Invisible (13 page)

“Good idea.” Then, in a different tone, Halim added, “The police have begun asking some difficult questions.”

A seagull screeched overhead. “How difficult?”

“Licensing questions. Procedural questions.”

Alarm traced a cold finger down my spine. “Why would they do that?”

“I think they’re just fishing. Try not to worry. I’ve got matters well in hand.”

Right
. “You don’t even know where the guard is.”

“If you’re so concerned about how I’m handling things, Dana, then perhaps you should return and handle them yourself.” An uneasy silence, into which he sighed. “I didn’t mean that.”

We were both on edge. There was no point in discussing it further. “Call me if anything changes.”

“You’ll be the first to hear.”

I cradled the phone in my hand as if it could reassure me that, indeed, Halim would call. Halim was a practical man. He’d only keep in touch as long as it benefited him. That calculating look on his face as we’d both stood over the dead woman had revealed his true nature. Halim was loyal to one person: himself. I’d known that and I’d still signed the partnership papers.

I hadn’t realized that at the beginning. Halim had offered me
a chance to belong to the small select group of people who imploded structures for a living. It was a secretive business, almost entirely family-built. But Halim had seen something in me that made him reach past his own brother and hold out his hand to me. I’d jumped without thinking. I’d quit my boring office job, signed the partnership papers, and uncorked a bottle of champagne.

And for the first few years, despite financial hardships, things had progressed smoothly. Halim had brought me along and I had turned out to have a gift for eyeing a building and seeing its weak spots. It had thrilled me to discover this talent within myself. But then the economy had tightened even more, and I had started noticing things, like how Halim sometimes took on a job without consulting me, ordered supplies without letting me know, hired and fired people without so much as a passing word. Things that told me Halim still firmly considered himself in charge and I was nothing but an employee.

In which case, why even bother to bring me in? It was time I found out. When I got back to Chicago, we’d have that conversation. I was ready.

“Dana?”

The woman who’d been down playing at the lake’s edge with her child stood before me.

There was no mistaking those eyes and that crooked smile.

“It
is
you!” Sheri threw her arms around me, rocked me from side to side. “Omigosh, I heard you were back! I’m so sorry about Julie. You didn’t even get a chance to see her, did you?” Sheri had filled out some; the extra weight had softened her features. She wore her blonde hair pulled back in a black elastic headband, exposing her high round forehead. “They should have called you sooner. I almost did myself.” She hugged me tighter. She smelled of sun and sunscreen. “I just can’t believe it! You owe me, sister. All these years and not even a postcard.”

“Mommy?”

“Oops.” Sheri drew back and put her hand on the head of the
towheaded boy beside her. “Logan, this is Miss Julie’s sister. Peyton’s aunt.”

He peered up through his glasses, crinkling his nose and drawing up his upper lip, badger-like.

I smiled down at him. This was the little guy Peyton mentioned had kidney disease. He looked so young. “Logan! You have got to be Mike Cavanaugh’s big boy.”

He leaned against his mom and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

Sheri pushed down his hand, gently. “We’ve been married twelve years, Mike and me, if you can believe it. Logan’s four. Our other son, Mikey, is in second grade.”

Twelve years, two boys. Sheri had dreamed of being a groupie for Nirvana. She’d written love letters to Kurt Cobain and had his initials tattooed onto her ankle. The night he killed himself, she locked herself into the old pavilion down by the lake. I’d climbed through the window to coax her out.

“I’m hungry, Mommy.”

“How about some grapes?”

“I don’t
want
grapes. I
want
a banana.”

“You know the deal, buster. How about a hamburger?”

“With cheese?”

“Sorry, honey.”

“No ketchup, either,” he said sadly.

Sheri clasped his small hand in hers and smiled at me. “Want to walk to the snack shack with us?” she suggested.

We found a table beneath an umbrella, on a small skirt of concrete fronting a restaurant with its doors propped open. Another table was occupied, a young couple, sitting close together, their hands intertwined.

“What are you having?” Sheri asked me. “My treat.”

I’d never had that second cup of coffee. “Coffee would be great.” Coffee would be heaven.

“Let me guess. Just a little cream, right? You always were so disciplined. Be good, you two—I’ll be right back.”

