Piece by Piece

by Laura Bradford

  Sure enough, the duck responded to the child’s sweet hello with a single, muted quack. When she informed him about the ice cream Caleb had gotten her, he quacked again.

  “See? It’s like that with the two of them every single time we come, and we’re not here all that often.”

  She pivoted on the bench so she could both eat and watch at the same time. “How did he get the name Upside-Down Ducky?”

  Caleb’s laugh drew a quick over-the-shoulder glance from Nettie—a glance he waved back toward the duck. “First time we saw him, he was dunking himself the way ducks do. Only this guy stayed that way almost the whole time we were eating our ice cream. Nettie, of course, thought it was hilarious. When I took her over to get a closer look when we were all done, he swam over to see if we were going to give him something to eat. Nettie bent herself over, headfirst, and begged him to dunk his head again. And he did it . . . And then, when she flipped herself again, he did it, too! Next thing I knew, there were four other kids around Nettie’s age standing next to us trying to get this guy to follow their commands, too. But he didn’t. When they flipped over, he just looked at them. When Nettie flipped over and then righted herself, he quacked and dunked his head. Every. Single. Time. Watch . . .”

  Pausing his spoon a few inches shy of his next mouthful of ice cream, he nudged her attention back to his niece. “Hey, kiddo, can you make him go upside down so Dani can see?”

  “Yah.” Nettie bounced up to a full stand, flipped herself over at the waist, and then, when she righted herself once again, the duck quacked and dove his head into the water, his little yellow webbed feet breaking the surface.

  “Whoa,” Dani managed around her spoon.

  “I know. Crazy, isn’t it?” Setting his now-empty ice-cream cup onto the tray, he stretched his arms high above his head. “I get such a kick out of watching that, I’m not sure who wants to come here more these days, Nettie or me.”

  “Have you tried?” she asked, alternating her attention between Nettie and the man seated on the other side of the table. “Will he do it for you?”

  Caleb laughed. “Oh, I’ve tried. More than a few times, I’m embarrassed to say. But all I get for my efforts is dizziness.”

  “And the duck?”

  “He just sits there.”

  “What about Luke and the other boys? Have they tried?”

  “They have. And same thing—nothing. Nettie does it and, quack, he flips.” Resting his forearms atop the table, Caleb leaned forward, shaking his head in disbelief. “I’m telling you, Dani, he remembers her.”

  “There’s a cat like that out by one of the soccer fields,” she said, going in for yet another bite. “We’re pretty sure he’s a stray on account of the fact he doesn’t have a collar and he’s pretty skittish whenever anyone gets too close. But Spencer? It’s like he’s this cat whisperer or something, because every time he’s around, that cat comes bounding over to see him like a dog might—”

  The sound of her own laughter stopped her cold, forcing her gaze down to the empty cup in her hand.

  “Keep going,” Caleb prodded as Nettie’s return to the table freed his gaze back onto Dani. “Did he give the cat a name?”

  Did he . . .

  “I can name a cat!” Nettie plunked herself back onto the bench and pointed Dani’s eyes back to the now-empty cup in her hand. “You ate it all up!”

  I can . . .

  She stared down at the milky residue inside her cup, her throat closing so tightly she was forced to breathe through her nose.

  Two words, two children. One present, one . . . not.

  Breathe in.

  Breathe out.

  Breathe in.

  “Dani?”

  She could feel Caleb’s questioning eyes, could see Nettie’s sticky hands moving in time with whatever the little girl was saying. But in that moment, all she could hear, all she knew, was the voice of disgust inside her head.

  You laughed . . .

  Chapter 18

  She heard the soft thud of his approaching footsteps as he came around the back of the grossdawdy house, but she didn’t look up. If she were lucky, he was looking for Elijah or a wandering cow and would simply keep on walking, oblivious to her presence. But the sound of her name, hushed and uncertain on his tongue, squashed that hope in record time.

