Is home about to change forever? Her eyes welled at the thought.
“Come here. Sit with me a minute. Just take a breather,” Sean said, pushing Jessica’s suitcase to the side and patting the spot beside him on the bed.
She plopped onto the mattress, shaking her head. “This whole thing is so weird. That it would be her—she’s just so tough.” It was what she admired most about her mother.
“Then you can trust she’ll get through it,” Sean tried. But it sounded hollow to Jessica. Too simplistic. Like one of the slogans he tossed out in a brainstorming session at his advertising agency.
“She sees herself as the traditional sort,” Jessica babbled. “I know she does.” Her eyes grew distant as she went on, “But she’s not. I mean, she’s never done anything like other mothers, really. She likes—rock concerts with lots of pyrotechnics. And roller coasters. And even now, when she’s supposed to be retired and taking it easy, she and Dad are starting a new business. House-flipping. They’re renovating the oldest house in Finley in time for a giant December wedding. This kind of thing—it’s not supposed to be happening.”
“You’ve surely got a lot of her in you,” Sean said.
Was that supposed to mean he thought she was tough? Or brave? She wasn’t. The only time in her life Jessica had ever been brave was when she was ten—maybe eleven.
Her eyes widened. She hadn’t thought of that in years. It was summer—no, spring. Before the school year had ended. And not much was going on at the elementary school—things had mostly wrapped up for the year—but her parents were swamped with their high school students’ term papers and final exams. And they’d shooed her out of the house, go play, let me work. Upset, she’d wound up riding her bike out to the ancient Powell farmland. All the way out to the back part. Toward the creepy old cave. There’d always been something strange—frightening—about it; the kids all liked to make up spooky stories about monsters who lived in there.
She’d heard a voice, she remembered now—a chant, like she’d heard in old “cowboy and Indian” movies played at the Finley drive-in. A rhythmic song that was usually warbled during some big-screen depiction of a Native American stomp dance. A driving beat. So what if there were no Native Americans around there anymore? So what if even the silly old drive-in had been closed by then for a good two years? It had felt like—yes, definitely, it was a voice. And the more she’d listened, the more convinced she became that it wasn’t a recorded voice (like some old movie soundtrack), but a voice addressing her directly. She was sure of it, even though the words didn’t sound like English, even though she had not been able to grasp their full meaning. And perhaps it had only been the sound of the wind as it brushed the trees. That day, though, back then—ten-year-old Jessica had sworn there was a voice. And it was talking to her.
Even though she was alone (with no one to protect her from whatever was inside), she’d dropped her bike into the grass and had approached the entrance. The chant changed tone slightly, turned encouraging. Like it was trying to teach her a lesson in valor. She knew all about lessons. Grow up with two teachers, and it began to feel like everything in life was some new piece of instruction, like you should always be taking notes.
She’d done as it seemed the chant was asking that day. She’d gone inside, and before she quite knew what she was doing, she’d picked up a rock and scratched two names: Amos and Finley. And drawn a heart. She’d put everything she knew about love into the letters. She’d stood back in the dim light and felt proud of her effort. She remembered still how no hum of loneliness had existed in the cave, even though its being cut off from direct sunlight or grass or any signs of human life should have made it feel like the loneliest place on the planet. She remembered suddenly not feeling alone or afraid. Almost like, as she’d scratched those names, she had allowed Amos and Finley to join her.
The experience had stayed with her for the longest time. Funny why she should think of it now, so far removed. That day, as she’d left that cave, she’d felt as though she’d found a sanctuary. A place she could visit when things weren’t going well. The cave had become her very own just-in-case pocket knife. A tool, she’d thought, that could offer rescue from any tough jam.
∞ ∞ ∞
“You’ll be renting her out again this year, eh?” asked the pastor of the Finley Christian Church.
Mark nodded, still in shirtsleeves as he stared at the back portion of the church parking lot. “Sorry I’m later than usual. It just doesn’t seem like time to be setting up a Christmas tree lot. It’s still so warm—like summer’s a habit Finley can’t quite figure out how to break.”
