by Kay Bratt
It shamed her now, but she’d turned away, hiding her face from Lauren and pretending to make the bed until she got herself under control. Jacob had been gone five years by then, but it still felt as fresh as the day they’d lowered him into the ground, when she’d clung to one of his small blankets, inhaling the last scent of him as she said her goodbye. The pain had been unbearable, the sadness settled around her like a wet winter cloak, refusing to move.
In truth, it was still that way more often than not. People said that time healed all, but for Sadie, time only made her wonder what he would’ve been like at twelve years old. Then thirteen. On his fourteenth birthday—puberty flowing and his nose peppered with the dreaded teenager’s acne, she supposed—would he have been interested in girls or taken more of a liking to cars or sports, spending all his time with the boys? A late bloomer, like Tom said he had been growing up.
Once, when they’d still been speaking about him, before Sadie had closed that door, Tom had claimed he would’ve been headed toward a football career or maybe baseball.
Sadie didn’t know about that. But on what would’ve been his sixteenth birthday, she’d taken off for the day and somehow ended up at the department of motor vehicles, watching as teenagers took their driving tests, their parents hovering with anticipation until their children emerged, smiling or shaking their heads.
She’d imagined Jacob thin and as tall as Tom, with her father’s perfectly sculpted nose. He’d be strong and confident, nothing like some of the awkward teens she’d seen that day. Sitting in the car, she’d watched each boy who entered the doors, anxious to pass his first test into adulthood. One of them had come with tattered shorts and an obscene T-shirt, and Sadie had dreamed up what outfit Jacob would’ve worn: something neat and tidy for the picture on his license. A collared shirt, for sure, and not some cheap graphic or tie-dyed shirt.
He would’ve passed on the first try, she’d told herself, gloating at the thought of her son excelling at everything, a fantasy that she built upon year after year.
Tom hadn’t asked her where she’d gone that day, and now, sitting here replaying it in her mind, she realized she hadn’t asked him either. Lauren had been at a sleepover with her grandparents, so now she remembered Tom had been alone.
And she had been alone.
Once she’d stopped critiquing the boys who walked and breathed—who lived—the pain had filled her so deeply that she’d huddled in her car for hours, sobbing and asking God why—what had she done so wrong that he’d been taken from her?
Now she asked herself why she and Tom hadn’t been together that day. Or any of those days. They could’ve been dividing their pain in two to help each other carry the burden instead of hoarding it like it was some sort of buried treasure.
And the feeling of impending doom never left her. She was reminded time and again that death had darkened their door and knew where they lived.
It could easily come back for more.
Sadie remembered the first time Lauren had allowed her to hold her in a tight embrace. Sadie had sworn then that nothing would ever be able to take her away. She’d see her go through preschool, then puberty, and one day even plan a wedding and help her decorate a nursery. Just to make sure that fate knew she meant business, Sadie had mapped out Lauren’s entire future, as though if it were set in stone with no question about which path her life would take, it couldn’t be messed with. Somehow, Lauren had cooperated, going into the hobbies and clubs that Sadie pushed on her, hip-hopping around in dance class, mastering the butterfly stroke on her swim team, and even excelling and becoming the editor of the high school yearbook club, an honor that was sure to help her get into the college and major she wanted—or that Sadie wanted for her.
Yes, karma had been good to them, and Sadie wasn’t as much thankful as she was indignant because after what she’d gone through—what she’d lost—she deserved for her second child to be treated well and to follow the path laid out for her instead of the universe cutting it short.
She felt the familiar flush of anger coursing through her body and, right behind it, the electric currents of pain.
“Mom?” Lauren said, her voice a disembodied sound from the dark.
“I’m here,” Sadie said. She reached over and stroked Lauren’s hair, taking care not to touch the sore spot.
“What are you thinking about?” Lauren said. “It’s so dark. Please talk to me.”
“I—I was thinking about you when you were younger.” Sadie never talked to Lauren about Jacob. Actually, she never talked to anyone about him.
“What about me?” Lauren asked, her voice soft.
“Remember that time you wrapped up a bar of my soap and gave it to me for Mother’s Day?”
Lauren let out a small, hollow laugh. “I was so stupid.”
“No, you weren’t stupid,” Sadie scolded. “You were adorable. And sweet.” She began rubbing little circles on Lauren’s back. “You just wanted to please us all the time.”
“But giving you something that was already yours? A bar of soap? Come on, Mom,” she said. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not the gift, Lauren. It’s the gesture. And that wasn’t just any bar of soap. It was rose-milled soap, and you knew I’d been saving it for a special occasion. But I’d bought it for myself and not really thought much about it until you gave it to me that morning. Then I realized how spoiled I was to have it. See, the littlest things that are really of no consequence make the best—” She stopped suddenly.
“What is it?” Lauren asked, immediately frightened.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Sadie said. “You just made me remember something.”
She moved until she could reach behind her and put her hand in her back pocket.
There it was, she thought, smiling. When she’d thrown away anything that a bear could sniff out, she’d forgotten about the gum.