Logan and I eyed each other. “So you’re four, huh?” I ventured.

He put his thumb back into his mouth and turned to look at the lake. Yep, that about summed up my conversational skills with kids.

We watched a motorboat churn across the water, a waterskier bumping along behind it.

“Here you go.” Sheri slid a paper plate in front of her son. “Cheers.” She tapped the rim of her cup against mine, smiling.

Logan peeled back the top of his hamburger bun and scowled at the patty. “Where’s the mustard?”

“I’m sorry, honey. I told them plain.”

“Want me to get some?” I asked.

He ignored me, replaced the top of his bun, and took a big bite.

“That’s a good boy.” Sheri patted his shoulder. “Dana, you’ll never guess what I was thinking of the other day. That time we went sledding down that pile of snow in the church parking lot and you ran into that parked car buried underneath—remember?”

The old Chevy had been buried beneath ten feet of hard-packed snow. I’d shot directly into the hidden rear bumper. I rubbed the scar on my chin and smiled ruefully. “I think of that now and then, too.”

“Remember when we used to ride our hobbyhorses everywhere?”

Galloping around the neighborhood, jumping over bushes, neighing the whole time. “We were such dorks.”

“And when we stuck a gallon of ice cream on the windowsill and it melted down the side of the house? Why did we do that, anyway?”

“Weren’t we hiding it from your brother?”

“That’s right.” Sheri laughed. “He never found it, but the wasps did. My mom had to push it off the ledge with a broom handle. Remember how mad she was?”

“How are your folks?”

“Oh, they’re hanging in there. They’ve still got their place out on the lake, but I don’t know how much longer they can hold on to it. Dad sold his practice a couple years back. His arthritis got so bad he couldn’t do adjustments anymore. Now he just mopes around and obsesses about his cable bill. Having him home has made Mom a little nuts. She stays up till all hours, falls asleep at the kitchen table. The other day she left the burner on and forgot about it. If I hadn’t stopped by, the whole house might have gone up.”

I didn’t want to hear this. It only made me long even more for my own mother. She would have been active and engaged. She would have made me laugh even while we were sitting in some specialist’s office, talking about a hip replacement.

“I love Grammy,” Logan announced.

“Sure you do. I love her, too.” She ruffled his hair, then smiled at me. “So, have you seen Joe since you’ve been back?”

“He stopped by the house last night.”

“He’s a teacher now, you know. I’m really hoping the boys get him when they’re in high school. He’s supposed to be phenomenal.”

I could just picture it: Joe earnest and enthusiastic, getting kids to listen, opening their minds.

Sheri toyed with her stirrer. “Sparks still there?”

The moment Joe had appeared in the kitchen, everything had stopped for me. There’d been a buzzing in my ears, and I’d been suddenly and profoundly aware of the pounding of my heart. Different from when I’d first seen him, in that busy bar where my automatic reaction had been to think about my hair and whether I’d remembered to put on earrings. But last night, in my sister’s home where everything was stripped by grief, there had been no artifice. It had felt intimate and personal, but I had no way of knowing if he’d felt the same way. “It’s been a long time. We’ve both moved on.”

She frowned. “Joe tell you that?”

“I guess I just assumed it.”

“You ask me, he’s still got a thing for you. You guys never did resolve things. Maybe that’s fanning the flames. Mike and I have tried to set him up at least a million times.”

This was embarrassing, and I didn’t like the surge of hope I felt, hearing that. I had friends in Baltimore waiting for me to return so we could play tennis or catch the latest movie. I had a pretty little condo surrounded by boutiques and cafés, where jazz music floated late into the night, and where I could walk along the waterfront to watch the sailboats glide past. I didn’t have anything in this little town, other than regret and loss.

“I’m not saying he hasn’t gotten serious with anyone,” she said. “Trust me. Half the women in town would snap Joe up if he gave them the chance. There’s something to be said for a guy who’s smart and kind and gentle. The way he looks doesn’t hurt things, either.”

I arched an eyebrow; she giggled.

“Mommy?” Logan tilted his head to squint up at her. “You talking about Daddy?”

“You bet!” she said brightly.

