Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

  “Then . . .” The question died on her lips as the trooper stepped forward, his Adam’s apple rising and falling with a hard swallow.

  “Ma’am, there’s been an accident.”

  My Day’s To-Do List

  • Reconfirm food arrival for 1 p.m.

  • Put out guest book.

  • Set out serving spoon holders.

  • Leave key under mat for Emily.

  • Service: 10 a.m.

  • Gratitude notes.

  Chapter 2

  It was as if she’d put up a sign outside each of the first-floor rooms, separating the various parts of her life into neat and manageable chunks. In the study, scattered about in twos and threes, were Jeff’s business partners and employees, the rise and fall of their strident voices reminiscent of every summer gathering and holiday party she’d hosted for the company. Yet even amid the dull roar that had accompanied her every thought, her every move, since Sunday evening, the differences called out to her like flashing neon lights, searing themselves into the one part of her brain she couldn’t seem to shut off.

  Now the occasional slap of a hand on one another’s shoulders lingered longer. Throats weren’t cleared to gain attention, but rather to get a word or a thought past a rush of emotion. Eye contact bowed to glances at the floor, the ceiling, the smattering of plaques and framed awards lining the walls of the richly paneled room, and, of course, to Danielle herself.

  She drew in a breath and forced herself to move on to the next group, to listen politely to stories about her husband, to field the sympathetic pecks on her ice-cold cheek, and to return the earnest embraces from those who had become treasured friends over the years.

  Friends like Wayne Rodgers, Jeff’s go-to guy for all things financial . . .

  “One time, I literally used a bag of M&M’s you sent in with Jeff for Valentine’s Day one year to help him grasp a numbers thing he wasn’t getting.”

  Oh yes, she remembered that Valentine’s Day. She’d left bags of his favorite candy in his car, in his briefcase, in his gym bag, under his pillow, wedged inside his coffee mug, and even inside his slippers. She remembered, too, his “found another one” call after each discovery.

  Friends like Kelly Collins, Jeff’s assistant and second mom as he was prone to call her . . .

  “Did you know he deliberately hung a picture of you and the children on the wall opposite his desk so that if he was on a call with a particularly trying client he could look at the four of you and breathe his way through it?”

  Of course she’d known that. She’d been the one to track down his favorite picture, to purchase a frame that complemented the others in his office, and to move it “an inch to the left” and “a half inch higher” until he’d been completely satisfied with its placement.

  Friends like Marty Jones, the once-homeless guy from the mailroom who was so grateful to Jeff for having given him a hand up in life . . .

  “I will always wonder why me? Why was I the one fortunate enough to cross paths with someone so kind and so giving?”

  Oh how she remembered that day. The gorgeous blue sky. The warmish temperatures. The smell of pizza and corn dogs and hot pretzels dotting the air. The way they’d wandered the city streets, slipping in and out of boutiques and pocket parks, talking about everything and anything like the newly in love. The fact that they had two under the age of five and another on the way just made the envious looks on the faces they passed all the more fun. And then, just as they were heading back to the car, they’d spotted Marty, sitting on the steps of a church, his clothes tired and ratty but his shoes spit-shined to perfection. It was those shoes that had led her to whisper, “Let’s talk to him,” in Jeff’s ear.

  And friends like Tom Gavigan, Jeff’s best friend from college and his partner at the marketing firm . . .

  “I never could have made this place the success it is without Jeff. Clients took to him right off the bat, you know?”

  Yes, actually, she did know. Because she, too, had taken to Jeff like “Pooh Bear to honey,” as she loved to tell the kids whenever they asked about the moment she’d met their dad. Something about his strength—wrapped around an almost boyishly innocent optimism—had let her know before their first official date was even completely over that he was the man she would one day marry.

  Friends like—

  “Dani?”

