Only Ever You (8 page)

“Doggie! I want doggie!”

“There’s no dog out here,” the woman said, squinting as she tried to peer down into the depths of the woods. She hoisted the child onto her hip, gently scolding as she began a slow climb back toward the house. “You know you’re not supposed to be in the woods alone; it’s dangerous.”

Bea waited, heart pounding, until they’d crested the hill before moving in the opposite direction. Cosmo scratched at her arms, struggling to get down, but she didn’t dare release him until she’d gotten across the creek and halfway up the other side.

*   *   *

When Bea made it back to her own little house in the woods, Cosmo jumped against her legs, whining and barking to go out. “You were just outside,” she complained, wishing Frank was around to take him out, but he could never be counted on to do anything domestic. Despite her exhaustion, Bea quickly let Cosmo out the kitchen door, and he lifted his leg next to the sagging fence. She had to force him back inside, and after she’d fed him and he’d lapped up a full bowl of water, he raced back and forth in the living room, trying to engage her in playing even after she’d sunk onto the old couch.

“Settle down,” she told the little dog. “I’m too tired for this.” When Cosmo jumped on her lap, she plopped him back on the floor, but gave up after they’d repeated this three times. “Damn dog,” she muttered. “Just sit down there, then.” She shoved him to the end of the couch and turned onto her side. Cosmo made a throaty, whining sound, but finally settled, his small body warm against her feet. She switched on the old TV and watched the local news, a roundup of everything awful that had happened in one day. She hated them all, these reporters with their smiley, overly made-up faces, feigning concern when you could see the lust for tragedy in their eyes, hear the sharklike glee as they recited it all: Murders and house fires, rapes and robberies. A veritable buffet of bad news; sidle up and gorge on someone else’s sorrow. Bea sank deeper into the couch, fatigue overtaking anger. Her eyes closed.

She was in the passenger seat of a car watching the speedometer climb. They were going too fast, the car racing down the road and still the speedometer climbed—seventy, eighty, eighty-five—the needle trembling. The car shook. She told her daughter to slow down, but the girl just smiled. She was driving in the wrong lane, but she didn’t seem to notice. Bea could see that they were going to crash. An approaching car came closer and closer.

Bea woke up screaming. For a moment she didn’t know where she was, and then Cosmo licked her face and Bea pushed him away, sitting up on the couch, breathing hard, her throat sore. It had gotten dark—the only light in the room the glow from the old TV. She rubbed a hand over her face and looked at her watch. It was after seven—she’d slept for over two hours.

“I’m getting old,” she said out loud, voice scratchy. The dog tilted his head to one side, looking at her quizzically before jumping against Bea’s legs and whining until she stood and walked to the back door again. She let him out into the yard and stood there staring up at the night sky, pulled back into memory, a cold autumn night like this one, but long ago, her daughter pointing out the constellations to her mother, “
There’s Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, and there’s Orion.…”
Bea tried to remember the feel of those small shoulders under her arm, the smell of silky hair as she’d stooped to kiss the top of her head. She’d never fully appreciated that moment and all the hundreds of other small moments in her daughter’s life.

“You can’t undo it, Bea.” Frank had come home without her hearing him. He stood beside her on the patio, a solid presence impossible to ignore.

For a moment she thought her husband was talking about the past, but then she saw that he’d dropped a Polaroid of the child that she’d taken that day at the park. “Give that to me; what are you doing with it?” She snatched it from the ground before he could retrieve it and pushed past him back into the house. He followed her inside, hovering as she hung up the set of keys she’d had copied. She hadn’t used them today, but she would soon enough.

“It’s never going to work,” he said, not for the first time. “You need to let it go.”

He’d always been negative; she felt the acid burn of long simmering anger. “Mind your own business, Frank!” She refused to look at him. If she didn’t look at him, with any luck he’d get the message and disappear.

chapter nine

OCTOBER 2013—TWO WEEKS

Jill had just finished taking engagement photographs for a couple at Frick Park when David called. It was late afternoon and she balanced her cell phone between ear and shoulder as she loaded camera cases, tripods, and other equipment into the trunk of her car. He sounded rushed as he always did at work. “Are we all set for tonight?”