I had once loved Joe, deeply and truly, in that all-absorbing, first-love way. But I was older now, and far wiser. There was no room in my life for adventures that would only lead me back to doors I’d slammed shut long ago.

“What about you?” Sheri wanted to know. “What have you been up to?”

“A lot of different things. I worked in a lab for a little while collecting samples, then answering phones at a nonprofit until they lost their funding. I had a couple of government jobs shuffling paper that made me really understand why people go postal.”

“I thought you went off to college?” A tiny frown puckered between her eyes. She was waiting for me to explain the long silence, the lover who demanded I remain by his side night and day,
the important job that took me to foreign countries, anything that might have prevented me from writing back, or calling once in a while. After all, we’d once been close friends. But there was no challenge in her expression, no hidden animosity. I relaxed. I guessed she’d moved on, too.

Something had blown into my cup. I dipped in a fingertip and tried to capture it. A bit of leaf. Who knew what else was floating around in there? I set my cup aside. “No, now I’m a part owner of a demolition business.”

“Is that a joke?”

“No joke. Friends introduced me to this man, Halim Rajad. He was looking to start up his own company. I was looking to do something different.”

“Oh. And you’re in love with him? This Halim?”

“We’re just business partners.”

She nodded, distracted. “Hey, tiger. Don’t wipe your mouth on your sleeve.” She plucked a paper napkin from the dispenser and handed it to her son. “Did you know we have a new water park, Dana? It’s pretty awesome. We love it, don’t we, Logan? On Fridays, they have line dancing at Lakeside. And Orenson’s now rents out paddle boats and Jet Skis.”

“I want a Jet Ski.” Logan balled up his paper napkin between his palms.

“We’ll see.” Sheri tapped the paper plate. “Eat up, honey.”

“I’m done.” He’d taken two bites.

“Okay. Why don’t you go see if you can find any shells?”

“I guess.” He clambered down from his chair.

We watched him wander a few yards away and crouch to study the sand.

“He’s really cute,” I told Sheri. “How’s he doing?”

“You heard, huh?” She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, Dana. We have good days, I guess. We’re still getting the hang of it.” She pulled his paper plate toward her. “Julie was trying to talk me into doing his dialysis at home. She thought it would be easier on him,
but I don’t think I can handle it. I don’t have any medical training. What if something went wrong?” She raised worried blue eyes to mine.

What did I know about dialysis and little boys, how much she could handle, whether doing it herself would help or worsen the situation? Uncomfortable, I said, “I’d bet you’d figure it out.”

“I’d freak out about something, and then he’d freak, and it would be horrible. The poor kid—he picks up all his cues from me. I have to be relentlessly
cheerful
.” She bit hard into the burger. “It’d be easier if we knew why he got sick. It’s the not knowing that’s so painful.”

“Julie was trying to figure it out.”

“Yeah, she was.” We looked at each other for an uneasy moment.

“Excuse me.” A woman paused by our table, her hands on the handles of a stroller. “Is that your little boy?”

Logan stood by the lifeguard’s station, flinging shells at the ducks. The birds flapped their wings and lurched back and forth, honking.

Sheri shot to her feet. “Logan? You stop that right now!” She jabbed a finger in the air. “That’s one!”

Logan tossed a shell to the ground.

Up went two furious fingers. “That’s
two
!”

He stamped his foot and whirled around. Pushing his hands into his pockets, head hanging, he trudged toward us, the very picture of dejection. He was so small. The lake behind him seemed impossibly vast.

“He’s been so angry.” The breeze swept a tendril of hair against Sheri’s mouth, and she tugged it free. “We have him in play therapy, but you can see how much good that’s doing.”

“I’m sorry.” It was an inadequate thing to say, but Sheri had turned her attention to her son, who now stood before her, mouth turned down, his small shoulders sagging with defeat. She stooped to brush the sand from his pants and backside.

“That wasn’t nice, Logan. Why would you hurt those poor ducks?”

“They were bothering me.”

“Oh, honey. They were not.” Sheri hoisted him up onto her hip and pressed her cheek against his head. “I don’t know,” she said to me. “Maybe Julie was right.”

She walked away, her child in her arms, before I could ask her which thing she thought Julie had been right about.