Equilibrium (5 page)

“And this is Mr. Smi—”

“Finn,” Red said. His pink hand nearly crushed hers.

“Oh!” Mom squealed. “Almost forgot.” From her pocket, she took two keys—the silver hardware-store-issue key that unlocked the studio from the outside of their house and the antique gold skeleton key that unlocked the inside door. “For you,” Mom said, and she placed the keys side by side in Aidan’s upturned palm.

Warm cocoa rose in Darcy’s throat and soured her mouth, and she swallowed.

Aidan turned the key. He and Finn slipped into the studio and shut the door behind them.

Daddy’s door. She’d practically memorized that door, with its worn finish, the permanent scratches. The lengthwise crack in the frame she used to peer through when she was little and Daddy wouldn’t let her in, no matter how hard she’d cried. Now what would she see if she looked through the crack? A red-faced doofus and Aidan, grinning like an idiot.

“Yoo-hoo!” Her mother’s dizzy friend, Elle, pushed into the mudroom with Maggie, middle-aged hippie woman, in tow of her tailwind. Oh, great, the goon squad had arrived. Soon Maggie would entice them into joining hands in a misguided attempt to conjure her father’s ghost.
Count me out!

Mom hugged Maggie against her chest, squeezing the patchouli out of her. Maggie plucked a chunky knit cap from her head and shook out her gray curls.

Elle unwound her red scarf. “Saw Aidan’s truck,” she said, as though she were teasing.

Mom wagged a finger at Elle. “I don’t know whether I should kiss you or kill you.”

Elle hugged Mom and planted a kiss on her cheek. “It was Maggie’s idea.”

“I bet it wasn’t,” Mom said.

Troy flung open the storm door and said exactly what Darcy was thinking, “What’s going on?”

Mom rushed to Troy; she always rushed to Troy.

“Two guys just carried Dad’s desk out into the yard,” Troy said, sounding winded. “Are you giving his stuff to the Salvation Army or something?”

“Sweetheart, no, I rented out the studio.”

Troy’s voice reverted to his adolescent high-pitched croak. “No way.” He glanced over his shoulder out to the driveway. Aidan leaned into the bed of his truck and passed a guitar case to Finn. “Both of them?”

“No, just—” Mom leaned out the door. “Excuse me, Aidan!” She ushered Troy outside, and Darcy followed behind them. Not much cracked little brother’s voice. Darcy wasn’t going to miss this.

“I’d like you to meet my son, Troy,” Mom said. “Troy, Aidan Walsh, our new tenant.”

Aidan nodded. “Nice to meet you, Troy.” Aidan put down a box and shook Troy’s hand.

“Finn, friend of Aidan,” Finn said, but Troy’s gaze lingered on Aidan.

“So where’re you putting the desk?” Troy asked, and Aidan exchanged a glance with her mother.

“I asked Aidan to put it out in the shed,” Mom said. “But we could find a place for it in the house, if you’d prefer.”

Troy cleared his throat. “The house would work,” he said, but his voice didn’t return to normal. Troy stared after Aidan as the two men carried Aidan’s guitar and moving boxes into the studio.

“I just—I don’t get it,” Troy said. “You never do stuff without telling me and Darcy first. You don’t like to surprise us.” Surprises were Daddy’s specialty. Mom, they could predict.

Mom pressed her lips together and lowered her voice. She held her arms against the cold. “Troy, I asked you months ago, and you were okay with it.”

Troy looked right at Mom. “Well, I’m not okay with it now,” he said, and Darcy found herself nodding in agreement with her little brother.

Shivering, she trudged back into the house and sat at Mom’s desk. Cold banded her chest. Elle’s and Maggie’s annoying voices carried from the living room. Footsteps, Drew’s and Aidan’s, sounded from behind the closed door of Daddy’s studio.

She couldn’t pretend anymore Daddy was home, safe and sound, writing away. She couldn’t trick herself into thinking any second now he’d open the door and wrap his arms around her, so she could bury her nose in his citrus-musk scent. She couldn’t—

Darcy dug her nails into her thigh. The flesh gave, and she inhaled sharply.

