Every Last Cuckoo (5 page)

Lottie slumped down into a chair next to Sarah, across from
Tess. The sun was not quite up, but it lit the sky over Apple Mountain in the distance. Through the bay window by the kitchen table they could see over the backyard and across the high end of the meadow that led down to the thicket and the pond. The light shone like pearl. Soon it would turn to the gradual morning blue that Sarah loved. It was a peaceful scene, but the memory of yesterday's headlong rush down the slope was all too fresh.

Sarah squeezed Lottie's hand under the table. “Want some pie, kiddo?”

Lottie shook her head mutely.

“Oh, come on,” Tess urged, gesturing with her fork toward a second serving on her own plate. “This pumpkin is the
best
.” She took another bite and mimed ecstasy, her eyes heavenward, her left hand on her heart. She reached for a can of Reddi-wip, bought specially for Luke and Hannah, and pointed it at Lottie, grinning.

“How
can
you?” Lottie burst out. “How can you eat pie? How can you act . . . goofy?”

Tess stopped clowning but was still amused. “You want to know? I'll tell you, Lottie. I'm eating pie and I'm goofing around because I'm incredibly happy. I'm celebrating. I'm finishing Thanksgiving dinner with praise in my heart. Total joy.”

“Yeah,” said Lottie. “After I almost killed your daughter.” Her brown eyes filled, and she stared fixedly out the window so that the tears would not spill over.

“That's not what happened at all,” Tess said firmly. “You took the very best care of Hannah that anyone could. You jumped every time it looked like she might get hurt—on the swing, running around the yard, trying to climb the deck railing. I saw all that.”

“It wasn't enough,” cried Lottie, finally looking straight at Tess and letting the tears come.

“Right,” Tess agreed, matter-of-fact. “It wasn't. That's a tough lesson.”

“I don't understand,” said Lottie.

“You shouldn't have to,” Tess told her. “You shouldn't have to know yet that you can't protect the people you love. You do what you can, but perfect safety just isn't possible.”

Lottie opened her mouth to say more, but Tess shook her head. “Look at the sky turning blue out there, and eat your grandmother's pie, and get it all the way through your head that Hannah is perfectly okay. And so are you.”

Lottie gave in and eyed the pie disappearing from Tess's plate.

Just then they heard Hannah scampering down the hall with Sylvie at her heels. She stopped at the kitchen doorway in footed purple pajamas, holding a tattered stuffed rabbit by one ear and smiling brightly at the three women sitting at the table.

“I
wondered
where you were!” she said, putting her small, balled hands on her hips. The bunny swung at her side. She went to Tess and kissed her, then dispensed her affections to Sarah before scrambling up into Lottie's lap. Lottie looked apprehensive, as if Hannah might dissolve into mist, but she made a circle of her arms and loosely enfolded the solid, warm child.

Hannah looked across at Tess and declared, “Mom, I need breakfast.”

Tess laughed. “We're all having pie. Want some?”

“Pie for
breakfast
?” Hannah crowed. “Is there pumpkin?”

 

IT'S ALREADY TWILIGHT. Sarah croons softly to Charles as she listens once more for someone to pick up a ringing phone. Lottie answers and spins into fear at her grandmother's nearly incoherent voice. “
Mom!
” she shouts, then yells into the mouthpiece at Sarah. “Nana, I can't understand you! Slow down!” Dimly, Sarah can hear Lottie's alarm, but she has no time for it.

“Mom?” Charlotte asks, after seizing the phone from Lottie. “Mom, are you all right?”

Sarah takes a ragged breath, which feels like the first since she started toward the woods with Sylvie. Finally, she is able to speak. Charlotte stays calm while Sarah tells her what has happened and where she is. Sarah is immeasurably grateful for her daughter's coolness in this dizzying moment. “Mom,” Charlotte says again, steadying Sarah. “We're leaving right this second. Lottie will know where the trail is. We'll be there in twenty minutes. I just made tea; I'll bring a thermos. Keep Dad warm. He'll be fine.”

