Chapter 4
Chapter Four
It wasn’t long after Carmen’s comments about Syria that she fell back asleep, leaving Elena jittery but heavy with doubt.
It was early afternoon, and sunlight made the snowdrifts outside the hospital glow.
Elena bundled up and left the hospital, thinking about her car at the garage, James Murphy, and the freelance articles she needed to write that weekend.
Did she really have it in her to sit at her computer and write meaningless drivel while her mother drifted in and out of consciousness at the hospital?
More than ever, Elena’s life felt on the brink of collapse.
It hadn’t always been this way.
There was a bus stop near the hospital, where she waited for the minibus that took her back downtown.
Once there, she paused in front of the massive Christmas tree, the same one that had been lit last night.
Standing there, the winter wind blustering around her, she tried to imagine the chaos.
One minute, her mother had been stoic and sure and seemingly healthy, and the next, the night had filled with the sounds of ambulance sirens.
Elena walked the few blocks from downtown to the house where she’d been raised.
It looked the same as ever: ivory siding, dark-green shutters, a front porch with a swing.
Elena walked up the steps and sat on the swing for a second, her thoughts swirling.
Funnily enough, she still had a house key on her keychain—something she’d kept there “just in case” and then let herself forget about.
When she shoved the key into the knob, she turned it and felt the familiar smells of her childhood envelop her.
She closed her eyes against the wave of nostalgia.
If this had been some other year, she might have heard her father’s laugh like dark honey, her mother singing upstairs.
Because her parents had loved to work and had given almost everything to their careers, they’d decided to have only one child.
Elena had been lonely as a kid until she’d met Maxine and they’d become best friends. She couldn’t remember why they’d stopped speaking in college. There’d been no argument. They’d just drifted apart.
There were differences in the house. In the front room hung a photograph of Carmen holding an award for excellence in journalism.
The award was regional and maybe not as “important” as some of the bigger journalism awards worldwide.
But in the picture, Carmen looked terrifically pleased, as though everything she’d done in her life had been leading to this moment.
Elena still remembered what Carmen had said when she’d first told her she was going to the Middle East. “Why do you think you have to prove something over there? We’re doing good reporting right here in Millbrook! This is your lifeblood. This is where you belong.”
But Elena had been a rising star at her university.
There, she’d uncovered a story of campus corruption and been instrumental in taking down several high-ranking staff members.
As a result of her back-breaking work, she’d achieved recognition from numerous journalism master’s programs. Still, instead of studying even more, she’d decided to go overseas—first to Paris, then to London, then to Rome.
She’d spent her mid-twenties in the throes of European life, eating croissants and walking next to frigid rivers and dating men who made up nicknames for her in their own languages.
It had been a sort of fairy tale. There, she’d also broken stories, writing about everything from police corruption to student protests to political campaigns, trying to see it all through the lens of an American abroad.
At the beginning of her thirties, she returned to the United States to work for CNN.
It was around this time that she first began writing about war.
Eleven years ago—when she was thirty-one—war raged in the Middle East, and she was fixated on it, eager to become a master, to understand the nuances of who hated whom and why, as well as the dramatic history behind each of their ancient cultures.
Her theory was that if we didn’t understand the pain we wrought, how could we end all this pain in the future? And it felt up to her to understand that pain.
In the living room of her childhood home, Elena changed into a sweatshirt and a pair of sweats and put on a pair of thick socks.
She turned up the heater, then went to the kitchen to make herself a mug of tea.
In many ways, she felt like a trespasser, as though her mother or father would storm into the room at any moment and ask her what on earth she was doing.
The water boiled, and she popped a tea bag into a mug and stood at the window.
In the backyard stood her old playhouse, which her father had made her from trees he’d chopped himself.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she had to turn away.
Out of the blue, the phone rang.
Elena wasn’t sure if she should answer. This house wasn’t hers, so the people contacting it weren’t trying to reach her.
Then again, didn’t everyone in Millbrook know that her mother was ill?
She tiptoed to the phone, unsurprised to find it still there, hanging on the wall, because her mother loved old-fashioned technology.
It was probably part of the reason she still worshipped physical newspapers and the art of the printing press.
Elena took a breath and answered it. “Hello? Vasquez residence?”
“Elena, hi.” It was James Murphy's calm voice. “I wanted to check in. I hope that’s okay.”
Elena collapsed at the kitchen table with relief.
Here was someone not from her past, who cared only for her present.
“Hey, James. Thanks again for this morning. I’m sure I was a mess.
” She took a breath. “I’ve had that car for a few years, but I seldom drive it in the city.
I didn’t know how bad it had gotten. I’m surprised I made it here. ”
“Don’t mention it. Marvin towed it. But he says it isn’t looking good.”
“It’s so kind of him to do that,” Elena said, her stomach roiling. “I’m not surprised it’s dead.”
But Elena was surprised at her own shock at small-town charm and kindness. Had she really forgotten that things could be this way? She supposed so.
She’d been gone a long time.
“Whatever you need, let me know,” James said. “I know how tricky it can be to live life without a car. I went about a year without driving recently, and I found myself stranded often enough.”
Elena felt there was a mystery behind what he told her. Why would a strong, small-town man like James not drive a car? But before she could probe for details, James went on.
“I wanted to ask about your mother. How is she?”
Elena rubbed her temple and considered whether it was right to share her mother’s business with a sort of stranger. “They’re doing some tests,” she said. “I don’t know. She seems a little confused.”
James made a soft noise. “I’m sorry to hear that. I know she’s been through a lot at the paper.”
“Thanks. Yeah. We’ll see.” Elena didn’t know what else to say.
She got up, opened the fridge, and studied her mother’s products: the milk, the juice, the fruit.
Her mother had always been incredibly fond of eating healthy, when it wasn’t the holidays, of course.
Where had her mother been for Thanksgiving Day?
Clearly, she hadn’t been here. There were no signs of baking or cooking.
What if her mother hadn’t celebrated Thanksgiving at all? Elena felt another stab of grief.
“Is there anything else you need from me?” James asked.
Elena closed her eyes and brought James’s calm and handsome face to mind.
Had he been wearing a wedding ring? Unlike Maxine, he didn’t give off the air of someone who had someone else waiting for him at home.
But it was strange that such a kind and compassionate man had no one.
Did something happen to you? She wondered about him.
“Do you know anyone at the paper?” Elena asked suddenly. “I’d like to talk to someone my mom worked with in the past few months.”
“I only know some of them in passing,” James admitted. “But Natalie Strong has been a major player up there lately. Her number should be in the paper. I have it right here in front of me, actually. Do you have a pen?”
James read out Natalie’s phone number and email address, and Elena wrote the information down and thanked James.
She reasoned that she could have found all this out herself.
But something about James made her want to keep him on the phone longer.
Maybe it was simply that she saw her own loneliness, reflected in him.
But soon enough, she could find no reason to continue talking to James.
“Will you be in town much longer?” James asked.
“That remains to be seen, I guess,” she said. “I’ll probably go back up to the hospital later tonight and check in.”
James made her promise—again—that she’d contact him when and if she needed anything. They said goodbye.
Elena walked the seven blocks to the offices of The Millbrook Gazette, watching out of the corner of her eye as Millbrook residents returned home from prosperous days of Black Friday shopping.
It had stopped snowing, and the sky was like a soft bruise.
When she turned the corner and saw the newspaper offices for the first time in years, she had to stop to catch her breath.
How many times had she walked from school to find her mother bent over her article for tomorrow’s paper, making notes to herself, mumbling?
The newspaper had been a second home. Even her father had known to come here to find both of them, trying and often failing to pry her mother away from her work.