Blueprints: A Novel (16 page)

The child took off for the sandbox, where he picked up a plastic rake and began combing the sand. Though Jamie’s eyes were on him, her thoughts were on Jess. “I really liked Jess. She had a good heart.”

“Not her mother.”

“No. Jess became a third wheel the minute Maureen remarried. It got worse when the half sibs were born. I guess it’s in character that she’s washing her hands of Tad, but it still boggles my mind.”

“She was being honest. She’s not prepared to take in a child.”

“Neither am I, but do I have a choice?”

Brad didn’t reply.

“Neither do you,” she said quietly. “This is my lot now.”

“I didn’t know you were his guardian.”

“I never thought to tell you. I never thought it would happen.”

“You’re not set up for it.”

“I can be.”

“How will you work?”

“I haven’t thought that far.”

“You’ll have to soon.”

“Dad hasn’t been dead a
day,
” she protested and might have said more if a sudden scream from Tad hadn’t brought her head around. One look at him sprawled on his face, apparently having tripped climbing out of the sandbox, and she bolted forward in a fit of worry and guilt. Had she been standing right there, paying closer attention, she would have caught him before he fell.

By the time she reached him, he was on all fours and crying bitterly. Snatching him up, she saw dirt on his knees but no blood. Heart pounding, she clutched him to her. “It’s okay, baby, shhhh, you’re okay, I gotcha.”

“I wan Mommy.”

Jamie identified with that, oh boy, did she ever. There was something about letting it all go and sobbing for a mother to make everything better. She was bereft about Roy, distanced from Caroline, uneasy over Brad, and Tad was crying his little heart out. She felt his pain, felt as lost and alone as he did.

Holding him back, she wiped big tears from his cheeks with her thumbs, kissed his forehead, and hugged him again. “You’re such a good boy, Mamie’s right here, I am not letting go.”

And she didn’t. Ignoring the phone, she held him while he ate a snack. When family friends arrived and began congregating in the kitchen and living room to murmur together in horror and shock, she escaped with Tad to the den, where she held him on her lap and read board book after board book. When he began to squirm, she took him outside again, this time to the toy-filled garage. The child wanted for nothing except a mother and father.

And how cruel is that?
Jamie wondered in silent anguish.

Well-wishers joined them, speaking kind words that inevitably led to questions she couldn’t answer. She did her best to be polite, but after a while, her mind clotted. Leaving them texting others in town, she pushed Tad down the sidewalk on his tricycle while he walked his feet along. She went farther than she should have and ended up walking back with him on her hip and the tricycle trailing off her hand. By the time she reached the house, Brad was gone, headed to Theo’s to help make calls.

People left. More arrived. Some were personal friends of Roy and Jess, some friends of the business. They were devastated and didn’t know how to help, but the best Jamie could do was promise to let them know when she figured it out herself.

By midday, the people who came carried food. Sandwiches and casseroles, cookies and cakes, a watermelon filled with cut fruit—all so generous, she knew. But the gift she appreciated most was the arrival of Desideria Carmel, who cleaned for Roy and Jess and was stricken. Desperate to help, she took over the kitchen.

When it came to helping with Tad, though, Jamie smiled a thanks-but-no-thanks. She needed to do this herself. Sifting through foil-covered dishes, she took bits of chicken and pasta and sat him on her lap. He didn’t eat much. There were too many people around, too many voices droning on through the house. She had a little more luck with fruit, and total luck with a cookie, but even before the last of that was gone, he was rubbing his eyes with his fists.

He was exhausted. So was she. She carried him upstairs, changed him, and put him in his crib. He was asleep within minutes, and within minutes of that, slumped in a nearby rocker, so was she.

When the doorbell rang, she bolted awake. That brief sleep had been so deep that it was a minute before she got her bearings, at which point reality returned in a biting rush. Stomach knotting, she scrambled up to check Tad. Mercifully, he slept on. Likewise, mercifully, everything downstairs was under control. With more people than ever milling about, the dining room table was beautifully set and offered a spread of food and drinks. There were no paper goods here, but rather the fine china and crystal for which Jessica had registered before the wedding. The elegance of it all would have pleased Roy.