She vaguely remembered Mom asking her and Troy for permission to rent out Daddy’s studio. Something about unused space, and money that Mom insisted wasn’t crucial.
Yeah, right.
Darcy might’ve even said she couldn’t care less.

It wasn’t fair.

That was before Darcy had realized she cared a lot, before she understood Daddy’s studio without Daddy’s things killed her father double dead.

Chapter 5

O
ther than Aidan, what kind of guy would whistle off to work, psyched to head to the emergency room, her mother’s least favorite destination?

For the past few weeks, Darcy had tried convincing Mom something was very wrong with a man who couldn’t wait to mess around elbow deep in blood and guts, when most men would faint. Last time Darcy ran into Aidan, he’d told her about popping some guy’s dislocated shoulder back into place, complete with sound effects, and she’d nearly gagged. Yet Mom wondered why she’d refused to step inside Daddy’s studio since Aidan had taken it over.

Come to think of it, she might gag today.

On the other side of the kitchen table, Troy was busy eating a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios in the most disgusting way humanly possible. Little brother had it down to a science. Scoop milk and cereal, slurp milk from spoon, and then munch the
O
s. Darcy’s bowl of cereal sat untouched. She pushed the bowl away from her and kicked at the overflowing laundry basket by her feet.

Sunday was laundry day, her laundry day. But when she’d come downstairs this morning, the washing machine was already humming with Aidan-the-weirdo’s wash. The dryer churned with Aidan’s clothes, too, making Darcy think of how she’d made out with Nick against the dryer. Of what she’d let him do in there. Of what she hadn’t let him do since.

Not that he hadn’t tried. But whenever Nick came over to her house, Mom lurked. Whenever they parked at the lake, Cam and Heather came along. Darcy made sure of it. And she always had a ready excuse why she couldn’t hang out at his grandmother’s house, where nobody was home. Better to lie than admit she was scared to be alone with him. She’d learned from experience—juniors wouldn’t go out with a virgin for long. The washing machine beeped, but no weirdo emerged from Daddy’s studio. Troy chewed his cereal, humming through his nose. She glared at Troy, and he waved. Had he stayed up all night figuring out ways to irritate her? En route to the bathroom, Darcy bumped into Troy’s chair with her laundry basket. Twice. Troy chewed with his mouth open.

Aidan’s dryer load rotated on warm, the done button lit. Darcy pressed clear, opened the door, and scooped the warm wash into Aidan’s waiting basket. Jeans, T-shirts, boxers, and light green scrubs with a small questionable stain. Okay, she really was going to hurl.

She needed to get her wash started and shower before Nick came to take her to a movie. The last time they’d gone to a movie, they sat in the back row of Cinemagic. As soon as the room went black, Nick rubbed her neck and pressed his mouth to hers. He drew an ache up from her toes that left her wiping her eyes when the credits rolled, although she hadn’t watched a single frame. The best part? Nick had held her hand all the way to the car.

No wash, no shower, no Nick.

Darcy blew past the still-chewing-humming Troy and knocked on Aidan’s—Daddy’s—studio. No answer. She put her ear to the door, and shower sounds washed through the crack. First Aidan had swiped her laundry time, and now he was hogging all the water!

She stomped to the bathroom, opened the washing machine, and shoveled Aidan’s wet clothes on top of his dry duds. Let him figure it out. She lifted the basket and—

“What’re you doing?” Mom, dressed and wearing lipstick. On a Sunday morning. In the house.

“You going somewhere?” Darcy asked.

Mom took Aidan’s laundry basket from her arms and walked into the kitchen. She squeezed Aidan’s jeans on the top of the pile and furrowed her brow. “They’re wet.”

“It’s not my fault. He left them there. What am I supposed to do? Besides, the clothes underneath are dry, so the heat can rise up and—”

Mom’s eyes bugged out. “That’s worse.”

Aidan strolled into the kitchen, shower-fresh and barefoot, as if he lived here. As if he belonged.

