Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

  A recording—a recording she could listen to again . . .

  Tightening her grip on the phone, she reached for the machine’s play button only to pull her hand away as a different voice, a hesitant murmur really, cut through her sniffles.

  “Danielle?”

  She pulled in a breath, held it for a beat. “Yes . . . Who is this?”

  “This is Lydia. Lydia Schlabach.”

  The familiar name pulled her shoulders up and then sank them back against the chair. “Lydia?”

  “Yah. It is me.”

  Her mind’s eye rewound back to her own childhood and the trip she’d taken to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, with her parents when she was Maggie’s age.

  Maggie . . .

  Squeezing her eyes closed, Dani willed herself to breathe. To focus. To—

  “Wait,” she rasped. “You’re calling . . . On a telephone . . .”

  “Yah. It is the phone between our farm and the Zooks’.”

  She rested her elbow on the desk and, using her thumb and index finger, kneaded the area near the outer corner of her eye. “I-I didn’t know you could call like this. I thought it was just letters—like the ones we send each other at Christmas.”

  “I could not send just a letter for this.”

  And then she knew. Somehow, someway, the eight-year-old Amish girl she’d befriended nearly a lifetime earlier had heard the news about Jeff and the kids. A chill that began in her chest inched its way outward toward her limbs . . .

  “Danielle, I am sorry to hear of the loss of your family.”

  She stopped kneading and, instead, dropped her free hand onto the desk. “How? How did you know?”

  “It was Abram Zook’s wife, Katie. Her twin sister, Hannah, phoned to speak of the accident.”

  “But I don’t know anyone named Hannah who is Amish,” she murmured.

  “Hannah was not baptized. She lives an English life now in the big city. She takes care of a little boy—Jack.”

  Jack . . . Jack . . .

  Was there a Jack in Spencer’s—

  “Hannah told Katie that Jack’s kin live next door to you,” said Lydia.

  Dani lifted her gaze to the window as the woman’s words rang true. “Wait. I think I remember this now. Hannah grew up by you—in Blue Ball. Roberta’s sister is a bit of a socialite and this Hannah—your friend—is her son’s nanny. Roberta mentioned her one day when I was talking about you and how we’ve been pen pals since we were eight. I made a mental note to ask you if you knew her when we next exchanged letters, but I guess I got busy with the kids and . . .”

  The explanation died on her lips as her eyes, her thoughts, returned to the answering machine and the voices she knew it held. “Lydia, I . . . I have to go. Thank you for calling. It means a lot.”

  “Please do not go yet,” Lydia asserted, shyly. “There is more I want to say.”

  “You’re sorry. For my loss. I-I get it; I do. And I’m grateful for the call, truly. It’s just that”—she stopped, gathered her breath, and then released it slowly—“sorry doesn’t bring them back. I . . . I-I wish it did.”

  “Sometimes it is difficult to understand God’s will. It—”

  She jerked upright in her chair. “God’s will?”

  “Yah.”

  “Wait.” Gritting her teeth, she pulled the phone so tight to her face it hurt. “You’re telling me it was God’s will to have my husband’s car at the exact spot where another one could hit it with such force it killed my entire family in one shot? That was His will?”

  Her question, her tone, was met with a heavy silence.

  “Lydia?” she prodded, her anger audible. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  “It is not I who says such things, Danielle. The Bible says: ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”

  “And that is supposed to make me feel better?” she asked, shrieking. “That God chose to do this to a man like Jeff, who was kind and thoughtful and smart and true? That God chose to do this to my eight-year-old daughter, who loved helping people? That God chose to do this to my five-year-old son, who was going to move mountains one day? That God chose to do this to my little one, whose smile rivaled the sun? And that God chose to do this to my mom, who loved them all—and me—so fiercely? That’s supposed to make me feel better somehow?”

  “It will not, at first. But, in time, it will . . . help. For the Bible also says: ‘Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.’ ”

  “Lydia, please. This isn’t helping.”

  “It is not my wish to upset you.”

