Heart Echoes

by Sally John

  So why did she hesitate?

  Because Teal still intimidated her.

  Lacey wiped her hands on the dish towel hanging at her waist and headed into the back room. Worming her way into the graces of the sister she had not seen in nine years was pure ridiculousness.

  She sat at the desk and dialed Teal’s house number. It rang only once.

  “Hello. Lacey?”

  The wonders of caller ID.

  “Hi, Teal. Oh.” She breathed the word, suddenly unable to speak.

  “Yeah, I know.” Teal exhaled loudly. “But we’re okay.”

  “Your neighbor told me last night, but I needed to hear it from you. I didn’t mean to call so early, but I just could not wait another minute.”

  “No worries. An aftershock got us going about five this morning.”

  Lacey listened as Teal told her what had happened the previous day, how Teal had been in the car, out of touch with River and Maiya for hours, River’s broken ribs. Her stomach knotted more and more with each horrid detail. “Is it safe to stay there?”

  “Who knows? It’s earthquake country, as safe as ever, I guess. We’re staying home today. The news says the city is basically shut down, what with all the power outages and cleanup.”

  “The aftershocks—”

  “Are scary, but they’re lessening in strength and number.”

  “Oh, Teal! Why don’t you come home?”

  A heavy silence settled between them.

  Once every few years or so, Lacey spouted the question to her sister in a fit of emotion. The first time had been when Lacey was twelve. Teal was in Portland, a college freshman, making plans to spend Christmas with a friend’s family in Seattle. It was where Teal had gone for that Thanksgiving.

  Another time Lacey asked it, she was seventeen. Teal, twenty-two and long gone to California by then, had phoned to say she had given birth to a baby girl and named her Maiya.

  “Lacey,” Teal said now.

  She braced herself. Teal’s responses were always caustic. “If I wanted to be there, I wouldn’t be here, would I? I’m raising a child by myself; I do not have the time nor the money for travel. River is my home. I really, really do not care to hear Randi and Owen tell me what a lousy daughter I was and still am.”

  Which explained why it took Lacey years to gather enough gumption to repeat the question.

  Teal sighed.

  Sighed? For real?

  “I appreciate that, Lacey Jo.” It was an old nickname. “I really do. But we’ll be fine. We can’t run away from the mess right now. Our friends and coworkers and—and, well, the three of us just need to regroup and stick together. Does that make sense?”

  “Yeah.” What didn’t make sense was the hesitancy in her sister’s voice. “But if you need to get away at all, Will and I are here. And my friend’s aunt bought those cottages just off the 101 on Juniper. She’ll give us a deal. Remember them?”

  “The Moonbeam Cottages.”

  She remembered?

  They reminisced about the town and all that had not changed. It was a brief exchange.

  But very, very un-Teal-like.

  Chapter 14

  LOS ANGELES

  Teal set the cordless phone on the counter. Her little sister was an oddball. No matter how many months passed between phone conversations, she always spoke as if they enjoyed a normal relationship. Unlike Teal, she even sent cards for birthdays and every holiday on the calendar, including Passover and Kwanzaa.

  “Mom.” Maiya stood nearby, stirring pancake batter in a large mixing bowl. “Does this look right?”

  “Mm-hmm.” She cut open a package of bacon. They were full-on into food with high fat content.

  “What did you just call Aunt Lacey?”

  Teal bristled as she always did whenever Maiya referred to Aunt Lacey. It was too intimate a title for someone her daughter had met only once, nine years ago. They seldom even spoke besides the occasional “Hi, how’s it going, here’s Mom.”

  And it was too much like a bucket of guilt being dumped over Teal’s head.

  Maiya said, “Lacey Jo?”

  “Old nickname.”

  “I get it. For Lacey Joanna. What did they call you?”

  They as in the parents? Their nickname would be worthless, no-good slut.

  Maiya took the bacon package and peeled off slices, laying them in a pan. “Teal Susanna. Hm. Teal Sue doesn’t have the same ring.”