“Tonight?” Jill pulled out the album she had to deliver and slammed the trunk shut. “What’s happening tonight?”

“The firm dinner, remember? Andrew is going to be there and most of the other partners.”

“Aargh, no, I completely forgot!” Jill slid behind the wheel and placed the album on the passenger seat. “Let’s just skip it, okay?”

“I can’t do that.” David sounded aghast. “C’mon, I have to go and all the other spouses will be coming—what would they think if you didn’t show?”

“I doubt anyone would notice. Besides, I haven’t even lined up a sitter—how on earth will we find someone this late?”

“Call my mother.” He said it so quickly that she wondered if he’d planned it all along. “She’d be happy to watch Sophia.”

“I don’t want to do that, David.”

“Why?”

“You know why. She feeds Sophia junk and she won’t follow her schedule—”

“So what? She’s a three-year-old for God’s sake. How terrible is it for her schedule to be disrupted one evening?”

“—and she finds a million and one ways to criticize my parenting.”

“C’mon, she’s not that bad.”

“Really? So she didn’t tell me last month that I was to blame for Sophia’s ear infection because I didn’t make her wear a hat?”

“You’re too sensitive, Jill. Just ignore what she says, that’s what I do.”

“Easy for you to say, you’re not the one she criticizes.”

“She loves Sophia.”

“No one’s doubting that.”

“Then call her.”

Jill groaned and David said, “Fine, don’t call her. But I need you tonight so we’ve got to find a sitter.”

Jill glanced at her watch. “I won’t even have time to get ready at this point. I’m on my way to a client’s now to drop off some photos—”

“Can’t you drop them off tomorrow?”

“I promised them today.”

“Then have someone else do it.”

“It’s too late, I’ve already left the studio.”

“So just call and cancel. They’ll understand.”

“I can’t do that, not with these people.”

“This is for one of
those
families, isn’t it?” David groaned when Jill didn’t say anything. “It’s like you keep tearing at a scab,” he said. “Why do that to yourself?”

“Because I know how they feel,” Jill said, struggling to explain to him for the umpteenth time what she could barely explain to herself. “I need to do it. It helps them. It helps to have someone who understands. It helps me.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone, but she could hear his frustration. In a way David was right—every photo shoot she did for charity reminded her—but what he didn’t understand, what she couldn’t talk to him about, was that she didn’t need to be reminded. Ethan was always there, a constant presence, not like picking at a scab at all, really, because the wound had never healed.

After a moment David sighed and said, “I don’t want to argue, it’s your choice. But please, at least call my mother and ask, okay? I’d do it myself, but I can’t break away, especially now.”

“Especially now” had been going on for months. If the latest case reached a successful conclusion then he would certainly be promoted before the end of the year. This was according to Andrew, who as a partner himself couldn’t explicitly say anything, but had been encouraging David to think positively about his future with Adams Kendrick. “Come on,” David said, his tone softening. “How often do we get to go out in the middle of the week? It could be fun.”

*   *   *

“Of course I’ll watch Sophia!” To the average listener, Elaine Lassiter’s voice sounded nothing more than warm, gracious—the perfect mother-in-law and grandmother. Friendly and outgoing, a charmer just like her son, and once, long ago, she’d charmed Jill, too. “Do you want me to pick her up from day care?”

“No thanks, I can get her from preschool.” Jill emphasized the last word, her grip tightening on the steering wheel.

“I’m sure she’d love to go home early—it must be so hard on her to sit in day care all day.”

“She only does the extended option three days a week.”

“Well, I don’t know how you career girls do it.” Elaine’s voice was light, her laugh a melody. “I’m sure it must be hard leaving your child every day.”

“Sorry, Elaine, hitting traffic—I’ll see you at six. Thanks!” Jill pushed the off button with force, pretending it was Elaine’s face. “Annoying witch!” That woman always made her feel bad no matter how many times Jill tried to tell herself not to listen, that what her mother-in-law said didn’t matter.