She brought it back around and pulled out a piece, unwrapping it. It was waterlogged and stuck to the wrapper, but she peeled it loose.
“What do you have?” Lauren asked, hearing the paper.
“Open your mouth,” Sadie said.
“No way—I’m not opening my mouth for you,” Lauren said, laughing. “I can’t see what you have.”
“I promise you’ll be glad you opened.” She felt for Lauren’s face and found her mouth, then slipped the stick of gum into it.
“Ahhh,” Lauren said, moaning at the sweetness of it. “So good.”
Her obvious joy filled Sadie with pleasure. “See—I told you. This morning, if you’d have eaten this gum, it would have been fairly insignificant. But now what’s it feel like?”
“Like the best present ever.”
“And that’s how I felt when you gave me my soap,” Sadie said.
She unwrapped another piece of gum and broke the end off of it. She put the other part back in the wrapper and pushed it down into the package before returning it to her pocket. When she put the small bit on her tongue, she let the sugar tease her senses before she bit in.
It tasted amazing. Suddenly the dryness was gone, and in its place, a river of moisture formed in her mouth.
Lauren talked more, grinning over more things she’d done that she considered silly. They didn’t want to go back to sleep. Sadie was worried about Lauren’s head injury, and fear of what lay just beyond their reach in the dark kept Lauren awake. So they talked long into the night, comparing memories and reminiscing about Tom and how he obsessed over the whole Santa thing—staying up late to put the unwrapped gifts under the tree, nestling them among the wrapped ones, and consuming the cookies and milk even though he was lactose intolerant.
Sadie remembered him crawling into bed, exhausted and bloated but satisfied that Lauren would wake up to the magic wonder of Christmas once again.
He was a good dad, Sadie said to herself more than once as Lauren talked about him. He never let Lauren believe anything other than that he was the happiest man on earth to have “his two girls”
in his life. Unlike Sadie, he hadn’t let the tragedy of losing a son put a shadow over everything else in his life. But how much of that was an act? Sadie had never thought of that possibility.
“What do you think Dad is doing right now?” Lauren asked.
It was late, but Tom never went to sleep until well after midnight. Sadie had always enjoyed having the bed to herself as she drifted off to sleep, but now she wondered what kept him awake so much. “Oh, he’s probably sitting in his chair, a bowl of popcorn in one hand and the remote in the other, watching some reality show set in Alaska.”
“He’ll drop the remote,” Lauren said.
Sadie chuckled. When Tom nodded off, he usually let go of the remote, and she could hear it hitting the floor all the way from their bedroom. She didn’t know that Lauren could hear it too.
“He’s predictable, isn’t he?” she said.
“In a good way,” Lauren said. “More like dependable. With Dad, I always know what I’m going to get or how he’s going to react. Just like that time I forgot to put my car in park when I got out. It rolled down the hill into the ditch at a party my senior year. He’d told me to always use the emergency brake, but I thought it was a waste of time. Until that day. I was hysterical when I called him, but he calmed me down right away. He was there in half an hour and never once scolded me as he pulled it out. He said it was a great learning lesson, and he bet I’d never ignore the emergency brake again.”
“He was right too.” Sadie remembered the red convertible Mustang they’d snagged for a song and given to Lauren for her first car. Sadie had laughed when Lauren called it a classic car—even though it had been made the same year she was born and was far from antique.
There was a reason they’d gotten it so cheap, but Lauren hadn’t even balked that it was a manual drive. Tom had put her behind the wheel in the school parking lot, and within an hour she’d conquered how to drive stick. In his quiet and calm way, Tom had made it look easy, even as Sadie had sat in the back, a bundle of raw nerves at each jackrabbit start until Lauren had figured out the right combination of clutch and gas to begin smoothly.
Now she swallowed past a lump in her throat as she thought about how hard it must’ve been for Tom to always be the rock—never faltering as he strove to provide a joyful home for Lauren. One not marred by the ghost of a boy she’d never met.
No wonder Lauren had been drawn to him from day one. She’d known instinctively that Sadie was carrying too much sadness to make room for a little girl in her arms. But not Tom—he’d dropped his load the second he’d laid eyes on his daughter.
Or had he? Could it be that he hadn’t forgotten Jacob at all, that he’d suffered silently for all these years? That he’d found a way to do both—grieve his son and love his daughter?
Sadie didn’t know anymore. All she knew was that she felt selfish. She’d been so consumed by her own grief and laying out the perfect future for Lauren that she’d neglected the person who probably needed her the most. She’d left him to sort through his feelings and figure out how to keep breathing, all on his own.
He must hate her for it too. That was the only way she could explain his recent lack of interest in her and his unexplained absences. He’d finally decided she was a horrible wife and mother. Maybe he even blamed her for not stopping the runaway train of disaster before it was too late.
But his blame couldn’t even compare to that she already held for herself.
The owl hooted, and Sadie looked up, glaring at the spot the sound had come from. She could’ve sworn he’d rebuked her, even urged her to stop thinking so hard and instead be there in the moment, to stop living in the past.
He was right. Jacob was gone. Tom wasn’t there. And Lauren needed her.
They’d been quiet too long.