  Teal didn’t have the same ring as Lacey in any way, shape, or form. “Lacey called me Tealie Sue.”

  “Cute.”

  There had been absolutely nothing cute about Teal’s childhood. Even a special name her half sister called her carried a certain amount of pain with it. “Not as cute as Minnie McMouse.”

  Maiya flashed her a smile. Her eyes twinkled.

  Teal felt a rush of gratitude. Not only was her daughter safe, she must be truly, deep-down fine. She could not possibly fake such happiness if she and Jake Ford were intimate. Maiya may have gotten away with lies, but Teal would know if something that profound had occurred.

  Wouldn’t she?

  “Hey.” River walked into the kitchen, his hair damp from a shower. He had awakened in much less pain than the night before, and now the forehead creases were all but smoothed out. “I thought I smelled bacon.”

  Maiya said, “Yeah. Mom’s pancakes are coming too.”

  “Great. I don’t remember eating yesterday.”

  “Did you know she has a nickname? Tealie Sue.”

  “No way.”

  “For real.”

  They both turned toward her.

  “What?” she said.

  “It’s endearing,” he said.

  Maiya nodded. “Exactly. You should call her that, Riv.”

  Teal locked eyes with him and willed him to intuit much more than he could possibly know. He and Maiya had been told little about her history beyond “My childhood stunk.” Why burden them with sordid details of dysfunction at its finest?

  River gave his head a slight shake. “I think I’ll just stick with my own nickname for her.”

  Maiya rolled her eyes and turned her attention to the sizzling bacon. “You mean Xena? Ha. That is so lame, Riv. Lame, lame, lame.”

  Teal heard the tease in Maiya’s voice and saw the warmth in River’s smile. Tears stung. She stepped to the counter and turned on the griddle. “Lacey called to check on us.”

  “That was thoughtful of her.”

  “She invited us up to get away for a while.” Her back to them, she poured oil on the cooker and chose a spatula from the red utensil holder. “Getting away might not be a half-bad idea after all. Maybe we could go camping tomorrow, make it a long weekend.”

  “Mom, you don’t like camping.”

  “Suddenly it sounds comforting. The camper beats huddling in here, waiting for the next rumble to shake the house. And the three of us alone reconnecting as a family is exactly what we need.”

  The puzzled expressions behind her were almost audible.

  No, she did not care for camping. But River’s compact RV, which he kept parked at his school, made it tolerable. Cooking was a hassle and the bathroom a bad dream. Yet sharing close quarters with the daughter who had gone south and the injured husband would be worth every inconvenience.

  “Sooo,” Maiya drawled, “Cedar Pointe is not a possibility?”

  Been there, done that, Teal wanted to snap.

  They had visited once. Maiya was six years old, and Teal was a newbie in the area of faith. Overwhelmed with a sense of God’s love for her, Teal had been eager to share the grace she had experienced.

  There had been no other way to explain her life apart from that. The birth of her perfect baby, the care poured onto them by the neighbor Maiya called Gammy Jayne, Jayne’s church, the finances, the ability to finish her law degree, the plum job . . . the release from a lifetime of guilt and shame. Those things were sheer gifts.

  Teal still wondered where God had been duri
ng that disastrous visit to Oregon. Her mother, Randi, and stepdad, Owen, did not receive Teal or Maiya with open arms. They did not want to hear about Teal’s need to escape her past and live in LA. They had no memory of Owen’s whippings nor of Randi’s knack of looking the other way nor of any alcohol abuse whatsoever.

  Lacey was caught in the crossfire, as always an innocent bystander. Teal’s remorse over their history grew too heavy. She hugged Lacey good-bye, apologized for being the world’s poorest excuse for a big sister, and never went back to Cedar Pointe. She had no desire to ever go back.

  But her daughter might. Someday.

  Teal felt River’s hands on her stiffened shoulders, his gentle touch urging them downward from her ears, which they had crept up toward.

  In the throes of emotions still running high, Teal took a chance to find out if “someday” had arrived. She looked at Maiya. “Do you want Cedar Pointe to be a possibility?”