She must have done something in a past life to have not one, but two difficult mothers. The letter from her own mother had gone into a box at home unread, but it was undoubtedly just like every other letter she sent; they arrived at regular intervals: “Dear Jill, life has been hectic with the move, but this new job looks exciting. Things are a little tight right now, with the economy the way it is and moving expenses, but soon I’ll be making enough to finally buy that dream home we always talked about. After so many years, I can say that I’ve finally found my bliss.…”

Things had always been tight; her mother always chasing rainbows in search of her “bliss.” Jill couldn’t recall a time in her childhood when they’d ever completely settled down. No sooner did they move to one place than her mother was announcing that she knew, just knew, that the life she really wanted was in another city or state. She blew through careers and relationships like tissue paper, working as an artist, a secretary, and eventually in health care, leaving lovers behind without any visible sign of discomfort. Jill’s father had been a musician or a science teacher or maybe the door-to-door salesman who’d once given her mother a ride from Indiana to Pennsylvania. It was only when Jill reached adulthood that she’d stopped to ponder that her mother’s only real attachment was to her.

A bright spot amid all the dim memories: a neighbor who felt sorry for her, giving Jill a Polaroid camera as a good-bye gift. She’d suggested that Jill use it to document the move and she could still remember aiming out the window of the unair-conditioned cab of a U-Haul snapping scenes during a long drive South. She’d fallen in love with photography, and her passion, unlike her mother’s, had been lasting.

She’d fled that chaotic life for college, staying on in Pittsburgh after graduation ostensibly because of a job she’d landed at a local ad agency. That was the story she told if asked, but it was only partially true. The whole truth was that Jill had been desperate to find roots.

Enter David, a law school student when they met, whose own background practically shouted stability and normalcy. Elaine and Bill Lassiter had been married forever and lived in the same split-level in the suburbs that they’d moved into as newlyweds. What had seemed so appealing at first—the homemade meals, the family camaraderie—soon revealed its dark side.

Everything about Jill was alien to her mother-in-law. She’d been a stay-at-home mother and still clung to her children, calling multiple times a week with advice or to ask when they were going to visit. Elaine was obsessed with David’s professional success, but thought Jill choosing to keep working outside the home after having a child was wrong. She called constantly to check up on Sophia. A possessive grandmother, she pressured Jill about trusting her only grandchild’s care to “strangers,” but she was also critical of Jill’s parenting and often referred to Sophia as her baby, which made Jill bristle.

She tried not to care. She told herself that Elaine was just a lonely old woman who’d formed no life outside of her kids, but it was hard to remember when she was face-to-face with the woman. Elaine made snippy remarks to Jill, little verbal potshots about her looks, her parenting, her career, and all delivered with a smile. If called on it, a rare occurrence, Elaine would get all wide-eyed and say, “Why I was just teasing! Jill knows I didn’t mean anything, right?” Her only redeeming quality was that she truly, genuinely, loved and doted on Sophia.

Jill decompressed as she drove, trying to relax her shoulders and breathe deep, working to forget Elaine and concentrate on winding through a maze of city backstreets to Morningside, a working-class neighborhood with boxy brick homes and small, neat lawns where pumpkins and Halloween ghouls competed for space with plaster Madonna shrines. She pulled into an empty spot and backtracked down the sidewalk to a tiny brick house with white metal awnings over stoop and windows.

Jill hurried up the front steps and rang the doorbell. The wind had picked up, lifting a strand of blue ribbon tied to the lamppost. Probably the remnant of baby balloons hastily cut down; she could picture some well-meaning family member tying them there, then hurrying to take them down. The curtains were drawn in the windows, but Jill expected someone to be home. It was barely two weeks since she’d seen the Dilbys at the hospital.

At last she heard footsteps approaching. Cathy Dilby opened the door slowly, as if it took tremendous physical effort. She’d aged in the short time since Jill had last seen her, or perhaps it was just that she’d put on makeup and combed her hair for the photos, and now her skin looked washed out and her hair hung in lank brown strands. She blinked at the bright light, giving Jill a confused once-over.

“I’ve brought your photos, Mrs. Dilby,” she said, holding out the album.

“Oh, yes.” Recognition in the eyes, an attempt at a smile. “Please … come in.” She shifted slowly back to let her enter, tugging the sides of a pilling cardigan closer to her body. Up close, Jill saw that her eyes were bloodshot and she clutched a wad of crumpled tissues.