Little Green

by Tish Cohen

  “When I find her . . . I’ve been thinking I should stay. Gracie loves it here. And I need to start from scratch. Recreate my life. I can run my own practice. I’ve already seen a place I can work out of. Gracie can go to school in town.” He paused. He’d need a nanny at home for the baby, but he could work from home more while the child was young. “I can do this. Get a puppy. A German shepherd.”

  “Is Elise just going to walk away?”

  “I’ll wind up with custody, without a doubt. I’m Gracie’s primary caregiver. Elise can make her own choices. This is where we will be.”

  Cass turned onto her stomach and rested her chin on one fist. Gazed at him with those honey-colored eyes. She was truly striking—a watery spray of caramel freckles across her nose, thick copper lashes—even in the tragic light of the Swiss Miss Motel.

  “Did we, uh . . . ?” he asked, wincing. “Last night?”

  She laughed, slid a hand up his chest. “We did not. Believe me, if we did”—she played with the hairs on his chest—“you’d remember.”

  He held her fingers. “I really think I could do this. Live here.”

  “I could handle that.” Cass moved on top of him in lacy tank top and thong, all pillowy breasts and wild hair and soft lips. Kissed his bearded jawline to his earlobe. “Right now, I could handle a lot of things.”

  So could he. Matt tugged off her panties, slipped her top over her head, and let his fingers explore the wonder that was Cass Urquhart’s body. Then, for the first time in thirty-three years, he lost himself in the woman he’d never gotten out of his thoughts.

  Chapter 34

  Elise woke up just after eight in the morning, toy frog still in her hand, to the high-pitched crystal ping of her cellphone. Bleary, she sat up in Gracie’s bed to fish around in the covers, eventually finding her phone between mattress and headboard—no doubt nudged there by her daughter’s tiny dejected animals. An email had come in.

  It was from her father.

  Lisey,

  I haven’t felt right about intruding, given what hell you’re facing. But the police spoke to me yesterday, so I’m guessing you’ve heard that I’m here . . . staying at some god-awful fishing lodge up the lake, have been all week. Imagine moldy walls, zero water pressure, and a stowaway beetle in my suitcase hoping to wind up anywhere but this place.

  Asbestos be damned, I came here to see you. Unless you reply, I’ll be at your dock—eastern shoreline with the black boathouse, big S over the door?—around 11:30.

  Dad

  She immediately tapped out: “No. Please don’t.” But didn’t press send. She got up, restless, and paced the upstairs bedrooms. Her mind was awhirl. She hadn’t expected this reaction—after all, it had been twenty years—but part of her wanted to see Warren.

  She went downstairs and stared at her handbag on the kitchen table. Matt had always believed her sensitivity about anyone touching the purse was driven by possessiveness. But it wasn’t that at all. She reached inside, dug beneath the stiff leather bottom piece to pull out a stack of unopened envelopes. The first few were addressed to Lisey Bleeker, but later he’d started addressing them to Lisey Sorenson. She spread them out and examined them, reorganizing them by date posted.

  Was it time to finally open them . . . hear what her father had to say for himself?

  In her mind’s eye, that day had been unusually hot and muggy for September. Elise had just started eleventh grade and had stayed late after school to sort out some confusion—she and another girl had both been assigned the same locker. The other girl was a senior, so she had priority. Elise was assigned another locker down an airless hallway by the gym and had spent the better part of an hour setting it up. Aware that her mother might be starting to worry, Elise jogged the whole way home and arrived sweaty and parched.

  As she drew near, Elise could see that Rosamunde had turned on the sprinkler and forgotten about it. There were deep pools of water on the driveway, even on the lawn. She followed the snaking hose to the garage and tugged hard on the metal handle.

  The door wasn’t halfway up before Elise smelled the exhaust. Strapped into the passenger seat, where she used to sit when she was married and her husband did most of the driving, was Rosamunde, her face calm and expressionless. Her skin translucent and—for the first time—free of makeup. She’d had her hair cut to the chin and smoothed straight. She wore a white blouse Elise had never seen and the navy skirt Warren had deemed to be “business casual.” This Roxborough Rosamunde was so very compact. Smiling and composed. Sure of herself, finally, in death.

