A Measure of Happiness (15 page)

Katherine pointed at Blake. “Blake! You stay right there,” she said, and she went to Zach's side.

“You know him?” Celeste asked.

“Blake and I are acquainted.”

A sound came from Zach, a muffled chuckle. “
Blake.
That makes more sense.”

“Really?” Katherine asked. “This makes sense? Perhaps you can enlighten me, then.” A mirror chuckle threaded through her voice, but her mouth trembled, downturned. Her legs moved beneath her, gel filled and unfamiliar.

“Ah, shit,” Zach said.

“What was that?” Katherine asked, and she exchanged a hopeful grin with Celeste. How badly could Zach be hurt if he was cursing?

Zach pushed himself to sitting with his left hand. He cradled his right hand and groaned, answering Katherine's unspoken question.

From the looks of him, his back had survived the fall, free of injury. He sat tall. He wagged his head from side to side, as though testing out its movement. He sucked a breath in through his teeth. From the looks of him, his wrist hadn't fared as well. Zach's hand bent back at an unhealthy angle, deformed and broken looking.

The backs of Katherine's knees ached.

Celeste placed a hand on Zach's shoulder, her face a study in sympathy. “You okay, Zach?”

Zach smiled up at Celeste. “I'm excellent.”

“I hate to tell you, Zach,” Celeste said. “But I think you broke your wrist.”

“I hate to tell you, Celeste, but it's definitely broken. I heard the snap.” Zach released his injured right wrist, notched his left wrist upward, and clicked his tongue. “Been here before. You never forget the sound of a breaking bone. Nineteen eighty-nine, soccer camp, central defender, left wrist.”

“Nineteen ninety,” Celeste said. “High school soccer tryouts, goalie, right leg.”

Nineteen seventy-two, Lamontagne homestead, Katherine's relationship with her mother. Nineteen seventy-six, Brunswick Hospital, Katherine's bond with her newborn son. Both incidents had left Katherine broken.

But a broken daughter was still someone's daughter, a broken mother still ready and willing to nurture.

“Blake, hand me an ice pack from the chest freezer behind you,” Katherine said.

The freezer emitted a frosty breath. Blake held up a six-inch bendable blue pack. “This one okay?” he asked, his voice full of yearning, his eyes glossy with unshed tears.

“You little shit,” Celeste said to Blake, and he blinked a tear.

“Celeste, baby,” Katherine said, “hand me a tea cloth. One of the longer ones.”

Celeste met her gaze. Her mouth fell open, but no words released.

“Now, let's see. It's been a while since I've done this,” Katherine said. It had been a while since Katherine had reviewed the first aid instructions. She'd read and reread the American Red Cross manual, twice, with interest, and decades ago. She kept the thick manual under the sink in the employee washroom, a marker to show her when her stock of paper towels was running low.

“You're going to have to let go of your hand for a moment,” Katherine told Zach. “Just a moment,” she said. The word
baby
she thought but did not say.

“No problem, boss.” Zach raised his left hand in the air, as though taking an oath.

Celeste kept her hand on Zach's shoulder.

Katherine wrapped the cloth over Zach's left shoulder, her mind wandering to the Brunswick Hospital maternity ward and the softness of the blanket she'd used to swaddle her son. She'd insisted on one nursing and one swaddling, as if those two acts added up to a lifetime of full stomachs and security.

When Katherine slipped the cloth beneath Zach's right arm, he coughed.

“Sorry,” Katherine said.

“I'm good,” Zach said. “Tickle in my throat.”

Katherine brought Zach's arm to a ninety-degree angle across his chest, and he grimaced. “Hang in there.” She handed the other end of the cloth over Zach's right shoulder and into Celeste's hands. Then Katherine slipped the ice pack into the well. “All right, let's snug you up,” she said, but Celeste was one step ahead, tying the ends of the dishcloth, her face as serious as when she measured and weighed ingredients. Focused on making everything perfect.

As if such a state existed.

Zach coughed a second time, and Katherine patted his left shoulder. “Can you stand?”

“E-yeah. I didn't break my leg.”

Katherine stood, then Celeste, then Zach, a wave unbroken.

“Good as new,” Zach said.

“You will be,” Katherine said, “after a little trip to Brunswick Hospital.”

“What about me?” Blake asked.

Katherine stared at the boy. “Are you hurt?”

“Uh, not really.”

“Good,” Katherine said. “Celeste, can you drive Zach to the hospital?”

“Of course.” Celeste gave her head a quick shake. “What about you?”

“I'll meet you there. Luckily, Zach's injury isn't that serious. Meaning, you're going to have a bit of a wait in the emergency room. Plenty of time for me to take care of the Blake situation.”

Blake's gaze slid from Katherine's face to Zach's arm and back to Katherine. “Are you going to call the police?”

For the first time in decades, Katherine had the urge to roll her eyes to the ceiling. “No, Blake, I'm not going to call the police. But you might wish I had when I'm done with you. First you're going to clean up this mess to my specifications. Then I'm going to figure out how you're going to pay me back for all the pain and suffering.”

“I'm sorry!” Blake said. “I didn't do anything! It's his own fault. He grabbed me off the shelf. If he hadn't—”

“You little shit,” Celeste said.

White noise whirred in Katherine's ears. The sound of twisted logic tying a knot in her gut. Some things never changed.

Katherine rounded on Blake. “Not Zach's pain and suffering.
Mine.
” She held her hands out, flexed them, took a step back. Took a breath. “I'll meet you in Brunswick,” she told Zach and Celeste, and forced a smile. “Drive safely.”

