it out. They were in Paris—Alex was perched on a barstool and Juliet was holding Sabrina in her arms. Harper had taken it with a Royer IV, an old French folding camera from the Fifties she’d found at a shop in Saint Germain-en-Laye.
As Harper lifted the picture from the chemicals, she remembered the moment Alex first declared her love; they were on top of the Eiffel Tower and had just come from a relaxing eight-course dinner in Versailles. Although Harper hesitated in reciprocating, she really did love Alex, even then, and appreciated their life together.
Rummaging through the strips of film, Harper found a batch of negatives from their week in Maui and chose her favorite.
Strapped into their parasailing gear, Alex, with much longer hair, had her thumbs up as Juliet and Sabrina were being sucked off the boat by the Hawaiian wind. In the next frame, they were tiny flies in the sky.
Along with the happy memories, darker ones surfaced as Harper poked the paper with tongs. She remembered their fight the evening before their parasailing adventure, the one no one else heard, the one where Alex complained of Harper’s apathy. It was right before they ended their open relationship. Neither of them could connect knowing there were other women in their bedroom.
“I know,” Alex had said, throwing her empty rum bottle into Lahaina Bay, “I know there is more inside you than this. Fucking let me in.”
As Harper scattered negatives on the light table, she saw a shadowy figure walk past the sealed window, eclipsing the slice of sunlight. She looked up, remembered their busted doorbell and untied her apron. Slipping from the darkroom door, she crept to the window above the washer and dryer, a rickety porthole with webbed corners.
Harper didn’t see anyone in the driveway, so she jumped down and went to the window facing the backyard. On her tiptoes, Harper scanned the brick patio and the bushy wall of azaleas, but there was nothing. No one. It was her imagination.
When Harper finished the photos, she spent the early afternoon in the garden. Their rose bushes needed trimming—
they’d exploded with buds and taken over the hydrangea—and she’d picked up some perennials at the nursery the day before.
In the yard, she was wearing an old sundress that had gone from hanging in the closet to a wad in her drawer to her gardening bag. It was loose and tattered around the edges, and its buttercups were fading into the powder blue background. Her hair was twisted sloppily into a straw hat. On her knees in the dirt, Harper worked in the side yard for most of the afternoon as the sun, whose intensity grew as it moved across the sky, scorched her back.
Alex hadn’t phoned and Harper was worried. She was hours overdue and she’d tried her cell phone several times.
Harper was popping the last peony out of its can when someone called her name.
“Harper.”
She stopped and waited, staying close to the ground. An earthworm wiggled in the damp dirt as Harper told herself she was crazy. Still imagining things. Running after the train years earlier had been foolish enough; she wouldn’t fall for it this time, or ever again.
Then the voice once more.
“Hi Bella.”
Harper’s Jack Russell terrier, Quincy, jumped from the portico and barked.
Sitting up, Harper stabbed the shovel into the mulch. “Who’s there?”
She couldn’t look.
She’d given up so long ago.
Harper heard shoes against the brick pathway.
“It’s me.”
Twelve years.
This moment, not even a full second, suspended itself in time. Harper felt the wood grain of the Dunlop’s front door against her fingertips, the doormat crushed under her knees, the taste of blood in her mouth.
“Grace.”
Although she wasn’t ready, with wet soil stuck to her shins, Harper took off her gloves, stood up and slowly turned around.
Grace was less than ten feet away, and even more stunning than Harper remembered. Grace’s hair, still an even honey blond mix, was layered now. She wore black dress pants and a sheer top with delicate beading, a nude tank underneath. Covering her eyes was a newer version of her signature Gucci sunglasses, which she slid off as she walked toward Harper.
“Jesus Christ,” Harper said, wiping sweat from her forehead.
“Nope,” Grace said softly. “Just me.”
Face-to-face, they looked into each other’s eyes and beyond their initial words, said nothing.
It was a flash Harper had visualized in her dreams.
There was no exchange of affection. Grace was waiting for a hug, Harper could tell, but the phone rang, interrupting the moment. Harper let her gaze go from Grace to the cordless phone, set on the kitchen stoop along with a glass of lemonade.
Her body followed.
When Harper picked it up, she immediately turned back to Grace, who was walking around the yard inspecting their English garden.
“We’re here,” Alex said. “Finally. We broke down and I couldn’t get a signal.”
Harper’s hand holding the receiver shook.
“When are you leaving?” Alex asked.
“Soon.”
“Okay. I’ll see you at the show,” Alex said. “I love you.”
As Harper said goodbye, Grace turned around and from twenty feet away, nearly knocked Harper over. It wasn’t intentional. It was just the way she had.
Harper hung up, leaned back, and, as quietly as she could, set the phone on the table. Grace got closer again and sat on the step in front of Harper. Eddies of perfume and Aveda swirled in the air.
“What are you doing here?”
Beneath Harper, Grace’s eyes were open, expansive pallets
of blue. “That’s a good question,” she said, tracing the edge of the sandpaper guard on the wood stair.
Harper waited, but Grace had no answer, only another question. “Do you have any idea how hard you were to find?”
