by Anna Adams
“Look at them. My God, how is that going to make them feel?”
“My question, exactly,” Josh said. “They’re just kids.”
“They’re eighteen. If they want the fun of destroying property, they can take the consequences. I know you’re sensitive to kids from a broken home, Josh, but we have to stop this problem before they do something serious. And I still don’t have anyone else in mind for the school fire.”
“So why not accuse two troubled kids?” Josh put his arm around Lydia’s shoulder. “I’m familiar with the process.”
“Why are you both so determined these two are innocent if you’ve never met them?”
“I didn’t come up here to put children in jail,” Lydia said. “And being eighteen doesn’t always mean a kid’s suddenly an adult overnight.”
“They certainly don’t show an adult’s judgment.”
“Enough.” Josh held the door for Lydia. “Let’s get this over with.”
Everyone in the building, including a man with a mop and pail, eyed Lydia as if she were a criminal. Josh’s tension seeped into her shoulder. She suddenly understood his reluctance for small-town familiarity. Why couldn’t these kids cut out the fun and pranks?
Simon opened a door and suddenly, she was in a windowless room, faced with two lanky, dark-haired boys who stood on either end of a long, gray table. They presented mirror images of each other, except for the grimace on one adolescent face, and the contempt on the other.
“Where’s their grandmother?” Josh asked.
“Eighteen,” Simon said again.
Josh looked annoyed. Lydia stared at the boys—who stared back. She wanted to warn the scared one not to look so frightened. Simon seemed in the mood to take fear for guilt.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “They—” Josh, apparently realizing what she was about to say, instantly stiffened beside her. “The ones I saw were so far away, their faces were blurry. They were tall, but I don’t know how tall. I can’t say these are the children I saw.”
“These young men are doing all right by you,” Simon said.
“You’re stepping over the line,” Josh said.
“I’m angry when any kids are so mad at their home situations they take it out on property that belongs to everyone in this town.”
“Well, we aren’t the ones,” the angry boy said. “Can we go now?”
“Sit down.” Simon stared at Lydia.
She said nothing else. He gestured toward the door and she and Josh went out again. Simon followed them.
“You seem to have a grudge against them,” Lydia said.
“They’ve been causing trouble for over a year. I’m worried they’ll go so far I won’t be able to help them,” he said. “If they didn’t set the school on fire, I’m not looking for jail time for these boys. Geraldine loves them, but she can’t control them. I have access to agencies that might be able to help them.”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “I’ve been the victim of that kind of help.”
“That was eighteen years ago. Times have changed.”
“Call us if you need us, Simon. Good to see you.” Josh shook hands. Lydia let him steer her toward the front door. “I can’t believe he made you go in there. It wasn’t fair to them or to you.”
“I know you and your parents don’t trust the system, but maybe we should assume Simon’s telling the truth about his intentions.”
“He can have the best intentions in the world, but those kids are better off with a grandmother who loves them than they’d be in a system that sees them as a file number. And they are eighteen. Simon might lose control of the process.”
Outside, he pulled her close and glanced behind them to see if anyone was close enough to hear. “Did you recognize them?”
“They looked familiar, but I still would have said they were the ones if I’d been sure.”
“Okay,” Josh said.
“I can’t believe you had to ask that.”
It was his turn to grimace. “I won’t deny I usually deal with people who aren’t afraid of shading the truth.” He took a second look at her. “You weren’t afraid of them?”
“They’re not exactly scary.” They waited for a patrol car to pass between them and their car. Icy wind slipped into the open lapels of her coat. She parted from him to go around to the passenger side. “Although I may be confusing them with you, so they stop looking like the boys I saw.”
Josh signaled for her to get in. She followed.
“Don’t say that.” He leaned across the seat. “I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, and I don’t want you to confuse actual kiddy criminals for me. If they’re doing the petty crimes, they need some help.”
“But not to do the time?”
“I’d have them spearing garbage off the sides of the road from Nova Scotia to New York.”
She pulled the seat belt halfway across her lap, but leaned back. “I’m exhausted.”
Josh fastened it. “My job looks different from here?”
“It does,” she said. “And I only have to consider Geraldine, not small children or a wife who might be expecting a new baby.”
“Or fathers and mothers dependent on your client’s meager livelihood—or merely the fact that your client looks guilty to the cops so you have to prove innocence when the prosecution is supposed to prove guilt.”
“I think that is happening here. Simon seems certain.”
“I have a bad feeling about the one on the right side of that table, but maybe I’d be aggressive, too, if someone assumed I’d turned into an arsonist.”
Lydia closed her eyes. “I can’t believe this still goes on, two kids painted with scarlet letters.”
“Don’t you love this town, though?”
“Gloating is never attractive, Josh.”
“Do you still want to live here?”
She’d lied about that for years, to save her marriage. “Yes,” she said, looking into his appalled eyes, “I do.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SOMETHING PLINKED against the window. Josh moved closer. Minuscule light streaks shone on the darkness in the glass. “It’s snowing.”
