Custody (41 page)

“Um, no,” Tessa said, ducking her head. “I think I’ll look at the menu.”

“Sure thing, baby doll.”

“I’ll have the pancakes and bacon,” Randall announced.

Tessa scoured the menu. “I’d like a fruit cup.”

“A fruit cup!” Randall said. “Honey. What kind of breakfast is that?”

“I’m not very hungry, Dad.” Tessa felt her face burning. She hated arguing with her parents in front of people.

“It’s this heat,” Monica said placatingly. “Everyone loses their appetite.”

“Tessa. You have to have more than a fruit cup.”

Tessa shrugged. “Okay. And a glass of orange juice.”

Randall snorted. “Give her pancakes, too.”

“Dad, I don’t want pancakes.”

“I’ll be back in just a minute.” Monica took herself diplomatically off.

Randall spoke quietly. “Tessa. Look at me. Is something wrong?”

“No, Dad. Why does it have to be a federal case if I don’t want pancakes?”

“All right. That’s fine. But you need something substantial to start your day. You know that. How about—?” He scanned the menu. “Waffles with strawberries.”

Tessa shook her head.

“French toast?”

“Dad.”

Randall looked at Tessa. Then he smiled. “Mushroom omelet?” He knew she hated mushrooms.

“Maybe just a soft-boiled egg.”

“That’s good.”

But when Monica returned and Tessa told her, “A fruit cup and a soft-boiled egg,” Randall added, “And toast.”

“So,” Randall said when Monica went off. “I hear you don’t want to go to camp any longer.”

Tessa shrugged. “There’s only one more week, anyway.”

“So there is. Fall is fast approaching. And school.”

Tessa traced the raised designs on her place mat.

“You know Grandpops and I are hoping you’ll be able to live with us and attend the public school.”

Tessa chewed her lip.

“And you know, of course, your mother wants you to stay with her. Remain in private school.”

Monica returned with their juice.

“We don’t want to create an impossible situation for you, Tessa. We both love you and want what’s best for you. I know it’s hard, being your age, having your life in such turbulence. But I really do believe it’s the best for all of us.”

“I know, Dad.”

Randall studied her as he drank his coffee in silence. After a while, he said, “Your mother tells me that Sarah has invited you to visit next weekend. Since your mother’s got so much campaigning to do, she thought it might be a good idea if you and
I
go. What do you think of that?”

“Okay.”

“Of course,” her father said casually, “you could go by yourself, but then you’d have no buffer person.”

Tessa grinned in spite of herself. Her grandparents were truly generous, good-hearted people, but also disorganized and eccentric. Capable of making complicated arrangements to
provide jobs and housing for Russian immigrants—they seemed to want to take on the problems of the entire Russian population single-handed—they had trouble making a grocery list. When Tessa was ten, and invited to stay with them for a week in July, they’d driven her to the beach and dropped her off for the day without providing her with a lunch, beach blanket, sun block, or money, and then they’d forgotten to pick her up. She’d trudged home, feeling hot, pathetic, and sunburned, and later insisted that she’d never go visit them all by herself until she had her own car.

“Remember the time we all went there for Thanksgiving, and Sarah had forgotten to buy a turkey?” Randall asked.

“We just had tons of vegetables and pie.”

Their meals came, and Tessa was glad for the diversion of Sarah stories. Her father tucked into his food like a starving man. Tessa ate her fruit cup very slowly; then she decapitated the egg in its little white cup with great deliberation. She tore up the toast in little bits, hoping her father wouldn’t notice that she wasn’t actually eating it. The truth was, the fruit cup and egg made her feel stuffed.

It was just before twelve when Randall dropped his daughter back at her mother’s house.

“I’ll phone you, Tessa. We’ll leave sometime Friday afternoon, but I’ll let you know exactly when after I rearrange my schedule.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“If you feel like it, and your mom can spare you, I’d love to take you out to see Grandpops some evening this week, since he didn’t get to see you today.”

“I’ll ask Mom.”

Randall gave his daughter a hug. “I love you, Tessa.”

“Love you, too, Dad.”

He sat in his car until she was safely inside. He was tremendously concerned about how little she was eating, how thin she was. Clearly her appetite had diminished, and her hands were cold. He
was glad the divorce trial would be held in just ten days. He felt comfortable with Dr. Lawrence, who seemed like an observant, even-minded man. Surely the GAL would, if nothing else, speak to the matter of Tessa’s thinness. Until then, there was no point arguing with Anne; it only escalated the anger between them and tore Tessa apart.

So, he thought, driving away from the trim French provincial. Now: Kelly. He was looking forward to seeing her apartment. A home told so much about a person. Well, he amended his own thought, sometimes it did. He would hate to be judged by the anonymous transitional apartment he slept in these days.

Perhaps he was behaving impetuously, thinking he wanted to marry this woman Kelly MacLeod when he scarcely knew her. Yet he had lived his life until now with great forethought and caution, and he had to say it had not brought him much joy. Well, Tessa had brought him joy, of course. He did believe that some power somewhere in the mysterious tangle of life forces had caused him and Anne to come together not for the purpose of a long happy marriage but for the needs, actions, and decisions that had eventuated in the breathtakingly lovable person that was Tessa. Her welfare and happiness would always be his first consideration.

