Frost (13 page)

“Gonna be epic,” Jack said.

Who was this guy? And what had he done with Jack? And moreover,
epic
was how Homer’s vacation could be described — if he didn’t just go ahead and call it the
Odyssey.

We joined our friends at one of the Kountry Kettle’s back tables. It didn’t feel the same without Jaelle as our waitress, but it was nice to know she was happy working as my dad’s office manager. Shortly after we had placed our orders, the basketball team came bursting through the door, celebrations already begun. Coat still on, Pedro came and stood in front of our table.

“How’s everyone doing?”

“Good,” everyone but Penny replied. She sat staring at the tabletop.

“Not talking to me?” Pedro asked her.

“We can talk,” Penny said.

“How about outside?” Pedro replied.

Penny drew her coat over shoulders and followed
Pedro out the door. About ten minutes later, she returned, while he joined the team at a table up front.

“Well, that’s done,” Penny said with a slight catch in her voice.

“What’s done?” I asked.

“We broke up.”

“You what?”

“For the record, he broke up with me. Said I was being a bitch about the editor thing. That if I couldn’t be happy for him, we weren’t meant to be.” Penny, who had managed to keep it together until then, burst into tears.

Tina and I spent the next half hour in the bathroom with Penny, returning to cold food and the eyes-down faces of Jack and Matthew. When I dropped Penny off that night, she told me not to worry about her. She’d been seeing a jerky side to Pedro since New Year’s. As much as I wanted to think that the split was mutual, for the best, I couldn’t help notice the droop in Penny’s shoulders as she trudged up her front steps.

Monday evening, I stood in front of the Walden Inn clutching the box of sample wedding odds and ends. It had become clear, over these last two weeks of January, that my mom was not going to bounce through this pregnancy, never mind down the aisle on Valentine’s Day. Bed rest, I came to learn, meant that someone else had to do the meals, dishes, laundry, and shopping. Stanley tried to pitch in, but he was so overworked with his research that it looked like he was the one suffering from preeclampsia. The big surprise was my dad helping out when and where he could, driving my mom to some of her doctor’s appointments, and even occasionally shoveling out our driveway so I could get to school, work, or run my mom’s bullet-pointed errands. The woman was nothing if not calculating — a true mathematician. On top of all this, I had rehearsals three nights a week. The physical demands of the dancing were a welcome diversion to everything else that was going on, but still I felt a little guilty for having a life. At least my mom’s odd combination of Pollyanna Does Polynomials resulted in her absolute confidence that she and the baby would be fine. She, therefore, insisted that the rest of us carry on and be go-getters to her stay-putter.

I gave a half-cocked salute to the overly friendly front-desk clerk, who smiled and waved like we were long-losts. I wasn’t in the best of moods, as a crush of obligations was balanced on my head like some primitive earthen water jug — we’re talking both heavy and slosh-prone. Design projects for
The Snow Queen
production had been turned in that day, and all weekend, Penny and I had drawn until our fingers cramped — gnarled for life a real possibility. I felt good about the costumes, but the set designs had me nervous. Particularly as even glass-so-full-gonna-spill Penny had deemed them “not our best work.” Because of the design project, editor in chief Pedro had extended the deadline for my column and Penny’s article until tomorrow, but that only meant I had a night of writing ahead of me. The breakup between Penny and Pedro was still raw and made our lunchtime journalism club more awkward than Diversity Day at Dunder Mifflin.

Lately, it seemed everyone and everything in my life was cause for worry. Health concerns for my mom and Hulda. Afi so homesick for Iceland that he was symptomatic: fatigued, achy, red-eyed, and sniffly, which only meant that the mysterious Ofelia was a full-time rather than part-time lurker. And Brigid was still slinking around, writhing her way into every corner of my life and charming the Diesels off my dad, the too-short Haggars off Stanley, and the Levi’s off Jack. Jack: another raw edge. We were both so busy that, lately, our relationship had been boiled down to text messages. I was really beginning to hate that smiley-face icon.

With all this bearing down on me, I pushed through the doors to the catering office. Julia smiled up at me.

“Kat,” she said, “your mom e-mailed me you were on your way. It’s such a shame they’ve had to postpone. How’s she doing?”

“OK.” I set the box on her desk. “Bored, more than anything else.”

“And a summer wedding will be beautiful. We can have the ceremony in the gardens.”

“That sounds pretty.” I was reminded of how the essence of my half sister had been revealed to me via a dream sequence as a shy, red-haired lover of nature. She would like an outdoor ceremony.

“And it’s something for everyone to look forward to during these next few months,” Julia said with unreserved cheer.

I felt instantly shamed. Julia had — because of me — recently buried her only child, yet I was the one Eeyoring over every aspect of life while she reminded me how lovely the Hundred Acre Wood would be come summer. Gads, did I never learn?

“I’ll try to remember that,” I said.

“And we’ll make it very special. Twinkle lights and fireflies outshined only by the bride.”

“Fireflies. Jacob would have liked that.” I had no idea where the comment came from. Even I thought it was random. “What little boy wouldn’t, right?” I asked, trying to cover for my blunder.

Julia put her hand to her throat. “He just loved them. That’s probably why I even thought of them. He was fascinated by them. Called them sparkler bugs.”

