Table for five

by Susan Wiggs

  “When did the highway patrol find them?” The idea of Crystal trapped in a car, injured and terrified, haunted Lily. She saw Sean’s face change, stiffening with inner pain. “Oh, God,” she said. “You found them, didn’t you?” Recoiling, she closed her eyes to shut out the look that flashed across his features.

  “It was a couple of hours ago.” His voice was low and husky with grief and lack of sleep.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the urge to take his hand but deciding it wouldn’t help. “That must have been so terrible for you.” She kept imagining what it was like. She wondered if they’d suffered, if they’d struggled to stay alive, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask. For herself, she wanted to believe Crystal had gone suddenly, never knowing what had hit her.

  “Now what?” she asked Sean, holding on to sanity by a slender thread.

  “The highway patrol is sending someone,” he said, his voice toneless with shock. “I told them to let me go ahead, you know. I didn’t want the kids waking up to a bunch of patrol cars and strangers all over the place.”

  “That’s…that’s the right thing to do. I guess.” Like this is something I would know. Lily’s mouth felt completely dry. She could not believe how hard it was to speak or even to move. “This is bad,” she muttered, forcing herself into action. She went into the kitchen and looked at the half-organized cupboard. “I’m losing it, and that’s bad. I need to hold myself together for the children.”

  He crossed the kitchen and gripped her shoulders firmly, then looked down into her eyes. His hands felt unexpected, discomfiting, a stranger’s touch. “Yes,” he said firmly, “you do. And you will. We both will.”

  How was it that staring into his eyes just for a moment helped her reel her unraveling sanity back in? She had no answer, but his stare—it was more like a glare, actually—worked, maybe because deep within his gaze she detected a powerful hurt. She forced herself to stand up to the truth. Crystal was dead. Derek was dead. The children were alive, and they needed her.

  “Yes, okay,” she said, clearing her throat. “All right. The kids. They’re absolutely our top priority. The way we tell them right now is going to affect how they handle it.”

  “Yeah.” He let go of her shoulders. “I agree. The highway patrol is also sending over someone from Child Protective Services to check on the kids.”

  “Child Protective Services?” Lily was baffled.

  “They said it’s standard in cases like this, when…when both parents are gone.” He paused and seemed to have trouble taking the next breath.

  Lily thought again about reaching out, as he had to her, but her hands stayed at her sides, crushed into fists. “I imagine it’s their job to make sure someone’s looking after the children,” she said faintly.

  “I told them the kids were safe and sound, but by law they have to check.” He reached up and absently massaged his neck. “They wanted to send someone right away, but I said I thought I should be the one to tell them first.”

  Lily felt a jolt of apprehension. “You hardly know these children,” she said, picturing their sweet, unsuspecting faces.

  He glared at her. “I’m all they’ve got.”

  In terms of actual family, he was nearly correct, Lily reflected. Crystal was an only child. Her father had died before Ashley was born and her mother was in a nursing home. On her best day, Dorothy Baird remembered her own name and nothing more. The most recent stroke had left her barely able to speak at all. Now her diminished capacity was a blessing, because she wouldn’t understand that her daughter was gone.

  Derek had a stepfather who lived in Palm Desert and that was about it. That, and Sean Maguire.

  “She’s my—” Lily stopped, took a breath, steadied herself. “She was my best friend.” There. She’d said it. She had spoken of Crystal in the past tense. “These children are like my own.” The strength of her own conviction surprised Lily. She had never quite articulated the children’s hold on her heart like that before. She was shaken by an alien sensation, the fierce protectiveness of a mother eagle swooping in to defend her own. The notion frightened her with its power, and she realized the children didn’t need her as a friend or teacher. They needed her in a way that could alter her life for good; they needed things she wasn’t sure she possessed.

  Sean headed toward the living room. “We’ll tell them together.”

  “They might not get up for a while,” she said. “It’s not a schoolday, so—”

  A cry sounded upstairs.

  No, thought Lily. Not yet, please, not yet. Let them sleep awhile longer, let them have just a few more moments of blissful ignorance.

