by Anna Adams
He tried not to think as he readied Will’s clothes for the next morning and checked they’d done the right homework. The king of ABCs and colors in his kindergarten class, Will liked to have the correct answers. One day of his son’s near hysteria because they’d done the wrong day’s work had made him extra careful about getting the date and assignment combo right.
In the bathtub, Will was delivering color commentary as he dive-bombed plastic carriers with his fighters, which he could name by model. Patrick went to haul him and his boats out of the cooling water. “You have about two minutes.”
“I’m not ready, Daddy. I’m doing a battle.”
“You’re crazy for planes, buddy.”
Will slicked back his pale hair. “Once upon a day, I’ll fly planes like these, Daddy.”
“I’ll be first in line for a ride.”
“If I have room. Mommy doesn’t want a ride. She doesn’t want me to be a pilot.”
For Will’s sake, Patrick managed to hide his anger with Lisa. Shading the truth might not be honest, but Will needed some kind of mother figure. “Mommies worry about their boys. She wants you to be safe on the ground, at home.”
“She’s not home.” Will’s next bomb landed with even more force. “I don’t get to be with both of you no more. Ever again.”
He couldn’t say, “Because your mommy might have gotten you killed.”
“Sometimes that happens when people don’t manage to make marriage work, buddy. But Mom and I both love you. You know that.”
“Where is my mommy?” Will balanced his plane on his wrinkled palm. “I don’t like that I don’t get to see her. Do you make her stay away, Daddy?”
“No.” He would if he had to, until she got help.
Patrick had only cried twice in his adult life before the divorce. On his wedding day as Lisa had floated down the aisle like pure light and again at 3:24 a.m. on the morning Will came into their lives. Since the day his son was rushed to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia, however, he’d choked down more tears than the lead drama queen on the worst soap opera.
“You’re turning into a prune, buddy. Ready to get out?”
Will tried to answer, but a yawn stopped him. By the time he managed to close his mouth, Patrick had him wrapped in a towel, halfway to his room.
They read their regulation three books before bed, and Patrick said his own silent prayer that the question of keeping Lisa away from Will wouldn’t come up again.
He tidied up around the house. A client, who’d given up pickpocketing to earn a living by working for people like Patrick who couldn’t keep up with their own housework, came by twice a week to do the big stuff.
Patrick liked keeping Ned Montgomery off the streets, but he felt strangely embarrassed with the reformed convict knowing that Patrick hated to pick up newspapers after he read them. Or that Will had never managed to get a towel into a hamper.
After he ran out of mindless chores, he turned on one of the twenty-four-hour news channels. All the while, his thoughts drifted back to Daphne.
Was he a man or a barely surviving divorced father whose ex-wife had convinced him no one could change?
RAINA MET DAPHNE on the front porch. Her smile widened when Daphne got out of the loaner.
“You got a new car.”
The little sedan was hardly new. It sported a dent in the front panel closest to Raina, and a scratch all the way from hood to taillight. A hailstorm had pocked the paint job with dings. But it looked better to Raina than Daphne’s own car.
“I borrowed it from this guy named Kent while my car’s in the shop. The radiator blew.”
“I know Kent. He did some transmission work for my mother a couple of years ago.”
“You like his work?”
“Sure.” Raina snapped her fingers as if she remembered why she’d hurried out. “I did something today. I don’t want you thinking I don’t want you in the house.”
Daphne thought she might cry. “Are you throwing me out?”
“Are you nuts?” Raina turned away from the front door. “Come this way. I know you haven’t been comfortable, and you feel as if you’re living off me.”
“I don’t mean to seem ungrateful, Raina.”
“You don’t, but I’m not comfortable with taking rent for a room.”
She waved her hand and Daphne followed around the driveway where the small shrubs were fleshing out.
“Where are we going?”
“We’re here.” Raina pointed to the bank of four windows set into a brick addition that rose above the garage. “That’s an apartment. About a billion years ago, my great-grandfather’s housekeeper and butler lived up there with their children.” She pulled a key from her pocket and started up the brick spiral staircase. “I’m afraid spiders and old luggage live there now, but we can clean it out for you.”
“I can’t take it.” Daphne hung back. “That place may be servants’ quarters to you, but it’s nicer on the outside than any apartment I’ve ever rented.”
“Well, I think it’s more appropriate since you’re insisting that I take your money.”
“I can’t afford this much, and I don’t want to look at it. I love old places and I’ll fall in love with it, I’m sure.”
“It’s not like the rest of my house, and you aren’t going to pay me a thin dime more than you do.”
“This might be better than your place.” Daphne climbed slowly, certain she’d be a sucker for Victorian beams and molding, unblemished by fancy, twenty-first-century style.
“I was right.” Raina had already opened the door and was wiping cobwebs off her face. “I should have had the place cleaned before I showed you.”
But Daphne saw through the cobwebs and dust and stacks of detritus, to the bones and the bare wood and the thick, cool plaster. “If I moved in, you’d have to blast me out with a cannon.”
Raina swung around. “You like it?”