But now he might find happiness for himself, as well.

His cell phone rang. Kelly, he thought, wondering how soon I’ll be there.

But at first he couldn’t hear the caller. “Hello?” he asked again.

“Randall.”

An arrow of ice spliced his spine. “Dad? I can’t hear you.”

The old man’s voice was quavery and dim. “I fell. Can you come?”

“Of course, I’ll come. I’m in the car, I’ll head out your way right now.” Checking his rearview mirror he made a U-turn that led him toward Route 2. “How did you fall?”

“Painting. Ladder.”

“Dad, do you need an ambulance?”

“No!” His father’s voice gained strength. More quietly he added, “No need for any fuss.”

“Did you break any bones?” Now he was on a ramp leading to the eight-lane highway.

“No. Just knocked the wind out. Gave myself a scare.”

“Did you pass out?” Randall gunned the engine, cut into the fast lane, and kept his foot on the pedal.

“No. Hurt my pride more than anything.” After a moment, Mont Madison said, a note of satisfaction in his voice, “Got most of Tessa’s room painted, though.”

“Listen, Dad. I need to make a call. I’ll phone you right back.”

“No need. I’ll see you when you get here. Thanks for coming. Sorry to be such a pain in the neck.”

“You’re not a pain in the neck, Dad.”

Randall clicked off, waited until he’d turned off Route 2 on the two-lane road to his father’s farm, and punched in Kelly’s number. To his surprise and disappointment, he got her answering machine.

“Kelly, I’m terribly sorry, but my father just phoned. He’s had a fall, from a ladder, while painting a room in our house. He says he’s okay, and he’s a physician himself, so I’m sure he knows, but he wouldn’t call me and ask me to come out if it wasn’t necessary. I don’t know how long I’ll be with him. I’ll call you as soon as I can. I’m sorry. I’m—I’m sorry.”

Felicity lived in a two-family house in Everett. Kelly parked the car at the curb, and they stepped out into the heat, a wild storm of barking assaulting their ears.

Felicity led the way, calling over her shoulder, “That’s Gargoyle. The upstairs neighbor’s dog. He’s harmless. Anyway, he’s locked in the back yard. He can’t get out.”

The Lambrouscos’ apartment was on the second floor. Living room, dining room, two bedrooms, kitchen and bath, all painted in muted greens and blues with clean white trim woodwork—no doubt Ingrid’s touch. An ancient tweedish sofa worn shiny at the arms and back stood alone in the living room. Indentations in the carpet, dark rectangles on the wall, proved that once this place had looked like a home. Bits of paper, cardboard boxes from a liquor store, now filled with glasses, and bundles of fabric lay scattered over the floors. They went down a hall.

“My room,” Felicity said, throwing open a door.

Kelly stepped inside.

This room had been painted indigo. Dark blue fabric printed with stars and moons had been tossed over the rod to serve as a curtain over the one window. Leftover bits of tape glittered from the walls and the closet door where once posters had hung. In the open closet three lonely dresses hung deserted.

The furniture made Kelly gasp. It was all so familiar—the bed, the cobbler’s bench, the bureau, the desk—for a moment she was a child again, with her grandparents just in the other room.

“Anybody home? Felicity?”

A young man bounded into the room. He wore a Red Sox T-shirt and baggy red shorts drooped from his hipbones, exposing the white band of his Fruit of the Loom undershorts.

“Hi, Sly. Kelly, this is my friend Sly.”

Kelly shook his hand. The young man did resemble Stallone; he had the same dark good looks. No wonder Felicity was adamant about not moving to California.

“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Kelly said.

“No problem.” He had a strong Boston accent. “So, you want all this stuff moved?”

“Yes,” Felicity told him. “And those boxes of books.”

Kelly knelt by the boxes. Eight of them, packed with hard- and softbacks. “You’ve got quite a library here.”

“Secondhand stores. My treasures. Can’t part with them, but idiot me, I filled the boxes all so full I couldn’t pick them up.”

“No problem,” Sly said again. “Let’s start with the furniture.”

Kelly ran her hands over the bureau. Still a work of beauty, its surface was pitted, gouged, and scratched. She looked around. “What did you do to this furniture, go after it with a bat?”

“No, we just moved a lot. And did most of the moving ourselves.” Felicity lifted the mattress off the bed and leaned it against the wall. “I think I’ve lived in at least twenty different places in fifteen years.”

“You’re lucky,” Sly said. “I’ve never been anywhere.”

Together they lifted the bed slats out and separated the headboard from the side pieces.

“I’ve got the headboard,” Felicity said.

“I’ll take one of the sides,” Kelly said.

“Nah, I’ll get them both,” Sly told her. “You can be in charge of the doors.”

Slightly amused, Kelly obeyed. Sly probably thought she’d strain herself, injure herself. She could remember when anyone over thirty might as well be over fifty. She propped the apartment door open, and while Felicity and Sly moved the furniture down the stairs and into the open bed of Sly’s pickup truck, she walked through the apartment, her mother’s last home.