The first hint of bright yellow packaging meant nothing to me. It looked like something that would catch the eye of a younger person, the kind of bright yellow color that adorned many toy store shelves. I ripped the sides of the package some more, and then my breath caught. A chill ripped through my body. Some sound came out of my mouth, a slight moan perhaps, but my ears buzzed too loudly to hear it. I studied the package with intent, hands shaking, rattling the contents within.
“Gage, what’s wrong?”
Anna’s voice sounded very far away.
“Are you all right?”
Was that Lily?
My thoughts blurred. I was spinning, falling, reeling.
“Gage, what’s wrong? You’re scaring me.”
I turned and held the box up for Anna to see. Anna’s hands covered her mouth and partially hid the look of horror stretched across her face. Lily glanced back and forth between us as though observing a tennis match sped up, confusion and worry shown on her face.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” I heard Lily say.
I dropped the box to the floor by my feet, taking in short, sharp breaths that bordered on hyperventilating. My eyes, watery and raw, were transfixed by the top of the box. I reread the flap packaging through a film of gathering tears: Estes Cosmic Explorer Flying Model Rocket. Below that, in smaller type, I could make out the words: laser-cut fins and waterslide decals. It was the exact same model rocket as the one still inside its box and pushed underneath my bed. The same rocket Max and I were building just before he died.
CHAPTER 10
My eyes opened while it was still dark outside. Pivoting, my body fought against the stretch and tug of tight muscles. Stress and exhaustion had turned me into a Tin Man of sorts. Eventually, I worked myself into a seated position on the edge of the bed. Anna rolled over onto her side, ever the light sleeper, and exhaled softly.
“Baby, are you all right?” she asked, her croaky voice sluggish.
“Yeah, I’m just going to watch some TV,” I said.
My feet felt around in the dark, eventually finding the opening to the nappy black slippers I kept at my bedside.
“What time is it?” Anna asked.
“Two-thirty,” I said, glancing at the red glow of the digital clock, dismayed by the hour. I had to go to work in the morning—well, make that in five hours.
“You can’t sleep?”
“Not really, but I’m fine,” I lied. “I’m all right. Go back to sleep.”
Anna propped herself up on one elbow.
“Is it the present from Lily?”
A sliver of moonlight escaped from a passing cloud and lit her face with bluish light.
“Maybe,” I said, this time telling a half truth.
“Gage, it was just a coincidence, a horrible coincidence,” Anna said, rubbing my back with her warm hand. Her touch was comforting at a time when I needed to be comforted.
“Come here, baby,” Anna said, patting at the queen-size mattress. I flopped back down and Anna fit into my body’s contours like a puzzle piece. “Lily felt horrible about the gift.”
“I know. I know. It just took me by surprise, I guess.”
“She feels sick about it, but really she thought you’d like a rocket to build with the kids. She just stumbled on it at a yard sale and thought it would be a good gift for you, that’s all.”
I didn’t respond. I was trying to wrap my head around the likelihood of it happening as Lily had described. There wasn’t any cellophane around the box, so it could have been from a yard sale like she had said, but the rocket had never been launched. Other than me, who buys a rocket and lets it sit in a box? The Cosmic Explorer is a Skill Level 4 model, meaning it’s the kind experienced builders would buy, build, and let fly a bunch of times. It’s also currently out of stock in every local hobby store I called—and I called them all. There were, however, a couple for sale on eBay and some specialty hobby stores farther away, but it took effort for me to find them. My eyes locked on the ceiling where one floor above me I believed Lily to be sleeping.
“I’m making appointments for Lily to see a doctor this week,” Anna said. “She’s worried that you’re mad at her.”
“She told you that?”
Anna rubbed my shoulder. Her palms were smooth and without calluses because Anna preferred running to lifting weights.
“We talked after you left,” Anna said. “She’s worried that the whole thing is in jeopardy now.”
“Over a present?” I said with a slight laugh.
“She thinks you’ll take it as a sign.”
“That would be crazy,” I said. “It was just a coincidence.”
“That’s what I told her.”
But I was taking it as a sign, and thinking about Brad and what he saw or felt about a dark energy following me. I began to concoct a scenario of my own—one without coincidences, one where Lily Googled my name and saw the article in Wicked Local, a North Shore publication, honoring Max and Karen. There were pictures included with that article, I recalled. Pictures I hadn’t looked at in a very long time.
“I know this is going to work out,” Anna said. “Lily has a huge heart. I’ve never felt more certain about a decision in my life. Please don’t hold this against her, honey. She already feels bad enough.”
“I would never,” I said, kissing Anna’s forehead. “Get some sleep. I’ll come back to bed soon.”
Anna smiled sweetly and rolled onto her left side, which I affectionately referred to as her sleep side. Like the speed of our intimacy, it didn’t take long to discover each other’s behavioral quirks. From past experience we knew we’d have to love ’em and not change ’em. Time had stripped away some memories I had of Karen’s idiosyncrasies, but not all. Karen, a fastidious organizer, had carefully arranged everything in the house, including my work area where Max and I built model rockets. Whenever she straightened up, Karen turned the rocket kit boxes so the front of the packaging faced out like it was on display. That included the box for whatever rocket Max and I were building at the time. We kept that box on the plastic foldout table covered with a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, along with all the kit parts. We used the picture on the front of the box as a reference guide. I had given Wicked Local a photograph of Max and me building that Estes rocket for a tribute piece, but I couldn’t recall if Karen had done her usual OCD routine with our model rocket kit before she snapped that picture.
