She waved at a short-sleeved neighbor who, golf club in hand, was swinging stiffly at imaginary balls in his yard and sending chunks of snow flying. In front of Alexis Harding’s melting driveway glacier, a little girl dressed in a pink crinoline tutu and snow boots rode her training wheeled bicycle back and forth through puddles while her brother maneuvered around her on his skateboard.
Mara looked forward to buying Madeleine her first tricycle. She would get her a pink one with a bell and streamers on the handlebars. Or maybe Madeleine would prefer purple. Or blue. Maddie could have whatever color she liked. Maybe she would buy herself a bicycle someday, and the two of them could ride together. Mara hadn’t ridden a bike in years, not since she had pedaled her rusty one back and forth to junior high. But someone had stolen her bike from the rack in front of the school one day, and Mother didn’t have money to replace it, not even with a used one from the Salvation Army. Mara figured it was a prank: her bicycle wasn’t good enough for someone to want to ride. Someone had probably taken it and ditched it somewhere, just to be cruel. She had searched the woods near the school for it, but she never found it, and she never saw anyone riding it.
“Pretty optimistic there,” Mara said as she passed a landscape company’s truck, the driver pausing to remove the orange snowplow sticks lining driveways.
Maybe Jeremy could find work with a landscape company if construction didn’t pick up. Only a few of the neighbors did their own gardening. No shame in putting around flyers to advertise his services if he would agree to it. Since he was obviously still smarting from her basement offer, it probably wasn’t a good time to suggest he could make some money mowing lawns. That’s what he’d done as a teenager, and he’d made good money. Under the table money, Tom called it. Maybe she would suggest that kind of work to Abby. Every little bit helped. She wouldn’t mention the “under the table” part, though. Let them decide how to do it. She hadn’t asked Jeremy how he was handling the money he’d been getting for odd jobs. She didn’t want to know.
“What’s the matter?” she asked Kevin as he pushed Bailey aside and slumped into the front seat.
“Nothing.”
“Good day?”
Kevin shrugged.
“Where’s your brother?”
“Dunno.”
“He wasn’t at practice?”
“Nope.”
“You didn’t see him after school?”
“Nope.” He clicked his seatbelt into place and patted his lap for Bailey to return.
“Kevin!”
“What?”
She puffed out a chest full of air and craned her neck behind his seat, scanning the school entrance. “Go back in, please, would you? Go look for him.”
Kevin replied with his own irritated sigh. “He probably left with Seth.”
“Go check. Please.”
“Just text him. Or call Seth’s mom.”
“Kevin Mitchell . . .” When he was a little boy, the double-name tactic had worked wonders. She hadn’t tried it in years.
He drummed on the window, face turned away from her, and then growled, “Fine. But I told you, he’s probably with Seth.” As soon as Kevin slammed the door behind him, Mara texted Brian. No reply. She waited a few minutes—no sign of Kevin or Brian—and then scrolled through her phone contacts.
Jackie, Seth’s mother, picked up on the third ring. She was glad Mara had called. She was just going to call her. Seth wasn’t with her, was he? She had been sending him text messages for the past hour, but he hadn’t replied.
“I was hoping Brian was with you,” Mara said.
For the next few minutes Mara listened to Jackie rant about all the bad influences on her son, about how he had been a poster child for obedience and virtue—“a good Christian kid!”—until he started hanging around the “wrong crowd,” of which Brian, though she didn’t name him, was doubtless the ringleader.
“At least they’re probably together,” Mara said. “Safety in numbers, right?”
Jackie clearly was not comforted by this thought. She hadn’t been able to reach her husband yet—he was giving some deposition as an expert witness, yada yada—but he would have a way of tracking the phone. She would let Mara know as soon as she heard something. “And we’ll be grounding Seth,” she said in a tone that communicated that Mara needed instruction on what to do with her own son. “Severely grounding him.”
