“And to you it seems like yesterday?”
“Like it was this morning. She was just...here,” he replied, his voice trembling with emotion.
Sarah thought she saw a glint of tears in his eyes.
“Tell me about her, Luke,” Margot urged.
He smiled slightly and Sarah was struck at how much that tiny bit of a smile lit his face. As he talked about Jenny, his face became nearly rapturous. He’d gone from anger to joy so quickly, Sarah wondered if such an emotional bounce was healthy. But as Luke kept talking, Sarah realized she’d never seen anyone so completely and utterly in love as this man was with his dead wife.
Luke’s memories of Jenny filled the room as he expounded upon his wife’s talents, her kindness and unconditional love for him and their children. He held the rest of the group’s complete attention while he spoke. “Jenny did just about everything. She insisted the kids and I eat healthy food. She grew all kinds of vegetables and herbs in her garden, then all summer and fall she’d freeze and can things. She made applesauce.” He laughed to himself. “I was never sure it saved any money, all that work she did, but it tasted wonderful. We never had boxes of any kind of cookies or snacks. Jenny baked cookies and made granola. She sewed, too. She made clothes for the kids and all kinds of stuff for the house. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and find her sewing some kind of surprise for Annie. Doll clothes. A new dress. Secretly, I wondered if she was a magician. She seemed to make beautiful things out of junk and milk pods and pinecones.”
“She had vision,” Sarah blurted out before she realized she was going to speak.
Luke looked at her and gave her a soft smile of understanding. “Yes, she did. Thank you for saying that.”
Sarah could only nod, she was so struck by the sincerity in his voice. She found it odd that this same guy could be hostile one minute and tame the next. To her, he was like Jekyll and Hyde. Which one was the real Luke Bosworth?
Margot’s eyes tracked from Sarah to Luke. “Jenny sounds like an amazing person,” Margot said. “No wonder you miss her so much.”
Luke’s eyes turned stormy, as if Margot had just doused him with ice water. The blue turned to gray, and his face lost all the softness Sarah had seen while he spoke about Jenny. Luke didn’t say anything for a long moment, his eyes surveying the room and the other faces looking back at him—some commiserating, some staring blankly.
Then, as if he’d made a decision, Luke inhaled deeply, expanding his lungs with courage or conviction—Sarah couldn’t tell which. He clamped his lips shut, as if to stop the flow of words and memories. “Jenny should still be here. It was too soon for her to die. That’s what I can’t stomach.” He slammed his palm on his thigh.
Sarah pressed her body back in her chair when she felt his next tirade coming on. She couldn’t imagine having to live with someone so volatile. Sarah had always been uncomfortable with anger. To her recollection, her parents had never displayed anger at each other. They had always had “discussions” and they “worked out their differences.” She’d experienced anger at flat tires, impossible government websites and inept retail clerks, but she’d never given or received Luke’s kind of intense, blistering anger.
Margot’s gentle voice interrupted Sarah’s thoughts.
“Anger,” Margot said, “is one of the five steps of grief, Luke. It’s natural. Understandable. Expected. It just happens to be the step you’re stuck on—for the moment. In addition, you’re feeling rejected by God.”
“How do you know that?” He growled.
“You show it in your every gesture. My guess is that you think God took Jenny, but he didn’t take you. You were left here to fend for yourself with your two kids. So you feel rejected.”
Luke nodded once, abruptly and affirmatively, but he didn’t respond.
“This rejection you feel is a place for us to start, Luke,” Margot offered.
Sarah sat up straight when she heard Margot talking about rejection. As she repeated the word in her mind, it was as if a blaring alarm had gone off.
Rejection.
Was that what she was experiencing? Sarah had always had a problem with rejection—or so her mother had told her. Ann Marie often warned her that she was getting overly anxious about her schoolwork, to the point of being a perfectionist. Sarah had been terrified of getting a bad grade. She didn’t want to be rejected.