  “Then what is your wish?” she said, her throat tight.

  “For you to know I know. And for you to know that Elijah and I have spoken and there is room for you if you would like to get away for a little while.”

  Like clockwork, her gaze dropped to the bottom drawer and the brochure that taunted her thoughts around the clock. “Trust me, Lydia, the last thing in this world I want or need is a getaway.”

  “But perhaps, if you come, you can begin to heal, too.”

  “Heal?” Dani echoed, her anger draining into a heavy, choking sadness. “You don’t heal from something like this. You”—she looked up at the ceiling and then back at the answering machine—“you just wait. Until you get to die, too.”

  “Yah. But until you do, you must learn to keep living.”

  Keep living . . .

  It sounded like a death sentence.

  “Danielle, I must go. Elijah will be wondering where I am if I am not back soon. But please know that when you are ready, you do not need to send word. Just come. There is room and friendship for you here.”

  Chapter 5

  Dani was waiting when the morning sun finally poked its way around the edges of the blinds to project its presence onto the far wall. The first day she’d been aware of its intrusion, she’d pulled her pillow over her eyes and fallen back into yet another dream-filled sleep in which Maggie, and then Spencer, and then Ava had called out to her again and again, her own desperate attempt to find them repeatedly foiled. On each of the next six mornings, she’d held that dream at bay by closing her eyes but remaining awake, the promise of yet another twenty-four hours alone igniting a fresh new round of tears. But this time, when she turned her cheek against the still-damp pillow, she followed the vertical lines back and forth across the wall and fancied herself standing behind them, looking out, waiting for someone to release her from their confines.

  But there would be no release, no grace awarded for time served.

  “My jail,” she murmured, changing her view first to the ceiling and then to the stack of crackers on her nightstand that didn’t look a whole lot different than it had the previous night.

  She’d forced herself to eat one, and then two, chasing each and every nibble down with water to keep it from getting stuck in a throat that was at once dry from intermittent bouts of screaming and then raw from the tear-induced nausea that often followed. Yet as pathetic as it was, it had become part of her new routine . . .

  Lie in bed.

  Scream.

  Cry.

  Run for the restroom.

  Emerge, shaky and spent.

  Sleep.

  Go downstairs.

  Open freezer.

  Contemplate one of the dozen or so containers of food from her well-meaning neighbors.

  Close freezer.

  Grab a half dozen crackers and a glass of water.

  Go back upstairs.

  Eat one, maybe two crackers.

  Drink water.

  Spend time in one of the kids’ rooms.

  Scream.

  Cry.

  Run for the restroom.

  Emerge, shaky and spent.

  Sleep.

  Rinse and repeat. Day, by day, by day, until somehow two weeks had gone by since—

  Biting back the urge to scream, Dani turned back to the slatted square on the wall and willed h
erself to breathe. Slowly. Deeply.

  Breath by breath the prison bars gave way to the light until, struggling up onto her elbow, she found herself looking at the actual window and the light forcing its way into the otherwise darkened room. She didn’t need to open the blinds to know the sun was there, that another twenty-four hours had dawned, but for the first time in two weeks, she wanted air, needed air.

  She flung back the sheet, pushed herself up onto her elbow, waited for the dizziness that had become her morning norm to fade, and then swung her legs over the edge of the bed. For a fleeting moment, she considered opening the window around the blinds, but instead, she wrapped her hand around the cord and pulled, the answering blast of light lifting her shoulders and chin of their own accord.

  Oh yes . . .

  Seated there on the bed, bathed in the sun’s strengthening light, the chill that had taken up residence in a place no blanket seemed to reach finally loosened its grip. She reached for the latch, spun it to the open position, and slid open the window.

  Somehow, despite her pleas for time to rewind back to that fateful morning, or to fast-forward until she, too, could be gone, time had moved at its own pace. Now, based on the sights and sounds filtering through her screen, spring had dispensed with its annual game of cat and mouse in favor of strutting around in all its glory.