As soon as Jackie hung up the phone, Mara texted Brian again—still no answer—and waited for Kevin to appear. Ten minutes later he emerged from the administration building, Brian and Seth shuffling behind him, their hands shoved in their pockets. “Where were you?” Mara demanded as soon as they opened the back doors.
“Detention,” Kevin replied for both of them.
“Detention? For what?” In her rearview mirror she watched Brian glance at Seth.
“They took our phones,” Seth said.
“And didn’t let you call your mothers to say what was going on?” Not likely. “Text your mother right now, Seth. Let her know I’m bringing you home.” While Seth typed a message, Mara turned around in her seat and narrowed her eyes at Brian. “Detention for what?”
Brian also began typing on his phone. Mara snatched it away from him and held it out of his arm’s reach. “I said, detention for what?”
“Hall passes.”
“Hall passes?”
He stared at her without blinking. She turned to Seth, who had finished typing and was fidgeting in his seat. “Seth?”
He stared at his hands. “Brian stole a stack of hall passes from Miss Cooke’s desk, and we sold them at lunch.”
“You what?” She was so relieved it wasn’t drugs or bullying or sex or vandalism that she nearly laughed out loud. Digging her nails into her palms, she manufactured a suitably stern expression.
Seth leaned his head back and sighed. “Mom says I’m grounded for a month.”
Mara kept her opinion about that to herself. “We’ll talk about your punishment later, Brian.”
Muttering something under his breath, Brian shooed Bailey away and turned his face to the window, arms crossed against his chest.
One week, no cell phone, no video games, no arguing. After Brian unleashed a foulmouthed litany of names at her, some of which she’d been called many times before, Mara upped it to two weeks. He was more frightening—did he know this?—when he wasn’t yelling at her. Far more frightening when, with cold hatred in his eyes and a slight sneer on his lips, he stood silent, jaw raised, staring at her. She tried not to blink. When he finally turned away and vaulted up the stairs, she breathed slowly. Like the breath prayers Meg had learned from Katherine. Inhale: God. Exhale: Help me.
“I’m at my wits’ end with him,” she said to Charissa the next day as they worked side by side in the Crossroads House kitchen. “No clue how to deal with him.”
“Does Tom know what happened?”
“Attorney says I have to keep him in the loop with anything big that happens with the boys, so yeah, I texted him. His comment? ‘Boys will be boys.’”
Charissa snorted her disgust.
“I’m not minimizing what Brian did. He stole. He probably got off easy with detention instead of being suspended. But I’ll tell you, I was so relieved it wasn’t something bigger, something that hurt someone else. All the kids got their money back. No harm done, I guess. But still.”
Charissa was peeling the life out of a carrot, slowly turning it to inspect whether she had removed all the tiny little hairs.
“Here, just wash and scrub them. You don’t have to peel them.”
“But all the—”
Mara pried it away from her. “I know. It’s just going into the soup, so don’t worry about it.” She rapidly chopped it and added it to the pot simmering on the stove. “Want to try the celery?”
Charissa eyed the stalk critically.
“Watch.” Mara reached for the large knife. “Cut off the leaves”—thwack—“and then”—chop chop chop chop�
�“see? Nice and thin.”
Charissa shuddered.
“What?” Mara asked, scraping the celery off the cutting board into the pot.
“I think it’s the knives.” Charissa gingerly made her way to the corner of the kitchen and sat down in a metal folding chair, head in her hands. “Makes me feel a little woozy.”
Mara laughed and rearranged her hairnet. “You’ve seriously never chopped anything? Sliced apples? Cut broccoli? Nothing?”
“Not fast like that. I’d be afraid of slicing off a finger or something.”
“How’s it going in here?” Miss Jada asked, entering the kitchen from the main hall.
“Right on schedule,” Mara said. She emptied a bag of rolls into a bowl.
“You all right, Charissa?” Miss Jada asked.
Charissa looked up and gave her a wan smile. “Feeling a little dizzy. I’ll be okay.”