“Well, I’m just glad to see you,” Pastor Bill said. “Can’t remember a year without Mark Quigley trees. Count on a man of nature to know where to get the most beautiful pines, though, right?”
Mark chewed his bottom lip. He still wasn’t in the mood to talk Christmas trees. And not just because the heat hung on. He was still wondering if Jessica had ever opened the e-mail. He hadn’t honestly expected a response, but…He just wished there was some way to know for sure. Had she taken it seriously? Had she dismissed it, deleted it without reading?
Last night, in a fit of neurotic distress, he’d flipped open the lid of his laptop and logged back into his Amos Hargrove account—the same account he had created solely to send that single e-mail to Jessica. And he began to send additional e-mails to everyone whose address he knew: Jo and Norma. Annie and Miriam Holcomb, Finley’s biggest tall-tale-er. He’d even looked up Justin’s work address over at the site for The Finley Times.
Patricia Steele was not an unfamiliar name. She maybe hadn’t grown up in Finley, but she’d been teaching there for decades—sticking her thumbprint into the wet clay that all young people were made of. He’d been certain that his message of her biopsy would have that not-unfamiliar name on everyone’s lips—at the diner, at the coffee shop. Whispers of Did you hear? Or, I can get off work. Of course I can. Should we drive in together?
Mark hadn’t heard a single whisper. Jo hadn’t even mentioned it when he’d dropped by her bookstore. Didn’t ask him if he’d received the same message, didn’t ask him if they would go. The two of them. To sit in the waiting room, with Tim, one on either side, in those awful old plastic hospital chairs. It wasn’t like he and Jo were out at the Steeles’ place every Thursday night for cards, but they had shared a table and conversation at the Twinkle Star Bar and Grill a few times the summer before (usually after bumping into each other while exiting the same movie theater). They’d wound up at the county fair on the same night, the four of them taking bets on who could find the best tasting of all the fried food, Patricia getting cotton candy on her ancient Stones T-shirt, and laughing, her arms around Tim’s waist in a way that had made Mark wish, on the first star he saw that night, that he and Jo could wind up being a lot like them.
How was it that he and Jo hadn’t told each other, on the bleachers at the homecoming game, that they would go to the hospital to assure Patricia everything would be all right, to keep Tim from feeling heartbreakingly lonely during the long agonizing wait? Why had Mark thought it would be enough to just summon Jessica?
Wasn’t anyone going to support the Steeles? This wasn’t the town he knew—Finley wasn’t filled with people who said, It’s not really my business. What had happened? Had his Amos work already been absent too long? Had a few short months of no tiny little good deeds made everyone decide, Well, it was nice, but now, it’s apparently over?
He settled up with the pastor and drove out toward his house—then past it, straight to the old Powell property. He wasn’t entirely sure why, really—to work on Natalie’s bouquet? To see how landscaping was progressing at the site of next month’s wedding ceremony? To visit with Mary, current owner of the house and Finley’s oldest resident?
He sat in his car for the longest time, doing nothing but staring though the windshield. When he finally pulled himself out from behind the wheel, he immediately began walk
ing toward the cave at the back of the old homestead.
Younger generations had been banned from it by concerned parents. No hanging out over there. It’s dangerous. But his own generation—those Hargrove High stars of thirty years ago—they’d used the cave as a hideout. A place to smoke, to be alone with a special girl—tell her wild tales, play adult. For Mark, it had remained a kind of photo album. A place to take out old images, look at them all again, remember. He hadn’t been back in a couple of years, but—maybe it was the way he’d felt at the homecoming game. Maybe it was his need to believe Finley had not changed so much, that certain things were timeless. His mind swirled as he walked into the cold dampness of the cave. He wanted to feel them once more—the strange vibrations that had always dwelled inside.
His feet smacked the stones as he walked. He pulled the small flashlight he always carried from the pocket of his shorts. The cave walls were sweating, somehow matching the humidity of the outdoors.