  Pausing, mid-step, she turned back to Tom in time to see him glance at the floor and swallow. “I don’t know what we’ll do without you, Dani; I really don’t. Your encouragement of Jeff and the company as a whole has been a light for all of us at Parker & Gavigan. And your Friday cookie plates? Your holiday parties? Your gentle touch with the new spouses? Your charm with the prospective clients? The way you did all of those things while somehow still keeping up with everything here at the house, and with your volunteering, and, of course, with—”

  She felt his fingers release her arm in favor of an awkward sweeping gesture, but when her gaze followed she saw only the empty glass in Marty’s hand that needed to be filled, the used napkin Kelly was awkwardly holding, the fingerprints being left on Jeff’s many plaques, and the discarded plate atop his desk . . .

  “The kids.” Tom slipped his hands into the front pockets of his suit pants, his shoulders hunched forward. “You handled everything so perfectly all the time.”

  She looked again at Marty’s glass, Kelly’s napkin, the smudged nameplates on the bottoms of the plaques, and the abandoned plate on her husband’s desk, and gave in to the mirthless laugh bubbling its way up from deep inside her chest. “Do you see that glass in Marty’s hand?” she asked, pointing Tom’s attention, and that of everyone else who was trying so hard not to eavesdrop, toward the beloved mailroom employee. “If I really handled everything perfectly, as you say, his glass wouldn’t be empty. And that plate”—she gestured toward the desk she’d skimped and saved to get Jeff for his fortieth birthday—“would be in the dishwasher, instead of sitting there like the eyesore it is.”

  Tom drew back, the pain he’d worn just seconds earlier replaced first with discomfort and then, when Kelly scurried over like the mother hen she was, relief as he quietly stepped away.

  “Danielle, sweetie, do you want me to take you upstairs so you can lie down for a little while? A little alone time might do you some good. I can handle things down here while everyone finishes and—”

  “No. I’ve got it.” Again, her gaze returned to Marty only to find him no longer holding his glass. Likewise, when she glanced at the desk, the plate was gone, as well. Stepping back, she mentally inventoried the faces and, when she was satisfied she’d spoken with everyone from the firm, wiped her sweaty palms down the sides of her simple black dress and hooked her thumb in the direction of the hallway. “I really need to check in on everyone else, make sure everyone has had enough to eat, and to thank them for coming.”

  Kelly stopped Dani’s forward movement with a gentle hand to the arm. “Your friends from the neighborhood have everything under control with the food, and everyone will understand if you need to rest for a while.”

  There was something about the woman’s words and the way everyone in the room kept looking at her even when they were pretending not to that was making it difficult to breathe. She could see some of their mouths moving, knew they were talking about Jeff, about her, about the—

  Murmuring something she hoped fell somewhere on the spectrum between polite and coherent, Dani strode out of the room and into the hallway, the need to be somewhere, anywhere, else giving her feet purpose if not a clear-cut destination.

  Breathe in . . .

  Breathe out . . .

  Breathe in—

  From behind her she heard Tom’s voice . . . A quick laugh . . . A weighted silence . . . Conversations resuming . . . Sounds that propelled her farther and farther away from the study, down the same hardwood floor she’d walked a million times with forgotten shoes, extra pairs of socks, baskets of laundry, grocery bags, and
sleeping children.

  Her sleeping children.

  Squeezing her eyes closed until the image had passed, she willed herself to keep breathing, to keep moving, past the laundry room, past the guest bathroom, past the door to the mudroom and the garage, until finally, mercifully, the dull roar in her head parted in favor of the dishwasher’s steady yet oddly comforting hum. Soon, it was joined by the whump whump of the pantry door hinge as it opened and then closed . . .

  “Every single time I hear that awful sound, I’m reminded of how badly I need to tighten those screws. But then”—she stepped into the kitchen—“I get sidetracked and it doesn’t get done.”

  “Dani!” Roberta set the empty lasagna pan in the sink, waved off the advances of the other women in the room, and hurried around the center island like the neighborhood queen she only half kiddingly professed to be. “I made a plate for you to eat now, and I also made up a few containers for the freezer that you can take out and reheat as you see fit.”