When she broke up with James, she did the breaking up part so she wouldn’t be rejected by him. Yet James had rejected her many times—all in subtle ways, tiny snippets of rejection and dismissal telling her she wasn’t good enough for him or his wealthy friends.
Sarah had been dealt a double blow of rejection. Her mother was dead and she’d been left to fend for herself. And she’d just been suspended from her job.
Rejection number two.
Sarah sank a bit lower in her chair, wondering if she should extend herself to these strangers. Would this emotional gamble be worth it? She wished she could hide.
Isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Hiding my fears and probably a good amount of my own anger?
No, Sarah thought. I can’t bail. I came here to get better. I came here to make my life the best it can be and not live in the past. I want my future to be a good one. I want so much for myself. I’ll stay.
Sarah watched Margot as she struggled to pry information out of Luke, but he wasn’t having it. He was in bad shape, Sarah thought. She was grieving for her parent. Her loss was a normal part of life that most people knew they’d have to confront one day. But Luke’s situation was very different. He couldn’t have been much older than her, and yet he had already lost the love of his life. They’d barely had a chance to start their life together, and his wife was gone. Sarah hadn’t even thought about a family of her own until just recently, and she wasn’t even close to finding her soul mate. Her world had been all about her mother. Yet here was Luke, nearly paralyzed by his emotions. Sarah almost wished she was the counselor with all that training behind her so that she could say the right thing to him. All she could do was remain silent and listen.
Margot was urging Luke to tell her about his children, but he looked flustered and tongue-tied. Sarah couldn’t tell if he was still angry or just upset with this dreadful process of spilling his guts.
“Tell me about them,” Margot asked politely.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” Luke said flatly as if he’d finally controlled his rage. He nodded his head and pursed his lips as if he’d been in conversation with himself. “I was right about what I said before. My coming here was a mistake.”
Luke stood suddenly, spun on the heel of his work boots and stalked out of the room in four long strides. The door slammed hard behind him, the sound echoing against the walls, rattling the windows.
No one said a word for a very long moment.
Sarah sat up straight. “Do you think he’ll come back, Margot?”
Margot turned around and faced her. “I don’t know.”
Sarah looked past Margot at the closed door. Of all the things she remembered about Luke that evening, the soft, grateful smile he’d given her stood out the most. She’d seen past his anger at that instant, and she felt as if she had helped him, even if it had been in a very slight, tenuous way. “I hope he does. He needs us.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
SARAH TOOK BEAU out for his morning constitutional down Maple Avenue, where they both enjoyed the last of the spring tulips. Sarah noticed the spikes of peonies shooting up through the ground. The walk took an extra-long time, as Sarah allowed Beau to sniff all he wanted.
Sarah hadn’t been able to get Luke Bosworth out of her mind. She’d never met anyone so tortured. Her heart went out to him because he seemed to be clueless as to how to react to those around him. He was deeply within himself, yet when he spoke about Jenny, he allowed everyone in session access to his in
nermost fears. Sarah was drawn to his tenderness and depth of compassion. He was an enigma of anger and gentleness. She was already looking forward to the next meeting, when she would hopefully see Luke again and learn more about him.
She was almost embarrassed to be asking for any help at all from Margot, when Luke clearly needed all her guidance and then some. Sarah guessed, from his worn work boots and his jeans and faded shirt, that he hadn’t bought any new clothes for himself since his wife died. She remembered him making an offhand comment about medical bills and she could well understand his situation.
Her mother and father had purchased expensive but excellent health insurance a decade ago when Sarah had left for college. Sarah thought it was ridiculous, but Ann Marie had insisted, saying they weren’t interested in trips to foreign countries or expensive jewelry or things anymore. They wanted to provide Sarah with the education she needed to pursue her dreams, and they wanted to cover themselves in case of disaster. They did precisely that. Ann Marie left only a few thousand dollars in medical bills, and in addition, her mother had prepaid her own funeral and cremation. Sarah had none of the financial problems that she was now realizing a great many people were forced to deal with along with loss and grief.