On the back wall, he found the exact spot he’d come to see: the scratchings that had appeared quite suddenly nearly twenty years before. Only something was wrong.
The heart was still there, as was Amos’s name. But Finley’s was gone. Mark ran his fingers along the cave wall where her name had been. The stone felt perfectly smooth—as though it had never been carved into at all.
Finley’s name was missing. It wasn’t in the cave anymore.
What did that mean?
Where was she?
∞ ∞ ∞
Patricia hadn’t been in the hospital since she’d had Jessica. And back then, it hadn’t been a visit of worry, but one of relief. A flush of excitement, really, like the moment the roller coaster rounded the top curve. Life’s greatest adventure about to begin.
This time around, Patricia’s entire body had already gone numb before she and Tim got through the usual paperwork rigmarole. Being admitted to the same-day surgical unit, walking down a long white hallway, being given a white sterile gown, sitting on a white sterile bed. She had left anything of value at home, as she’d been instructed. She had no wedding ring on her finger, no earrings in her ears. She wore no makeup. Her cheeks looked pale.
Everything around her looked colorless, actually—almost as if she had been buried by the mounds of white in an avalanche. A cold, cold avalanche of snow. She couldn’t catch her breath, and she wasn’t sure how she would ever claw her way out.
A nurse entered, looking disgustingly young and healthy. Patricia caught herself thinking that if she were to name her, she’d call her June. She just had that look—fresh and brimming with time; so much of it, she could hardly imagine what she would do with it all. Endless—back when Patricia was teaching, that was how early summer had seemed. In June, summer felt endless.
Time was cruel, really; it liked to play games; it tricked young people into thinking like that. But in reality, time was finite. You only had a certain number of days, just like there were only a certain number of pickles in a jar—or a mere ten songs on your favorite record. Suddenly, as you edged closer to the end, you realized how little you’d always had, right from the very start. But by then, it was too late to do anything about it. You couldn’t exactly ask for a do-over, go back so you could simply enjoy or appreciate it more than you did. It seemed like such a cruel joke, really.
“Why don’t you go get Patty some ice chips?” June asked Tim. Yes, June—that was how Patricia had decided she would think of her from here on out. She had to think of her as something, since her hair was covering her name tag. But Tim was the only who had ever called her Patty. She didn’t much like it on someone else’s tongue—especially not a stranger’s.
Tim smiled, happy to have a job to perform—any job. However small. He was always happiest that way, Patricia had learned recently—when he had a new puzzle to figure out, a new hurdle to clear. But hadn’t Patricia discovered she felt the same way? Hadn’t she discovered that flipping houses had given her post-retirement days shape? Purpose? It was funny, really. Patricia, who was known as the least domestic person in all of Finley (a woman with a special talent for shrinking laundry, burning biscuits, and buying curtains that did not, now that everyone was looking, match the new couch at all) had finally found something she could do that was in any way house-related.
It had happened accidentally, with the foreclosure just down the street. Afraid their neighborhood could potentially fall into the hands of renters who would not care for it (and deplete the value of their own home at the same time), she and Tim had bought it with their retirement savings. All it needed was a little paint, a new kitchen sink. It sold quickly. It had been harder work than they had anticipated, but it had been exhilarating. The idea of starting a project and not knowing where it was going usually was. It let a girl dream—imagine the world’s most successful outcome. And where was a girl without the ability to dream?
Maybe the not-knowing was exciting when it came to houses, but it certainly wasn’t when it came to bodies. Patricia didn’t like not knowing where this was going at all.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true. She did have some suspicion of where this was going. She had already been through a needle biopsy—which had quickly indicated the monstrous thing in her breast was not filled with liquid. It was not a cyst, not like she and her doctor had hoped.
And now, a surgical biopsy. The kind of procedure that would cut her open, allow doctors to remove the lump, examine part of her under microscope. She’d be dissected, just like the frogs in the science wing of her old high school. And more—she was about to be told that something was wrong with her. Told that on top of being human, and therefore fallible, she was also a machine, and therefore breakable. Just like that dumb computer in their office at home. The kind of machine that wore out with use.
