11. Chapter Eleven
Chapter Eleven
Kat parked behind Adam’s cottage and gathered her purse along with Danny’s file. She had dressed carefully for this ‘unplanned’ visit, aiming for sporty weekend casual, like something from the J.Crew catalog. If the wind would cooperate by mussing her hair and putting some color on her cheeks, she would be all set.
As she approached the house, it occurred to her that she might not catch Adam and Danny at home on a Saturday. The morning had turned out to be sunny and beautiful and unusually warm for early May—the kind of day that a boy should spend outside. But when she knocked at the door, Adam answered almost immediately.
She didn’t need the wind to put color in her cheeks. One look at Adam, unshaven and barefoot, dressed only in flannel pajama pants and a white t-shirt, and she could feel the flush creeping up her cheeks. So he was a lazy-Saturday-morning kind of guy. Good to know.
He held the storm door open, welcoming her inside. She smiled up at him as she crossed the threshold and accidentally- on-purpose brushed against his chest. Small steps , she chided herself. Don’t blow it.
“Morning, Adam,” she said. “Sorry to interrupt your weekend, but I have an update and I thought you’d want to know immediately.”
“You’re not interrupting,” he said. “Have a seat and I’ll get you a cup of coffee.” He gestured toward the kitchen table, then refilled his own mug.
“Do you ruin your coffee?” he asked after hunting down a clean mug for her.
“Definitely,” she answered. “Cream, but no sugar. Milk’s fine if you don’t have any cream.”
He shook his head, clearly a black-coffee drinker, and retrieved the milk jug from the refrigerator. As she watched him move confidently around the kitchen, she tried to remember the last time anyone had fixed her a cup of coffee. She had been on her own for so long now that she couldn’t remember the last time she had shared a quiet cup of coffee at home with another human being. Her law practice had consumed her for the last few years, crowding out any hope of a social life. Before that, at the big firm in the city, she had always been the one to fix the coffee.
But she liked this. She could get used to this.
“So tell me the news,” said Adam, placing the mug in front of her and sitting across the table.
“Nothing unexpected. Yesterday afternoon I received Kevin Archer’s report, and he asked me to pass along a copy to you.” She opened up Danny’s file and pulled Adam’s copy of the document. He took it without taking the time to read it.
“So what now?” asked Adam. “You know me. You’ve talked to Danny’s grandparents. You have the report from the doc. What comes next?”
“I need to finish my research,” she responded thoughtfully, “and try one more time to get Danny to express a preference. Then I’ll be ready to make my recommendation to the judge.”
She looked around, realizing that the house was too quiet.
“Where’s Danny?” she asked. Maybe Danny would like to be a part of the conversation.
Adam looked uncomfortable, as if she had asked him if he wore boxers or briefs.
“He’s having a music lesson.”
“You’re kidding,” Kat exclaimed. “That’s new. When did he express an interest in music? Where is he taking lessons?”
“This is all very new,” said Adam. “Doc Archer suggested that we find an activity that Danny could do on his own, away from me. When I figured out that he liked the music he kept hearing from next door, it seemed a logical step to arrange lessons.”
“So he’s just next door?” asked Kat.
Adam nodded, then drank some coffee instead of elaborating.
“That’s convenient.”
It made sense. Luke James, the grade-school music teacher, lived next door. He would be a perfect choice to give Danny music lessons. Kat had the sense that Adam was holding something back, but she didn’t want to push the issue. She’d rather wait and see if he opened up to her on his own.
“Well, I’m glad that you’re working on this new angle with Danny. Whether or not it leads to a breakthrough, it shows you’re trying, and that Danny is willing to try new things.”
He didn’t look encouraged, so she reached across the table and squeezed his hand.
“Every little bit helps,” she said gently. She pulled her hand back before it could feel awkward and wrapped it back around the warm mug. There were too many ways to make a wrong move, and she needed to be careful.
At that moment there was a clatter at the back door, then Danny burst into the kitchen, proudly hauling a guitar case. Behind him was a slim woman, a curtain of wavy blond hair temporarily shielding her face as she navigated through the two doors.
Kat didn’t need to see her face to know who it was. Only one of the triplets was in town.
Callie stopped short when she saw Kat sitting at the table with Adam, her mouth half open as if she had been about to speak. She recovered quickly, saying her farewells to Danny.
“Great job today, Danny-boy. Same time tomorrow?”