Sarah hadn’t realized that she and Beau had been walking for nearly an hour. When they walked past Mrs. Beabots’s house, Sarah could hear her television was turned up, and she could smell the apples, cinnamon and butter that told her Mrs. Beabots had been baking...again.
As Sarah came up the sidewalk to her house, she noticed someone was sitting in one of the Adirondack chairs on her front porch.
As she approached, the person stood up.
“Miss Milse!” Sarah said with a smile.
The woman, in her mid-sixties, stood nearly six feet tall and was over two hundred pounds of pure-bred German muscle. She wore a very dated, cotton floral house dress with a blindingly white, ruffled apron. The short sleeves revealed upper arms the size of Virginia hams that looked as if she could rip up each floorboard for cleaning and easily pound them back into place.
Her steel-gray hair was pulled so tightly on her scalp and twisted into such a severe topknot that Sarah worried the woman would get a headache.
“I come to clean,” Miss Milse announced in her accented, guttural voice as Sarah mounted the porch steps.
When Sarah was a little girl, Miss Milse had been both babysitter and housekeeper for the Jensen family. Sarah knew the woman’s ways as well as she knew those of her mother and aunt Emily. Miss Milse could have been a gem for any branch of the United States Armed Forces, which she’d often told Ann Marie that she had longed to do. Miss Milse had wanted to travel the world and earn the nursing degree she dreamed of. But when she had been young, she’d been forced by circumstances to remain in Indian Lake to care for her widowed mother until she died of complications from Multiple Sclerosis.
Odd, Sarah thought. I know so much about her, but I still don’t know her first name. I guess she will always be Miss Milse.
Because Miss Milse was a force of nature, and truly one on the stormy side, Sarah didn’t have the foggiest idea how she was going to turn the woman away. She could not afford a housekeeper right now, especially on a reduced salary. She would have to be very diplomatic if she didn’t want to hurt the woman’s feelings.
“We need to talk about this,” Sarah said, opening the door. Miss Milse bent over and grabbed an armful of her favorite cleaning utensils.
This was going to be tough. Sarah took a step backward to give Miss Milse plenty of room to enter the house. The mop handles clanged against the metal bucket. It was an everyday, ordinary sound that should have gone unnoticed and been absorbed into the walls like any of the other sounds that meander through a house on a given day. But in that moment, the bucket’s tinny sound and its reverberation spoke to Sarah like a call from the angels.
The house is empty. Even with me in it.
“I start in kitchen,” Miss Milse said, her lips forming a straight, nonemotional line.
Sarah shook her head. “The kitchen is clean. There isn’t much to do with only me living here....”
Miss Milse’s eyes left Sarah’s face and looked past her into the dining room. She frowned. Sarah’s eyes followed hers until she saw what Miss Milse saw.
There were no flowers from the garden on the mahogany Queen Anne table. Tall silver vases on either side of the marble-topped hunt board were not filled with English ivy the way Ann Marie had always kept them. A cobweb, glistening in the morning sunlight, stretched between the arms of the Venetian crystal chandelier that had belonged to her father’s grandmother. Every generation of Jensens had painstakingly cared for the chandelier and passed it on to the subsequent generation.
The windows had not been washed this spring or summer, and across the wide-planked cherry floor, dust motes spun like fairy sprites.
Sarah looked up at Miss Milse. “I can do this myself,” she said in a low voice that lacked conviction.
Miss Milse sucked in a long breath and widened her stance as if she was readying herself for a physical battle. “I clean. I make it like Mizz Jensen always like.”
“It’s just not necessary,” Sarah began but before she could say another word, Miss Milse interrupted her.
“No. I take care of house when your fadder vas sick. Den. Your mudder. Den she die. I not hear from you. I come to you. I clean.” She poked Sarah in the shoulder with a stubby finger.