“No,” Harper said, lifting the shaking glass before putting it down quickly, “I don’t.”
“Well you are.”
Harper wondered how long Grace had been looking, and what in God’s earth she wanted now. After all this time. Harper could see the oil painting in her therapist’s office, an empty boat at dawn.
“You didn’t want to be found, did you?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Let’s see, an unlisted number, no forwarding address. No one I know has talked to you since you left.”
Everything Grace said was true. Maybe she didn’t want to be found. Or maybe she just wanted Grace to have to find her.
“I was on your trail a couple years ago,” Grace shared, “and actually found you in Seattle. But by the time I got up there, you’d already moved from that yellow triplex. There was even a piece of junk mail with your name on it still in the mailbox.
After that, I lost track. Well, until…” Grace stopped and stared at her hands.
Harper finished her sentence: “Until I ran into your mom.”
A deeply pained look flushed Grace’s face. “I was really, really sorry to hear about your parents,” Grace said, looking Harper straight in the eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been there. I wish you’d have called.”
“Called?”
A car alarm beeped in front of the house. Then there were footsteps coming up the driveway before Juliet surfaced with a Pyrex dish.
In her green scrubs, Juliet shouted, “Bonsoir!” She and Sabrina were both nurses at OHSU, a teaching hospital in the hills overlooking Portland.
Grace and Harper stood.
“Just returning this,” Juliet said, playfully licking her lips.
“Yuh-hum. We finished it this morning.” She spoke to Grace.
“Harper made this amazing casserole. Was it called Death By Eggs?”
Harper shook her head.
“Anyway, it was to die for.”
Juliet smiled at Grace then looked at Harper. Grace stuck her hand out.
“This is Grace, an old fr
iend of mine. In town for…work?”
“I just moved here actually.”
“What,” Harper gasped.
“I’m starting law school in a couple weeks down the road.
Lewis & Clark College.”
Juliet set the dish on the Adirondack chair. “What kind of law?”“You never went to law school?” Harper asked.
“Environmental,” Grace said, keeping her attention on Juliet.
“You picked the right city.”
“That’s what I’ve heard.”
Juliet sighed, a long day behind her.
“When are you leaving?” Juliet asked Harper.
“Soon.”
Juliet looked at her watch. “I figured you’d be on the road by now.”
“What time is it?”
“Four.”
“Fuck.”
“She goes on at eight?”
“Yeah.”
“You better get movin’,” Juliet said. “Alex’ll have a fit if you’re not there when the show starts.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Harper saw Grace look twice when she said Alex’s name.
“Will you be joining us at the beach Friday?” Juliet asked Grace.
“Joining you?” Grace questioned.
“What are you up to this weekend?” Juliet asked.
“Nothing, I guess.”
“You’re new to town. You should join us at the coast this weekend, right Harps?” Juliet suggested.
“Oh. I don’t…” Grace started to say.
To Harper, Juliet asked, “Is that okay? I guess I should let you invite her. She’s your friend.”
Harper was at a loss. “Ah, of course it’s okay.”
“Have you been to the Oregon Coast?” Juliet asked.
“No,” Grace admitted.
“You’re coming then. There’s plenty of room at Harper’s.”
“I…”—Grace looked at Harper, who was staring blankly at Juliet—“am not sure that’ll work.”
“Why not?” Juliet asked. “We won’t take no for an answer.
The more the merrier.” Juliet turned to leave. “Now get going.
Chop Chop.”
After Juliet drove off, Grace and Harper made plans to see each other once she returned from Seattle. Coffee at noon on Wednesday. Before Grace left, she pulled a Montblanc pen from her purse and jotted her cell number on the back of a receipt.
Harper flipped it over. It was from Bluehour.
Her heart rate quickened.
How dare Grace come to Portland, she thought. And still be so beautiful.
Life was going to get complicated.
“Thinkin’ About You”
Trisha Yearwood
On her way up to Seattle, Harper listened to the Dixie Chicks, contemplating, replaying the resurrection of Grace in her mind. Hearing her name. Seeing Grace’s face. The way Grace touched Harper’s arm when they parted.
Harper was to blame for the Juliet debacle. Even though Juliet was overbearing at times, pushy even, she should’ve been honest with everyone about her past, especially with Alex.
Harper arrived at the Paramount Theater with few a minutes to spare. As she hurried to her seat, there was a buzz in the auditorium, similar to the one in her head. An elevated energy.
Anticipation. One that everyone could feel. Alex, Harper knew, was feeling it in her room too, where she prepared for her show, meditating and eating licorice, lights low and lavender candles burning.
Above the crowd, the Paramount Theater’s expansive vestibule was filled with the smell of popcorn and history.
The theater, built in the Twenties, had seen some of the best performers of the twenty-first century. Their presence was tucked into the bronze pockets of the magnificent ceiling—Madonna’s
0
bravado from her first world tour, the psychedelic cadences of Jerry Garcia and the old money of Sinatra and his entourage.
When Alex walked on stage, the women went wild. As she took the microphone, her eyes moved along the front row until she found Harper, sitting on the end with her camera. Alex winked and blew her a kiss before welcoming the crowd.