He grinned and nodded. When she offered her hand for a high-five, he smacked it hard, then began lugging the guitar toward his room.
He waved at Kat as he went by, which under normal circumstances would have thrilled her, but she only managed a halfhearted wave back. She was too busy dealing with the avalanche of emotional baggage triggered by Callie’s arrival.
Adam stepped into the awkward silence.
“Kat, have you and Callie met before?”
Kat forced a smile and held out her hand.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again,” she said, shaking the hand that Callie cautiously offered in return. “Callie and her sisters were a year behind me in high school,” she explained to Adam.
Thank God it was Callie, the sister who never said anything. Kat had no desire to talk about the last time they had seen each other. It was beyond ironic that Callie was giving music lessons to Danny, who also never talked. Two mutes making music together. How oddly appropriate.
“So how did it go?” asked Adam.
Callie’s eyes flickered toward the door through which Danny had disappeared, then back to Adam. She cleared her throat.
“Very well,” she said in a raspy voice, as if she had a cold. “Danny is much more comfortable now, and he’s really opening up about the songs he likes and the kind of music he wants to play.”
“Wait a minute,” interrupted Kat. “You mean ‘opening up’ as in he’s talking? To you?” Callie nodded. Kat shot an irritated glance at Adam, who was also nodding.
She found herself caught between relief and annoyance. This was great news—wonderful news—but how could he expect her to make an informed recommendation regarding Danny when he withheld vital information? How could he possibly excuse keeping this news to himself?
Kat stood abruptly. She needed to remove herself from this kitchen before she scolded him in front of an audience and completely destroyed her credibility.
“Adam,” she said, striving to keep the irritation out of her voice. “Let’s meet for lunch on Monday to talk about how this affects Danny’s case.” She put her purse on her shoulder and snatched up Danny’s file. “I’m already running late,” she added, mostly to make herself feel better. She might have no life, but she could create the illusion of one.
“Thanks for the coffee,” she said as she reached across the table to shake hands with Adam. “Lovely to see you again, Callie.”
Kat held herself together as she made her hasty exit and walked—as quickly as she could without giving the appearance of running away—back to the car. Only after she was safely cocooned inside did she give in to the frustration and slam her hand on the steering wheel. She started the car, fighting the pricking feeling in her eyes, and drove away without looking back.
Damn him for not trusting her. Damn Callie for dredging up unpleasant memories. But mostly Kat kicked herself for allowing that fragile seedling of hope to take root in her heart. Adam wasn’t hers, not by any stretch of the imagination, and right now her chances of building a future with him looked bleak.
Callie stood in the kitchen, unsure of how to proceed after Kitty’s—apparently now she went by Kat—abrupt departure. The undercurrents she’d left in her wake made Callie wonder again about her relationship with Adam. Despite the swirl of cool air that had swept through the back door, the room now felt smaller with only the two of them in it. Warmer.
“I hadn’t meant to share the news of Danny’s progress so soon,” he began.
She raised her eyebrows. Was he blaming her for revealing secrets that she didn’t know were supposed to be secrets? Her back stiffened in response.
“Not that I blame you,” he continued. She didn’t quite believe him. “But it complicates things. I didn’t want to put any pressure on you or Danny to reach a major breakthrough.”
Okay, so maybe he wasn’t blaming her.
“I’m not worried about it,” she said, “and I don’t think Danny was paying any attention. He’s still pretty enthralled with the new guitar.” She smiled, and Adam’s ears turned pink. He must hate that. He could probably feel it happening, the way she could feel a blush coming on, but really it made him so much more approachable.
“I’m glad,” he said, taking a drink of his coffee. Then, realizing that she was still hovering near the door, he stood up and waved her inside. “Why don’t you sit down,” he said. “Do you want some coffee? Or something else to drink?” He moved toward the coffee maker, but she shook her head.
“No, no, I’m fine,” she said, taking the seat that Kitty had vacated. It was going to take some time to get used to thinking of her as Kat. She took a deep breath. “I wanted to give you an update on our music session. ”
“Great,” he said, reclaiming his seat across from her. “You gave me the headline earlier. Anything else I should know?”
The intensity of Adam’s full attention made her even warmer, but she squelched the memories popping up in her mind and kept her thoughts on Danny. There was no point in getting all wound up about Adam until she knew if he was involved with someone else.
“Did he talk about his parents at all? Or the accident?”