  Gazing down at the yard, she spied a female cardinal hopping around on the ground, happily partaking in a thawing earth’s feast. She heard another bird, not too far off, trying out a voice that had been virtually silent throughout the winter. A flowery scent in the air stole her attention from the feathery concert and sent it racing toward the back patio and the—

  She sucked in her breath so hard, all sounds outside the window ceased. There, just beyond the blooming Bradford pear tree and atop the little patch of earth she’d cleared in the fall, was a mass of tulips in a sea of bold, brilliant colors—reds, yellows, purples, and pinks. And in the center of them all, nestled amid a distinctive circle of pink, was a happy face made of two yellow tulips for the eyes, one yellow tulip for the nose, and a slightly curved line of four yellow tulips for the mouth.

  “What on earth?” she whispered, only to press her fist to her mouth as Ava’s voice filled her ears.

  “I made a surpwise for you, Mommy! A weally, weally special surpwise! It’s a happy face! With the pwetty fwowers!”

  Rocking forward, Dani rested her forehead against the glass, her eyes riveted on the fruits of an afternoon that had entailed dirt, water, endless questions, lots of giggles, wide-eyed plans, a carton of bulbs, and, finally, a mad dash to pick Maggie up at school and get her to a scout event.

  “They are going to be wewy, wewy bootiful.”

  Suddenly, she was back there, on that day—in that moment when she’d looked at her phone and realized it was later than she’d realized. Like a whirling dervish, she’d grabbed the dirt and the watering can and run them over to the shed. When she’d returned for the little shovel, she’d found Ava hastily digging holes in the center of the flower bed and begging for just “fwee more minutes . . . pwease, Mommy.”

  Of course, three minutes had become ten, but—

  Blinking against the day’s latest round of tears, she again took in the flowers that marked the eyes . . . the nose . . . the smile . . . “Oh, Ava, you did it . . . You made a happy face just like you said,” she managed through her trembling smile. “And it is absolutely bootiful, my precious angel.”

  She wasn’t sure how long she stayed there, staring out at those flowers, but, eventually, the sun on her cheek became the sun on her forehead and kicked off the first real rumble of hunger she’d had in two weeks. Slowly, she backed away from the window and made her way from the room. At the top of the stairs, she waited a few seconds to see if the rumble was, in fact, a sign she was about to get sick, but when it remained, and even strengthened, she headed downstairs to the kitchen and the mountain of meal choices that awaited her inside the freezer.

  Tetrazzini . . .

  Ziti . . .

  Beef tips and noodles . . .

  Shepherd’s pie . . .

  One by one she sifted through each stack before settling on Emily’s chicken casserole. Pulling it out, she carried it over to the counter, peeled off the sticky note with heating instructions, and popped it into the microwave for the first two-minute segment. While it cooked, she liberated a fork and knife from the drawer, set them on the counter, and opened the front window to the same gentle spring breeze that had greeted her upstairs.

  When her meal was ready, she headed toward her spot at the six-person table only to change course in favor of her desk and the single chair it boasted. There, surrounded by all things Dani, she took one bite, and then another, the simple act of eating both foreign and familiar all at the same time.

  Soon, two bites became three, and four, and soon, it was all gone, her friend’s simple yet tasty casserole the perfect choice for her first non-cracker meal.

  Pushing the plate to the side, Dani opened the top drawer, retrieved the package of thank-you notes she always kept on hand, and began to write notes to correlate with the names she’d seen in the freezer—Emily, Roberta, Suze, Nancy, David, and on and on she went, the routineness of the task calming. When the notes were done, she set about the task of stuffing them into envelopes she addressed, stamped, and placed into the growing pile at her elbow.

  When the last stamp was placed, she returned the packet of unused notes to the drawer and sank back against the chair, her gaze moving from the pile, to the clock, to the pen she needed to cap, and, finally, to the wall calendar and the multi-colored notations that filled each and every square—purple ink for Maggie, blue ink for Spencer, pink ink for Ava, and green for Jeff. Grabbing her glass, she tried to offset the sudden dryness in her throat with what was left of her water, but really, all she could do was stare at the days that had come and gone since the accident.