  The cry sounded again, more insistent this time. Lily and Sean exchanged a glance. “I’ll go,” she said, heading for the stairs.

  “I’ll go, too.”

  They found Ashley standing up in the crib, fists clutching the rail, face screwed up in preparation for another wail. She stopped when she saw Lily, smiled and reached out, hands opening and closing as if to grab the air. In the bed across the room, Charlie stirred but didn’t awaken.

  Lily tried a soothing shh as she lifted Ashley from the crib. The toddler’s diaper had a leaden, claylike feel. Lily noticed Sean standing uncertainly in the doorway, and reality poked through the fog of shock. This child was utterly helpless, and now she was an orphan in the care of an uncle who seemed more like a big kid and a woman who had sworn never to have children.

  “I’ve got this,” she told him, though her voice sounded wobbly with uncertainty.

  “I’ll go make coffee,” he said, heading for the stairs.

  Lily was on her own. “That’s helpful,” she murmured, carrying Ashley into the bathroom. “Just what we need.”

  “Okeydokey,” said Ashley.

  Lily found that by focusing on the baby’s face, she could hold herself together, but it wasn’t the baby’s face that needed attention. Lily’s inexperience showed as she fumbled through the diaper change, though Ashley submitted with a curious patience.

  The stretchy, fitted jumpsuit was awkward to remove, though the diaper peeled off easily enough. Then Lily stood there with the balled-up dirty diaper in one hand, her other on the baby to make sure she didn’t roll off the table.

  “I can’t just leave you here while I go put this in the trash,” she explained to the baby.

  Ashley babbled and smacked her lips. “Want juice,” she said. “Want cookie.”

  “In a minute. Let’s get you dressed.” She opted for putting the diaper on the counter to dispose of later. Where was the trash can? she wondered, exasperated. Crystal had never been the most organized person, but you’d think she would put both the trash can and clean diapers within reach.

  “Lily sad,” Ashley observed. “Got tears.”

  Lily realized her cheeks were drenched. “You’re right,” she whispered, using a baby wipe on her face. “I’m all right,” she assured Ashley, though she felt herself unraveling like a runaway spool of thread. She didn’t belong to herself now. Her best friend was dead and Lily could not break down and cry for her. “I’ll be fine.” She pasted on a bright smile. “Okay?”

  “’Kay.”

  She fumbled around, managing the diaper, a shirt and pull-on pants. As she lifted Ashley up and set her on the floor, Lily caught a glimpse of herself in a round wall mirror framed by pink fairies.

  She looked the way she’d expect to look after the sort of night she’d had. Inside, everything was different. A terrible darkness bloomed there, obscuring everything else. As she hurried after the baby scampering toward the stairs, she knew with irrevocable certainty that her life would never be the same. She felt like a different person, a stranger in her skin.

  Ashley held on to her finger as they went downstairs with excruciating slowness, each step of the descent drumming home the reality of what had happened. Sean waited at the bottom, the expression on his face inscrutable. When they were halfway down, Lily sensed a presence behind her and turned.
/>   “Charlie.”

  “Mom,” said Charlie in a sleepy voice. “Where’s Mom?”

  “Mom!” echoed Ashley in her cherub’s voice.

  Lily and Sean exchanged a terrible look. The sight of Charlie’s face, soft with sleep, nearly undid Lily again. How? she thought wildly. How would they break this to her?

  “Good morning, kiddo,” she said, stroking the little girl’s tousled hair.

  “Hi, Lily. Hi, Uncle Sean. What happened to your face?”

  “Hey, short stuff,” Sean said. “Why don’t you go see if Cameron’s up?”

  “He never gets up early on Saturday,” Charlie pointed out. Somber-faced, she looked from Sean to Lily. And in her eyes was a deep comprehension that caused a chill to creep up Lily’s spine.

  “All right,” she said with quiet resignation. “I’ll go get him.”

  “She knows something’s wrong,” said Sean.

  Lily picked up the baby, brought her to the kitchen and settled her into a high chair. “She’s known that since yesterday.”