“You’re not sick, are you?” Miss Jada was a stickler when it came to volunteers and staff being healthy. The guests had enough problems to deal with. They didn’t need to be exposed to germs from someone serving them.
Charissa rose unsteadily to her feet. “No. Not sick.”
But before Mara could rush to her side, Charissa swooned and collapsed onto the floor.
“I fainted, that’s all,” Charissa said when John skidded into Miss Jada’s office half an hour later. “I’m fine. Just a bit embarrassed.” As soon as Charissa had regained consciousness and recovered enough to walk, Mara had gently escorted her out of the view of concerned onlookers.
“I think she’s okay,” Mara said. “It happened to me when I was pregnant with Brian. Pretty common, I think. Nothing to worry about.” At least Charissa hadn’t hit her head. Somehow, she had managed even to faint gracefully. Mara had crumpled like a big old sack of potatoes when she fainted, Tom crowed afterward. He hadn’t even offered to get her a cold cloth. He just laughed, thought it was all very amusing, and told his friends about it later. Right in front of her. The story got bigger and bigger, and she got fatter and fatter every time he narrated it. Bam! Like one of those humpbacks crashing into the water, you seen those?
“I got up too fast, I think. I’m feeling better now.” Charissa handed Mara the wet towel and shifted position.
“Ooh-ooh,” John said when she swung her legs around and tried to sit up. “Take it easy.”
“I’m fine.” She sat with her head in her hands, then glanced up at John. “Really.”
He sat down beside her on the couch, arm draped around her shoulders. “I don’t think she should drive,” he said to Mara. “Okay to leave the car here for a few hours? We’ll come get it later.”
“No problem.”
He kissed Charissa on the cheek. “Quite a dramatic way to get out of cooking me dinner.”
Charissa smiled. “Raincheck.”
A few minutes later Mara watched the two of them leave together, hand in hand, John opening the door for her and helping her into his car. Did that girl have any idea how lucky she was? “Blessed” was a better word. Did she have any idea how blessed she was?
“She okay?” Miss Jada asked, sidling up beside Mara and tracking her gaze to the parking lot.
“Yep,” Mara said, “she’s gonna be fine.”
Becca
Becca leaned back against the red leather booth at the Cat and Mouse Pub and yawned. “I’ve got to get going,” she said to Pippa and Harriet as she took a last sip of her Strongbow cider.
“But it’s so earrrrrly!” Pippa chided. “We thought we’d head to the club for a while. Karaoke night.”
Pippa was already halfway to being plastered, and Becca wasn’t interested in watching her friend belt out a boozy anthem in a skin-tight top that showed off her breast implants. Harriet could be her chaperone. “I can’t, Pippa. Not tonight.”
“Oh, come ohhhhn. Simon can wait.”
“Simon’s at a quiz night.” Becca had planned to go to The Lamplighter to cheer on his team as they vaunted their trivia expertise, but he said he wanted a night out with “the lads.” He had obviously forgotten it was the four-month anniversary of their official first date. She had decided not to remind him.
“So, what’s the rush?” Pippa winked at one of the young bartenders delivering trays of food to a nearby booth before focusing bleary eyes on Becca. “You’re not going on one of your morbid walks again, are you?” Harriet tried to shush her with a nudge of her elbow.
Becca reached for her purse. No, she wasn’t going on “one of her morbid walks.” She was going to the British Museum, which was open late. But she didn’t tell them that. They wouldn’t understand.
Pippa grabbed her wrist. “Sorry! Staaaaay. Come on. Harriet and I are worried about you, aren’t we, Harry?”
“Bit more worried about you at the mo,” Harriet said as she checked her lipstick.
“See?” Becca said. “I’m fine.” She rose from the booth. “See you guys tomorrow.” No need to worry about her. She’d been an orphan for what? Almost a month now? Ought to be over it by now, right? Back to normal, whatever “normal” was? She threw on her coat and wove her way through the crowd before either one of them tried to stop her.
