But she had Mark, and his complete faith that everything would be okay. He made sure of that, researching every car seat, stroller, and high chair. A month before her due date he had packed a hospital bag full of things she might need: a toothbrush and toothpaste, soft slippers, an iPod and headphones, packets of crackers and nuts, bottles of water. That day, when he got into the driver’s seat next to her, he grinned and said, “We’re all set.” His face was so excited, so assured, she believed him.
“Here.” Ginny gets up and opens the refrigerator. She pours Cass a glass of orange juice. “This is what I used to do when I couldn’t feel Noah for a while. The sugar in the juice should wake him up.”
Cass sits back down and drinks the juice.
They wait in silence. The house is still; the wind has died down and rain patters against the roof. Ginny thinks of Edith, pictures her in her bedroom. She’s taking clothes out of a bag she’d packed for their night at Sparrow Lake.
Cass holds her hands over her stomach, and tilts her head to the right. Finally she smiles and lets out a breath. “I feel him. His knee or his elbow, poking my ribs.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE SMELL OF wet earth and new cement fills Mark’s nose as he climbs into the half-built shelter. He picks up a cinder block and its rough edges dig into his leather gloves. He drops the block into place.
Noah scrapes his trowel along the seam to remove the excess mortar. “Like this?”
“Exactly.” Mark shows him how to use the level, and how to fill mortar into the core of each cinder block. They move around on the sawdust Mark spread on the ground to absorb the mud caused by yesterday’s hailstorm.
Noah could be spending the afternoon with Livi. School is still closed and she invited him to go bowling, but instead he’s crouched in the dirt with his dad, and this makes Mark feel strong, and capable, and like he knows what he’s doing. It makes him feel big and the Other Mark small.
“You think you can push that wheelbarrow over here?” Mark asks. “It’s pretty heavy.”
Noah hurries to the side yard and manages to lift the handles of the wheelbarrow full of cinder blocks and push it across the lawn. His face is determined, his shoulders taut. When did he get so strong? It feels impossible that this kid is his own. But there’s nothing foreign about Noah’s expression. It’s the exact face he used to make when he was learning to walk. Lips clamped shut and eyes narrowed, his chin leads his whole head forward.
Noah sets the wheelbarrow down and watches Mark place the next cinder block. “Why doesn’t Mom want us to build the shelter?” he asks.
Mark waves his hand dismissively in the direction of the house. “Let me worry about your mom.”
Noah looks uneasy.
“Your mom, she doesn’t like—” Mark stops. He tries again. “She doesn’t like that we’re messing up the backyard.”
“She doesn’t want to think about bad things happening.” Noah jabs the trowel into a lump of wet mortar. He’s upset, but not at Mark. At Ginny. It’s a new sensation—the feeling that a line has been drawn, with Mark and Noah on one side, and Ginny on the other. He likes Noah’s allegiance. But it doesn’t feel right, being separate from his wife.
“It’s because of her work,” Mark says. “Her job is to solve problems that are right in front of her.”
Noah nods. “I know.”
Mark picks up another cinder block, sets it in place. Noah pours mortar on it and spreads it with the trowel. The pine trees overhead sway in the wind.
“Why are you growing a beard?” Noah asks.
Mark rubs the stubble on his face. “You don’t like it?”
Noah considers his dad. “You look like…”
“A mountain man?” Mark stands up straighter.
Noah shakes his head.
“No? A wise old man, then. A guru.” He makes a serious face and readjusts his glasses.
“What’s a guru?”
“A teacher. Someone who imparts wisdom.”
“No…”
Mark laughs. “Yeah, I guess not.”
“You look like you, only different.”
Noah hands Mark the trowel. They squat down inside the new wall to inspect the mortar joints. They’re both filthy. Gray dust covers Noah’s hair and clothes; mud cakes his sneakers. Mark’s hands are creased with dirt, his fingernails black underneath.