Troy had been giving Aidan the hairy eyeball since he’d moved in. Little brother would stop whatever he was doing and stare after Aidan, his face concentrating like when he was puzzling out a school assignment. Maybe Troy’s Einstein ways would spook Aidan. Nice one, odd little bro.

Troy chewed faster, then swallowed. He set down his spoon.

Aidan glanced sideways and eyed his laundry. “That looks strangely familiar,” he told her mother.

Mom laughed. “And familiarly strange,” she said, some dumb as dirt back and forth they’d devised. No surprise Aidan knew Elle. He acted like one of her mother’s girlfriends. Well, maybe not
girl
friend. Last week, Darcy had caught him checking out her mother’s ass when she wasn’t looking. Must be desperate. Yet another reason Mom shouldn’t trust him.

“Unfortunately, at least half your wash is still wet.” Mom looked at Darcy and lost her sense of humor. “Darcy, take Aidan’s wash and put it back in the dryer, including anything you caused to dampen.”

She wasn’t about to do Aidan’s wash.

“Darcy?”

“Tell Aidan if he wants to do wash on Sunday morning, he shouldn’t leave it for hours.”

“Darcy Ann, speak directly to—”

Aidan stepped between her and her mother, and Troy took his bowl to the counter to get a better view.

“Watched the clock,” Aidan said. “Dryer stopped ten minutes ago. Wash finished five minutes ago.”

She wanted him to get all red in the face. She wanted him to stammer. She wanted him to raise his voice till a vein popped out on his forehead. She didn’t want him to tell the plain truth. Darcy sucked at her bottom lip. Mom folded her arms, angled her a what-do-you-say-to-that glare.

“Something else bothering you?” Aidan asked.

Darcy wanted to knock the perfectly reasonable look off his face. “I do wash on Sunday,” she said, which sounded lame, even to her.

Aidan nodded, offering Darcy an I-know-how-you-feel frown, like she’d shared something deep. “ ’Kay. So you’d like me to stay clear of the laundry room on Sunday?”

“Uh-huh.”

Aidan flashed her a toothy smile. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Mom shifted Aidan’s laundry basket off her hip.

How was she going to get out of—?

“Darcy?” Mom said.

“Fine.” Darcy ripped the basket from Mom’s hands. She hoped her voice dripped with attitude.

Troy tilted his bowl in front of his face, slurped down the last of his milk, and came up grinning. “What’s so funny?” Darcy asked.

“You are.”

“Listen, dork, I don’t s—”

“Hey, Troy, know a decent bike shop around here?” Aidan said. “Looking to replace my tires.”

“Road or mountain?”

“Road.”

“You planning on riding on ice?”

“Nah, I’m counting on an early thaw.”

Troy set his bowl by the sink. “Souhegan Cycleworks on the Milford Oval.”

“You wanna come along to navigate, if your mom doesn’t mind?”

“Take him,” Mom said, her voice practically chirping.

Why should Mom care whether Troy got along with her newest buddy Aidan? He wasn’t related to them. Mom used to play at tearing her hair out of her head whenever Troy and Daddy argued. Darcy had kind of liked it. No matter the issue, she was always on Daddy’s side. Right now, she liked being on Troy’s side about Aidan.

“What d’you say, Troy?” Aidan asked. “Want to come along?”

Troy gave Aidan one of his long looks. Aidan spoke one of Troy’s two languages: geek and jock. Come spring, her brother sprouted wheels for legs and biked to school and back without breaking a sweat. He’d started riding a two-wheeler at age four, Darcy’s, not his. After watching her struggle without training wheels, he dragged the kitchen stool outside, hopped on her pink banana seat, and pedaled down the street. Still, Troy wouldn’t—

Troy nodded. “Need a few things, if you don’t have any plans.”

“That is the plan,” Aidan said.

“Cool. I’ll go get dressed then.” Troy breezed out of the room and jogged up the stairs, leaving Darcy dazed, holding Aidan’s laundry, and staring at Troy’s empty cereal bowl. The geek. The jock.