“Like it?” Daphne flattened her hands on the pale wall, a little beige from dust and dirt. “It feels like home.”
“I’ve never felt that way.”
It took a few minutes for Raina’s words to sink in. “What do you mean?” Daphne brushed dirt off of her skirt. “You’ve lived here all your life.”
Raina took up a position behind two steamer trunks and a carriage lamp. “I know I’m the lucky one. I had a mother and father who loved me more than anything they ever owned, and they owned all this.” Her hands, held wide, encompassed the apartment and the house, the grounds and probably half the town. “I never went hungry and I was never afraid, but I don’t know who I am, Daphne. I don’t even know who I want to be.”
“I don’t want you to be sad.” Without thinking, she hugged her twin.
Raina stared into her eyes. “Have you realized you and I won’t ever need a mirror again? We can just look at each other.”
“You’re changing the subject.” Daphne let her go, but she refused to back off from admitting she loved Raina. “I’m embarrassed because you can help me when I’m sort of homeless, and I can’t promise you anything but thanks, which you don’t want. That’s who you are.”
“Giving you rooms to live in and an old stove to cook on is easy. Telling you I don’t want you to leave Honesty—that’s hard. My father died so long ago I hardly remember his face. That scares me.” She looked up, her own features drawn. “My mother—her death hurts me every day I wake up and remember that she’s gone.”
Tears burned away Daphne’s rough day. She hugged her sister again. “I don’t want to leave,” she said. “You’re not alone. You won’t ever be alone again unless you ask me to go.”
“We have something else in common.” Raina squared the corners of the two trunks. “Neither of us is comfortable feeling needy.”
“Needing each other feels okay.” Daphne caught the trunks. “I came here because I thought if someone else loved me, I’d be safe. But you’ve done so much more for me. You’ve become my sister and now I feel p
rotective. My heart doesn’t seem to know the adoption agency split us up.”
“I still don’t see why they did that.”
Daphne scoffed. “I don’t care anymore. My life starts here and now.”
Daphne meant what she said. She had dropped off her information with the attorneys in town. Some had seemed interested.
“I envy that. I wish I knew what I wanted to do.”
“You must know your identity’s all tied up with your mother. How long was she sick?”
Raina’s tension tightened the air. “All my life in one way or another.”
“What could you do but take care of her? What you’re missing now is a job that you choose.” Daphne leaned into the stuff behind her and something scraped across the floor. She straightened, alarmed at ruining Raina’s property. “You may not have wanted your chance for a new start to happen this way, but that’s what you have, and you should run with the one thing you most want to do.”
Raina covered her face with her hands and then yanked them away. “First step here is to clean the place so you can live in it. You want it, don’t you?”
“It’s tempting, but I’m not paying you near enough.”
Raina shook her head. “I don’t need the money. Let me do the sisterly thing now and help you find a safe place to live.” Raina crossed to the wall, rubbing the grime with a cloth. “I wonder if this will come clean, or are we going to have to paint? The plaster’s in good shape.”
“You want to start tonight?”
Raina finally turned. “I know you want to be with Patrick, but I’m kind of glad you’re still here with me.”
“I think I love him, Raina.”
“I know.”
“But he’s afraid, and I deserve better.” She grinned and hugged her sister again. “You made me see that. And you and I are always going to be together from now on. I was serious about that cannon.”
A COUPLE OF NIGHTS LATER, Daphne found a Laundromat off one of the side streets north of the courthouse. Using the laundry in Raina’s house felt presumptuous, though she knew her sister would call that ridiculous.
She dropped her Hefty bag in front of a machine that had probably started service around the time she was born.
Detergent. She found a vending machine and kept feeding it quarters until it finally accepted six. But then the detergent it traded didn’t want to come out of the box.
Humidity had swollen the powder into a fat lump. This little box might have been in that machine for a decade or more. She had to tear the cardboard and then break up the bloated square.
“Your colors are going to run if you put everything in the same machine.” A small woman leaned in at Daphne’s elbow.
“I don’t think I have enough to use two.”
“We’ll share.”
“Oh.” The woman was older, her hair gray, her eyes tired. Her closet might be as empty as Daphne’s for the same lack of disposable income. “Okay.”
“I have whites,” the woman said. “You can put in anything light colored.”
“Cool.” She plucked out the softer colors, not wanting to dye her new compatriot’s clothing.
“You look like someone I know,” the woman said.
Raina got around. “I hear that a lot. Who?”
“You can’t be her. She’d never set foot in a place like this.”
“You might be surprised.” Daphne couldn’t let anyone bad-mouth her twin. “I’ll get another box of soap if my quarters hold out.”
“No need.” The woman dragged a bottle of liquid detergent out of the wire basket she’d rolled behind her.
“I don’t want to use yours.”
“We’re sharing.”
“Thanks, I meant to say.”
“Sure.”
They loaded the machine and then sat together in companionable silence on plastic chairs that skidded a little under their weight.
Daphne ignored the stares of people who also seemed to think they recognized her. She spied a stack of magazines in another one of the rolling baskets the place provided and sifted through them until she found a gossip mag only eighteen months out of date.