“You still look like a dad though,” Noah adds.
* * *
—
Samara’s father sits on the floor of his bedroom in a pool of her mother’s clothes, bright dresses and loosely knit sweaters and slippery scarves and floral skirts. He picks up a dress the color of new grass and puts it down.
She kneels next to him and reaches for a skirt printed with roses and sparrows. “Why didn’t she tell me?” she asks. “About the house in Costa Rica? About your plan to move away?”
He holds up a translucent blue scarf, and it shimmers in the light from the window. “She wanted to wait.”
“For what?”
“When we bought the cottage you were only just out of college. We weren’t going to move until you’d established yourself. She wanted you to have someplace to come home to, if you needed it.”
“She knew I’d end up back here.”
“You and your mom were a lot alike.”
She shakes her head because they couldn’t have been more different.
“She was good at so many things. You’re like that too. She said she was waiting for you to find what you love.”
Her mother was always saying stuff like that. Who asks themselves questions like that? What do I love? Samara doesn’t have an answer. Except for an image that springs up, just now in her mind, of herself standing on tiptoe on a shiny hardwood floor, a paint roller in her outstretched hand. “And then she got sick.”
“And then she got sick.” He’s still holding the filmy blue scarf, and the expression on his face is so raw she has to look away. She thought it was so easy for him to sort through it all, to throw it away.
She was wrong about Costa Rica too. It will be good for him, to get out of this house. To go watch some tropical birds. She’s ashamed of how little she’s thought of her father the last month. She tries hard to think of him now. But it feels like she’s holding on to something that’s being torn away. She thinks of the time her uncle took them out on his speedboat at Sparrow Lake. It was summer, hot and dry, with the charred smell of a distant wildfire in the air. She was twelve, maybe thirteen, and she wore a navy halter-top swimsuit with a white stripe. Her uncle had attached a big inner tube to the back of the boat. She didn’t want to ride on it, but she did because her cousin teased her. He was on one side and she on the other. She had to straddle the side of the tube, and hold on to a plastic handle. When the boat started moving she gripped the handle as it bumped over the waves. Then it turned sharply—and her cousin let go and fell into the water with a terrific splash. He was quickly buoyed to the surface by his orange life vest. But she held on, half on the raft, half off, her vest bunched under her armpits. She held on until her fingers turned white.
Her mother was a person who didn’t let go of things—until she wasn’t. Samara folds the dress with the roses and birds and takes the scarf from her dad. It was a favorite of her mother’s when she was a little girl. Samara used to wind her fingers around it when she sat in her lap, press its fabric to her lips.
She folds it too and places it on top of the dress. “I think you should go. It’ll be good for you.”
He squeezes her shoulder. “You should know the house is paid off, and as soon as I sign the papers, that money will be yours.”
“What do you mean? The house isn’t even on the market.”
“Your mother promised the Lenovs they could make an offer on it if we ever chose to sell.”
Samara st
arts to protest and then stops. She’s relieved. She won’t have to be the one to lead buyers through her parents’ house and listen to them criticize the tile or carpet color. She won’t have to haggle with another agent over the selling price. She won’t have to walk through the empty rooms, to leave the spare keys and the garage door opener on the counter, and to lock the front door for the last time.
Still, they should have told her, about their plan to sell the house and their intention to leave the country. But this is what her parents do, what they’ve always done. They keep things from her. They know she doesn’t like change, and they protect her from it.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?” she asks. “That morning at the hospital, when you and Mom and Dr. McDonnell talked about whether to go ahead with the surgery. I was asleep and no one woke me up.”
He sighs. “We should have. If there was any mistake, that was it. I’m sorry, Sammy.”
She takes the pile of folded clothes and puts it into an empty cardboard box. “I can’t take that money. You’ll need it when you move.”
“I’ve got plenty in my retirement accounts.”
“You’ve already helped me, too much. With school, with my real estate license.”
“It’s what your mother wanted.”