  “Hey . . .” Caleb crossed the patio and squatted down beside Dani’s Adirondack-style chair, the lines above his brow pinched together with worry. “I’m really sorry, Dani. I wanted to look in on you sooner, but Lydia wasn’t back from Miss Lottie’s when we pulled up. I didn’t think I should bring Nettie here, so I let her help me feed the calf.”

  “I wasn’t expecting you to look in on me.”

  If the wooden tone of her answer surprised him, he didn’t let on. Instead, he cocked the front brim of his hat upward with his finger and shifted his weight across his bent legs. “But I wanted to. It’s clear that something upset you there at the end and if it’s something I did, or something I said, I’d like to know. So I can apologize.”

  “You did nothing.”

  “Are you sure? I’ve been told I talk a little too much, sometimes.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The lines around his eyes softened a smidge. “I thought it was a good sign that you ate all of your ice cream. Made me wish I’d gotten you the next size up, instead. Next time, though . . .”

  “There won’t be a next time.” She fixed her gaze on a windmill spinning in the distance and tried to tamp down the anger she felt building inside. “Not with me, anyway.”

  Surprise swayed him back. “I thought you said I didn’t do anything wrong . . .”

  “I did. Because you didn’t.”

  “Then why—”

  Stopping his question with her hand, she abandoned her view of the windmill and dropped her feet back onto the patio. “Look, you have nothing to apologize for, but I don’t need you looking in on me, now or ever. I came here, to Lancaster, because your sister said I could have my own space. If that’s changed, or if I’ve overstayed my welcome, just say that and I’ll leave.”

  “Whoa.” He sprang upward, his tall frame blocking her path to the back door. “Slow down. No one said anything about you overstaying your welcome or wanting you to leave. I just know something happened at the ice-cream place today because one minute you were actually laughing and—”

  Feeling the heat of shame on her cheeks, she pushed past him, desperate to make it inside before the tears began. Two steps from the door, however, he rushed forward, stopping her with his hand. “Dani, wait! Is that what this is about? That you laughed?”

  She tried to wiggle free of his hand, to reach out for the door handle and pull, but she couldn’t see through the rush of tears ignited by his words. “Please,” she managed as the threat of full-on sobbing marched its way up her throat. “I want to go inside.”

  Instead of loosening his grip, he turned her so they were face-to-face, the worry he’d worn on his face just moments earlier replaced by . . . understanding?

  “Dani, you weren’t doing anything wrong. You were sharing a story that made you happy—a story about your son. That’s nothing to feel bad or guilty about. Ever.”

  She stared at him through the watery haze, grief rapidly giving way to anger. “I can’t be happy! My husband, my three children, and my mother are gone, killed in a car accident that shouldn’t have happened—that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been a better mother, a better wife, a better daughter!”

  His grip softened. “Dani, you looked at a brochure, that’s it. That doesn’t make you an awful person and it certainly doesn’t make you responsible for what happened to your family. That’s on the driver of the other car, not you.”

  “I stayed behind,” she countered, her voice rising. “I stayed behind to-to read.”

  Slowly, he released his hold on her arm. “Didn’t you say your mother insisted you stay home?”

  Had she? She couldn’t remember . .
.

  “That she didn’t like how little time you took for yourself?” he continued.

  She looked past him, the windmill swimming in her vision while his questions landed like grenades.

  “That even after they left for the park, you spent your time writing thank-you notes for your daughter’s birthday gifts?” Hooking his finger beneath her chin, he guided her eyes back to his. “That’s not the description of a selfish woman, Dani. Not even close.”

  “My job was to soak them up the way Lydia does! To play with them! To laugh with them! To be present in the moment with them! Not running around trying to be some award-winning mother or wife in the eyes of-of . . . other parents, or clients, or whoever else I was always trying to impress!” She paused, trying to collect herself, but she couldn’t. Now that the words were flowing from her mouth, she couldn’t stop them. Not yet. “I shouldn’t have been writing thank-you notes, or planning class parties, or reading some book my mother left behind on the coffee table! I should have been with them that day! I-I should have been with them in that car!”