I knew only one way to find out.
I padded down the hall, my feet cocooned inside slippers. I kept asking myself, What where the chances of Lily coming across an unused, out-of-stock Cosmic Explorer rocket at a yard sale? I settled on it being somewhere just south of winning the Powerball.
Anna’s office was neat as usual. That was one way she and Karen were alike—both women loved order and floundered in chaos. I powered up her Mac and soon had the Safari browser open. I typed “Max Dekker” and “Wicked Local” into a Google search box.
It was just a coincidence, I said to myself.
My finger hovered over the return key, shaking.
What would it prove? Something? Nothing?
I recalled the way Lily smiled at me in the kitchen during the tour, a smile with hidden meanings. I hit the button and a web page loaded in a blink—Thank you, Comcast. The link to the article I wanted appeared first in a listing of thousands, mostly web pages containing the word “max,” the name “Dekker,” and the word “wicked” or “wickedly.” I clicked the first link and swallowed a breath while waiting for the page to load.
The headline snapped a vise around my heart: TOWN REMEMBERS MOTHER AND SON KILLED BY DRUNK DRIVER. I scrolled down the page, passing the picture of Karen smiling at the camera on a beautiful spring day. I had taken that picture on our front lawn, and thought at the time that nobody had a more perfect smile.
Toward the bottom of the article was another picture, this one of Max and me. My teeth clenched while blood thrummed in my ears. There was Max, smiling at the
camera, pleased with our progress, and me, the proud dad, with an arm wrapped around my son. And on the table next to us was the eye-catching yellow packaging, bright as gold.
CHAPTER 11
Soon as morning came, I told Anna about the picture. Without hesitating, she headed straight to her office. No pit stop for that morning cup of joe. That was how I knew she took this seriously. She put her face right up close to the computer screen, as if proximity might somehow alter the image. We were looking at the same Wicked Local article, but clearly through a different lens. I had doubts about Lily’s story, whereas Anna’s squinty expression told me she wanted to believe otherwise. The present and the picture were simply two unrelated coincidences. Make that three coincidences—Lily just so happened to come upon a yard sale with an unused, uncommon model rocket for sale; the rocket just so happened to be the Cosmic Explorer; and it just so happens there’s a picture of me and Max shown with that rocket easily accessible on the web. Two coincidences (though it’s still in Powerball territory) I might be able to buy, but three? The picture changed everything.
“I think you’re making something out of nothing,” Anna eventually said.
“How can you say that?” I asked, jabbing a finger at the screen.
Anna looked at me with a pained expression.
“You don’t want this, do you,” she said, her harsh and whispered voice a statement, not a question.
“No,” I said, protesting.
“No, you don’t?”
“No, I do. Yes, I want this. Of course I do,” I said.
Anna shook her head. “No, no, you’re looking for a reason to back out. I can tell. I know you are.”
“Honey, that’s not true.”
“Oh, please.” Anna brushed me away with a flick of her hand and bolted from the office, tightening the cloth belt around her bathrobe on an angry march to the kitchen.
“Why are you walking away from me?” I called out after her.
“I’m not walking away,” she said with her back to me and in a tone that implied the opposite. “I have a meeting this morning and I have to get ready.”
From the kitchen doorway, I watched Anna pour hot coffee from the freshly brewed pot into a blue ceramic mug. Anna drank mocha-flavored coffee, which I couldn’t stand, so we had two automatic drip brewers occupying our limited counter space. Some things in life were not subject to compromise.
“Please, let’s just talk about this,” I said.
Anna spun on her heels. “Talk about what? That you want to kick Lily out over a present?”
“I want to know if she did that intentionally.”
“Gage, what the hell? You really think that about her? You think she’d troll a bunch of hobby stores specifically looking for a Cosmic Explorer rocket? Why would she do that? Can you give me one reason?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t get why. But you have to agree it was strange.”
“It’s nice that she bought you a present.”
“How can you say that? It is strange. You at least have to admit that.”
Anna’s brown eyes smoldered, arms folding across her chest, the coffee mug somehow kept in balance. Her mouth tilted into a frown while her body went rigid. I knew the signs of the coming storm.
“What do you want me to do?” Anna asked. “Confront her?”
“I’ll ask her,” I said, feeling my own anger start to bubble.
“That’s just great. You’ll scare her.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re angry about this and I’m not sure you’re the best person to ask her about the picture.”
Every word Anna said just made me angrier.
“We are in this together,” I said. “Don’t paint me as the bad guy here.”
“I don’t really think we are in this together. I’m not sure you’re ready.”
“You think I’m being paranoid about Lily?”
“You don’t? Weird things do happen, you know.”
“I think we should ask her and gauge her reaction.”
“You can’t do it,” Anna said.
