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To my two Ws—Wrenna and Will—with love before, again, and always
PROLOGUE
Mackenzie Cooper had no idea where she was or, more critically, why she hadn’t already arrived. Her navigation screen said she was still on the right road, in the right town, but all she could see were woods left and right and a curve of macadam ahead. The turnoff was to have been five minutes past the café in the town center, and they had easily gone ten. During that time, she hadn’t seen anything remotely resembling a turnoff, much less the red mailbox that allegedly marked it, although a red anything would have been easy to miss. The fall foliage was a tangle of fiery shades, its leaves crowding the roadside like families at a parade.
A glint in the rearview caught her eye. Braking, she steered to the side until branches brushed the car. She toggled her window down, but before she could get an arm out in a plea for help, the pickup steered around her, sped past, and disappeared over the hill ahead. Assuming the driver knew where he was going, she accelerated and followed, but by the time she hit the crest, the pickup had taken another curve, and by the time she made that one, her car was alone.
She glanced at her phone. It was cradled in a vent holder at the perfect spot for viewing, which had served her well until her map app had frozen. The upper-left corner of the phone showed an ominous NO SERVICE where bars should have been, meaning that she couldn’t even call or text for help.
“Are we there yet, Mommy?” came a plaintive cry from the five-year-old safely strapped in the back. It wasn’t the first such cry, just the first that Mackenzie couldn’t honestly answer.
“Almost, sweetie,” she said, white-knuckling the wheel through another sharp turn. When the road straightened, she touched the SUV’s map screen to zoom in. The larger view showed tendrils where driveways might be—and, oh, she just passed one, she realized, but it was a barely there thing, thin and rutted, with no mailbox of any sort.
Turn around, her sane self ordered. But the red mailbox was likely around the next curve, she reasoned, and, if not that, her phone would wake up. Besides, she didn’t see a place to turn around. Her SUV was big, the road narrow, and it was snaking wildly through a forest that had no business being this close to the city.
Actually, this place wasn’t close to the city. Lily’s school was. But being a private school, many students traveled distances each day, which translated into playdates in the boonies. Lily’s new best friend had already been to their place twice, easily arranged since the Coopers lived close to school, but this was their first playdate at Mia’s. And why would Mackenzie hesitate? Lily wanted to go. She had asked repeatedly, had begged. Besides, Mackenzie liked this family. She liked that they didn’t live in an oversized shingle-and-stone rebuild, that the dad was a carpenter and the mom a struggling writer, that Mia was on scholarship. Edward, too, felt an instant connection—as if the Boyds were people they had both known in earlier, more modest lives.
Mackenzie had made the arrangements with Mia’s mom, including drop-off and pick-up times, clothes to bring for playing outside, Lily’s love of peanut butter and aversion to chocolate. She hadn’t thought to ask about cell reception. Her carrier was the best in their own neighborhood, clearly not so here.
The map screen switched to night mode for several beats, seeming as confused as Mackenzie. She knew it was a glorious fall day. Glimpses of blue could be seen through the high canopy, along with shards of fire where sun lit the leaves, but in every other regard, the day-darkness was unsettling.
“Are we lost?” came Lily’s worried voice.
“We are not,” Mackenzie said with determination. “Mia’s driveway is off this road.”
She just didn’t know where it was, and, no matter how often she glanced at the phone, it remained dead. Eyes shifting between the road and the SUV’s map screen, she zoomed the view out once, then again until she saw an intersection, which was good. At this setting, though, she couldn’t judge how far off it was. She was an artist, not a mathematician.
“All I see is trees,” Lily said, more curious than complaining. “Maybe Mia lives in a tree house.”
Mackenzie smiled into the rearview mirror. As dark as the woods were, her daughter’s blond hair sparked with light. “Maybe a fairy house. What do you think?”
“With fairy dust around it? And popsicle-stick windows and clay walls? That’s silly, Mommy.”
“Why?”
“Only our fairy houses have those. Besides, fairy houses aren’t real. Mia’s house is made of wood. Her daddy built it, and he’s a … what did you say he is?”
“A carpenter.”
“Uh-huh. Are we almost there?”
“I think so. But will you look at these trees, Lily? They’re yellow, like your hair. Know why?” she asked as a diversion.
“The green stuff.”
“Chlorophyll. It dies off when the nights turn cool. Remember, we talked about that? The colors we see now were always there. We just couldn’t see them until the green was gone.”
Lily was silent through another twist of the road, then asked, “Are you sure we’re not lost?”
“Do I ever get lost?”
“You did when we were driving to the ocean.”
“Excuse me, little love. I got us to the ocean, just not the part Daddy wanted us at, but he was sleeping.” In the passenger’s seat. After a late night of work. “No, we are not lost.” But Mackenzie was thinking of turning around and retracing the road to town. If she had a working phone, she could call Mia’s mom for directions. Of course, there was still the turning-around problem. The road was undulating with a frequency that made narrowness all the more of a challenge.
“Why’s it taking so long?” Lily asked.
