Someone Like You (5 page)

Her mother would have known exactly how to handle the situation. Mimi hadn’t been very good at mundane chores like paying the electric bill or keeping the telephone service on, but she would have known how to shield the faeries from the rainfall, then taken Annabelle on a guided tour of every faerie hiding spot in the Highlands.

Joely winced as she remembered the time she had tried to entertain Annabelle with a double helix made of dried macaroni. The poor child had fallen asleep before the first helix was in the planning stage.

The off-again/on-again rains finally stopped a little before five o’clock, and the sun reappeared. It was in full bloom at eight when they got ready to head up the hill.

“You’ll still need a cardi and your Wellies,” Joely warned as they finished a light supper. “It’s going to get cold tonight.”

Not even the prospect of rubber boots was enough to dim Annabelle’s enthusiasm and, to her surprise, Joely found her mood much improved by the time they gathered up blankets, extra sweaters, the picnic basket, and an umbrella (just in case) and set out.

“What time is it in Japan?” Annabelle asked as they made their way toward the hill path.

“Much later.”

“Is it already tomorrow?”

“Yes, it is.”

“So Daddy knows what happened today before we do.”

She needed more than a master’s in bioengineering to field that question. “Everything is happening at the same time,” she said, gripping Annabelle’s hand as the child’s clogs slipped on the wet grass. “It’s just that it’s later in Japan than it is here.”

“But you said it’s already tomorrow.”

“Yes, but—”

“If it’s already tomorrow, then he knows what happened today.”

“No, he doesn’t, Annabelle, because it hasn’t happened yet.”

“But it must have if it’s tomorrow.”

She stopped and put down the picnic basket, then held out her left wrist toward the child. “What time is it?”

Annabelle peered at the watch. “Half six.”

She pulled out the stem, adjusted the time forward three hours, then pushed it back in. “What time is it now?”

“Half nine.”

“That’s all there is to it, honey. We play with the clocks, but time itself remains constant. It may be tomorrow in Japan, but your father is still living in the same moment as we are.”

Annabelle had a quick and curious mind. She peppered Joely with questions about the nature of time that would have stumped her old physics professor at MIT. She was glad when they reached the top of the hill, and Annabelle spotted her best friend Louis and ran off to tell him all about time zones.

Louis’s mother Sara motioned her over to her blanket. “You look like you need a glass of plonk.” Sara had been a Sloane Ranger in the early 1980s and occasionally slipped back into the slang of her misbegotten youth.

Joely spread out her own blanket and settled down next to her friend. “I love cheap wine,” she said, accepting a plastic cup of red. “William thinks I’m a peasant at heart.” She made Sara laugh with a recounting of the rain-soaked garden faeries and her own struggle to figure out a way to keep them from drowning.

Sara topped off their cups. “So how are you coping without Mrs. Macdonald?”

Joely took a long sip of wine, grateful for the meager warmth it sent into her system. The sun might still be out, but the temperature was beginning to dip. “We’re doing fine at the moment.”

“What about when you go back to work?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

“Shouldn’t that be her father’s job?”

“Sara.” Her tone held a gentle warning. They had been over this territory a hundred times before. “We both do what’s right for Annabelle. She’s our first priority.”

“Darling, she’s not your child.”

“I know that.”

“Loving her isn’t a crime, but—”

“Sara.” The warning was less gentle this time.

Sara waved away the warning. “If Hugh and I weren’t heading down to London tomorrow, I’d take Annabelle and send you off to Japan right now. What you and our William need is some time alone.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“When was the last time you two went on holiday alone?”

“Never,” she said after a moment.

“That’s not good.”

“It’s not bad either. We’re a family,” she said. “We don’t need to escape on holiday.”

“Every couple needs to escape.”

“Sara, is there a point to this?”

“I’m British, darling. We ease our way slowly toward personal revelations.”

“You’re wondering why William isn’t here tonight.” He had, after all, made loud and enthusiastic promises.

“Why isn’t he here tonight?” she asked.