“You don’t trust me?”
“Honestly, no. I don’t.”
Her tone implied that she didn’t believe I wanted to adopt a baby, that I hadn’t let go of my past life and that any excuse was a good excuse to keep from moving forward.
“Then you do it,” I said.
“Ask Lily if she Googled your name and bought you that present as a way of hurting you? Honestly, you want me to have that conversation?” She shook her head slightly, as if the sight of me sickened her. “If that’s really what you want, then I’ll do it. But should I have that conversation before or after her ultrasound?”
“Jeez, Anna . . . I just . . .”
“No, I’m serious, Gage. If this is really important to you, when should I ask? Because if I see that picture of the baby, I’m not going to be able to let go.” Anna covered her mouth, but not in time to silence her sob. Her eyes squeezed closed and she turned away from me. Her shoulders shook in reaction to the sudden surge of emotion.
I stopped being angry and felt like a bigger jerk with each step I took crossing our kitchen’s white linoleum floor. I wrapped my arms around Anna’s shaking shoulders and tried to comfort her with an embrace.
“I’m sorry, babe,” I said.
Anna kept her back to me.
“Please just tell me you want this,” she said in a soft voice. “Please. I just need to know that you really, really want this the way that I do.”
“I want this,” I said. “I honestly do.”
“Then we’ll go speak to Lily together, because that’s how we’re in this.”
CHAPTER 12
On her second day of living with us, Lily dressed much like her first. She seemed to favor that gray hooded sweatshirt with a white tee underneath, but that day she wore baggy sweatpants instead of the ripped pair of jeans I’d seen her in before. By contrast, Anna and I were both dressed for work. The morning sun, already strong, suggested a warm day ahead. The apartment would remain shady for a few more hours, though. Perhaps that explained the chill in the air. Or perhaps it was the way Lily kept looking at me.
Lily sat on the sofa, body leaning forward, only occasionally making eye contact. What was this all about? her expression asked. Why did we want to talk to her so urgently? Lily’s interlocked hands nervously massaged her long fingers. Anna came back from the kitchen with a glass of water, no ice per Lily’s request. Lily worked nights and our phone call had awakened her, or so Anna had said. I felt bad about interrupting her sleep, but this had to be discussed.
I repositioned two chairs in front of the sofa while Anna set the water glass down on a wicker coaster. We took our seats, facing Lily, and once again I thought of us as two parents. This time we were preparing for a knockdown confrontation with our insolent teenage daughter. Lily’s nervousness was evident again with those darting eyes, tapping feet, fidgety legs. She seemed young to me, and even though our age gap was only twelve years, those were significant years developmentally. When I was twenty-seven, Lily’s age, she was only fifteen. I was building my career while Lily was learning how to drive. Sweat beaded up on the back of my neck. Why? Doubt, I thought. I doubted my earlier suspicions. Lily was barely an adult. Her anxiousness gave me pause and forced me to mull over Anna’s earlier question. What motive would Lily have to hurt me? I came up with nothing. She needed a place to live and we were able to provide. She wanted a loving couple to adopt her unborn baby and we were more than willing. Why would she sabotage her safety net? What gain could she possibly achieve? I could conjure up only two answers for those questions: she wouldn’t, and none.
“Lily,” Anna began, her voice calm, designed to allay any concern. “Gage and I want to speak with you about the present you gave him.”
Lily cringed. Her pained expression conveyed that she continued to blame herself for the incident.
“You guys wan
t me to go,” Lily said, making a soft sigh of finality.
With that we went from having a discussion to standing on the edge. Anna’s hand went to her chest, a shocked look came to her face, blindsided by Lily’s reaction. Anna had wanted this discussion to be a slow build, but Lily had just slammed her foot down on the accelerator.
“No, no, that’s not it at all,” said Anna.
Lily did not seem convinced. Her eyes glanced toward her bedroom where she would need only minutes to pack that one small suitcase.
Anna continued, “We just have a question, that’s all.”
“What question?” Lily asked. “I told you I feel horrible about it. I don’t know what else I can say.”
Anna’s expression begged me to facilitate the discussion. This was my doing and therefore my responsibility. I cleared my throat, prepping it for words I wasn’t sure would come out.
“I just want to ask you some questions about it,” I said. “I’m not angry, I’m just a little confused about something.”
Lily gazed at me as though I were speaking in a foreign tongue. More sweat on the back of my neck. My heart fluttered with anxious little spasms. Was I making a bigger deal out of this for nothing? Was it all just an improbable set of unrelated coincidences?
“What?” Lily asked, looking to Anna for the answer. She didn’t trust me, and I hadn’t given her reason to. I was the one hurt by the present, so her allegiance naturally went over to Anna, where she felt safe. Couldn’t blame her. “What do you want to ask?”
“Where was the yard sale where you bought the rocket? Do you remember?”
Lily shrugged.
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure what town it was in. I was just driving around in my friend’s car, doing some errands and I saw a big yard sale, so I stopped, and that’s where I found the rocket.”
“Did you Google my name before you came to see us?”
“Did I what?”
“Google, or do some other web search. Did you look into my past before you came to us about adopting your baby?”
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