  She nodded, or at least thought she did, her thoughts already on to the parade of foil serving dishes lined up, one beside the other, across the center island. “Did I order enough of everything?” she asked, glancing back at Roberta. “I wasn’t sure how many people were going to come back to the house, so I had to do a little guesswork with the caterer.”

  Roberta’s large doe-like eyes moved back across the kitchen to the other women before returning, once again, to Danielle. “You did . . . fine. There was plenty of everything.”

  “Good.” She stepped closer to the foil platters and, seeing several were empty, began stacking them inside one another for the inevitable trip out to the trash can in the garage.

  Suze, the neighbor on the other side of Roberta, stepped between Danielle and the next empty tray. “Dani, stop. We’ve got this. Why don’t you let Emily warm up your plate of food for you now and I’ll get rid of these, okay?”

  “No. I’m fine. I-I’m really not hungry.”

  “Are you sure?” Emily chimed in from her spot by the bay window and its view of her own home across the street. “Because I can do that if you want me to. Or if you’d rather something a bit lighter, there’s still some salad left. I can even put one together for you with extra toe-matoes and cu-mum-bers just the way you—”

  Emily’s quiet gasp was drowned out by the louder, collective exhale of Roberta and the others. Covering her face with her hands, the petite brunette who was Dani’s closest friend on the street dropped onto a kitchen chair and doubled over. “Oh, Dani, I’m . . . so . . . sorry. I-I didn’t mean to-to say it the way that Ava—”

  The door to the sun porch opened, pulling Dani’s attention off her grief-stricken friend and fixing it, instead, on Lila Roberts, her co–room mother in both Spencer’s and Maggie’s classrooms. In the woman’s hands were two large black trash bags that were quickly shoved back inside the sun porch at the sight of Dani.

  “Oh. Dani. I didn’t know you were in the kitchen.”

  “I didn’t know you were here, Lila.”

  “Where else would I be?”

  “Are the kids with you?”

  Lila nodded—once, twice.

  Dani pointed to the now-closed sun-porch door. “What were in those bags just now?” she asked as she followed Lila’s widening eyes to Roberta, and then Suze, before they returned, more sheepishly, to Dani.

  “I-I just wanted to help out a little,” Lila said, her voice raspy.

  “Help out?” Dani repeated. “With what?”

  This time, when Lila’s eyes moved to the others, they no longer conveyed discomfort but, rather, panic.

  “We just thought we’d help clean up from Saturday,” Roberta offered, leaning against the island. “So you wouldn’t have to keep looking at it and remembering.”

  “Keep looking at what?” Dani swung her gaze off Roberta and onto the pair of French doors just beyond Lila’s shoulder. The four-season addition was everything she’d hoped it would be with sheer white curtains that billowed in the lightest of breezes, white wicker furniture with sand-colored cushions, the cute end table fashioned from an old ship’s steering wheel, and the walls’ ocean-blue hue that—

  Ocean . . .

  Pressing her forehead to the glass, Dani stared into the room, her mind’s eye filling in what was now missing.

  The royal-blue streamers she’d painstakingly hung from the ceiling with a colorful fish attached to the end of each and every piece . . .

  The sea of light and dark blue balloons that had covered the floor so deftly it was virtually impossible to see the carpet . . .

  The chest she’d found in an old thrift store and refinished to look like one fit to hold a myriad of treasures—dress-up rings and tiaras, beaded necklaces and sparkly faux jewels—

  “Where is everything?” she managed past the queasiness. “The treasure chest? The streamers? The . . . balloons?”

  When her questions were met with silence, she fixed her gaze on Lila only to have Lila’s lead it back to the neatened room with its uninhibited view of the carpet, the trio of black garbage bags just inside the door, the blue latex mound sticking out from the bag in the middle—

  She heard herself gasp, heard it fade to nothing against the equally distinct latch of the treasure chest, the rustle of the fish-adorned streamers, the shrieks of excitement at the thought of “swimming” in an ocean of balloons, and Ava’s giggles rising above everything else.

  Ava’s giggles.

  “Dani? Are-are you okay?”