“No,” said Callie. “We just played music and talked about the music.”
She shifted on her chair, wishing she had accepted his offer and had a cup of tea. It would have given her something to do with her hands.
“What do you mean, you ‘talk about the music’?”
Callie wrinkled her eyebrows, wondering how to explain.
“I don’t know. We talk about what parts of a song we like or don’t like, which parts are tough to play. We talk about which song we should play next, or what’s our favorite key.”
She hesitated. He noticed.
“What? What else?” It was as if he could tell that she didn’t want to tell him, and therefore this must be the most important part. It probably was.
“We talked this morning about how I write songs. He didn’t say much, but he was really interested.”
“Why?”
Callie wasn’t sure she wanted to explain. She hadn’t really talked about her songwriting with anybody other than her father, and the conversation with Danny this morning revealed as much about her as it did about him.
Adam looked like he was prepared to wait all day for her answer.
Callie sighed. Rather than looking at Adam, she watched her fingers tap out a silent rhythm on the edge of the table while she talked .
“I write songs to say the things that I can’t say otherwise—the things that are too complicated or painful or scary to talk about face to face.”
She stopped. He waited.
“When I play my songs for people, when I finally say exactly what I mean and they understand, well, there’s nothing else like it.”
Callie looked up and met Adam’s eyes squarely, wanting to make sure that he understood this last part—even if it made her more vulnerable.
“If I didn’t have music—if I couldn’t connect to people through my music—I would be locked inside myself.”
“Like Danny,” he said, a muscle in his jaw working to hold back strong emotion.
She nodded. “Exactly. All his questions made me wonder if we should incorporate songwriting into our time together.”
He stood abruptly, walking over to the sink and dumping the rest of his coffee. He stayed at the sink, his back to her, tension clear in the lines of his body.
“I thought this would be good news,” she said, unsure of what was going on in Adam’s head. “I thought this might be an opportunity to work through some of Danny’s baggage, if it’s okay with you and the shrink.”
He sagged a bit, turned to face her. He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms.
“It’s a great idea,” he said, his tone making it sound more like a funeral. “Screw the shrink. I think you should do it.”
Callie wrinkled her eyebrows. She had known Adam once, but even if he were a complete stranger, she would still be able to tell that something was off about his reaction.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “I bring you good news and you act like it’s bad news. You’re saying the right words, but the vibe is all wrong. I don’t understand.”
“How I feel isn’t important,” said Adam. “Leave it alone. ”
She could do as he asked. She could flow around these unexpected rapids and continue downstream as if nothing had happened. She could keep her present-day relationship with Adam much lighter and simpler than the one they had before. However, she had promised herself to stop going with the flow, and to speak up when she had something to say. It was time to walk the talk, to keep her promises to herself, even if she felt like she was going to throw up.
She stood, mostly to get Adam’s attention and make sure she couldn’t chicken out. Her knees felt shaky, so she braced herself by placing her hands on the table.
“No, I won’t leave it alone. I think it’s important to understand you and your relationship to Danny. You’re a huge part of his life. If I don’t understand you, then I can’t understand Danny. What’s going on?”
He waited so long to answer that she almost gave up. Finally he spoke.
“Ten months,” he said fiercely, his voice pitched low so that it wouldn’t carry to Danny’s room. “I’ve been trying to connect with Danny for ten”—he swallowed an expletive—“months, and I got nowhere. Then you waltz in out of nowhere and reach him on the first day. You get him talking to me in less than a week. What kind of incompetent fool does that make me?”
Adam paused, taking a few deep breaths to get himself under control.
“I made a promise.” He made a strange coughing sound, as though he were choking on the words. “I made a promise to my brother as he was dying that I would take care of Danny, and I’m a fucking failure. Danny’s the only family I have left in the world and he doesn’t want to be with me. That’s what’s going on.”
The words hung in the air between them. Now it was Adam who didn’t want to meet her eyes. He studied the table between them as if it held the answers he needed. She certainly didn’t have the answers, but at least she had some perspective.
“Do you play music?” demanded Callie.
“No,” he said, his voice full of regret.
“Did you know that Danny played music?”
“No.”
“Then how the hell were you supposed to know that it would help?”
He finally looked up and met her eyes. She could see his anger, all of it directed squarely at himself.
“I should have figured it out,” he said evenly.