  Now, Elise stared down at the envelopes from her father. Never, in all the years since Rosamunde died, had her profound grief, the agony that could bring her to her knees if she stayed still long enough, been anything less than resolute. It had been the flag she planted in the ground that day in the garage, certain it was immovable.

  Until now. For the first time in her life, the image of her mother sitting in the car with the motor running brought anger. Not even anger—that was too tame. Fury.

  How could she? Rosamunde was a parent. So goddamned what if her husband had walked out? She had a daughter who needed her. Who—she had to have known—would be the one who would pull up that garage door and find her. Who she was leaving so alone in the world that Elise would spend the rest of her life on the run, so filled with sorrow for all that had befallen her mother that she would harden and grow fierce with resolve and ambition and drive. Who, as Rosamunde must have realized, would misdirect her resentment and aim it squarely at her only remaining parent, a man she would have no choice but to hate.

  Rosamunde didn’t take away one parent from Elise; she took away both.

  Elise thought back to those nights in her airless room in North Carolina. How she’d pondered all the possible reasons other aspiring Olympians might have to make such profound sacrifices in their lives. Of course, you could throw in Academy Award and Nobel Prize winners. Those who climbed Everest. Any pinnacle strived for that almost no one reaches. If you examined the childhoods of those who worked hardest, those who forfeited so much in their lives to win whatever prize they sought, would you find any who felt whole from the start? Or, like Elise, did they simply find themselves so broken one day that they would spend the rest of their lives trying to prove they had worth?

  Had Elise done anything remotely as despicable with Gracie?

  She’d cut her thumb. She’d run to the shed. And someone out there had capitalized on those moments she was absent. Someone out there—for whatever reason—had gone and done the unconscionable.

  Elise ran a fingertip across her name on one of Warren’s letters. It occurred to her, like the light of dawn peeling back the night sky, that all these years she’d been running from the wrong person.

  Chapter 35

  The Sunday morning crowd at the Bookworm was full of tourists, mostly baby boomers—Matt was certain everyone in attendance had grown up pondering the identity of the Woodstock Girl. Cass couldn’t have looked more the part. Natural and summery in faded jeans with frayed cuffs, leather flip-flops, and a creamy, loose-knit sweater.

  She was terrific in front of her audience. Held the mic to her lower lip as she admitted that day at Woodstock was the day her life really began. The photographer had been a scruffy redheaded guy, college age, with a bag of camera equipment. She followed him around and he taught her how to find the beauty shot within every frame. He let her practice with his Polaroid camera, then gifted it to her. Cass reached into her bag now and pulled it out to excited oohs and aahs. “When they stopped making these a few years back, I bought out every package of film left. Course, now they sell them everywhere.” She looked through the lens at the audience, snapped a one-handed photo, pulled it out, and fanned herself with it. Her laugh was throaty. “I’ve always said, people look their best in Polaroids.”

  Matt leaned against a table in the travel section, baseball cap pulled low to avoid being recognized. With his beard, he was fairly certain no
one but the staff had so much as glanced his way. Also, he could best observe the street from this vantage point. Ridiculous, of course. No one would be parading his daughter past the bookstore.

  He’d sent Barrans his resignation. Caught up with Dorsey on communications—the latest was a psychic certain Gracie had been taken to the Netherlands. She’d seen a vision of her squatting in a wooden child carrier on a bicycle ridden by a blond man. There were windmills. Tulips.

  A woman in a long flowered dress and drapey bead necklaces put up a hand to get Cass’s attention. “Which day was the photo taken? It doesn’t look as crowded as I’ve always imagined Woodstock to be.”

  “Good eye,” Cass said. “This was Monday morning—because of the rain, they’d extended the schedule. The crowd had shrunk down from half a million on the weekend. The day was dismal, and in every direction you looked, the muddy, sloppy field was splotched with lumps of soaking-wet sleeping bags and backpacks. I remember thinking it looked like a field of dead dogs. Everywhere was this sort of sad aftermath. But still, it was an intimate vibe. It was, ‘Look at us, the lucky ones, still here.’”