Katherine brushed the flop of dark hair from in front of Zach's eyes.

Zach met her gaze. “Thanks, Katherine,” he said, not drawing out the pronunciation, like Adam. Zach spoke her name with his own unique voice.

“Be careful going over bumps,” Katherine said, thinking of her harried drive to Brunswick Hospital and the way her contractions had refused to synch with frost heaves and impatient motorists.

“I'll take good care of him,” Celeste said.

“I know you will.”

“Sorry about the accident,” Blake said.

Accident? More like the on purpose. This time, Katherine did indulge in an eye roll.

Zach grinned. “In the famous words of Moe to Shemp, ‘It's okay, kid. Accidents happen.'”

Celeste laughed and pantomimed swinging a bat or an ax or something. Katherine had no clue. She'd never cared for the Three Stooges, never understood the humor of violence.

Katherine restrained herself from going after Blake. Going after Blake and cleaning up after him.

Instead, she forced herself to watch while he attempted to follow her instructions. Thus far, he'd swept and mopped the café twice, because the first pass had left the grit of sugar underfoot and glass winking from the corners. Perspiration dotted his brow.

She'd needed the time to calm down, to talk sense to the voices in her head that replayed the way she'd felt the first time she'd found her shop burgled, the sense of violation and paranoia that had echoed from the incident, waves that affected her to this day. Finding her shop broken into a second time had only confirmed her fears, her adrenal glands primed and ready for overdrive, stoking her original trauma.

And all because of a boy, a scrawny teenager with ill manners, dirty nails, and a warped sense of retaliation. It was like finding out the boogeyman was a sham, a bug you could squash with the tip of your shoe. It was like discovering Oz, the all-powerful wizard, was nothing but an ordinary man who'd lost his way. The overarching lesson from the universe reminded Katherine of her father.

Boy, would Barry ever have a field day with that one. Katherine, the baby of her family, had a daddy complex. Or did she have a complex daddy?

His bark is worse than his bite,
Katherine's mother used to say. Short-term, this had proven true. Long-term? Not so much.

Outside the café, the streetlamps began to light, sundown coming earlier and earlier. The way the seasons worked never failed to surprise Katherine, changing faster every year, as much a delight as a fright. And a reminder that she wasn't getting any younger.

The phone hung on the wall behind the register, a black retro reproduction you had to dial by hand or pencil. She could call Barry—seven little numbers, seven spins of the dial. She could tell him about Blake and the break-in—the break-ins—and ask Barry to handle this clearly damaged child, way out of her comfort zone.

Barry never said no.

She indulged in the fantasy—Barry dashing through the door, the bell jingling in his wake. The two of them embracing, the solid comfort of his body against hers. He'd sit down with Blake and draw out his sweetness. He'd draw out her sweetness.

Or she could, for once, be fair to Barry, leave him alone, and attempt to channel his shrink wisdom.

Her stomach grumbled. Her head ached, a vice-like pressure against her temples. Her last meal, if you wanted to call it a meal, had been a serving of pie and ice cream. So much for her so-called diet. Might as well shoot it to hell.

She checked her watch. Ten minutes before seven. She had just enough time for a quick bite, a quicker chat, and a race to the hospital.

The image of Zach's angled wrist flashed across her internal vision, and a pain spiked her wrist. She wrapped her hand around the ache, and the pain subsided.

“Blake,” Katherine said, and the boy startled from his thoughts. What they might be, Katherine hadn't a clue. “That's enough for today. What's your poison? Apple or pumpkin?”

“Apple,” Blake said.

“Me too.” She cut two generous servings and sat down in the booth Blake had previously damaged. If the booth choice threw him off, all the better.

Blake waited for her to dig in before he took his first bite. Then he attacked the pie, bending his head to the plate, as if he were starving. Was he?

Katherine chewed slowly. “You did a nice job cleaning up the mess you created.”

Blake glanced up at her, sidelong and wary, and then went back to the pie.

“How do you suppose we deal with your incidents?”

Here Blake paused, his fork hovering over the plate.

Barry probably wouldn't have used the word
incidents.
Too circumspect and vague. She'd get to the point. “How are you going to pay me back for the property damage?”

Blake glanced right and left, as though searching for an answer.

“Okay, well. Let's get specific.” Would Barry say
specific?
“Your previous break-in tantrum cost me . . .” She slid a pencil from her back pocket, swiped a napkin from the holder, and scratched out
$250
. She held up the napkin like a flash card.

“No.”

“Oh, yes. I've checked and rechecked the figures.” Plus, she'd paid the bills. “The sugar dispensers you're so awfully fond of smashing run a dollar thirty-nine apiece. Beginning of the month, you demolished eight of them. . . .”

Blake's mouth went slack, and he glanced to the ceiling. “Eleven dollars and twelve cents.”

“Yes. Impressive,” she said.

The left side of Blake's lips twitched upward, as though he was unsure whether she was generously praising his math skills or sarcastically lauding his destruction.

To the boy's credit, he didn't attempt to deny the earlier break-in. “The paint to cover your graffiti cost fifteen dollars a gallon,” Katherine said. “I needed two gallons, due to the pale color. And let's not forget your crowning achievement—”

Blake lowered his fork. The tines tapped against the plate, a wordless plea. His eyes widened, huge, like an infant's. Like the child that he was. The frightened child.

Why? She thought she was being straightforward. Was something in her tone or expression scaring him?

Good lord, what if she wasn't channeling Barry? What if she was channeling her father?

She hiccupped, bitter apple liquid refluxed, and she covered her mouth. She swallowed, and her eyes watered.