Next to Cat, Sara probably knew her as well as anyone on earth, and even Sara knew very little. “No big secret. He’s off to Kyoto to fill in for a sick colleague.”

“Bugger all.” Sara plucked a salmon roll-up from the picnic basket and popped it into her mouth.

She laughed out loud. “Yeah,” she said. “Bugger all.”

“I meant what I said. You and our William need some time alone. You’ve never had the chance to be simply the two of you.”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid your William and I need more than time alone.”

“It’s come to that, has it?”

“I think so.”

Sara opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.

“Oh go ahead,” Joely said with a wave of her hand. “I can take it.”

“I know you’re the practical sort, but would you mind awfully if I held a good thought for the three of you?”

It would take much more than a good thought, but Sara was her friend and she already knew that.

“What was his wife like?” Joely asked as they divided up a piece of cake layered with lemon curd. “I’ve seen pictures, but they don’t really tell you anything.”

If the question surprised Sara, she didn’t let on. Her brow furrowed ever so slightly as she considered her answer. “Thoughtful. When I think of Natasha, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. She knew how to listen.”

“Was she funny?”

“Obliquely.”

“Obliquely? You’ll have to do better than that.”

Sara rolled her eyes. “You Americans are so literal.” She was silent for a bit. “It’s been a very long time, but when Annabelle laughs, it’s Natasha I hear.”

This was one of those times when Joely longed for the plain talk of her old hometown. Pretty words, but they told her nothing beyond the fact that Annabelle was her mother’s daughter. “Where did you meet? How did you all become friends?”

Sara and Natasha met in an obstetrician’s office near Kensington Park. They were both there for their first postnatal visit, both accompanied by their husbands and brand-new offspring. The men worked in finance. The women were delighted to be stay-at-home mums. It had been a heady time. They were all young and beautiful and healthy, and the future went on forever.

“How did she die?” Joely asked, making sure Annabelle was out of earshot. “I mean, I know she was sick, but I never asked William for details.” Natasha had never seemed real to her, and so she had been content with what little she knew.

“Pancreatic cancer,” Sara said. “Forty-five days from diagnosis until her funeral.” She met Joely’s eyes. “She was buried a week before Annabelle’s first birthday.”

Once Sara started, she couldn’t stop, and Joely listened, first in fascination and then in despair, as William’s wife, Annabelle’s mother, suddenly became a flesh-and-blood woman.

William and Natasha had had a real marriage. They had formed a real family, and if the fates had been just a little bit kinder, it would have been Natasha sitting here with Sara watching their children play in the heather on the night of the summer solstice.

She had never given much thought to William’s loss. It had happened before they met, and he had made his peace with it. Or so it had seemed to Joely. And if there was one thing she had learned growing up, it was to take things as they presented themselves and not ask questions. She wasn’t an explorer. The dark and murky waters of emotion were foreign territory to her and, she had assumed, to William as well.

But maybe that hadn’t always been the case. Maybe with Natasha things had been very different.

A skirl of pipes drifted up from the valley below, and Joely shivered. There was something timeless about the Highlands that even she, with her practical mind, couldn’t help but acknowledge.

“Nobody back home would believe this,” Joely said. “Annabelle says she hears the pipes every morning, echoing in the hills.”

Sara laughed. “And Louis claims he saw William Wallace last week coming out of the cinema.”

“Are we sure there isn’t Scots blood running through their English veins?”

“Speaking as the mother of a seven-year-old, I am most certainly not sure of anything.”

Annabelle and Louis finally ran out of energy. They threw themselves on the blankets and lay on their backs, looking up at the soft indigo sky. Before long the kids drifted off into sleep, and after a bit even Joely and Sara found themselves hiding yawns behind their hands, and it wasn’t even nine o’clock.

“Safe trip,” Joely said as they hugged good-bye at the foot of the hill. “I’ll miss you.”

“It’s only until September, love.” Sara hugged her back. “You and William and Annabelle must come down for a weekend. Promise me you will.”