The traitor.

Chapter 6

S
ometime after eleven that night, Laura noted her mind drifting off into sleep, and she spiraled down into a nightmare.

Her bedroom door sprang open. A shot rang out. Blood splattered the walls. Jack’s blood webbed between her fingers.

Laura was awake, upright, in bed, a gasp caught between her teeth.

She flicked on the overhead light, and the brightness scared away the nightmare along with the shadows. Her circulatory system pulsed madly. She held a hand to her chest, waiting for the drumbeat’s retreat.

A nightmare had hijacked her memory, forcing her to relive the worst day of her life.

She gathered her hair away from her perspiring neck, fashioned a loose braid, and cool air whispered over her nape, sending a shiver down her bare arms. She slipped into the cream-colored satin robe at the foot of her bed and headed for the relief of the hallway, a place where spectral blood did not splatter.

In the bathroom, she considered taking either the Valerian drops Maggie had given her as a sleep aid or the prescription sleeping pills. She’d tried each of them exactly once, and she’d hated herself exactly twice for having needed mind-altering medications.

Thanks, but no thanks.

No sound from Darcy’s room. Laura pushed the door open with one finger, stepped inside, and listened for the cadence of her daughter’s breathing. Well, it sounded as if her daughter were fast asleep, but Darcy had fooled her before.

The
Union Leader
sat on Darcy’s bedside table, the newspaper still folded open to the apartments for rent Darcy had shown Laura she’d circled for Aidan. She’d even “borrowed” Aidan’s rental agreement and knew they could ask him to leave within thirty days. But Aidan wasn’t the culprit, just a convenient scapegoat for her daughter’s grief. Darcy scoffed at the idea of visiting her father’s grave. Instead, Jack’s former studio served as her in-house memorial. The problem was, Jack didn’t live there, either. Laura had only recently figured that out herself.

Laura pulled the covers over Darcy’s exposed shoulder, wishing she could protect her more thoroughly and rewrite her daughter’s childhood to include a father who could do no harm. Heaven forbid either one of her children got sick like Jack. The secondhand effects of mental illness posed enough of a burden. Laura sighed and kneeled down next to the bed, an old habit gone by the wayside. If Darcy were really asleep, then she wouldn’t wake from her mother’s nearness. Laura gazed at her daughter’s relaxed face. “I’d do anything to keep you safe, angel.”

At Troy’s door, she blew her son a kiss across his darkened room, not wanting to wake her light sleeper, her easy child. She’d do anything to keep her son safe, too. When Troy had climbed into Aidan’s truck for their drive to the bike shop, she’d slumped into her desk chair, limp with relief. Troy had worked through his eleventh-hour resistance to renting out the studio quietly, in his own internal way.

Darcy’s methods were a lot more external.

Laura padded down the stairs, switched on the kitchen light, and preset the oven to 325 degrees. She didn’t know what she was about to bake, rarely knew until she began these middle of the night cooking frenzies. Showing up and answering the call to the kitchen usually set her creative process in motion. She refastened her satin belt and sat with her chin in her hands.

She took out two well-used cookie sheets and lined up all the ingredients for gingersnaps, the spicy cookie recipe she’d long ago committed to memory. If she moved really quickly, reciting the list of ingredients and paying special attention to the task at hand, then she could drive away the nightmare’s afterimage. She didn’t need the yoga Maggie swore by, the supposed meditation in motion exercises she taught in group to relaxing Indian music. Laura had her own methods for producing equilibrium.

She placed the butter in the microwave and gave it a minute on defrost to bring the hardened sticks to room temperature. Thinking of the blood she’d touched in the nightmare, she washed her hands and dried them on rough paper towels until the pockets between her fingers grew raw. Damn him. How dare Jack haunt her so? Was this the thanks she got for loving one man so completely?

The word
raw
boomed inside her head, conjuring an image of Laura at eighteen. After her mother’s death, she’d been open to influence, and Jack Klein had been a taker. He should’ve waited, should’ve helped her process her grief. Instead, he’d helped her bury it, along with her childhood. Was it any wonder Laura worried about Darcy’s vulnerability to a charmer like Nick?