  The crowd was rapt. The only movement came from the store’s owner, soundlessly checking on the coffee, the tidiness of the books; she’d been careful to avoid Matt and his aura of tragedy. Now, she moved past him with a hushed “Pardon me.” Her name tag caught his attention: VAL REISER. Wait, this was the source of the Annie Leibovitz comparison—the bookstore owner?

  “I was goofing around until Hendrix launched into that crazy edition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.’ I mean, his amps were so freaking loud, and at first he played it sort of as is, then—I’m sure some of you guys remember it—he went mad crazy with the feedback from his amp. Used it to mimic bombs dropping, jets racing, people wailing . . . holy shit, was it something. That was the moment the picture was taken. This photographer I’d been hanging with, he went nuts snapping people’s reactions. I mean, people were dropping to their knees, pulling out their hair. Some weren’t even breathing, it was so intense.

  “So everyone was strung out and way inside their own heads with what they’d just heard. Then Hendrix went into ‘Purple Haze’ and everybody started dancing like it was their last moment on earth. I’ll never, ever forget it—or that nameless soul who snapped the photo and sparked in me a forever love of the lens.” She held a hand up. “Thank you for coming, folks.”

  A thunder of applause. Val took the mic to thank Cass, thank the crowd for coming. She invited all in attendance to help themselves to refreshments and be sure to bring their books to the table where Cass would soon be signing.

  Her face flushed, Cass sauntered over to Matt and stood, flipping her hair off her face. “I survived.”

  “You were so natural. Like you’ve been doing this all your life.” He glanced at his watch. “Listen, I’ve got to head—”

  “Wait.” She reached up to touch his jaw. “I was thinking before I went on . . . I love today. Waking up with you. Looking across the room just now to see you there waiting. Feels . . . like the way things should be.”

  Maybe it was time for them to rewrite history, he thought. River and Gracie adored each other. Cass could sell her place, he’d sell his, and they’d start fresh. He’d always wanted a son. And there’d be no more perfect little girl for Cass than Gracie.

  Then there was the baby. Cass would be wonderful with an infant.

  It would be an idyllic life—probably the one he was meant to lead.

  So why was his heart thumping?

  Cass laughed and looked toward the back of the store, shaking her head. “Okay. Heard you loud and clear.”

  “Don’t say that. It’s just so soon.”

  “I wasn’t proposing. We shared a very romantic morning. Passionate.”

  “I know. It’s just . . . I don’t even have my daughter back yet. I’m not ready to think about romance or passion, if that makes sense.”

  Val waved to Cass from across the room. There was a lineup of people clutching books at the signing table, excited to chat with the Woodstock Girl in person.

  Before Cass walked away, she said, “That’s the thing about romance and passion, Matty. The last thing either should do is make sense.”

  Chapter 36

  Her arms had long since stopped aching from burying and unburying the dead animals, but the cramping in her belly had steadily grown worse. Now, Elise was hit with enough heavy nausea that she put Warren’s letters away and made her way back to the medical clinic on Highway 86. This time, a receptionist was there—a huge-eyed girl with a pointed face all but hidden by two sheets of glossy hair. A mouse in the curtains. When Elise asked for Dr. Jennifer Upton, the mouse shook her tiny nose. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Sorenson. Dr. Upton’s not working today.”

  No. Elise needed Jennifer Upton, with her gentle authority and her cool hands and her life-giving advice. “Is she on call? Can she drop in?”

  “I’m afraid she’s incommunicado on Sundays. Family time.”

  The girl’s face morphed into a rat’s now. How dare she say “family time” to Elise, when she clearly knew who she was? And how dare this Dr. Upton make Elise need her and love her, tell her to return with any problem and then, when there was a problem, have taken off to mother someone else?

  “But she did leave instructions, if you did come back, to send you straight to Oliver.”

  Elise forced calmness into her voice. “That would be good.”