  “Why? So you could be dead, too?”

  “Yes! Yes!” she sobbed. “Yes! A million times, yes!”

  Bookending her shoulders with his hands, he squeezed her full attention back to his face, the look of horror she found there ratcheting up the volume on her sobs. “Don’t say that, Dani! Don’t think it, don’t say it, and don’t believe it—ever!”

  She tried again to break free of his grip, but he held fast. “I can’t listen to this,” she wailed.

  “Sorry, Dani, but you have to. You’re in a bad place right now. A horrible place. I get it, I really do . . . or”—he glanced up at the sky as if searching for something—“or at least I can imagine what this must be like for you. And every time I do, I don’t know how you’re still standing; I really don’t.”

  “That’s just it: I don’t want to be standing. I want to be with them. Like I should be!”

  “You are where you should be, Dani.”

  “How-how can you say that?” she stammered.

  “Because you weren’t in that car.”

  She yanked free of his hands, anger blooming again. “Are you saying you think my family should be dead?” she hissed.

  “No . . . Not should. But for whatever reason, God wanted you to stay here. For now.”

  “God?” she half yelled, half shrieked. “God? What God wants to take a wonderfully brilliant husband and father in the prime of his life? What God wants a kind, sweet, empathetic eight-year-old, or a five-year-old who just lost his first tooth and was loved by everyone? What God wants a three-year-old who grew happy-face flowers for her mommy and never even got to try out all of her birthday presents? What God takes a mother who supported her only child through everything the way my mother did?”

  “You’re angry. That makes sense.”

  “It does? I’m so glad you think so . . .”

  He palmed his mouth, only to let his hand slip down his chin to his side. “I’m not trying to patronize you, Dani. I’m really not. What I just said about anger—it’s normal after a loss like this. Miss Lottie said there are five stages of grief and anger is definitely one of them. Not everyone goes through all five stages, and the order may be different from one person to the next, but anger is a big one. I read about it after I left her house.”

  “Is laughter one of them?”

  Oblivious to her sarcasm, he paused, considering her question. “No. I don’t think it is. I’m pretty sure it’s denial, anger, depression . . . bargaining, and acceptance.”

  Acceptance.

  As if that could ever happen . . .

  To Caleb, though, she shrugged, the gesture labored as the fight began to drain from her body. “I laughed today, Caleb. Laughed. And in that moment, anyone looking at me would never know I lost my entire family eight weeks ago. What kind of person—what kind of mother—does that?”

  “A wonderful mom who loved her children, who took joy in the memory of a moment with one of her kids, who—”

  She threw up her hand, stopping him mid-sentence. “A wonderful mom?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You didn’t know me as a mother,” she argued. “You didn’t know my husband, my kids. You can’t make an assumption like that.”

  He squared his jaw, pulling himself up to his full six foot two. “It’s not an assumption, Dani. I know you. A title like wife and mother doesn’t change that.”

  “Please. You met me, what? A few times over a course of a single week when I was eight and you were ten? That was a lifetime ago.”

  “In years, maybe. But I don’t think the core of who you are has changed. Not even a little,” he said.

  “The core?”

  Crossing his arms in front of his chest, he met her eyes, the irritation she knew they held showing no effect on him. “You were kind, gentle, and generous in nature.”

  “Twenty-seven years changes people, Caleb.”

  “Some, maybe. But not you.”

  “You can’t know that,” she said, flustered.

  “I can, and I do. Which is why I stand by my earlier assessment about your laugh. You were recalling a special memory—the way a wonderful mom would.”

  This time her laugh held no sign of humor, lightness, or anything resembling joy. “Wonderful moms don’t long for time away from their kids! Wonderful moms aren’t surprised when they look out their window and see something their child told them about six months earlier yet didn’t truly absorb in the moment because they were too preoccupied with I don’t even know what!”