“Your dad said it was cold outside.” His mother, wearing reading glasses, glanced up from her embroidery frame. “Do you miss our early snows?”
He looked at Lydia. Sprawled on the floor, she looked so focused on her book, she might not have heard his mother’s question. She’d dropped her bomb in the car and abandoned it as it lay between them. Apparently, it was up to him to explode.
“It snows in Connecticut too, Mom.”
“And that snow’s better in some way?”
“It comes without the things I don’t like about Kline.”
“What would be so wrong with living here?” Evelyn lumbered on where Lydia had halted on the precipice. “This is a great place to raise children. Young couples like you move up here all the time.”
Josh stared from his mother to his wife. Lydia hadn’t turned a page in awhile.
Unbelievable. “Are you nuts?”
“I might be a little, but we’ve come so far,” his mom said, an octave higher as she realized her mistake. “You own land here. You have family.”
“Evelyn, this is the wrong time.”
“Thanks, Dad, but I can’t believe I have to tell any of you that no amount of time will change what happened here.” Lydia, from the floor, leaned on one elbow to look up at him. “I don’t know if you and my parents have been planning this, but you’d all better realize I’m not moving back to Kline.”
He stood and went to the kitchen, and then to the mudroom, his only thought to get out of the small house that sucked his soul. But there, he hesitated. Lydia would follow, and she didn’t need a stroll in the snow.
She’d often said she felt trapped in the town house in Hartford, but his wife knew nothing about being caged. He paced to the front door, which came too soon, and then he turned into the living room, which was untouched, but pristine. No one used a li
ving room in Kline, Maine, unless the minister or the mayor dropped by.
“Josh?”
“Try not to sound afraid of me, Lydia.”
Her hand on his arm, she turned him. He expected an apology. She’d broken their unspoken agreement. A home in Kline was off-limits. But her hard gaze startled and held him. “I am not afraid of you. I have never been afraid that you’d do anything that would hurt me.”
“Other than keep the job that made me who I was.”
“Who you were?” Unease laced her tone. “You’ll be another man somewhere else?”
“I don’t know who I am when I let an aberration in one woman’s behavior chase me out of the town and the job I love—where I made a difference, Lydia.”
“Are you talking about me or Vivian Durance when you say aberration?”
Good God. He eyed her without bothering to answer.
“You’re angry because I wanted you to quit?”
“Let’s not talk blame,” he said.
“If you do blame me, we should. How can our marriage survive if you’re keeping a quiet grudge?”
“I didn’t want you to leave me.” That mattered most right now. “I did what I had to do to make something right.”
“I wanted to come before your clients. I didn’t want to live in a place and a house that hold such horrible memories.” She blushed. “I know that’s what you’d be doing if we moved here, so as much as I want to live here, near your parents, on the headland you already own, I’m not asking you to do that.”
“I got angry because I felt pressure from you and my mother. Dad tells me what to do all the time, but at least he leaves me alone to make my own decisions.” He stroked the back of her neck, trying to comfort with actions, since he couldn’t find the right words. “I care more about what you think than anyone else, but we can’t say anything new about this.”
“Shouldn’t talking help?” Lydia asked. “I’m trying to reach you. You obviously want to be with me. Why can’t we say the right things?”
“We don’t know them?”
She seemed to look inside herself. “That leaves us nowhere. How do we learn what to do to keep each other happy? Where do we turn?” As if she knew there was no answer, she left the one sterile, unfriendly room in Evelyn Quincy’s home and climbed the stairs. “I’m going to bed, Josh. I’m not angry.”
He wanted to go after her, but she was right. They could talk about Mitch and Luke Dawson, Clara, his job and the holes in a system that made children victims twice over when their families fell apart. But eventually, he and Lydia had to stop thinking about Hartford or the Kline police or his past.
They had to face each other.
And when they tried, they seemed to find silence instead of a future.
“Don’t pretend your problems will get better if you leave them alone.”
“Mother,” he said without turning, “this is between Lydia and me.”
“I know what I’m talking about.”
He stared her down. “Yeah?”
“Your father and I had problems. Haven’t you ever wondered why I drank?”
Hell, yes. He turned so fast he nearly knocked her over. “Why?”
“I was a horrible mother. I didn’t feel the usual bond, though I prayed to.” Tears filled her eyes. If they hadn’t, he might have hated her. “You needed me and I was frustrated by everything I had to do for you. It never seemed like enough. And yet I loved you. I wanted to be the mom you needed—like other moms. If I drank, I didn’t feel as much—emptiness. And then when you were eight, Clara came along. Same thing. I was bad. Bad all over. What woman feels impatient rather than maternal? And how could I resent the time I had to spend buried in this house—” He eyed her sharply. She broke off.
“I’m sorry. The walls just closed in on me. I had a life so many women wanted. I could be home and raise my babies, no day care, about enough money to get by, but I was smothering in Dr. Seuss and corduroy jumpers, Little League practice and play dates where all the other women talked about their joy in the things that frustrated me. I felt like a leper in this little stuck-in-the-TV-fifties town. Maybe if I’d worked outside—no, forget it. That’s the past,” she said.