She tried to speak, but an onslaught of unwelcome emotion grabbed her by the throat and cut off her words. September was a very long time away, and almost anything could happen. Sara was a good friend and a very wise woman, and she was able to read between the lines of Joely’s silence.

“It will work out,” Sara said as they all parted company. “I know it will.”

The long, eventful day finally caught up with Annabelle, and she clung to Joely like a spider monkey. She smelled of grass and heather as she pressed her face against the side of Joely’s neck. Her warm, moist breath was sweet as clover.

“I want to talk to Daddy,” Annabelle said a few minutes later as Joely closed the front door behind them.

Joely slid the lock into position and dimmed the lights. “I think we should get you ready for bed, don’t you?”

“Can we call him? Why can’t we call him right now?”

“Brush your teeth and change into your pajamas,” Joely said. “I’ll bet he phones us before you climb into bed.”

Annabelle brightened. “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?” she asked as they climbed the stairs to the second-floor bedroom.

“Since when do you ask first?” Joely said, placing a kiss on top of the child’s head. “Brush your teeth, and we’ll negotiate.”

Annabelle dashed into the little bathroom adjacent to her bedroom. A second later the sound of running water drifted through the closed door. Stifling a yawn, Joely walked slowly down the hallway toward the corner room she shared with William. She was exhausted through to her bones, a deep yawning exhaustion that sapped both energy and hope.

The bleat of the phone, followed by Annabelle’s squeal of “Daddy!” from the bathroom, almost jolted her out of her shoes. She darted across the room and grabbed the receiver before it could ring again.

“Your timing is perfect, William,” she said by way of hello. “We just got in a few minutes ago.”

“Honey, it’s not William,” a familiar voice said in return. “It’s Cat, and I’ve got some bad news.”

“Are you okay?”

“It’s Mom. I don’t have all the details, but she either fell and accidentally set fire to the house or set fire to the house then fell when she was trying to escape.”

“Oh, Jesus . . .” She sank onto the bed as hideous images filled her brain. “How bad?”

“I don’t know. I was in New York when Karen called to tell me.”

“Where are you now?”

She heard the sound of muffled conversation. “North-eastern Connecticut, near Storrs.”

“Was she drinking?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on, Cat, I think we both know—”

“I told you I was in New York when it happened. I don’t know the details.”

“Sure you do. We both do. She was drinking and—”

“Daddy!” Annabelle burst into the bedroom. “Let me speak to Daddy!”

Joely placed a hand over the mouthpiece. “Honey, this isn’t Daddy. It’s my sister.”

Annabelle’s lower lip trembled. “I want Daddy.”

“I know you do, and I’m sure he’s going to call as soon as he possibly can.”

She patted the bed next to her, and the little girl climbed in, clearly torn between tears and a minor tantrum.

“Sorry,” Joely said into the phone. “William’s been delayed in Japan, and Annabelle isn’t very happy about it.”

Cat didn’t acknowledge the interruption. “Joely, I need you to come home.”

For the second time in less than five minutes, Joely struggled to catch her breath. “I wish I could. I know there’s a lot on your shoulders, but I just can’t. This isn’t a good time.” Not now. Not when things were so fragile, so uncertain. Not with Annabelle looking up at her with big weepy eyes. Not with William half a world away. Not with her professional life teetering on the brink. Not with her past tucked away like an old photo album, exactly the way she liked it.

If Cat wanted reasons, she had reasons. She could give her reasons for the next five years why she didn’t want to go back to Idle Point now or ever, but her sister’s full frontal assault was under way.

“When you left for MIT we made a deal,” Cat was saying. “I’d stay here and take care of Mom, while you went out there and grabbed the world by the balls and made us proud. Remember?”

“I’m grateful. You know that.”
Everybody in town knows that, so why are we going through this? It’s not like she’d even know I was there, Cat. You’re the only one who matters
.

“This isn’t about gratitude. I promised I would let you go, and you promised you would come home if I asked you to.”