  He grabbed a box of Peek Freans and handed one to Ashley, watching her as though she were a time bomb. She gazed at him for a moment of eloquent silence, then took the biscuit from him. “’Kyou,” she said.

  She seemed to like Sean better this morning.

  Lily picked up the cup of tea she’d brewed earlier and tried to take a sip, but the brew was lukewarm and bitter now. She remembered setting it to steep before Sean got home. That had been eons ago, it had happened in a different era, before she had to face the fact that her best friend and Derek had walked out of her classroom yesterday and had driven over a cliff.

  “What’s going on?” asked Cameron in a grumpy, just-awakened voice.

  Charlie scurried in and went straight to Sean. “I made him get up and he’s all mad at me.”

  Lily filled a sippy cup with juice and gave it to the baby. Cameron stood, stolid and wary, straddling the threshold as though about to flee.

  Lily felt Sean’s eyes on her. Now? he seemed to be asking.

  These poor kids, Lily thought, clamping her teeth together to keep in a sob. We’re as lost as they are.

  Sean cleared his throat. He kept hold of Charlie’s hand and looked into Cameron’s eyes. “There was a car accident yesterday…”

  Charlie’s face crumpled and her shoulders drew inward and trembled. Sean put his arm around her. Lily moved toward Cameron, her hand outstretched. He ignored the gesture and right before her eyes, he seemed to turn as cold as stone, although his expression didn’t change.

  “Your mom and dad were driving together, and the weather made it dangerous,” Sean continued, a subtle note of disbelief in his voice, “and their car went, uh, it went down a bank.”

  While Lily listened, she watched Sean’s face grow whiter. Cameron’s expression vanished to nothing.

  A thin sheen of sweat glistened on Sean’s brow and upper lip. Lily thought about what this night had been like for him while the rest of them slept. She considered the scratches on his face and hands, his torn sweatshirt, the muddy boots parked outside the door. He’d been the one to find his brother and Crystal. What had those haunted eyes seen? Had he touched them? Had he cried?

  She wondered all these things as if she should be concerned, but to her mild surprise, she felt a numbness. She could register facts, but God help her, she couldn’t match them to any tangible feeling.

  There were too many things to feel, to talk about. Too many inexplicable things to explain. Lily slowly lowered her hand, touching Cameron’s. “We don’t know what to say,” she whispered.

  “You don’t need to say anything.” He glared at her.

  “Yes, we do, but no one knows where to start.”

  “So what are you looking at me for?” Cameron wrenched his hand away from hers. His face registered shock and pain for a fleeting second before the uncomprehending expression of a wounded animal masked his features.

  Seeing his agony, feeling it pierce through the numbness—that was when Lily discovered something worse than her own grief.

  chapter 16

  Saturday

  7:05 a.m.

  Sean struggled to find the words to speak the unspeakable. His mouth was dry as dust.

  “So where are they?” Cameron demanded.

  “Mommy,” Charlie said in a tiny whisper.

  “Emergency workers got them out.” Sean could still see the flash and glare of the generator-powered spotlights, the shower of sparks gushing from the cutting tool they used to make an incision through the crushed cab, the undisguised disappointment on the geared-up rescue workers’ faces. They were trained to save people. Recovering corpses was the last thing they wanted to do.

  One of them, carrying a toolbox and a tank of oxygen, had paused to check on Sean. “How about you?” he’d asked. “You okay?”

  “I’m not hurt,” Sean had told him, dry-mouthed. He’d felt a strange, numbing gauze enfolding him, softening the edges of his vision, muffling sound, insulating the distance between him and the world.

  “Hold still,” the guy said. “I’ll clean up those cuts for you.”

  “You don’t have to—”

  “It’s my job.” He flung a blanket around Sean’s shoulders and set down the toolbox, which doubled as a stool. It contained an array of masks, shears, forceps, tubing and bandaging, instruments Sean couldn’t identify. Then he switched on his headlamp and a penlight.