“Because I don’t want to drive fast on a road I don’t know.”
“Will you know how to find me to take me home later?”
“Absolutely,” Mackenzie said with feeling, though she was thinking it might not be a problem if she didn’t get them there in the first place.
“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, too, baby.”
“Mommy?”
“What, hon?”
“I have to go to the bathroom.”
“We’re almost there, almost there.”
According to the map screen, they were nearing the crossroad. Hoping to get her bearings there, perhaps see a sign or regain her cell signal, at the very least have room for a turnaround, she zoomed in to identify it, to bring the name into view, leaning closer to catch it.
Too late, she remembered that the GPS display of her current position trailed reality by a number of seconds. Too late, she realized that the momentum built climbing another hill would have her barreling down the far side without knowing how close the intersection was.
She never saw the STOP sign hidden by leaves of the same color, never saw the van speeding at her from the right. She felt the terrifying jolt of imp
act, heard a high-pitched scream from the back seat and would have blindly reached for Lily if the SUV hadn’t hurtled into a spin that defied gravity.
She felt another impact, then nothing.
1
The trouble with waking up in the morning is that you look like who you are. That’s great if you like who you are, but not so great if you don’t.
I don’t. My face is pale and my eyes haunted. Five years have passed since the accident, but after a night with my head on the same plane as my heart, the scar on my forehead is a bright red. At least, it looks that way to me. When I touch it, I find a smooth ridge, but my fingertips remember the earlier roughness. And then there’s the picture taped inside the medicine chest, where I’m sure to see it when I reach for toothpaste.
Mug shots are never pretty. Heartache is written all over mine. Size-wise, the print is small enough, but that doesn’t dilute its impact. It’s a reminder of what I did, a little dose of daily punishment.
Duly tweaked this Thursday morning, I closed the medicine chest and leaned into the mirror. I dabbed a long-wearing concealer over the scar and under my eyes once, twice, then a third time because last night was a bad one. After setting it with a breath of powder, I applied foundation, then a blusher. Both were creams, applied with a sponge. Moving up, I turned haunted eyes into stylishly smoky ones by skimming a gel pencil along both waterlines, smudging shadow into the corners, and separating my lashes with mascara.
Satisfied, I straightened and stood back, brushed my hair, fluffed my bangs. Then, as I did each day, I turned away from the mirror wearing my new face and tried to forget the old one. Was this honest? No. But it was the only way I could survive, and survival was key.
* * *
This day, the rising March sun was paper thin but promising. I felt no threat, no premonition, not the slightest sense of unease as I coasted down Pepin Hill over frozen ruts and cruised toward the center of town. After crossing the river, I passed the elegant Federal-style homes of the town founders and turned left where the road I was on ended and South Main began.
The usual string of cars lined the block fronting Rasher and Yolk. Some were pickups with mudstained skirts that labeled them locals. Others were clean SUVs with New York plates, but with the state line only thirty miles away, I thought nothing of it. Rasher and Yolk served the best breakfasts around. Every New Yorker who knew Devon knew that.
Warmed by omelet thoughts, I continued south for two more blocks before turning left toward the river again. The pottery studio was in a cavernous mill that had straddled it for a century. Like the Inn upstream, the mill had endured its share of Vermont blizzards and the ensuing spring floods. The fact that the old mill was built of wood, rather than the Inn’s stone, made its survival all the more magical. Not even the hurricane that had washed out so much else on the river two Septembers before had harmed the mill’s ancient oak.
I found this inspiring. To live through trauma and thrive? That was my goal.
The pottery studio did thrive. I was one of a dozen sculptors here today, and it was barely eight in the morning. Half were students, in town for a week of clay immersion that was offered by the studio’s owner in partnership with the Inn. The rest were experienced artists, drawn to Devon for its appreciation of fine craft. Some were throwing pitchers and pots to be sold at the studio store in town. Since moving to Devon four years ago, I had sold things there myself. None were billed as Mackenzie Cooper art, and I deliberately tried not to replicate that style. Little bits slipped; I couldn’t fully escape myself. But my current work was more subtle than spirited, and I never sculpted the family groups for which I had been known. Understatement was what my life in Devon was about. I was happy to fly under the radar.
Devon was a perfect place for that. A small town in south-central Vermont, it was known for upscale art galleries, VIP sightings, and the Spa’s signature hot stone massage. Though the best-worn path to town was from Manhattan, more distant visitors came to rub shoulders with the rich and famous. All were welcome. Guests kept the town afloat.
How to tell a guest from a predator? Should a clean SUV outside Rasher and Yolk have caused suspicion? Or a lone tourist wandering on South Main taking pictures with his phone have raised a red flag?
Not in Devon. We were definitely used to strangers coming and going.
Buy a house in our midst, though, and we were cautious. It had been months before the wariness that met me when I first came faded—and that quickly, only because I had done repeated makeup applications for the library trustee chair, the Town Manager, and the head of the Garden Club. These people had bonded with me. The fact of my bare hands on their skin was conducive to that, but the emotional clinched it. A makeup artist was like a therapist, listening quietly to a client who arrived barefaced, with defenses down and a need to vent.