“What did she want me to do with it?”
She asks the question in her head, too, but this time her mom’s voice is silent.
“I don’t know,” her father says. “But I know she wished she could be around to see what you decided.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
WHEN GINNY GETS home from work she calls out to her husband and son, but no one answers. It feels strange being home without them. She turns on the kitchen light. The dishwasher stands open, half-unloaded. Bread crumbs speckle the counter. An overflowing basket of muddy clothes blocks the door to the laundry room. Mark always keeps everything so tidy; she feels disoriented, like she’s walked into the wrong house.
She pulls her phone from her pocket and scrolls through the messages she and Edith have sent to each other over the last week. Dozens and dozens of texts. All so sweet and silly, they seem to be written by someone else. At the end is the last thing she wrote to Edith.
When can I see you?
And a blank space below it, where Edith’s response hasn’t appeared.
Ginny takes off her jacket, pushes her clogs from her feet, and starts toward the stairs. There’s a tinny taste on her tongue. The kitchen floor lurches—
Edith stands in the middle of the living room, dressed like she’s about to go running. Her track pants swish as she lunges, stretching one leg behind her, and then the other.
“What are you doing here?” Ginny croaks.
“He’s out there again,” Edith says.
“Who?”
Edith doesn’t look at Ginny. She acts like she hasn’t said anything at all. A voice calls from the stairs, “What did you say?” and the voice is Ginny’s own.
Ginny turns her face away from the sound. It isn’t real. It’s a side effect of her medication.
“He’s out there again, in his car,” Edith says.
Ginny’s twin joins Edith at the front window. She wears scrubs and smells of coffee and chlorine. Her pager, phone, and surgical scissors are still clipped to her side.
“I’m going to go talk to him,” Edith says.
“No. Don’t. That’ll just make things worse.”
Edith shakes her head. “I don’t know…”
Ginny squints out the window at Mark’s Jeep, parked on the shiny pavement. It takes her a minute to see inside because the streetlight casts a glare on the windshield. Mark sits in the front seat. Or, someone who looks a lot like Mark. The real Mark is out with Noah, at Home Depot or Safeway. This Mark’s face is streaked with mud. His mouth is a thin dark line, and his head twitches nervously back and forth.
“Let’s just be glad Noah isn’t here this time,” Ginny’s twin says.
“This is getting crazy. It’s not a normal reaction to your marriage ending, living in a tent in the woods, parking outside your ex’s house for hours at a time—”
“Just ignore him. If he doesn’t leave, we’ll call the police.” Her twin turns away from the window and moves toward the stairs.
The Jeep’s headlights switch on, and it backs out of the driveway.
“He’s leaving,” Edith says.
“Good.”
Edith joins Ginny’s twin at the bottom of the stairs. “I was going to go for a run. But I’ll stay here.”
“Would you?” Her twin presses her fingers to her eyes. “I’m so beat. Noah will be home any minute. Let’s not mention—”
“Of course not,” Edith says firmly. She reaches out to squeeze Ginny’s twin’s arm. “It’ll be okay.”
“Will it?”
“Yes. I’ll call for a pizza. The kind with pineapple Noah likes.”
Her twin’s face relaxes. “Good idea.” She leans her head toward Edith and their foreheads touch.
Ginny listens to their footsteps climb the stairs. Out the front window the driveway is empty. She tells herself the person who sat in Mark’s Jeep wasn’t real. But his dirty face seems to loom in front of her eyes, no matter how many times she blinks it away.
Cass’s dog barks outside and then quiets. Ginny moves back to the kitchen, away from the driveway. She opens the sliding door to the backyard. The hole has disappeared. In its place is a cinder block structure. Somehow in the span of a few days Mark has built it, his bunker. It has a floor and walls; only the roof is missing. A tangle of pipes and tools sits at its muddy threshold.