  In minutes, she was paper-gowned and lying on her back, bare abdomen slathered in cold gel, the lights overhead permanently singeing her retinas, and Oliver once again jammed into the tight place between exam table and wall.

  “Not to worry,” he said, digging the Doppler down around her left ovaries. “Whatever’s going on, we can deal with it. Sometimes a bit of remaining tissue gets infected. The important thing is, you knew to come in.”

  He probed harder, toward the center now, pressing so deep she gasped.

  “See anything?”

  “I do.” He squinted at the screen, his expression dour. Pushed hair behind his ears and, wiggling the Doppler, moved closer. “Yeah. I think I know what’s going on here.” The screech of his wheeled stool. “Can you excuse me a moment?”

  What choice did she have?

  The wait was short. Almost immediately, Oliver was back at his post and armed with his magic wand. “I’m an ultrasound tech. I’m not usually authorized to give patients any sort of diagnosis. But I got the okay just now.” He turned the screen around so Elise could see, and worked the Doppler down around her lower abdomen again. He turned up the volume and the wavering, vaguely underwater swish of her body filled the room.

  “You see that there?” He pointed to a black hole in the mottled gray clouds, then a ghostly keyhole shape. “That’s what we’re focused on.” He slid the wand to the right. “Almost got what I want. There.” He looked at Elise and grinned as the room filled with a speedy, rhythmic swoosh, swoosh, swoosh.

  Elise looked up at Oliver, stunned. Could it be?

  Oliver’s smile spread across the entire room. “That’s your baby’s heartbeat, Mrs. Sorenson. You’re eight weeks pregnant.”

  Chapter 37

  With the crowd around Cass thinning out, Matt stood at the food station, trying to spread cream cheese on an everything bagel, sending seeds skittering across the tablecloth and onto the floor. The more he tried to clean it up, the more cream cheese appeared on his hands, his forearms, and his jeans.

  “Cass is going to kill me for being so late. Listed a condo over at Whiteface, took forever.” Garth had appeared beside him to fill a Styrofoam cup with coffee. “So, Wolfe’s offer is in, if you have a minute to sit down and go over it.”

  Matt picked up his bagel only to have it fall apart in his hand and hit his shirt on the way to the floor. He grabbed a handful of napkins and wiped down his shirt, the carpet. Even more napkins to clean his hands. “Yeah. I think I need a bit of time.”

  If Garth
was surprised, he didn’t show it. “Expires at midnight. We don’t want him to walk . . . Another piece of land’s come on the market on Lower Saranac.”

  “Man, it’s so hot with the lights on, all the people.” Cass’s face was flushed as she fanned her neck with the collar of her sweater. She gave Garth a look. “Were you even here?”

  “You kidding? I was at the back the whole time.”

  “Turns out my grandfather owes all these families money . . . or land,” Matt said. “I don’t even know the extent of it. I have to figure it all out before I make any decisions.”

  Garth paused. “But wouldn’t it be better to settle up from a place of security? It’s a lot of cash. You could pay back God and still be fine.”

  Certainly he could take the money, then figure out who was owed what. But these people would never be able to buy back their land once it went to a resort.

  “Matty, you need this money,” Cass said.

  “Believe me when I say, Lake Placid has become a buyer’s market catastrophically lean on buyers right now,” Garth said.

  “I have a plan. I have to stick to it.”

  “You’re not thinking straight,” said Cass. “Whatever’s up with these families, it happened a long time ago.”

  “When it happened isn’t the issue.” Jesus fucking Christ. People needed to back off. “I have to do this. Everything hinges on it. Everything.”

  “Cassidy?” Val’s arms were tucked through those of two kids with pale red hair and freckles, in or around their late twenties. “You aren’t going to believe who these two are: Nicholas and Sophia Redondo. Their father took the photo. Hatch Redondo.”

  “We were so stunned when we saw your book cover online.” Sophia appeared nervous as she took Cass’s hand in her own.

  “Dad would be over the moon right now if he were alive.” Nicholas was flushed. “To see you doing so well—a photographer, no less.”