Wedding Ring (16 page)

Nancy couldn’t help herself. She began to giggle. “Little men in white suits?”

“You think this is funny, Nanny? You think I like knowing you’re going to put me somewhere I don’t want to be?”

“There
are
no little men in white suits, Mama. And hell, if there were, they could help us dig. I think we ought to call anybody who’ll come and help.”

“Don’t cuss.”

“Hell. Hell. Hell!”

There was a frog-filled pause again, then something rattled in Helen’s throat. “I said, don’t cuss.” The noise rattled again.

“I am way too old for you to wash out my mouth with soap.”

The rattle got louder, and suddenly it was a real belly laugh. “Don’t you bet on it, girl! I’m still twice as big as you.”

“You two!” Tessa sounded as though she was smiling. “How did you live together all those years? You must have driven each other nuts.”

“Just the way you and I did,” Nancy said. She was laughing now, too. “We were never meant to be together, the three of us.”

“A celestial miscalculation,” Tessa said. She was laughing, too.

“God doesn’t make mistakes,” Helen said. “But sometimes He mixes things up just to see what happens. Keeps things interesting.”

“Well, it is interesting,” Nancy agreed. “It’s always been interesting. And I should know best, because I’m right in the middle of it. Mama, you’re on one side pulling at me, Tessa, you’ve always been on the other. And I was never just right for either of you.”

The skies chose that moment to open. There was no flash of lightning, no crack of thunder. One moment the only moisture in the air was the fierce humidity of a Shenandoah summer night. Then sheets of rain were gliding over them like a river tumbling toward the sea.

“Rain!” Helen shouted. “Rain at last!”

Nancy thought about her hair, fast plastering itself to her scalp. She thought of the crisp linen blouse that was now dishrag limp, the sharply pleated dry-clean-only pants, the mascara that would run like claw marks down her cheeks.

She threw her hands toward the sky. “Rain!” Before she realized what she was doing, she dropped her shovel and launched herself forward to grab her mother’s hand. “Rain.” She began to dance.

“Quit that. Just quit that now!” Helen insisted. But she didn’t pull away.

“Tessa?” Nancy held out her other hand. “Come here. We’re going to do a rain dance.”

Tessa stood rooted to the spot, staring at her mother and grandmother.

“It’s an order,” Nancy said sharply. “Get that skinny butt of yours over here right now, and dance with your mother and grandmother.”

Tessa moved slowly, as if she thought she might be nearing a lunatic asylum. But she took Nancy’s hand.

“You’re the one needs the men in the white coats,” Helen said.

“Rain, rain!” Nancy began to pull them back and forth, forward and backwards. “Kick those feet, ladies. Like this!” She did a grapevine step left over from an aerobics dancing class she had taken to keep herself fit and trim.

“Mom, this is odd behavior,” Tessa said. But she was following closely, kicking her legs like a Rockette when it was time.

Helen tried to pull away, but Nancy wouldn’t let her. “Come on, Mama, you can do it. When was the last time you danced?”

“None of your business.”

“Dance with us now.”

Helen harrumphed, but she began to move. Tentatively, grudgingly, but she was definitely moving.

The rain picked up. Tessa pulled them to the right, and they began to move around the fruitless holes they’d dug, weaving back and forth between holes and trees. Dancing, most likely, on some portion of Helen’s life savings.

“Rain!” Nancy shouted again. “Thank you, God, for rain!”

“That’s the first real prayer I’ve heard from you in a long time,” Tessa said.

Exhausted, they stopped at last, in a small circle. Tessa grabbed her grandmother’s other hand, and the three women, dripping now, sodden to the bone, stared at each other through rain-beaded lashes.

Finally, one by one, they dropped hands, but they didn’t move apart.

“We’ll find the money, Gram,” Tessa said at last.

“I won’t need it where you’re going to send me.”

Nancy did something she couldn’t remember doing since she was a little girl. She put her arms around her mother and hugged her hard. Wet clothes sucked at wet clothes, and water drained down her legs. “Nobody’s sending you anywhere,” she said. “We’ll make all our decisions together, Mama.”

Helen frowned and nodded. But a frown in the middle of a cloudburst got washed away quickly.

For a moment, just the briefest moment, Helen’s arms went around her daughter. For an even briefer moment, she squeezed.

T
essa wasn’t certain when her whole emotional life had begun to revolve around Mothers Against Drunk Driving. She stayed far away from the organization’s victim support services, but in the years since Kayley’s death, she had immersed herself at every other level.