She feels sick looking at the ugly, squat thing her husband has built. That she let him build. She could have stopped him, but she didn’t, and its dark, heavy shape fills her with shame. She closes the door. Her phone is in her pocket. She shouldn’t text Edith again. She shouldn’t but she does.
Please. I’ll meet you wherever you are.
She waits in the blue glow of the phone’s screen. And waits.
When Edith’s answer appears it feels like magic. She’s at the hospital; her shift is almost over and she’ll meet Ginny there.
* * *
—
The sun disappears behind the mountain, and the walls of the shelter and the surrounding trees become indistinct shapes in the dying light. The creak of insects fills the air. Noah rubs his eyes. They’ve been working hard all day. Mud streaks his face; his hair is stiff with cement dust.
Mark’s tired too. His shoulders ache from hauling cinder blocks and trusses and the steel hatch door. The stubble on his cheeks itches with sweat. “We’re almost done,” he says. He switches on a work light he’s attached to a tree, and it casts a yellow glow over the building site. He lines up the metal trusses on the wet grass. Then he attaches the hook of the mini crane he’s rented for the day, a sprawling machine that looks like a giant wolf spider.
He tells Noah where to stand so he can guide the trusses into place. His son pulls on a helmet, safety glasses, and gloves.
“Just follow the chalked guidelines, like we talked about, okay?”
Noah yawns again and nods.
Mark turns the key on the crane and the machine comes to life with a thundering whine. Fumes billow and they both cough.
Mark positions himself behind the controls. He scratches his stubble, and then takes the levers in his gloved hands. “Okay, here goes.”
* * *
—
Ginny hears a click—someone’s opening the call room door. Did she and Edith not lock it? A figure blocks the doorway. “Dr. McDonnell?” a tentative male voice says into the darkness. “Are you in here?”
Ginny feels Edith’s warm body against her own. Neither of them moves. She can see Dr. Harper but he can’t see her. There’s still time to…to what, hide?
A
s he feels for the light switch, the sweat under her arms and the slippery wet between her legs goes cold. And then—snap—they are all bathed in bluish light. Ginny and Edith in the bed, their hearts hammering against each other. Their scrub pants pushed below their knees. Dr. Harper’s mortified face in the doorway.
Edith snatches the thin sheet and pulls it over her body.
“Dr. McDonnell.” Her intern talks to a spot on the wall above Ginny’s head. “We’ve been paging you. There’s a situation on the fifth floor—” Clogs squeak in the hallway behind him. It’ll be Dr. Dawson, and maybe the floor nurse too. Or, worse, another surgeon. Dr. Harper holds open the door as if he’s inviting everyone inside.
But before the clogs arrive, he turns off the light and closes the door. “She’s coming,” Ginny hears him say.
And then she’s moving like a frightened animal, like she moved when she was a resident, in response to a barking order from an attending, or a harried correction from a nurse. Her heart scampers, her body shivers; she doesn’t look at Edith. She throws open a locker and it clatters against the wall. She finds a clean pair of scrubs and fumbles to pull them on.
Dr. Harper didn’t say which patient. She thinks immediately of Professor Kells. Where is her pager? Her phone? They aren’t anywhere in the room. Not on the desk or in the locker or on the floor. She thrusts her bare feet into her clogs because she can’t find her socks. Edith hasn’t moved. She’s still in the bed with the sheet pulled up to her chin. Her cheeks are bright red.
Ginny remembers what Edith said in the car, that Ginny has only been thinking about herself, not about Edith at all.
“I’m so sorry,” Ginny says, before running out the door.
* * *
—
The backyard is dark now, and thick with exhaust. Mark squints at the controls of the mini crane in the light from the work lamp. Just one more truss to go. Noah stands inside the shelter, ready to help guide the beam into place. Mark grasps the throttle and feels the vibration of the machine through his body as he maneuvers the boom up, slowly, carefully, keeping the beam level. Then down, down, down. He makes sure it’s not too close to Noah, or too far away.
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