“You want one?” she asked her new friend.
“Nah.” The other woman waved her hand.
Daphne sat and leafed through the old news.
“What is your name?” the woman asked.
“Daphne Soder.” She offered her hand. The woman shook it in a small, tight grip.
“I’m Clea Taylor.”
“Hi, Clea.”
“That lady you look like. She’s nice enough.”
Daphne closed the magazine. “Yeah?”
“Sure. She comes to this place I visit. They call it a senior center, but it’s not really. We just go there for lunch when we don’t have something at home. That lady helps cook and serve the meals.”
“She cooks.” She tried to imagine Raina in her white suit, peeling carrots or rolling out biscuits.
“I like when she’s there. She doesn’t act like she’s doing us a favor. She asks about my granddaughter.”
“That is nice. Sometimes those do-gooders just pretend they’re listening.” She offered a silent prayer that Raina would forgive her for calling her a name.
“She really does do good.” The woman hesitated. “My grandchild is a boy, but she tries. No one else remembers I have anyone. Or at least they don’t take the time to talk about it.”
“I think I was supposed to meet you tonight, Clea.”
“Huh?” She looked suspicious.
Daphne backed off. Once she’d been like her new friend, a person without anyone or anything to count on. Flippancy could frighten a woman like that.
“I mean I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I really have.”
“Oh. Me, too.” Clea’s face reddened. She got to her feet slowly, as if her body ached. “I’m gonna check on our stuff.”
Daphne tossed the magazine onto the chipped Formica table at the end of the seats. Funny, she’d been in Laundromats so many times and yet tonight she felt as if she didn’t belong here.
The old antsy feeling started almost like a tickle in her stomach. She couldn’t name it—depression or just plain uncertainty. Fueled by Patrick’s real and possibly even sensible fears, it grew stronger, wrapping spindly arms around her chest until she couldn’t breathe.
She wiped her mouth.
How good would a drink taste? At first, she’d been picky. Glenfiddich, thirty years old, had assuaged her shame. Then she’d learned to make do with twelve-year-old.
Finally, her discerning tastes had given way to expedience. Turned out you could break the steel arms with beer-on-sale just as efficiently. Hell, she’d fought the monster off one night with a particularly potent cough syrup. She stretched her legs out in front of her, staring at her worn sneakers.
Was she desperate for a drink or for another wrong man?
“We’re on the spin cycle,” Clea said, standing in front of their shared machine.
Daphne went to wait beside her. The cycle had just started, but standing so close to Clea, she realized how tiny her washing partner was. A nice fat sandwich wouldn’t be amiss.
“Clea,” Daphne said, “could you watch our things? I’m starving, and I’d love something to eat. Have you ever eaten at that sandwich place on the square?”
Clea looked as if she’d love to decline Daphne’s offer and just as much love not to. She folded her hands together and pressed her fingertips against her lips.
“I really like tuna salad,” Daphne said.
“They have the best I’ve ever tasted.”
“Think you’d want some chips?”
“Have you ever had those sea-salt and vinegar ones they cook in a kettle?”
“I love those.” She’d never heard of such things, but she’d find them.
As she walked out of the Laundromat, she glanced back. Every article of clothing she owned in the world was either in those machines or on her back.
C
lea was still standing where she’d left her. Daphne put on a little speed. You had to choose to trust.
She was walking back to the Laundromat when Patrick’s car passed her, moving slowly enough to let her see inside—even if she wished she could look away. He and Will were chatting. Neither saw her, and then suddenly, a little hand lifted in a wave.
She waved back, with the hand holding the sandwich bag.
She grinned. No matter what his parents’ divorce had done to him, or how Patrick worried for Will, he remained a loving little guy.
AS SOON AS her wash dried, Daphne folded her clothing and trotted it out to the loaner. Clea waved goodbye, pushing her basket of clothing and detergent, topped with the bag holding over half of the longest tuna salad on a roll Daphne had been able to buy from the sandwich shop.
“You sure you don’t want a ride?” Daphne asked.
Clea shook her head with dignity. “I don’t have far to go.”
Honesty looked so pretty from the square and the shopping area around Miriam’s shop, but Daphne wondered where Clea would be stowing her clean clothes that night.
She wove around the square until she found a parking spot near the church. As usual the side door stood open.
The nights continued to bring fear back to Daphne. Fear that she wasn’t as strong as she believed.
The meeting helped, though she’d finally learned only she could find her resolve.
The church service must have ended at the same time as the meeting. Parishioners moseyed down the stairs, not always discernible from the group who’d met with Daphne.
Gloria Gannon stepped out of the crowd. “Daphne?”
“Hey.”
“How are you?”
“Fine. How are those cookies coming along with Will?”
“We’ve made a few more. You should come help us eat some.”
“I’m not sure Patrick would like that.”
“You did tell him, then?”
“He knows.”
“Does he know he’s in love with you?”
Daphne’s breath caught. She looked right and left, afraid of being overheard. “I don’t know that.”