  Maiya crinkled her nose in disgust. “Are you kidding me? Grounded in Camp Poppycock, Oregon?” It was Teal’s reference to Cedar Pointe. “I remember it as freezing cold and rainy. I bet they don’t have Internet or satellite TV or any TV. Probably not even cell service. Aunt Lacey and Uncle Will just stand around all day and make coffee. No thank you. I’d take primitive camping over that anytime. Mom, the oil is smoking.”

  River reached around Teal and turned down the griddle. “I suggest we stay put for now and not make any rash decisions about anything, not even camping for the weekend. We’re all, understandably, a little on edge.” He took the spatula from her, nudging her aside.

  “On edge” was putting it mildly. Teal had not slept for twenty minutes at a stretch throughout the night. Lying on the carpet between him and Maiya, she dreamed in a half-alert state of the freeway overpass, the Iowans, the sirens, the chaos. She would awaken fully, touch Maiya and River, pad out to the family room, check the TV news, go back, and lie down. Then she would begin the entire process again.

  River poured batter from the spouted bowl onto the hot griddle, making six uniform puddles.

  She rested her chin against his shoulder and watched him cook. He had not shaved since yesterday. If he skipped another twenty-four hours, his face would darken with the beginnings of a full beard.

  She said, “If we go camping, I promise not to mention how I feel about men who hide behind beards.”

  He grinned his half grin, a yummy expression that made her want to tease him until the other side of his mouth went up, revealing his teeth and laugh lines. “How do you feel about men who can’t do much beyond cook pancakes?”

  “Love ’em. They would let Xena and Xena Junior drive the camper, chop the wood, carry boxes of food, hook up the wires and pipes and propane and all that stuff.”

  He laughed.

  “Mom,” Maiya said, “we can do it the easy way. Take the tent and little grill with charcoal. That’s all Jake had at his campsite, and we got along just fine.”

  Teal held up a finger and closed her eyes.

  “What? What’d I say?”

  River cleared his throat. “Too much, too soon.”

  By 8:30 a.m., the day felt as long as a week. Teal considered driving downtown to the office and getting lost in work.

  They’d had The Discussion with Maiya. Their pronouncement that, yes—despite the fact that they were all safe and she had not imbibed, smoked, or had sex—she was still grounded indefinitely. The unspecified time limit was River’s idea. Teal had wanted to go with a year.

  The earlier twinkle in her eye long gone, Maiya had left the breakfast table in a major huff to be alone in her bedroom, about the only activity she was allowed beyond eating and working at the ice cream parlor. They didn’t have the heart to tell her kitchen cleanup was still allowed and expected.

  Teal sat now on the family room floor next to the couch where River had stretched out. She faced the television, which in spite of their agreement to turn it off, still played nonstop local news.

  She said, “Should I hide her cell phone and laptop?”

  “No. We need to trust her to some extent. Just put them away in our room.”

  “What about her television?”

  “It’s too heavy for you to move. She knows it’s off limits. Again, the trust factor comes into play. Though she may need to watch some news today, like we do.”

  Teal listened to a man on the screen describe how his house became the pile of rubble visible behind him. “I don’t understand why I want to watch this.”

  “Because it’s our world. We’ve all been affected, the entire city. We want to come together as a community and comfort each other.”

  “We’re not being voyeuristic?”

  “Are you enjoying a sick sort of fun while this guy talks about everything he lost?”

  “No. But I must admit that a part of my brain is registering that there will be a ripple effect in families. The strain is going to push some marriages to the breaking point, and they won’t make it. Others are going to decide they need to write that will they’ve been meaning to for years. Some single dad is going to rethink his visitation rights. All of which means more business for me. Isn’t that awful?”

  “It’s reality. You’ve never been in the business for the money.”

  That was true. The income was a necessity, of course, but the law fascinated her. It kept her going. To see it in motion as it helped those who hurt was her passion.

  River touched her hair. “Speaking of ripple effects, the earthquake prompted your sister to call.”