Alex’s popularity had grown since her last tour, and considerably so. She’d gone from selling out bars and small venues to the big time: huge summer festivals, opening for well-known headliners, filling a theater like the Paramount.
Harper was proud of her; if anyone deserved the sweet taste of success, it was Alex. Many nights Harper had woken up at two or three, and found Alex in the living room strumming the guitar with her spiral notebook open, scribbled lyrics and titles in the margins amidst musical notes. She was a true artist.
In the bright lights, Harper snapped several shots of Alex performing. One with just her and the microphone, the spotlight illuminating her body as she sang a capella with the guitar slung around her back.
During intermission, Harper got a beer and leaned against the pewter railing above the mob of dykes. Before her first sip, Harper dug into her bag to make sure the Valium was still there.
The prescription had expired, but she’d thrown it in the small zipper pocket of her purse anyway. Just in case. Doctor’s orders after she’d ended up in the emergency room for sleep deprivation years before. Harper could feel the swallowing fear of panic coming back. Suffocation. Claustrophobia.
As Harper nursed her lager, she replayed her conversation with Grace for the fifteenth time since they parted, focused now on the tail end of their conversation, the piece that occurred at Grace’s car door.
It had been Grace that snowy night in December. She’d been in town visiting Lewis & Clark’s law school and to see if she could find Harper. Harper didn’t tell Grace that she’d gotten close, nor did she tell Grace that she’d run after the train in a humiliating tear down the sidewalk. These details were Harper’s. And hers alone. Grace didn’t deserve to know.
After Grace found Harper’s empty apartment in Seattle, she
explained, she’d all but given up until Harper bumped into Cilla when she was home settling her parents’ estate.
“She told me you were in Portland,” Grace said, propped against the car with her glasses back on.
By the time Grace found Harper, her parents had been dead for almost two years.
Traveling from Chile to Buenos Aires, Ana and Blue’s small, twin-engine plane had gone down in the Patagonian Andes.
Harper had traveled to Santiago with Alvaro to retrieve their bodies.
The photos from their last trip were framed in sequence in Harper and Alex’s hallway; the halogen lights really brought out the sparkle in Ana’s eyes. Harper’s favorite shot of her mom was the last one her dad took before he died. She was sprawled on a rock on the edge of Rio Picacho, her boots off and her feet crossed in front of her. Ana had that look; the one Harper’s father fell in love with in Kenya, the one he mused about when he drank wine.
It was a miracle the film survived. If only they had.
Before Harper left Arizona with their ashes, mixed together according to the instructions in their will, she stopped by the cemetery to see Dean. It had been years since Harper visited, so she took a boxed lunch for herself, a pot of pansies for Dean and had planned on staying the afternoon.
Except for a graveyard truck and an old man on the other side of the pond, Harper was alone that day. It was quiet, only a fading lawnmower in the distance. The grass had grown over, but Dean’s grave was just where Harper remembered, past the mausoleum under a willow tree. After she threw out the blanket and kicked off her sandals, a pair of Canadian geese waddled along the water’s edge.
Harper worked on lunch, a half sandwich, egg salad and two cookies, both peanut butter. Halfway through, a piece of mayonnaisey yolk fell from her spoon and landed on the slate headstone beneath her. Harper was startled—she hadn’t noticed she was lying on someone. Ethel Ramsey. She lived to be ninety-one. Harper apologized to Ethel as she cleaned her mess and scooted over.
A car door closing
, a jarring discord of metal, woke Harper from her nap.
Lifting her head, Harper could’ve picked out Cilla’s black convertible anywhere; even though it was a newer model, she’d ridden in her Bentleys hundreds of times. They all looked the same, just upgraded year after year.
When she first saw Cilla, she was pulling geraniums from the trunk. Harper gathered her trash, blown and scattered about, and braced herself as Cilla approached.
Harper saw the hesitation when Cilla realized it was Harper at Dean’s grave, a short pause before continuing her way.
“Harper,” she said, setting the flowers down.
“Hi Mrs. Dunlop.”
“What a surprise.”
“I was just leaving.”
She stood over Harper in a wide hat, her tangerine linen dress whipping in the wind. “You don’t have to go on my account,”
Cilla said. “How are you? It’s been ages.”
“I’m all right.”
She started to walk away and stopped. “It’s so nice that you’re here…visiting Dean. Seems no one comes to visit anymore. Only me.” In the shade of the tall trees, Cilla was dappled with white flecks of flickering light. Harper studied her as she gracefully strolled back to the car. Once Cilla had come back and was sitting on her own blanket a few feet away, she spoke to Harper again.
“Do you come here often?” she asked, rubbing her temples and looking longingly at Dean’s headstone.
“This is my first time, actually, in many years. If I still lived here, I’d come more often.”
“What do you mean?”
“I live in Oregon now.”
“You do?”
“I moved away a long time ago,” Harper said, embarrassed she didn’t know. “I’ve been gone since ’ninety-five. I went to grad school in Seattle then moved down to Portland last year.”
“You’re kidding?” Cilla said, taking off her sunglasses. “I wonder why Grace never mentioned it.”
Harper knew why, maybe they both did.
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