He would not have been pleased with Jamie’s T-shirt and jeans—it seemed a lifetime ago that she had pulled them on—but there was nothing to be done. She refused to run home for nicer clothes lest Tad wake while she was gone, and a good decision that was. Nicer clothes wouldn’t have worked. By the time he woke up, she had so OD’d on well-meaning friends that she knew if she didn’t escape she would go mad.

*   *   *

The town playground was a five-minute drive from the house. Jamie had driven Jess’s SUV often enough that the eeriness of doing it now wasn’t so bad. But then, she had no alternative. Her convertible didn’t have a backseat, and the playground was a must.

Always before, though, she had taken Tad here during the week. This being Sunday, the place was packed with families, so arriving alone with Tad was a stark reminder of their loss. She actually stood at the fence for a minute, wondering if she could bear it. If a break from people was what she needed, she could always drive around for an hour.

But Tad was standing between her legs, his little fingers clutching the links and impatiently rattling the gate. Telling herself that his needs came first, she lifted the latch. He ran off toward a broad climbing dome, and though she was quickly there, he knew this piece of equipment. Scrambling up, he sprawled from one foothold to another, reckless and unafraid.

Jamie was moving around the dome in anticipation of where he might fall off when she was spotted. Even wearing sunglasses, she was a familiar face, if not as a former classmate then as a MacAfee.

“Jamie! Oh my God! You poor thing,” cried one parent. And another, “Jess was my playground buddy. We always sat here together.” And a third, this a dad who sold flooring to MacAfee designers, “We heard the sirens, but had no idea it was Roy.”

Nodding, Jamie continued to shadow Tad around the dome. When he slid off and raced to a nearby rope ladder, others migrated there as well. She kept her eye on Tad, saying only as much as was necessary to avoid rudeness, but all the while she was growing frantic, wondering how word had spread so fast and why these people couldn’t see that she needed to pretend, for a few minutes at least, that this hadn’t happened. She helped Tad climb to the top of the ladder, then lifted him off, knowing that he was going to have to learn how to climb down as well, but not today.

Today she needed a quiet corner. There was only one—the old sandbox, which was huge and contained many more pails and shovels than children. Only one little boy was there; she guessed him to be three or four. The man she assumed to be his father sat alone on a bench on the far side. He wore sunglasses and a ball cap and was reading a book.

Thinking that something about him was keeping the other parents away and that maybe, just maybe, the repellent would work for her, too, she sat down at the end of his bench. She had no idea if he saw her. He didn’t say anything. Which was good.

Her eyes hung on Tad, who stood utterly still by the rim of the box as he watched the other child shovel sand into a pail, pack it down, and turn it over. The sand was damp; after last night’s rain, it would be a while drying out. Climbing in, Tad went to within three feet of the child and continued to watch.

“Will you have custody of him?” came the low voice of a woman kneeling at Jamie’s elbow.

Jamie hadn’t seen her coming. She cleared her throat. “Uh, yes. I will.”

A minute passed. Then the woman said, “Jessica adored Tad. She was good with other kids, too. She told me she wanted another one and that she was trying to get pregnant, but I guess it hadn’t happened yet.”

Jamie swallowed. She tried to let the words go over her head, but they only created another source of loss.

“If I can help, you know, maybe host a play date for Tad, will you let me know?” She rattled off her name; Jamie didn’t catch it. She was thinking that she couldn’t process play dates just yet when she saw Tad pick up a shovel and dig into the sand. Without a word to the woman, she left the bench and entered the sandbox. Pulling over a pail, she set to helping Tad fill it with sand. When it was full, she tipped it to make a mound beside the three that the other child now had. None was perfect. All were crumbling somewhere or other, but that didn’t matter. Looking around, she spotted a plastic piece in a castle shape, but while the other child helped her fill it, Tad sat on his haunches and watched.

They worked in silence. Jamie thought about asking for the boy’s name. Or his age. But doing something, anything, without having to think was a respite. So she let it go.

When she returned to the bench, the woman was gone. Jamie dug out her cell and called Caroline. She didn’t care if her mother was busy. She needed to hear her voice.