Sarah tried to smile, but lost energy before it landed on her face. “You don’t understand, Miss Milse. You see, I, er, lost my job. Well, not really. I hope to go back to my work someday. Soon, perhaps. Maybe when that happens I can call and have you come clean.” Sarah looked at the woman’s stubborn expression, hoping she’d made herself clear.
Miss Milse looked down the hall at the mirror that had not been dusted, at the chairs that had not been lemon-oiled and at the floor that needed waxing and buffing. She scrutinized the gilt-framed paintings and heirloom family portraits that hung on the wall. She took in the sweeping wood and carpeted staircase that had not been waxed, vacuumed or dusted since the last time she’d been in the house over three months ago. She looked back to Sarah.
“House needs me to clean.”
“But I can’t pay you what my mother used to pay.”
Miss Milse shook her head. “You pay less.”
Sarah’s shoulders drooped. This wasn’t going well. “I want to pay you, but it’s just not the right time for me.” She looked away, feeling absolutely wretched. “I can’t pay you at all.”
Miss Milse stood stock-still.
“I’m so sorry,” Sarah said and met her eyes again.
Slipping out of the corner of Miss Milse’s nearly lashless blue eye was the first tear Sarah had ever seen the woman shed. This huge block of a woman who never understood the first joke Sarah had told her and who almost never laughed or smiled or showed any emotion other than pride in her work, was crying.
“I’m so very sorry.”
Miss Milse’s chin fell to her neck and she lifted her thick fingers to wipe away her tears. “Don’t pay me. I clean. I come be with you.” She lifted her head and looked around the house where she had worked for over twenty years. Her tears were careening down her cheeks in rivulets. “I come every morning. I help in house. In garden. I be wit you. I remember your mudder wit you.”
Miss Milse wavered like a mirage in the desert through Sarah’s tear-filled eyes. She nodded. She understood...finally.
“Yes. Please come every day, Miss Milse. We will work together.”
Miss Milse sniffed. “Ya.” She trudged off toward the kitchen where Sarah heard her deposit her mops and bucket with a loud clatter.
“Ya,” Sarah repeated. The house was less empty now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
EARLY-JUNE DAWN rays gl
ittered amber and gold across the waters of Indian Lake, lighting the path for Sarah and her sculling crew— Maddie Strong, Isabelle Hawks and Liz Crenshaw. As they had done since their sculling days in high school, the women rented a Janousek JS 4x/-long hull, quad sculling boat from Captain Red, who kept the boat in superb shape just for them. All the girls had been on sculling teams in high school and some, like Sarah, had raced in college, as well. Together, they had conquered Lake Lemon, near Bloomington, and raced down the North Shore of the Chicago River. Sarah loved being on the water, skimming along the glassy surface, barely creating a wake and knowing that her body and those of her crew were still able to challenge record-setting times. The white-hulled, fiberglass English Janousek dominated both national and international regattas, and when Sarah was in the stroke seat, she pretended she was once again out there making sports history.
Sarah sat close to the stern, the rest of the crew matching her cadence and movements. The quad and girls shot across the glass-smooth waters of Indian Lake like a summer dragonfly, shimmering, daring and purposeful.
Here on the water, Sarah lost her feelings of sadness and came alive again. She could hear Maddie behind her joking and teasing the other girls mercilessly. Even with their banter, the rowers never lost a second of precious rhythm. They moved as a unit. They thought as a unit. Sarah and all the women knew there were people on shore—picnickers, sun-tan addicts and weekend volleyball teams all stopped to watch them skim the lake as if they were airborne.
* * *
LUKE PARKED HIS truck next to the creosote railroad ties outside Captain Redbeard’s Marina and looked at the summer dawn as it glinted and shimmered off the lake’s smooth surface.
Annie and Timmy climbed out of the backseat and stood next to their father, following his line of vision.
“Wow. Would you look at that?” Timmy exclaimed, pointing an excited finger at the white sculling boat whipping across the center of Indian Lake.
Luke lifted his hand to his forehead and shielded his eyes. “Sculling. I haven’t seen a sculling quad in years.”
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