I knew about venting to a therapist, and I could certainly relate to wanting to feel better about oneself. What I loved most about my job was that I could make it happen for others, if only until bedtime, when the new face washed off.
So I listened. I didn’t offer opinions beyond whether to use corrector or concealer, blusher or bronzer, matte shadow or glitter, and I never groaned, sighed, or frowned in response to what was shared with me. Hell, who was I to judge?
I also understood vanity. As far from the mainstream as Devon was, there were occasions when a woman wanted to look her best. Most of us had spent time in the city. We appreciated fine makeup, right along with craft beer, high-tech down jackets, and good cell phone reception.
The pottery studio was an exception to the last. Cell phones were useless within its wood walls. Potters knew they were leaving the world behind when they came here. For me, that was part of the appeal.
I had used the studio enough to be known by the local potting community, which knew me as Maggie Reid, not the full Margaret Mackenzie Reid, certainly not Mackenzie Cooper. Mackenzie was the artist, the wife of a venture capitalist, the mother. Maggie was just Maggie. Her hair was a deeper auburn than Mackenzie’s had been and was colored at the roots to hide new wisps of gray. She used makeup to soften grief lines and bangs to hide her scar. Wearing base layers of wool under a sweater and jeans, a voluminous scarf, and fleece-lined boots, she was more concerned with warmth than style. She also weighed ten pounds more now than when she had been in the news.
She? Me. I could blame being thin on nerves, but even before the accident, I had been that way. It was the look of the elite, to which, for a time, my ex-husband and I had belonged. I had put all that behind, as well.
“Hey, Maggie,” one of the regulars called in greeting as I headed for the supply bins.
I smiled and waved but didn’t stop. Many of us were here before going to other jobs, which meant time was short. Besides, my need today was less for people than for clay.
Clay was in my blood, the smell of it alone a balm. Granted, March meant mud season, which lent an earthiness to the entire town. But potting clay was earthy in a different way. It didn’t spatter my truck or cause ruts deep enough to make my tires spin climbing up to my cabin each night. Potting clay held promise. A world of wonder could come in a few hands-on minutes, and I had spent far more than that in my thirty-eight years. I’d been first drawn to clay when I was eight. By the time I was fifteen, it had become a passion, and by twenty-two, I was sculpting full time. By twenty-eight, I was married to a man who not only had faith in my work but a growing business network. An agent resulted, and my career took off.
If that sounds seamless, it’s misleading. My personal history reads like a timeline in which each phase is separate and distinct. There were the growing-up years with my family, the eight years of college and beyond studying art, the seven years I was with Edward, the year in which I had been alone in hell, and now, the four in Devon. I had friends here, but none, save one, knew of those other lives. Clay did. For me, it was the single entity linking present to past—truly, the only one I could bear.
I deliberately
chose a workbench apart from the others. The sandy burr of the potter’s wheel soothed me when I worked, but not so human voices. I wanted nothing to come between my focus and the clay.
Not that focus was necessary to decide what to make. Need determined that, and today I needed a teapot. I had known it the instant I saw honey scones on my Facebook feed.
As bakeries went, The Buttered Scone was fabled in Connecticut. Its daily specials varied, but its honey scones were the best. They were simple and dense, but just flaky enough, moist enough, sweet enough to make you weep.
I had grown up on them. My mother was The Buttered Scone, and she knew I loved her honeys. I often wondered if she thought of me now when she featured them. I had posted a comment on her site this morning, then deleted it before she could.
I might not be having a honey scone today, but I could make a teapot. They’re actually a challenge. There is an element of engineering in creating one that can pour without spilling. The spout has to be mounted at just the right height and angled just so, the rim wide enough to allow for washing but not so wide that water leaks out when it reaches the spout. I know these things, because I have only made, what, a gazillion teapots? Today, my inspiration is a honey scone. Last week, it was a green cupcake with a sugar leprechaun crouched on the top.
My mother was an artist, though she would never call herself that. Art was an abstract concept, and Margaret McGowan Reid saw life in absolutes. She baked sweets, she would say. She rented a commercial kitchen and employed ten people. Like the rosary beads always on her person, these were physical things.
So was a teapot.
Dipping my fingers in water, I formed a cylinder. The clay was cool under my hands, but pliable. I widened my cylinder as the wheel spun it smooth, then reached in and bowed the inside. Dipping again, I sped the wheel a tad and narrowed the top on a whim, loving the eloquent irony of a whistle-hole crown on a round little belly. Of course, no infuser would fit through what I’d made. Wetting my fingers again, I widened back the collar, then, using my forefingers, shaped the rim. The lid would sit here, larger or smaller. I couldn’t decide which. First, I made it too wide, and it looked positively stocky at the top of the pot. Then it was too narrow, too spindly. In the process of adjusting it, though, something happened that I liked. My thumbs had nicked notches that undulated around the top of the pot.
Before and Again Page 1