She hangs up, and Sarah turns back to Charles. “Don't go, don't go,” she begs him.

The EMTs arrive at last, having followed Sarah's route on their snowmobiles. One tows a rescue sled—a sleek, enclosed bubble on runners, with room inside for a patient, an attendant, and emergency supplies. Moments later, Charlotte and Lottie come racing down the trail, half falling, half sliding. Charlotte has a large flashlight in her hand, turned on against the gathering dusk. It's
been half an hour since Sarah reached her husband's unconscious body, and he has not so much as moaned since the first small sound. Three rescue workers check his vital signs, which are weak but steady. They take off his wet outer clothing and wrap him in a lightweight, heated blanket before moving him to the rescue sled.

“His body temp is just over eighty-six, which isn't too bad,” says one of the paramedics. “We can only warm him part way out here. Too much external heat sends the cooled blood back to the organs too fast. Shocks the system.”

They explain more as they work, telling Charlotte what they see. Charles's heart rate is steady, but the least wrong move could drastically disrupt it. They move very, very gently with him. They think he has broken his knee. They're not too worried about a cut on the back of his head, though. The snow has kept it from bleeding much.

Finally the team installs Charles in the rescue sled. Charlotte goes and pours hot tea into the thermos cap for Sarah. “You'll need this, to make it back home, Mom.” She sees a paramedic—a tough, abrupt young woman—gesture to her. “Time to go,” she says briskly. “Try not to worry. He seems pretty tough for his age.”

Charlotte barely has time to say, “Go ahead,” before the woman climbs into the sled with Charles and yells to the driver, who speeds off; then her remaining colleague climbs aboard the other machine and follows. Charlotte watches the taillights rapidly disappear. She turns to Sarah, who is sipping tea, cradled in Lottie's arms but still shivering.

“Mom, we have to get you home. Now. It's almost dark.”

“Yeah, Nana,” Lottie adds shakily. “Come on.”

Sarah looks blankly at the two women. She knows perfectly well who they are, but their voices are slurry, their features do not hold still. It isn't until Charlotte and Lottie each take an arm that Sarah heaves herself painfully upright, pushing on a fallen log for leverage. She wants to say something but cannot. Her jaw will not open, she cannot form words.

Neither can she walk. She trembles. Her knees buckle every few steps. Charlotte and Lottie make a chair for her, interlocking their hands and wrists in a foursquare pattern. Sarah manages to hold the flashlight steady in her lap. Gradually, they make their way home, stopping now and then to rest. Sylvie joins them, having first run ahead with the snowmobiles, which soon outraced her. Ruckus stays with the women all along, his head low. When they finally reach the house, Charlotte tries to put Sarah to bed. “Lottie can stay with you, Mom. I'll go to the hospital and call as soon as I know anything.”

Sarah nearly agrees. She is desperately tired. Her limbs are smoke, they will never hold her up again. But as Charlotte turns to leave, Sarah suddenly bolts up in bed, burning. “No,” she cries. “Wait.” She will not be placated, she will not lie down. The more Charlotte reasons with her, the more unreasonable she becomes. Finally she turns to Lottie. “You help me, right now. I'm going with you.” Lottie ignores her mother's disapproval. She puts her hands under Sarah's arms and lifts, as if her grandmother were a small child.

P
ETER AND
V
IVI LIVED
six miles closer to town than Sarah and Charles, in an 1830s farmhouse fronting on a dirt road. The house was older but strung together like Charles and Sarah's, its two-story main unit linked to the barn by a long ell. This design kept farmers and their hired help out of the elements. It was too easy, in a January whiteout, to get lost just stepping outside.

Peter and Vivi had adapted the design to their own uses. The barn was now Peter's woodworking shop, and the adjacent part of the ell, once used for storage and as quarters for farmhands, was Vivi's textile studio. The rest of the ell had been hollowed out to make a single, high-ceilinged room that was beautiful and always messy. It held an enormous kitchen and dining area with two big couches, bookshelves, and a woodstove. A wall of windows faced southwest, overlooking broad meadows and wooded hills beyond. Peter and Vivi scarcely used the main house at all, except for their bedroom and bath.