Sadie moved closer, curving her own body against Lauren and putting her arms around her, pulling her in tightly. She could feel her daughter trembling, and it frightened her. Shivering would use up too much energy—more than Lauren had to spare. She had to get her mind off the cold. And she had to keep her awake so that she wouldn’t fall into hypothermia.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked, using Lauren’s words back at her as she nudged her shoulder. She needed to keep her talking.
“I don’t know.”
But Sadie had a feeling she knew exactly what—or whom—her daughter was thinking about. “Talk to me about Cooper,” she said. She didn’t know much about the boy. Not enough, anyway, considering how much time he spent with Lauren. She knew he was a senior, though he and Lauren had different majors. Somehow, he’d also finagled an internship at Yosemite, probably to stay close to her. He came from a long line of attorneys, but his head was in science. For the bookish type, he was fairly handsome, but Sadie wanted Lauren to choose someone with a career path closer to her own. A marketing executive and a lab geek most likely wouldn’t make it too far in life together.
“I was thinking about when he took me to France,” she whispered.
Sadie shook her head just slightly, as though clearing the water from her ears.
“I didn’t hear you,” she said. “Say that again.”
Lauren let out a soft chuckle. “Yes, you did, Mom. I said we went to France.”
“Oh, Lauren. Come on. You did not. Anyway, I have your passport at home in the safe. You couldn’t have gone to France. You mean you want to go to France.”
“No, I mean we did go to France,” Lauren said. “Dad sent me my passport. I didn’t want you to know because you wouldn’t want me to go. It was right after those terror attacks in Paris, but our trip was already booked and paid for. So we went. We stayed far from Paris, and I was going to tell you about it when I came home next.”
Sadie pulled away and sat up, her head grazing the roof of the shelter.
“You’re telling me that you left the country, and I didn’t even know it? Why, Lauren, why would you do that? Do you know how dangerous it can be for someone your age to travel alone?” She tried to hide her hurt. Then she thought of something and felt a current of alarm. What if they’d gotten married? Could they do that in France? Sadie was afraid to even ask. At least not now, in their dire circumstances. She couldn’t take any more stress.
“I wasn’t alone. Cooper never left my side, even for a minute.”
That’s what Sadie was afraid of.
Lauren’s teeth began to chatter again, and Sadie lay back down beside her, pulling her close again. She felt breathless with anger that once again, she’d been left out of something that Tom had not been. More secrets.
“How did I not know you were out of the country?” Sadie finally said. Her gut clenched at the realization that there was too much distance growing between them.
Just like with her and Tom.
“It was at the end of the week I did the internship interview and orientation. I told you I couldn’t have my phone.”
“Huh,” Sadie said. She felt betrayed. “I can’t believe you and your dad lied to me.”
“Mom, we didn’t lie. We just didn’t tell you at the moment. And you know you would’ve freaked out and found a million reasons why I shouldn’t or couldn’t go. I wanted to do something for myself that didn’t involve you and Dad. I’m telling you now because I’ve wanted to share it with you all this time. It was so amazing. Please don’t ruin it by being mad.”
“I’m not mad,” Sadie said slowly, doing her best not to let the edge of irritation emphasize each word. She felt her pulse race and forced herself to slow down. They didn’t need a fight right now. Everything could be addressed later—when they got out of there.
“In Nice we visited the Old Town and walked up toward the promenade. There was a bunch of boutiques there, but we didn’t look long.”
“Too pricey?” Sadie asked. She was trying.
She felt Lauren nod. “That and we just didn’t want to waste time with shopping. We only had one free afternoon there and wanted to see everything we could. But a half hour or so
later, we somehow ended up at a big market, and there we found some good stuff at affordable prices. We also saw a cathedral. Right when we were passing it, the sun filtered light across the cobblestones and turned the window into a gorgeous array of warm colors. It looked like a painting.”
“Sounds romantic.” Hearing how much it meant to Lauren was softening Sadie.
“It was. Cooper held my hand the whole way, at least until it got too sweaty and I pulled away.”
They laughed. Her sweaty hands were a legend in their family. Lauren would swear one day she was going to have Botox shots put in them to stop the perspiration. Sadie always promised her she’d grow out of it.
“We somehow rambled into a part of town that was a gathering of local shops. All kinds of foods and fish stores. The aromas were overwhelming but also intriguing. It smelled so lively—like nothing I’ve ever come across here in the States.”
Sadie could visualize it, and it sounded even better than she’d always imagined.
“We got ice cream there. Then on our way back to where we were staying, we stopped at the cemetery and read out some of the oldest names and dates. I was really tired then. Happy tired but ready to get off my feet. On the way back, we circled Castle Hill so we could finish the day walking by the sea.”
“It does sound like you had quite the adventure, Lauren.” Sadie tried to keep the longing out of her voice, but even she heard the envy coming through. She hoped Lauren was too lost in her memories to notice.
“I did. But do you want to hear the best part?”
Sadie wasn’t sure she did. Her blood pressure was probably already rising. She let out a deep breath. But at least Lauren was talking, and that meant she wasn’t sleeping.