“Mom,” she breathed, bending over herself in dire relief. “Mom.” Barely a sound.

“Oh, baby. You sound awful.”

She took a steadying breath. “Is Jess gone?”

There was a pause, then a sad “Yes. Theo just got the call.”

Jamie wrapped her free arm over her head. “Oh God,” she whispered.

“I know,” Caroline whispered. “The enormity…” Her voice trailed off, then, “I’m guessing the funeral will be Wednesday.”

“Together?”

“Yes.”

“How’s Granddad?”

“Terrible. The house is swarming with people.”

“Roy’s, too. It’s overwhelming.”

“Here. Brad wants to talk.”

“Wait—” Jamie wasn’t ready to let her go, but Brad must have grabbed the phone.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Can you meet us at the funeral home?”

“Right now? I, uh, no.” She cleared her throat. “I’m with Tad.” She peered around her arm. Tad was holding his own.

“Can’t someone watch him? Someone at the house?”

“I can’t leave him right now.”

“What about the housekeeper?”

Yes, Desideria would watch Tad, but Jamie needed to be with him. “I’ll have to let Mom and Theo handle it. Gotta run, Brad. Talk later.”

Ending the call, she pocketed the phone and, hugging her stomach, huddled into herself. Tad continued to play, not so much with as alongside the other child. From time to time, he sat back on his heels, but even then, he wasn’t looking for Jamie.

She half-wished he was. She half-wished she was so instrumental to his existence that he couldn’t bear to have her out of his sight for more than a minute. That would justify her not going to the funeral home. But the truth? With Jess declared dead and Tad her own child forever more, she was having trouble breathing. Dealing with the reality of a funeral—burial clothes, hymns, obituaries—would have been way too much. She couldn’t even think about picking out a dress to wear herself.

When her eyes filled with tears, she pressed a hand under her nose to squelch out-and-out crying.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Jamie,” came a new female voice. “What a fluke accident. If only that tree had come down in the hurricane we had two years ago—” The voice suddenly stopped.

Startled by the abruptness, Jamie looked up, then followed the woman’s gaze to the man at the other end of the bench. His hand was raised off his book just enough to say,
Enough. Leave her alone.

Amazingly, the woman pressed her fingers to her mouth, nodded, and, seeming duly chastised, left.

*   *   *

The angst of the past few days notwithstanding, Caroline would have driven over to see Jamie if there hadn’t been so much to do here. Each time she went looking for Theo to say she was leaving, the front door opened, and more people arrived. She knew them all, if not through work then through Williston, and if not through the town then through her marriage to Roy. With Theo looking as fragile as the antique French armchair on which he sat—“Patricia’s favorite,” he said each time she suggested he might be more comfortable elsewhere—she couldn’t desert him. She guided friends his way. She reassured him that the picture of Roy in the newspaper obit would be a good one. At his urging, she dug through files in the library to read the write-up of Patricia’s funeral and see which hymns were played.

She also brought him water and tried to get him to eat. “You need strength,” she told him in a private moment, squatting beside his chair with her back to the room. “Roy would not want you to starve. Here’s tuna salad. You like tuna.” When he waved the plate away, she set it on the lamp table. “You’re exhausted. Why not go up and rest for a few minutes? We’ll all understand.”

Seeming not to hear, he said in a rough murmur, “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. This wasn’t in the plan. You think about the life you want, and you follow the rules and try to do the right things.”

Caroline squeezed his hand. “You’re a good person, Theo.”

“And still he died.” Sad eyes met hers. “Roy had his faults. But he was my son.”

“He had many strengths. You raised a good man. He loved his family.”

Indeed, she had never once doubted his love for Jamie. Wondering if Jamie knew that, she thought again about going to Roy’s, but as she stood, Theo’s eyes went to the door. “There’s the president of the bank. Talk to him, Caroline. Answer his questions. I can’t go through that again.”

So Caroline talked with the president of the bank. When Brad showed up, she drew him in to take her place. This time, when she went to tell Theo she was leaving, he came up with another person she needed to call, so she went into the library to use the phone.