lake and Williamsburg filled me with fear. What would two girls alone, with no money and no one to protect them, do in such a world? I hated myself, hated my cowardice, but when she said, “No, you won’t,” all I said was, “Please. Don’t leave me.”
A breeze shifted the leaves above us. Water fell like rain, then stopped. I crossed the space between us and touched her arm. Every night we’d spent talking in our starry bedroom, every time I held her hand, every day we escaped to the Hundred Tree, and every game we’d ever played was in my touch, and she felt these things and pulled away. “Read my note. It will tell you what to do. You’ve started doing it already. And—” She paused, a careful weighing. “And there’s Emily.”
Something pressed against me. Something heavy. I said, “Emily?” Even though, in that moment, I knew.
She grabbed my arms. Her fingers dug into my skin. “Lucy, listen to me. It doesn’t have to be you. It can be her. It’s going to be her anyway, someday. Mother can’t protect her forever. Even she knows it.”
My ears filled with cotton. I saw Emily on Father’s lap, his lips against her neck. Mother’s hand, reaching. Emily beside me on the davenport. Her arm trembling. I saw Lilith’s hand, slipping through the firelight to take Charlie’s as Father watched. The thing that pushed at me pushed harder. Your turn, it said. Your choice. I shook my head. “No.”
“Lucy, please,” Lilith said. But she didn’t say anything more, because behind us came footsteps on the path. She looked over my shoulder, and her face closed.
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