“How cute.”

Julia’s face flushed pink. At first I thought I’d embarrassed her or made her sad, but then I somehow knew she was happy to remember him, to share bits of who he was with me, with anyone.

“So if Thomas the Tank Engine had needed the help of fireflies to get him out of a dark tunnel . . .” I said with a small lift to my shoulders.

“Oh. Now. Jacob would have thought such a story had been written just for him.”

I pulled my gloves from my pocket. “Thanks again for all your help. We’ll keep in touch.”

“Please do,” Julia said.

And I intended to. I finally had a plan, even.

That night — after making pasta for my mom and me, writing my column, and running a load of towels — I took out
Thomas.
A part of me had felt silly just buying the book, never mind paging through it, but to read it out loud? The other part, one I was trying to develop, felt determined. I cleared my throat and began. “
Thomas the Tank Engine: The Complete Collection
by the Rev. W. Awdry. Thomas was a tank engine who lived at a Big Station. He had six small wheels, a short stumpy funnel, a short stumpy boiler, and a short stumpy dome. He was a fussy little engine. . . .”

“From the top,” Ms. Bryant said, emphasizing her displeasure by punching her fists down on her chai-colored pencil skirt.

The dance chorus was rehearsing the ice-fairy number. It was the point in the story where Penny — as Gerda in her quest to find her playmate Kay — was brought to me, said ice fairy. My fey little forest companions lead Gerda to my tinseled cottage — another team’s set designs — where I warn her of, and provision her for, the perils ahead, all the while dancing my little fairy tail off. All Penny had to do was look lost and frightened, in this scene, anyway.

It was suddenly my turn to feel chilled when I sensed someone watching me. From the wings, Brigid’s level-straight form emerged. I still was yet to warm to the celebrated stranger.

Ms. Bryant looked at her watch. “Let’s wrap here for the day.”

“Did I miss it?” I was surprised to see my dad hurrying in behind Brigid.

“We just finished,” I said, relief running down my neck and even collecting in the cups of my sports bra. I wiped my brow with my forearm.

“What a shame,” Brigid said. “Your father wanted to see you dance.”

“Mr. Higginbottom would prefer we keep the rehearsals closed,” Ms. Bryant said, walking over, her head angling to Brigid.

Clever, the way she made Higginbottom the heavy. Sure, he was the strict director type while she was his good-cop assistant; still, it was a way of confronting Brigid.

“But Mr. Higginbottom would surely make an exception for Kat’s father,” Brigid replied.

“Dad, really.” I stepped in between the two women. It was comforting to think that there was possibly another person in the county who wasn’t fawning over Brigid. “You’d just make me nervous. Can’t you wait until opening night like everyone else?”

“If I have to,” he said with a pout.

“Is Mr. Higginbottom in the choir room?” Brigid asked Ms. Bryant.

“Yes. He’s working with Matthew on his songs.”

“I’ll be back,” Brigid said to my dad in her best — though likely unintended — Terminator impression. “I have some music for him.”

After the chill of Brigid’s displaced air had settled, my dad extended his hand to Ms. Bryant. “Greg Leblanc, Kat’s dad. Pleased to meet you.”

“Sage Bryant,” she said, shaking his hand. “Kat’s design teacher.”

“Hmmm.” My dad stroked his chin. “Sage. An anagram of ages.”

“I beg your pardon?” Ms. Bryant said.

My dad loved word scrambles, particularly those involving names. Penny still liked to talk about how he’d reworked Penelopa into
one apple
in mere seconds. Tina hadn’t been quite as tickled with her Kerstina morphing into
a stinker.
She had been a good sport, though, and he eventually had her laughing at his weird skill.
Ages,
though; it reminded me of something Penny had reported about Ms. Bryant in her teacher profile article last fall.

“Is it true, Ms. Bryant, that you can guess anyone’s age within a year?”

“I do seem to have an unusual ability in that area.”

“Then how old do you think Brigid is?” I blurted out in a rush, my big mouth leaving my social graces at the starting blocks.

Ms. Bryant tapped her chin with her index finger. “Well, now,” she began. “I’m not sure . . .” She hesitated, her eyes fluttering up and down nervously.

“Where are your manners, Kat?” my dad asked. “Brigid may not appreciate this game.”

“Sorry,” I said, but thinking
Dang it all.

“Though I’d like to play,” my dad said with a cheeky glint in his eye. “How about me? How old am I?”

Ms. Bryant studied my dad while biting her bottom lip with her top teeth — very nice, very white teeth that they were.

“Thirty-eight. I’m sure of it. Though I bet you often get taken for younger. Partly because you’re such a lover of games.”

“Yes. Yes. And yes,” my dad said. “Very impressive, but how did you know about the games?”

“The anagrams, of course. I guess we all have our quirky little talents,” Ms. Bryant said.

Brigid returned from the choir room, looking as indefinable as ever. She and my dad walked me to my car, but I was lost in my own thoughts. I wondered about Sage Bryant’s curious talent and even the way her very name was an anagram of it. I also wondered at her pegging my dad so accurately as a game player. And more than anything, I wondered just what kind of a game Brigid was up to here in Norse Falls.