The microwave ding bristled her all over, a disproportionate startled response. She shook her head, trying to regain composure, although she was her only witness to the overreaction.

She poked the butter to test its give, then added a bit of the dark brown sugar. Drizzling the dark molasses over the golden hills blasted the image of the cramped kitchen from her childhood and the tiny fatherless apartment she and her mother had shared.

Her tiny fatherless life.

She readied the dry ingredients and added more ginger than the original recipe called for.

Sift, sift, sift, sift.
She squeezed the metal handle, tried enjoying the snowfall of flour and spice, and the way the beige mounds rested at soft angles, sloping against the rim of the glass bowl.

She hadn’t had a family, really. None except for her quiet mother, a woman who kept to herself. Kept herself from her daughter, too. So many times, Laura had asked her about her father, always with the same result. Mama smiled her rueful smile, leaving her to wonder whether the look of regret had as much to do with Laura as her conception. Now she’d never know for sure.

She dumped the dry ingredients into the wet and blended with her favorite wooden spoon, folding dark grainy stripes into the dry sands. Her arm muscles tensed and picked up speed.

Each and everything she’d made for her family had blossomed from that emptiness she’d felt as a child, the feeling as if she were the only one without any family to speak of. She’d always craved open fields and mountain views, even though she’d spent her childhood on city streets, conjuring small-town life from all the books she’d read. For a while there she’d even grown to believe in the power of her imagination to influence her life, although she’d never spoken of magic out loud.

Now she believed only in what she could see. The readers who never knew Jack the person didn’t suffer the consequences of his real-life actions, those that diminished rather than elevated their children. Those that—

The
crunch-snap
of wood brought her attention to her spoon broken into two tidy sections, not a splinter in sight, and a very well mixed dough. She rubbed at her spent muscles, tossed the doomed utensil, and spread a plastic-wrap bonnet over the bowl.

Now what? Letting the dough sit for half an hour provided way too much time to think, when that was the last thing she wanted. She cleaned the dough dribbles off the counters, wiped the completely clean kitchen table, and then made her way to the broom closet. No matter how many times a day she swept the kitchen, she’d always discover more dirt.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the notion that she was an adult woman responsible for two teenage children seemed preposterous. Deep inside of her lay the young girl who had willingly stayed up all night, reading under the covers with a flashlight borrowed from her mother’s emergency car kit. Later, she’d set her intentions to paper, deciding exactly what her life would look like ten years down the road, and the precise steps needed to birth the dreams of marriage, children, and a published novel by age thirty. She certainly hadn’t signed up for widowhood at age thirty-four or a fatherless life for Darcy and Troy.

Laura stopped sweeping, visualizing another girl hiding beneath a white bedsheet with a silver flashlight in hand. She headed straight for her desk to jot down the sketchy character before the story seed dissolved.

When the ideas thinned, she read what she’d written and chuckled her way down the page. Okay, either she was entirely too smart for herself or just a BS artist. Maybe both. Really, whom was she kidding? Even if she found a story train, what right did she have to follow it? Time was running out on her free lunch. Come fall, she’d need a job. A paying job. Best-case scenario for writing and selling a first novel would get her a check for a few thousand dollars in about four years.

Jack was one of the few writers who’d actually earned a decent living out of his passion. Thank goodness for the long tail of royalties. The ideal of the struggling writer never included a thirtysomething widow with two teenagers in need of financial support they could depend upon.

She rubbed at her eyes and stood to her anklebones crackling a protest at finding themselves up and about so late at night. Then another sound drew her attention outside her weary body. The music of a strumming guitar flowed seamlessly from Aidan’s closed apartment door, through her office nook, and penetrated her chest.

One note, then several successive notes rippled the air. She couldn’t make out the tune, but she adored it right away. The flowing melody thrummed bittersweet, the strings plucking chords of deep regret and unspeakable sorrow, making her think he was playing her song, like in the old Roberta Flack tune “Killing Me Softly.” A joy just below the surface kept popping in, refusing to bow to the song’s initial mood.