She had begun her volunteer work with MADD by asking restaurants near her home if they would consider joining Northern Virginia’s designated driver program. She persuaded several to offer free nonalcoholic drinks and a pep talk to one person at each table who agreed not to drink and drive that night. There were still restaurants where she wasn’t particularly welcome because of the pressure she had applied.

After that, she had trained and worked as a court monitor, observing DUI cases and reporting back to the local and national offices. Now most of the county courthouse personnel knew her by name, even though she had graduated to training other monitors and didn’t make as many personal appearances.

She organized victim impact panels, haunted shopping malls to present red ribbons to holiday shoppers who agreed not to drink and drive, solicited gifts of used cars to help fund MADD’s programs. But everyone knew that Tessa’s most important contribution was her unflagging devotion to administration. She was adept at finding grant money and writing proposals. She could organize phone trees, update websites, send bulk mailings over the Internet with the flip of her index finger.

The care she had once lavished on her family and students now went into phone calls and file folders, but she had still made a few friends along the way.

“Tessa! Did you tell anybody you were coming in this afternoon?” Sandy Stewart, the local chapter’s dark-haired, fair-skinned program manager, gave Tessa a bear hug as soon as she walked into the MADD office. This was Tessa’s first trip back to the city and the MADD office after the weeks in Toms Brook.

“I didn’t plan to come. I wasn’t even sure you’d still be here.” Tessa gave the Amazonian Sandy an obligatory pat on the back before she pulled away. “But I had some bank business to take care of, and some shopping. I ended up nearby.” She didn’t add that she’d spent an hour at a local quilt shop getting tips and books on restoring old quilts. If she opened that door, Sandy would charge right through it, and Tessa knew she would have to tell the whole wedding ring quilt story.

“Can you stay?” Sandy looked at her watch. “At least until it’s time to close up here? We can hit Starbucks for a latte.”

“I thought I’d clear out my cubbyhole and see if there’s anything I need to take care of. I’ll be here a little while.”

“The paper’s been piling up. The Sisk Foundation turned down our grant proposal, but they’ll be evaluating a new round next month and suggested some changes we could make to increase our chances.”

Tessa was disappointed. The Sisk grant would have provided money to train high-school teachers on new classroom tactics to discourage drinking and driving. But the idea was good, and they would find a way to make sure it was funded.

“I’ll take the changes with me and look them over,” she promised.

“You just let me know when you’re ready to go, and I’ll close up shop for the day.” The office was small, and six-foot-tall Sandy carefully made her way back to her desk, menacing anything that wasn’t tied down. It was late enough in the afternoon that no one else was there.

Tessa cleared out her cubbyhole, not surprised by the amount of mail, annotated articles and memos that had stacked up in her absence. Most likely none of it was vital. The staff and most of the volunteers knew that she would be away for the summer, and they had her cell phone number in case her input or participation was crucial. Going through the clutter now would just make room for the next installment.

She took the stack of papers to a table in the back where she and the other volunteers usually worked, and made herself at home. In the background she could hear the rise and fall—mostly the rise—of Sandy’s voice on the telephone as she made the final calls of the day.

Tessa sorted the papers into stacks, although her mind wasn’t really on the task. She tried not to lie to herself, although sometimes it was the only way she made it through the day, but she knew that coming here had been a lie of sorts. She hadn’t headed back to Toms Brook after her errands, and for once, MADD hadn’t figured in the decision.

She missed Mack. She wanted to see him, and she hoped that she could catch him at home before she went back, perhaps even for a quick dinner.

She hadn’t seen her husband for three weeks, not since he had dropped off her suitcase and told her that he had reached his limit with their relationship. Most of the time she had tried to put him out of her mind. He had called her occasionally. She had called him occasionally. They had talked about who should service their air conditioner, and whether they should renew their subscription to
Newsweek
. He had reported on his mother’s latest boyfriend, and she had updated him on the treasure hunt for Helen’s savings—one tin found, two to go.

Although she was realistic enough to know that his ultimatum must be resounding somewhere inside her, she had been careful to push it out of her thoughts. Sometimes she tried to imagine a life without Mack, what she would do and where she would go, just to prepare herself for a future that seemed inevitable. More often, she did nothing.