She snickered at that, and he narrowed his eyes, some of his anger now directed her way. But for some reason, it didn’t scare her. It inspired her to give him some attitude right back.
“Okay, Superman,” she said, rolling her eyes dramatically. “You really blew it on this one. I completely agree. If you don’t have psychic powers, you don’t deserve to build a life with this kid. I guess you’ll have to give up and hate yourself forever.”
“It’s not funny,” he said, his voice getting louder.
“You’re right,” she said, her humor fading. “It’s not funny. Danny’s hurting, and he needs music to help him heal. Can’t you just be glad that you found a way to connect, even if it’s through me? Your self-flagellation is not helpful.”
“My what?” he said. Clearly he had heard her, or he wouldn’t look so offended.
“You heard me,” she said. “It’s time to man up.”
Callie could hardly believe her own boldness. Adrenaline hummed through her veins. If he wanted a fight, she was ready.
He laughed abruptly, and the tension in the room abruptly dissolved.
“You sound like my brother,” he said.
“And that’s a good thing?” she asked, uncertain how to proceed given the sudden mood change.
He smiled ruefully .
“It’s a good thing.”
She relaxed, let out a sigh.
“Well, that’s a relief. I was running out of motivational one-liners.”
He laughed, more naturally this time. Her adrenaline high mellowed into a happy glow. She needed to speak her mind more often. No wonder Mel said whatever was on her mind. It was liberating.
“So it’s okay with you if Danny and I do some songwriting?” she asked again, circling back to their original topic.
“Yes,” he said, looking much more relaxed about the whole thing. “And I appreciate you talking to me about it first.”
“No problem,” she responded. “I’m looking forward to it.” She didn’t really want to leave, but couldn’t think of a reason to stay. She hovered for a moment, needing closure after the intensity of the last few minutes, but unsure how to make it happen. Should she shake his hand? Give him a hug? She wondered, given her hyped state of awareness, what would happen if they actually made physical contact. At a minimum, they would throw off very real, very painful sparks. Safer to back off, at least for now.
“So I’ll see Danny tomorrow morning?” she asked, slowly retreating.
“I’m sure you will,” he said. She gave him a wimpy little wave and escaped out the back door. If she could coast on the adrenaline high, it would be a very productive day.
When Callie returned to the house, she found a note from her parents saying that they had gone out to run errands. This provided the perfect opportunity to go on a treasure hunt. She had been thinking for days about reconnecting with her early songwriting. She could remember parts and pieces of her early attempts, but somewhere up in the attic were her music notebooks. The contents of those notebooks were more personal than a diary, and could provide her with the emotional memory she sought. She had squirreled them away in one of the cupboards under the eaves when she had left for college, not wanting anyone else to find them. Now all she needed to do was remember which cupboard, and she could open the door to her past.
She left Roscoe napping in a patch of sunshine and climbed the stairs to her mother’s attic studio. This had been forbidden territory for as long as Callie could remember, which didn’t mean she and her sisters had never sneaked up those stairs. On the contrary, they had learned quickly about the squeaky third and seventh steps. They had also learned to be cautious and to hide the evidence of their explorations.
Today, the mature choice would be to wait until her mother came home and then ask permission to root around in her private domain. But Callie also hoped to stumble across the flowered box her mother had been so anxious to hide. She would never get a peek at it if her mother supervised the search.
At the top of the stairs, she paused for a moment, her view of the studio obscured by layer upon layer of memories. She saw the original flowered wallpaper that her mother had stripped away when the girls were five. She saw the tiny windows, before Dad had opened up the wall and installed giant picture windows overlooking the lake. She saw the water damage from the year the skylight had leaked. And she saw the dress-up box still nestled in the alcove. When Mom had been desperate to finish a painting, she had allowed the girls play in the alcove as long as they promised not to bother her. The arrangement usually bought her an extra hour or two of painting time.
Callie’s eyes widened as she surveyed the chaos that was her mother’s present-day workspace. How in the world could the woman create art in the middle of all this clutter? Callie needed peace in order to create. Clutter was a distraction, tugging on her sleeve and demanding her attention. Yet somehow her mother managed to create dramatic and powerful pieces in the middle of a disaster zone.
Careful not to disturb anything, Callie worked her way around the edges of the room, checking each cabinet under the eaves for her notebooks. She clearly remembered writing KEEP OUT on the box with a red marker, on all sides, so it shouldn’t be that hard to identify. But cupboard after cupboard yielded only art supplies, canvas, frames, and other random junk. No notebooks. Her heart sinking, Callie wondered if her mother had thrown the box out, not realizing that it was important.