  Maggie had missed a scout meeting, a classmate’s party at the new paint-your-own-pottery shop in Westfield, two dance classes, three playdates, and tryouts for Annie at the local theater . . .

  Spencer had missed three soccer practices, three baseball practices, one game of each, two sessions of karate, a playdate with Bobby, a party at the rec center, and a swimming lesson . . .

  Ava had missed two story hours at the library, four sessions of gym time for three-year-olds at the rec center, two beginner ballet and tap classes, a mom-and-me trip to the zoo with their church friends, and her three-year-old birthday portrait . . .

  Jeff had missed a client dinner, a golf outing with his partners, and the second of their two planned date nights during Mom’s visit . . .

  From a distance, the mishmash of colors was almost rainbow-like with the addition of things like parties and dinners being squeezed in alongside the staples like games and practices and classes. But up close, as it was at that moment, it wasn’t rainbow-like at all. Rather, it was crazy and chaotic and—

  Desperate for air, she slid back her chair, grabbed the stack of stamped thank-you notes, and stepped out onto the front porch, her gaze, if not her thoughts, firmly rooted on the mailbox at the end of the driveway.

  By muscle memory more than anything else, she crossed the front porch, made her way down the trio of steps onto the flagstone walkway, and then stopped dead in her tracks as a series of sounds broke through the haze in her brain and forced her to look up.

  Across the street, Bobby and a little boy from his soccer team were running around the yard playing army men. Next door, Roberta’s daughter was playing Barbies with Suze’s daughter, their sweet, almost singsong voices trying desperately to adopt a more appropriate tone for their adult-age dolls. And between both groups, in the middle of the road, were Dani’s friends and fellow moms, their laughter-infused chatter like ice water against bare skin.

  She didn’t mean to gasp or breathe or step backward or swallow or do whatever it was that made everything in front of her stop in one swipe of
an invisible conductor’s baton, but she did.

  The pow-pows of the army men’s weaponry ceased . . .

  Barbie’s trip to the cardboard mall in her bright pink coupe stopped . . .

  And the laughter-filled chatter of her peers drifted away into a suffocating silence.

  Clearing her throat, Dani motioned toward the mailbox with the stack of thank-you notes. “Don’t mind me. I-I just need to put some things in the box real quick.”

  The boys’ eyes widened across the tops of their empty water guns, the girls pulled their Barbie dolls onto their pastel-clad laps, and the moms exchanged knowing glances before heading, as a unified group, in her direction.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, holding up her free hand. “Just wanted to mail these, that’s all.”

  Roberta and Suze stopped. Emily didn’t.

  “It’s good to see you outside,” Emily said, hurrying in her direction.

  Unsure of what to say, Dani stuffed the envelopes into the mailbox and mentally calculated how fast she could make it back inside.

  Thirty seconds? Maybe forty?

  Of course, with Emily now standing in the middle of the walkway, blocking her path, all bets were off.

  “It’s really, really good to see you out here, Dani. Like real good.”

  In lieu of the words that still seemed to have abandoned her, she tried to offer a smile. But even without the benefit of a mirror she could tell the effort yielded something far more grimace-like than intended.

  “We”—Emily swept her hand toward Roberta and Suze—“miss having you out here with us, Dani.”

  “Emily is right!” Roberta called. “We really do!”

  Dani shifted her weight across her legs and swallowed.

  “In fact, Emily was just bringing us up to speed on the latest escapades involving that lunatic mother in Bobby and Spencer’s—” Suze’s perfectly manicured hand came down on Roberta’s arm, silencing the rest of the story and sending both women’s eyes down to the pavement in near perfect unison.

  “Oh, Dani,” Emily whispered. “They didn’t mean it. Roberta and Suze—they must have just forgotten what they were saying, and who they were saying it in front of for a moment. I mean, this”—Emily motioned toward Dani’s house—“is just still so hard for everyone to wrap their head around, you know?”