Everyone, including Sylvie and Ruckus, arrived at the Markses' in two cars. Charles was out of sorts, ill-tempered ever since he'd risen around noon. No pie for his late breakfast; he would not be sweetened.

When the extended Lucas family entered, Vivi had a Brunswick stew simmering and cheese biscuits ready to bake. Hannah asked Peter, “Where's your dog?”

Peter bent down over a padded rocker and scooped up a hefty black-and-white cat. “Here he is,” he announced to Hannah.

She pursed her lips severely and shook her head at him. “That's a cat!” she exclaimed.

Peter gave her a look of horror. “Sshhh!” he said. “Don't tell Boojus that! He
thinks
he's a dog!”

Hannah ducked her head and giggled, her hand over her mouth. “Why?”

“Just watch,” said Peter, putting Boojus down. “See how he sits?” Boojus sat. “Any self-respecting cat sits with its legs all close together and its tail wrapped around like a ribbon on a package. Boojus here sits all loose and sloppy, just like a dog. See how his lazy old tail's just lying there, straight out? He'd wag it if he could figure out how. He also fetches. And follows us around, and begs at the table.”

“Can I see him fetch?” Hannah begged.

“Well, sure.” Peter tore a piece of waxed paper off the end of a roll, crumpled it noisily into a ball, and threw it across the wide oak floorboards. Boojus pricked his ears up at the first crinkling sound, watched Peter's hand in tense anticipation, then scrambled across the smooth floor in pursuit of the ball, skidding past it as he tried to stop. He doubled back, batted the wad of paper
around a few times, then picked it up in his mouth and trotted to Peter. He dropped it at Peter's feet and looked up at him expectantly.

Hannah said, “Let me!”

Tess laughed, “I never saw such a thing!”

Charles, Charlotte, and Luke stared coldly at Boojus, unamused by his performance.

“Oops,” said Vivi, interrupting the play and tossing Boojus outdoors. “Forgot about the Lucas family allergies.”

Hannah buried her face in Sylvie's fur and burst into tears. “I wanted to make him fetch!” she cried.

Vivi looked distressed. “Oh, dear, I never meant . . .”

Lottie soothed Hannah and shyly offered to take her outside in pursuit of the cat. “I promise, we'll stay close,” she said to Tess, not noticing Charlotte's anxious look. Tess agreed readily. Luke followed Lottie and Hannah. In the small commotion of their leaving, Charles corralled Peter and David and led them into Peter's shop. Sarah saw them go and knew it would do Charles good to decompress in the company of men. She was glad to see him invite David and not Tom, who sat next to Charlotte on the big couch. Soon she heard distant, deep-chested laughter drift back into the kitchen. Charles's bad mood was loosening its grip.

Hannah's increased, meanwhile, and soon after dinner David and Tess decided to take her home.

“Never mind,” Vivi said, when they apologized for leaving early. “She just needs you two to herself for a while.”

Tess carried Hannah to David's car. The dogs followed, and David drove off with Hannah crying loudly, wanting both to stay and to be far away from all those people.

After they had gone, the others sat back down at the table with coffee and the last of the pie Sarah had brought over. Peter asked where David and Tess had met, adding, “Is Hannah's father in the picture?”

“Don't know,” Sarah answered. “They haven't mentioned him.”

Lottie hesitated, then said. “Hannah's father is dead. He was murdered.”

Charlotte jumped as if stung. “How do you know that?”

Lottie looked uncomfortable. “I don't know if I should've said. She told me today, at our house. We were alone in the kitchen. I was still feeling really guilty about Hannah, and she told me she knew what that was like. She said she blamed herself for a long time after her husband got killed, even though she was only trying to keep him safe.” She looked at them all in turn and added, “His name was Ian. She was really in love with him.”