Maybe that was the cruelest joke of all.
“I don’t think you mind me sending him out on a bit of a useless errand, do you?” June asked once Tim was out of earshot.
Actually, she did. Patricia liked noise. Right now, she needed it. She wanted him around for his incessant chatter—he would surely talk to her about their latest house until it was time for her medically-induced lights-out—or channel-flip on the TV across the room from her bed, grumbling about the choice of shows.
She hadn’t been a fan of noise when she was younger. When Jessica was little, it seemed Patricia’d always been getting after her, barking at her to keep it down while she was trying to grade papers. She had also once wished their house was not quite so close to the street where the high school boys liked to drag race. Every single year, newly-minted sixteen-year-olds got the same idea: drag racing down the long stretch at the end of their neighborhood—the one with no stoplights. Roaring engines at midnight could rouse her from even the deepest sleep, the most involved dreams.
Yes, maybe back then she’d demanded quiet. But right now, quiet tortured her. It dug into her; it was as sharp as the ancient fondue forks her parents still kept in the knife drawer. Wasn’t there a football game on somewhere—one with plenty of crowd shouting? Feet stomping to some rousing rendition of “We Are the Champions”? Couldn’t everyone on the floor turn their TVs to the same channel, make it sound like they were all somewhere else? Somewhere happy?
June approached Patricia with a blood pressure cuff, her new pink scrubs rustling with each step.
“You’re going to get a sky-high reading right now,” Patricia warned her.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” June said, ripping the Velcro open. As she leaned forward to take Patricia’s arm, her hair tumbled forward. It truly was beautiful—the kind of light blond that hadn’t yet darkened with age. Child’s hair. Patricia told her so.
“Thank you,” June said, her cheeks taking on a blush far deeper than the pink of her scrubs. “My fellow likes it. Matches some of the flowers that grow near my house.”
Patricia chuckled. My fellow. She liked the phrase, actually. Seemed sweeter than boyfriend.
“This will all be over
soon,” June cooed.
Patricia barked out a guttural laugh. There was no need to placate her. She opened her mouth to let June know it would be okay—no, better—if she told it to her like it really was.
But there was something about the way June touched her as she went about the task of wrapping the cuff around her arm: warm and surprisingly welcome. Just like early summer sun rays. Patricia was filled with the assurance that it really would be over soon—and not just that the biopsy would be over and done with. She felt like the whole thing would be over: the worry, the suspicion that something malignant was growing inside her. Patricia felt herself calm at June’s touch. So much so, her shoulders slumped forward.
“Why, look at that,” June said, pointing at the back of Patricia’s shoulder. “You’ve got a tattoo.”
Patricia nodded. The only thing that she couldn’t leave at home, the only thing that was hers that couldn’t be stripped away.
“A shamrock?”
“Four-leaf clover,” Patricia corrected. “It’s ironic, see, because I can’t grow anything. I mean—nothing. Not even dandelions.”
June frowned, straightened up, plopped her fists on her hips. “That’s not right,” she said, as if she knew Patricia. “That’s not right at all.”
Patricia found herself wishing that Tim would hurry up and bring the ice. She needed the company of someone she knew. Someone who didn’t have to be told about things like Patricia’s black thumb.
She especially needed Tim since Jessica wasn’t around. She missed her girl. They had so much shared history—a different kind of history than she had with her husband. Last Thanksgiving, when Patricia’d had that bout of poorly timed flu, it had almost seemed more natural to have Jessica around, making her hot lemonade and adding another blanket, than it did to have Tim bringing her orange juice and Vitamin C tablets and trying to fluff her pillows to make her more comfortable. Tim tended to need comforting himself when Patricia got sick. He needed her to be the one to tell him everything was okay. His universe fell out of alignment when she was out of commission—even for a couple of days.
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