  Her voice broke, but she forced herself to go on, her throat growing rawer and rawer by the second. “Wonderful moms get down on the floor with their sons and happily play cars and trucks for hours! Wonderful moms go to the park with their children and their husband and their mother instead of staying home by themselves! Wonderful moms are with their children when they need her most!”

  “Enjoying a book and a little time for yourself doesn’t mean you weren’t a wonderful mom,” Caleb countered. “It means you needed a recharge. That’s it. Everyone does at some point. As for what happened to them? You didn’t cause it . . . It didn’t happen as some sort of punishment for you . . . It just happened. And it’s horrible, and it’s heartbreaking, and you’ve got a long road ahead of you, but you’ll get there. In time.”

  “There’s nowhere to get,” she rasped. “Nowhere I want to be other than with them.”

  “One day, when the time is right, you will be. But for now, you’re here.”

  She sagged back against the door, twisting her hands at her sides. “I miss them so much,” she whispered. “It’s like there’s this hole inside of me that just keeps getting bigger and bigger.”

  “And it will, for a while. Until you start filling it back in with your happiest memories and all of the new moments and joys still to come.”

  “New joys?” she echoed. “There won’t ever be new joys!”

  He led her gaze down to her abdomen, held it there a moment, and then brought it back to his own with a dramatic cough and a follow-up smile. “I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

  Turning, she grabbed the handle and gave it a fast tug, the answering whoosh of the door cut short by his hand.

  “Okay . . . Okay . . . I won’t push. But you’re still here, on this earth. Remember that.” He let go of the door’s edge. “Joy is everywhere, Dani. Sometimes it finds you just like news of that baby coming did. And sometimes you go out and find it all on your own, just like you did today at the ice-cream place when—”

  “I didn’t do that,” she argued. “I didn’t find anything even close to joy.”

  Returning his cowboy hat to its forward position, he held her gaze for several long beats and then turned and walked away.

  Chapter 19

  It was just shy of eleven o’clock the next morning when she heard the shout, the fear, if not the reason for it, reaching through the screen and yankin
g her to her feet. Dropping her pen onto the lone paragraph she’d written thus far, Dani ran across the kitchen, through the front door, and down the steps, her ears straining for anything that could pinpoint the direction she should go.

  A second, louder shout sent her racing across the driveway into the barn. Her pounding footsteps and minor stumble against the open door brought the sound of running feet in her direction.

  “Tell me you found her . . .” Caleb said, bending at the waist, his hands on his thighs as he worked to catch his breath.

  “Found who?”

  “Nettie!”

  Dani clapped her hands to her mouth as the sheer terror she saw resurrecting itself in Caleb’s eyes became hers. “She’s missing?”

  “She was right here”—he jammed his finger toward the empty baby bottle standing upright on the hay-strewn floor—“five minutes ago! And now she’s gone!”

  “Maybe she just went inside. With Lydia.”

  “Lydia is at a doctor’s appointment,” he said, glancing inside one stall and then another, his mouth growing tighter each time.

  Spreading her hands wide, Dani closed the gap between them with four . . . five . . . six steps. “Hold still a second. Think. Maybe she walked into the field to see Elijah.”

  “Elijah is with Lydia.” Caleb fast-stepped his way past the remaining few stalls and then whirled back to Dani, his eyes wide, his hands linked behind his cowboy hat. “I was supposed to be watching her, and I was! I let her give the calf his last few slurps from the bottle while I mucked out one of the stalls. That’s it!”

  She took a moment to think, to process, a strange yet familiar calm settling in around her. “Okay. How long has it been?”

  “Since I last saw her? Five minutes,” he said again, his eyes darting around the barn as if seeing it for the first time. “Tops! And I’ve been looking for her for four of those five!”