Laura padded to the apartment’s door, and the upbeat secondary melody gained momentum, running away with the song. She’d noticed Aidan’s guitar when he’d first moved in but had yet to hear him play. Could she have slept through other concerts? Mistaken his playing for Darcy’s or Troy’s music?

She pressed her hand against the door, and the vibrations sang through her palm. The music stopped, but her hand still buzzed. She raised a fist to the door, then paused, getting a full-frontal memory flash of the classic movie,
The Good-bye Girl
. The single mom, Marsha Mason, upon hearing sub-leaser Richard Dreyfuss playing the guitar in the middle of the night, walked into his room and found him naked as a jaybird, obscuring his nudity with a well-placed guitar.

Apparently, her late-night mind was dipping into music and movies from as far back as preschool and elementary, and broadcasting from her ’70s archives. Smiling, Laura tapped on the door with the knuckles of her middle finger.

Nothing. Oh, great. The poor guy probably thought squirrels were scampering through the walls. She knocked harder. “It’s Laura.”

Panic now, as she realized her foible. Aidan, her tenant, her new friend, deserved privacy, not a midnight visit.

“Laura! Door’s unlocked. Come on in.” His response sounded as if he were expecting her.

She pushed open the door, trying to look less like a grinning idiot.

There he sat.

The light from the mudroom followed her through the doorway and laid a carpet of illumination across the weathered pine boards, then climbed up a dark leather recliner and onto Aidan himself. In the minimal light, she made out his bare feet, the folds of his jeans, and the curve of the guitar he clutched in front of his shirtless chest. Not naked as a jaybird, thank God, but close enough to give her pause.

The words played in her head and sounded a lot like Elle. Laura was no good at this, years out of practice, so she couldn’t say for sure whether his response to her visit indicated interest.

For Laura, his nearness awakened every secret place. “Was I too loud? Did the music wake you?” Aidan said, and the gentle rhythm of his rich voice tweaked the pulse at the base of her throat. He got up and turned on the overhead light, making Laura wish for the anonymity of darkness. She straightened beneath the thin satin layers of a nightgown and robe, not exactly appropriate garb for their professional living arrangement.

Her bed-sock feet relaxed against the smooth wood floor, responding to a palpable softness in the air. Yet, the distance between her and Aidan contained an energy that shifted her balance forward. A corresponding internal tug spun her thoughts. “Goodness, no. I was cooking. In the kitchen.”

He raised his eyebrows into identical arcs.

“I was getting some dough ready. For gingersnaps. I haven’t really baked anything.”

He nodded, as if her nonsensical speech made all the sense in the world.

“You have to let the dough kind of meld together. So I was writing.” She didn’t wait for his reaction; she just barreled forward. “Not really writing. Sketching out the framework for a character that came to mind while I was baking, but not really baking. You have to let character sketches meld, too.”

“Sure.” He took a step in her direction.

“Loved the music. I don’t think I’ve heard it before though. I was wondering if you could tell me what it’s called.”

“Nope.”

“Not even a clue?” She tried looking him in the eye, even though his bare chest was vying for her attention. Just a sprinkle of dark hair at the center. And that waist—she gazed over his shoulder.

“I’ve never heard it before, either. Never played it before tonight.”

“You write music?”

“Occasionally. When I can’t sleep.”

Her new friend, Doctor Aidan Walsh, wrote music and strummed the guitar like a virtuoso.

Well, she couldn’t look
past
him when he was standing so close. “The music was beautiful.” He was beautiful. “You should write it down.” She should stop offering unbidden advice. “I could let you know when the cookies are done, if you like.” She turned to leave.

“Um, Laura.” He waited for her to turn toward him. This time she held his gaze, and he grinned. “Do you . . . would you like some company?”

“Sure.” She exhaled her response, and it came out all breathy, as if she were trying to sound sexy. Either sexy or asthmatic.