  Sean winced at the glare as the penlight stabbed at his pupils. “It’s just a couple of scratches.”

  “Then this won’t take long.” The rescue worker cracked open a styptic pencil, disinfectant pad and wound-closure strips, and with surprising delicacy cleaned the cuts on Sean’s face and hands.

  When Sean tried to protest one more time, the worker glowered. “Hey, buddy, you look like shit, okay? I don’t think you ought to go see these folks’ family looking like this.”

  He had a point, but Sean shook so much a second rescuer had to come and hold him still. Their gloved hands felt warm and rubbery against his skin. One of them was chewing spearmint gum, the scent distinct and strong but not quite masking the reek of motor oil and blood. The guy with the bandages positioned himself between Sean and the wrecked car, probably deliberately so Sean wouldn’t see the grim business of extracting the bodies. Beyond the worker’s shoulder, he watched the dawn breaking over the landscape, the ruined bank, the steep slope, the No Trespassing signs.

  “They have other family in the area?” the worker asked, turning the gum over and over between his front teeth.

  “Three kids,” Sean said.

  “Man, that’s tough.”

  In the kitchen, now bathed in golden morning light, Sean still flinched from the echo of those words. “Your mom and dad didn’t make it,” he told the children. “The rescue workers said they died…right away. They didn’t feel any pain and they weren’t scared.”

  He felt Charlie in his lap, trembling like a baby bird that had fallen from the nest. He tightened his arms around her and lowered his head, resting his chin on her soft hair. He wanted to circle her completely, engulf her, form his body into a hard protective shell around hers. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.” Never had those words seemed more inadequate.

  “Now will you tell us what happened to your face?” asked Charlie in a fearful whisper.

  “A few scratches, that’s all,” he whispered back. “From some branches.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “I’ll be all right.”

  “Who’s going to take care of us?”

  “I will, honey.” The patrolmen at the scene had verified that he was the next of kin and that the children were being cared for. Later, a case worker would evaluate the situation, making certain there were adequate arrangements for the kids. Sean had barely had time to ponder the ramifications of that, but there was no way in hell he could look Charlie in the eye and give her anything less than his full commitment.

&nbs
p; “We both will,” Lily said. Tears streamed down her face, but her voice was steady.

  Cameron still hadn’t moved from the doorway. He looked painfully tense, keeping his emotions coiled inside. Probably better than anyone present, he clearly understood his world had broken away like an iceberg in the night, and he’d never get it back to the same place again. Life as he knew it was over; his childhood lay behind him.

  Lily took his hand again, even though he’d rebuffed her a moment ago. “Cameron, I’m so sorry.”

  Once again, he shook her off and backed away. “Now what?” he asked, his voice sharp with anger.

  Lily looked over at Sean, her eyes swimming with sadness. She seemed to be just inches from losing it, but she didn’t. Their gazes held for a long moment. He hardly knew this woman, yet he recognized the pain he saw in her eyes. Then she blinked and the moment passed. They were just two strangers again.

  “Cameron,” she said, “we’re not sure. We have to take this one step at a time.”

  “More,” said Ashley, rattling her sippy cup.

  Sean, Lily and Cameron moved to help her at once. They were all desperate to do something normal—give the baby some juice, wipe a crumb from her mouth, answer the phone.

  Sean couldn’t believe someone was calling at this hour of the morning. Maybe it was Maura. Maybe it was the highway patrol, saying there had been a mistake, that was some other accident Sean had come across. He set Charlie aside and snatched the receiver from the wall phone. “Hello?”

  “This is Melanie Larkin from KBUZ News. I’m calling for details of the Highway 101 tragedy—”

  “Piss off,” said Sean, slamming down the receiver.

  “S’off!” said the baby, slamming down her sippy cup.

  Charlie regarded him with saucer eyes.

  Sean felt his neck redden. “Sorry for my language. That was some news reporter wanting to ask about what happened.”

  “How do they know to call here?” Cameron asked.

  “They monitor all the police and emergency frequencies on the radio,” Sean said. “No idea how they got this number—”