  Lifting her hand, she tried to keep Lila’s voice from drowning out the flash of joy in her ears, but it was no use. Just as every remnant of her daughter’s third birthday party was now gone, so, too, were Ava’s giggles.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you, Dani,” Lila rasped. “I just wanted to help. To make it hurt a little less. To do something—to fix something for you.”

  The words reverberated in her thoughts, fading in and out against the thudding in her head. There would be no fourth birthday for Ava. There would be no more soccer goals or base hits for Spencer.

  Whump. Whump.

  There would be no new badge ceremonies or sleepover parties for Maggie. There would be no new clients to woo or deals to celebrate for Jeff. There would be no—

  Whump. Whump.

  Whirling around, she looked from the pantry to Suze and back again, her hands clenching into fists at her sides.

  “Dani, please . . . I can put everything back the way it was if you want.”

  She didn’t mean to laugh, if that noise bubbling out of her at the moment could even be construed as a laugh . . .

  Was it? She wasn’t sure.

  Pulling her arm free of Lila’s grasp, Dani crossed to her desk, yanked open the top drawer, and felt her way past the tin of sharpened number two pencils, the bin of big block erasers, the box of crayons, and the cute little grocery store list she’d yet to use.

  She moved on to the middle drawer, pushing aside the family address book, the latest issue of MOM Magazine, and the box of animal stickers she kept at the ready for rainy days . . .

  “Dani, can I help you find something?” Emily asked, coming up behind her.

  “No, it’s here; I know it is.” She shoved the drawer closed and moved on to the bottom one, lowering herself to the chair as she did.

  The town’s recreation calendar . . .

  The school’s information binder . . .

  The room mother folders for both Maggie’s and Spencer’s classes . . .

  “Finally,” she muttered, grabbing hold of the miniature tool kit and pulling it onto her lap. With her thumb and forefinger on the zipper, she began to pull, her gaze returning to the drawer, the binder, the folders, the sleek color brochure for the—

  “Are you wanting to tighten that hinge on the pantry?” Emily squatted down beside the chair and lowered her voice so only Dani could hear. “Because it’s okay to leave it for another day, sweetie.”

  She squeezed her eyes closed aga
inst the parade of images she didn’t need to see to know. She’d memorized every detail a million times over.

  The glass of wine waiting on a nearby table . . .

  The thick white robe draped over a nearby chair and the matching slippers waiting beneath . . .

  The outdoor massage tent with its scenic view of award-winning vineyards . . .

  The stone patio with the twinkling lights that looked like stars . . .

  The—

  “Talk to me, Dani. Just tell me what I can do for you and I’ll do it. Please.”

  Stilling her fingers atop the tool kit, Dani looked back at her friend; the same worry she saw etched into the skin beside Emily’s brown eyes now trembled the woman’s lips, too. It was a worry Dani could feel just as surely as she could Emily’s hand going round and round on her back. It was also a worry she knew she didn’t even come close to deserving.

  “I need you to get everyone out of here, Emily. Now.”

  Chapter 3

  It took every ounce of energy she had to keep her eyes open, to swing her legs over the edge of the bed, to slip her feet into her slippers. The swath of sunlight creeping its way around the edges of the window shade told her it was morning. So, too, did the rumble of the garbage can as Jeff wheeled it down to—

  Rocketing forward, she pushed the corner of the shade to the side in time to see Emily wheel the can to a stop against the curb before heading back across the street, her gait void of its usual zip.

  Emily.

  She’d known it couldn’t be Jeff. Yet, for one disoriented second, she’d almost let herself believe the past five days had been some sort of heinous nightmare rather than her new reality. The echoed slap of the shade against the windowsill as she sat back in the otherwise silent room said otherwise. So, too, did the undisturbed sheets on the other side of the bed . . .

  Reaching back, she pulled Jeff’s pillow against her nose and chest. There, in the tear-dampened folds of the feather-soft fabric, she could smell him—his shampoo, the faintest hint of his cologne, his very being.