“Mom.” She’d listed his worst fears. “I’m thirty-two, but I don’t want to hear raising me drove you to drink.”
“It didn’t.” She took his hands. It was all he could do not to shove her away. “I’m trying to tell you my failings drove me to drink. I should have admitted I needed outside work, too. I should have found a way to be happy at home. I love you, son, and I still want to be your mother.”
“That’s some kind of love.”
She flinched. He hardly noticed, didn’t want to care. “You felt this way about Clara, too?”
She recoiled. “I only realized what I was rejecting when I couldn’t have you anymore. I didn’t care what anyone in this town thought of me after that. I only sat in that cell and cursed myself for every moment I’d thrown away, every instant of happiness I could have given you or Clara, with just a little less despair, a little more acceptance. Something outside that damn bottle would have made life easier for all of us.”
“Did you ever tell Dad?”
“No. And maybe that kept us both drinking. I was ashamed, and I thought Bart could only love me if he drank enough to dull my complaints. We never actually addressed our problems. We both tried to drown them.”
“He’s no saint in this.”
“We didn’t go straight to a therapist for marriage help back then. We were fools.” She looked tired, used up by the past and her dissatisfaction and the harsh climate of their hometown.
“Why didn’t you start this Grandma Trudy business then? Maybe you’d have liked coming home if you’d had other work to challenge you during the day.”
“After I came home from—prison—I tried to make up for the past. I made myself into June Cleaver, but you no longer cared. After all these years, I began to feel pointless again. I—” She licked her lips. “You probably don’t understand. I still dream of the taste, the cool fire—you look horrified, Josh.”
“Because I’m seeing my sister face down in that green pool.”
“Son.” She caught him close. Her slender arms were steel. Her tears wet his shirt. “I can never tell you how sorry I am. It has no end. I’d give my own life for my little girl’s. I don’t even know if she knew I loved her.”
Josh couldn’t speak. He just held on.
After a few moments, his mother pulled back, wiping her eyes with her fists. “I started Grandma Trudy’s because otherwise I’d have started drinking again.”
“It helps?” he asked, and he cared about her answer.
“I love the challenge, even when I’m afraid I’m cooking us into the poorhouse. But it doesn’t make up for Clara.” She tiptoed to kiss his cheek. For the first time in eighteen years, he didn’t step away. “It can never make up for not having your love.”
“I do love you.”
She nodded, not entirely convinced. “Go upstairs to your wife,” she said. “Better to fight it out than ignore poison.”
He turned to the hall, but stopped dead. His father waited in the doorway, leaning against the jamb as if he couldn’t stand without support. His eyes swam in tears, and Josh found himself choking again.
“How long have you been there?” he asked.
His dad didn’t answer. Instead, he let go of the door and staggered toward Josh, who caught him. His dad’s rough embrace was new and unfamiliar and yet vital.
Josh broke away, pretty sure he was going to cry if he didn’t get out of there. “It’s okay, Dad.” His only thought was to reach his wife.
As if his need had traveled through the house’s old timbers and reached her in their room, Lydia met him halfway down the stairs. “I shouldn’t have run off like that,” she said.
Below, the living room door closed on his parents.
“Let’s go in here.” He took her into the family room w
here someone had stoked the fire. He closed the doors, shutting his parents out, and Lydia sat on the love seat that had been reupholstered at least four times since his grandmother had owned it.
Continuity. His family had it. He’d rejected it, but it comforted Lydia, who’d been alone since she was eighteen.
“I want to tell you the truth,” he said. “I don’t want you to believe you can talk me into something different. We shouldn’t waste time on false hopes or lies or games.”
“I’m not playing games.”
“Let me get this straight, please. I left my job in Hartford, but Kline is not our next stop.”
“I know,” she said, sad-eyed, “but let me ask one question. Where would we find this much land? We can make our home anything we want it to be. I’d design a workshop. You could rebuild one of those nineteen-thirties hot rods you’ve talked about. I’d love a small office of my own.” She scooted aside to let him join her. A sound like bees departing fifty hives buzzed in his brain. “You love this land and so do I. Your grandfather gave it to you.”
“I’ve just told you how I feel. I paid attention to what you wanted. Why can’t you do me the same courtesy?” What part did such an antiseptic word have between a wife and husband?
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I love being with family, and I believe you love your mother and father, too. If you hung in long enough around here, you’d get over your resentment. You’d stop wanting revenge.”
“My sister died here. My parents let her die. I’m trying to make things right with my mother and father, but I can’t change my real problem with this place. I couldn’t save Clara. Do you think that memory fades?” Guilt almost stopped him as she ducked her head. “Any more than you’ll forget losing our baby in Hartford?”
She looked up, her mouth trembling. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking, except I’ve been caught up in creating some perfect future for us,” she said. “You can’t stay here for the same reason I don’t want to go back.”