  She turned to him. “Your point?”

  “And now we have Tealie Sue. Want to tell me?”

  Her throat went dry and she shook her head.

  “Love . . .” River pressed with such tenderness. Not responding to his compassion was kind of like telling God to take a hike.

  Which she had been known to do on occasion.

  River said, “Owen called you that.” It was a statement.

  Her husband was a smart guy.

  When Teal was four, Owen Pomeroy had married her mother. Lacey was born soon after. From the beginning Teal refused to refer to him as her stepdad. He was always Owen, and at some point her mother became Randi, short for Miranda. Owen never adopted her. A huge blessing, in her mind. There would never be any legal ramifications with the scuzzball.

  “Yeah.” She sighed. “I’ve told you how Lacey was so cute and funny when she was little. How everyone adored her. Well, she even got a special name, Lacey Jo, from our mom. I was six, not cute, not funny, not adored, so I nicknamed myself Tealie Sue. Lacey liked it. I told everyone at school that was my new name. Owen the moron got wind of it and made it his term of endearment.” She smirked. “Which was helpful, in a way. It gave me a heads-up that he was about to ridicule me or smack me.”

  “Oh, Teal.”

  “Hey, it’s not a big deal. I covered this ages ago. I actually hadn’t given it a thought in years.” She smiled. “God’s honest truth.”

  River wrapped an arm around her neck and kissed her forehead. “God’s honest truth, you are not only cute and funny and adored, you are beautiful inside and out.”

  He had said the words before, whittling away at those other words planted by her stepdad. On some days she imagined River’s were the true ones.

  “And one more thing,” he said. “I love you.”

  She laughed and kissed him. Those were the words she could believe any day.

  Chapter 15

  “Mr. Hinson died!” The blonde teen, a friend of Maiya’s, announced the news loudly, her dark eyes wide and her chin trembling, right there in the middle of Shoe Place. “A wall collapsed on him!”

  As Teal watched the girls whimper and hug each other, she murmured to herself, “Where do I go to resign?”

  Just when she thought the earthquake stories could not get any sadder, a new one slammed into her heart with debilitating fury. Mr. Hinson taught math at the middle school. Even now as high schoolers, the girls thought of him with
fondness. He was like that.

  Had been like that.

  The mother of Maiya’s friend touched Teal’s arm. She couldn’t remember the woman’s name, but it didn’t matter. They exchanged subdued hellos and began the dialogue that had become commonplace the past three days with friends and strangers alike. “Is your family all right? Where were you when it struck?”

  Eventually she and Maiya made their way outside to the car with new shoes for marching band and a pair of everyday sandals for school. It was only because of her growing feet that Maiya had been granted a reprieve to exit the house.

  Well, that and Teal’s stir-craziness. Like most of her coworkers and much of the city, she was doing work from home or putting it on hold. Not that she wanted to stray too far from Maiya and River yet. Aftershocks had lessened in numbers and strength, but they were still strong enough to rattle her nerves.

  “Mom—” Maiya spoke over the top of the car—“why can’t I drive?”

  “Honey, if you say ‘Why can’t I’ one more time, I swear I’m going to lose it. Do you really want me to explain again why you have no privileges?”

  Maiya huffed and tossed her head. Her long hair bounced over her shoulder.

  Teal got into the car and shut her door.

  Maiya slid in from her side. “But you know I have to get in more practice time so I can get my driver’s license in October.” She slammed the door angrily. “It’s like schoolwork. You wouldn’t say I can’t do homework.”

  “Those are not the same at all. Driving is a privilege you earn by being trustworthy.” She put the key in the ignition and sat back with a sigh to look at her scowling daughter. “Less arguing might convince the jury to commute this part of the sentence.”

  “Oh, ha-ha.” She crossed her arms and stared straight ahead. “From the counselor herself.”

  Teal studied Maiya’s pretty face, so incongruent with the ugly words she had been spouting in recent days. River’s insight came to mind: they were all on edge. They needed to cut each other a lot of slack.