In order to check the last cupboard, she needed to move aside her mother’s ‘resting chair.’ The ancient, overstuffed armchair had an afghan thrown over it to hide the fraying upholstery. It faced her mother’s current work-in-progress, which she had tented with a muslin dust cloth. Callie felt guilty enough about her unauthorized snooping. She didn’t dare peek under the cloth. As she tugged the chair to one side, she did smile to herself at the memories it evoked.
When she was quite small, Callie would wake up first from afternoon nap and creep up the stairs to spy on her mother at work. Her mother would be so deep in concentration that she wouldn’t notice the creaking of the stairs or the little eyes peering around the corner. Eventually, she would take a break and step back, regarding her work. At that point she would notice Callie, who would demand to see the pretty picture. So she would sit in the ‘resting chair’ and pull Callie onto her lap, and together they would study the work-in-progress.
Callie checked the final cupboard, but there was still no sign of the notebooks. She would need to ask her mother about them—omitting any mention of the failed search, of course. First, however, she needed to cover her tracks. If she didn’t put the ‘resting chair’ back in exactly the same place, her mother would notice.
As Callie stepped around the chair to move it back into place, her toe bumped something underneath. She pulled aside the fringe of the afghan and revealed the corner of a box. A flowered box. Her breath caught. Feeling mildly criminal, she bent to retrieve it. It was heavier than she had expected, packed full.
Callie scooted the ‘resting chair’ carefully back into place, then sat down on it with the box in her lap. She lifted the cover to find the box stuffed full of photos and letters. The ones on top appeared to be more recent than the yellowed envelopes toward the bottom, but they were all clearly from the same person—someone named Lauren Harrington. The return address was in New York City, and this Lauren had been using the same monogrammed stationery since the 1980s. Talk about consistency. It was the expensive kind of stationery. The envelopes were a creamy color, and they were lined in a dark green paper that matched the swirly H on the outside of the envelope.
Not sure how much time she had, Callie reached for the one on top. It was postmarked just a few weeks ago. This was probably the one her mother had been reading at the kitchen table, when she had looked so pale.
March 2
Dear Dora,
I am dying. I tell you this now, bluntly, because I am sick and tired of dancing around it. I was supposed to die when I was thirteen, and every year since then—43 of them!—has been a gift. We should be celebrating my triumph over the odds instead of tiptoeing around the truth. But the children are firmly planted in denial, unwilling to imagine a life without their mother. Even my doctors won’t say it plainly. Only Barrett understands. And you, I hope.
Frankly, I’m relieved that I can see the end approaching, and that it is not cancer. I have been stalked by that invisible enemy for too many years. I swore to myself that I would never submit to chemotherapy again, and I meant it. But my new diagnosis means that I don’t need to battle my physicians or my family, for there is nothing heroic they can do to save me. Thank God.
(It’s congestive heart failure. Funny how the miracle that cured my cancer also sowed the seeds of my destruction.)
I write to you now, dear friend, because I would like to see you before I die. I would like you to see how our beautiful children have grown up. I would like us all to be together one last time.
The doctors tell me that I may have another year or two, but they are lying. (They call it optimism.) I know my body. I know my self. I will have one last summer on the bay, and then I will fade away.
Would you deny a dying friend her last wish?
Please come see me.
Love,
Lauren
Callie studied the letter for a long time, her mind filled with more questions than answers. Who was Lauren? If she was such a ‘dear friend’ then why had Callie never heard her name? And Lauren referred to ‘the bay.’ Could that be the same bay on Long Island where her mother had grown up? Was this a childhood friend? If so, why all the secrecy?
There were not supposed to be any secrets in this house.
For a horrified moment, Callie wondered if Lauren could possibly be a man. But she looked again at the handwriting, and the swirly H, and the text of the letter itself, and she relaxed. Lauren was a woman. Not, thank God, her mother’s secret lover. Callie laughed out loud at the thought. Some things were just not possible.
Callie reached for the next letter in the stack, but the sound of a car coming down the driveway froze her hand. Heart pounding, she put the box back together and tucked it carefully back where it belonged. She smoothed the afghan and hurried downstairs, leaving no trace—she hoped—of her intrusion.