The larger than life marble Lion of Knidos, its eyes gouged and lips parted in the prelude to a roar, confronted Becca the moment she entered the museum’s Great Court. That’s where she ought to have met her mother in December, near the lion at lunchtime. She should not have met her there just before the museum closed. And not with two friends in tow. She could still see her mother rearrange her disappointed face when she realized she and Becca wouldn’t be having a mother-daughter dinner.
“Look, Daddy!” a little boy exclaimed, barreling around Becca to reach the reclining lion. “Aslan!”
Becca couldn’t remember much of the Narnia mythology—she had been little, maybe six or seven when her mother read her the books—but she didn’t think Aslan was a stone lion. Killed on a stone table or something. That part had made her cry, how the lion didn’t fight back but submitted himself to cruelty and died.
But wait! her mother would say, rocking her in her arms and wiping away her tears. Wait and see what happens! Too bad she had outgrown fairy tales. What she wouldn’t give for an embrace from her mom now, for words of reassurance that all would be well.
How long, she wondered as she watched the little boy skip around the statue, how long would she be able to play her mother’s voice in her head? How long before the memories of her scent, her laugh, her nervous tics became memories of memories rather than memories of the real substance of her? How long?
Maybe that’s why she felt compelled to visit all the places her mother had been, so she could imprint the memories of her posture, her gait, her facial expressions, her words, even her sighs while it was all still fresh in her mind. She wanted to remember everything vividly because there was so much she had not savored when she had the opportunity. Why had she not taken more photos? Why had she not thought to record her voice in ordinary conversations? Why had she not seized every possible chance to be with her in London and tour these places together?
“What good does it do to punish yourself?” Simon had frequently asked over the past few weeks. “Regret gets you nowhere.”
No, and neither did anger. But she battled both. The stratum of strong emotions lay directly beneath a shallow surface of self-control, and these days it didn’t take much to drill straight through.
She left the little boy and his dad, who was commanding him not to jump up and touch the lion, and strode past the gift shop. If only she had met Simon after her mother’s visit. She didn’t regret meeting Simon—not at all!—but if they had met at the pub a few weeks later, maybe things would have been different. Then she would have at least been able to enjoy her mother’s visit without feeling the need to conceal such a huge part of her life. If Simon had been a peer from school, someone she had met at a lecture or in a tutorial, she would have introduced them immediately. But she had known her mothe
r would have a meltdown over her dating an older man.
Becca shadowed a tour group into the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan, where crowds of eager visitors pressed around a glass display case. In the glare of the artificial light it was difficult to see the inscriptions on the black granite. She wasn’t sure if her mother had stopped to look at the Rosetta Stone. She had never asked her.
She stepped aside so a towheaded little girl could get a closer view. “What is it, Daddy? A very old rock?” The earnest lilt of her voice made Becca smile.
“It’s a very, very old rock with pictures that are actually words,” he said. She stood on her tiptoes, straining to see. “And no one knew what those pictures meant until they found this stone. This stone was the mystery decoder.”
“It’s magic?”
“No, not magic. It just gave clues for how to solve an ancient mystery. It told us what the lost language was saying by using words we could understand.”
The tenderness in the father’s voice pierced Becca. Losing her mother had reopened all the old aches over not having a father too. It was like she had lost him again, just when she was finding him. She had lost every opportunity to know him through her mother’s eyes, through her stories.
Lyrics from an Ella Fitzgerald recording she had loved when she was a little girl floated through her memory, a song she had often insisted her mother play on her grandmother’s old record player: I’m a little lamb who’s lost in the wood. I know I could always be good, to one who’ll watch over me.
If she hadn’t met Simon, she thought as she exited the museum an hour later, where would she be?
Lost. And entirely alone.
Notting Hill was not the sort of neighborhood her mother would have chosen to visit on her own (“Way too alternative,” Becca had explained to Simon), and Becca, not eager for her mother to see the flat where she spent most nights, had steered clear of mother-daughter outings near Portobello Road.
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