Tessa realized she was staring at a pink message slip, had been staring at it for some time. Maybe she was borrowing trouble to seek Mack out tonight, but was she really ready to give up a marriage that had once seemed nearly ideal? In the past three years she had taught herself a dozen ways to avoid the pain of Kayley’s death. Was this just another? No husband equaled fewer reminders of her daughter?

She had to know. She was almost certain she wasn’t ready to endure the marriage counseling Mack was insisting on, but she had to know if he was as adamant about that as he seemed. Perhaps there could be compromises as they continued to feel their way back into a world where Kayley no longer existed.

She set the message on top of the “to do” pile, then she realized the content still hadn’t registered. She lifted it off the pile once more and forced herself to read it.

Someone who obviously didn’t know or remember that she was out of town for the summer had scrawled a name and number across the surface, finishing with “important.” Underlined. Frowning, she pulled the telephone a little closer, punched the button for a line that wouldn’t conflict with Sandy’s and lifted the receiver.

Mack wasn’t sure why he had picked this particular restaurant for dinner with Erin. Siam Palace was one of Tessa’s favorites, and it was close enough to their home that they ate here often. Kayley had never liked Thai food, so there were few memories of her here, but the place practically reeked of Tessa.

He wondered if he was lonely for his wife, that by coming here—even with another woman—he was trying to get closer to her. That seemed perverse and distinctly unattractive, but he wasn’t certain it wasn’t true. All he knew for sure was that Erin had mentioned a yen for Thai food, and Siam Palace had slipped past his tongue.

“So glad to see you, Mr. Mack.” Frankie, the proprietor, honored him with a grin. He was a handsome man whose taste in clothing ran toward jewel-toned shirts open at the neck and dark pants. The restaurant was unpretentious, even plain, but the food was some of the best in Northern Virginia. The Friday night business alone could have kept the place afloat.

“Couldn’t stay away,” Mack assured him. “You have a table for two?”

“Mrs. Mack, she’s coming, too?”

For a moment Mack didn’t know what to say. Again he wondered what bad judgment had brought him here. “No, it’s a business dinner.”

Frankie led him to a window table. There was little to see except parking lot and traffic, but Mack took advantage of it so that he wouldn’t have to answer any more questions.

When the server made her first stop, he ordered iced tea and some of the excellent
kanom jeeb
that were Tessa’s favorite. She ate the same way she did most things, sparingly, gracefully, with concentrated appreciation. The bite-sized dumplings, with their delicately explosive flavor, were right up her alley.

Erin still hadn’t arrived by the time his iced tea did, nor even by the time the
kanom jeeb
came out of the kitchen. He wondered if she had gotten lost, and just as he was about to look for a phone, she appeared in the doorway. She wore stretch jeans, and a bright blue tank top covered by an unbuttoned white shirt. She looked crisp and cool, and he wondered just how quickly Erin would melt if he kissed her.

He rose, not flustered, but disturbed by the thought. He wasn’t surprised that sex was on his mind. He’d gone without for weeks, and before that he might as well have. Tessa, once so responsive that she could climax after the briefest foreplay, hadn’t had an orgasm in months. She was stiff and unyielding when he touched her, and most of the time intimacy seemed more of an effort than a release.

He stepped around the table, took Erin’s hands in his and kissed her cheek. Just over her shoulder he saw Frankie watching. Mack wondered if he imagined Frankie’s disapproval.

“I’m so sorry I was late.” Erin let him help her into her chair. “There was an accident on the beltway, and I was stuck in traffic. I was afraid you might not wait. I couldn’t reach you on the cell phone.”

“I left it at home this morning by mistake. Don’t worry, I knew you’d be here.” Erin, like Tessa, was completely reliable.

He realized that was the second time in a minute he had compared Erin to his wife.

“The two cars looked like they were totaled. There were a little boy and his mother standing by the police cars. They were both crying.” She sighed. “I hope no one was killed.”

Mack wondered if alcohol was lurking in that picture. One too many after-work drinks?

“Anyway, I’m starving,” Erin said. “What’s good here?”

“Everything. I ordered an appetizer. It just came. You’ll have time to look over the menu before it gets cold.”

She picked up the menu Frankie had left at her place and scanned it quickly before she put it down again. “So how are you?”

“Working too hard.” And he was. He had spent the entire day driving from D.C. to Baltimore, then back again, trying to track down three character witnesses for a client who was about to go to trial. It was the kind of job he generally hired others to do, but he had needed a personal feel for the way these three witnesses lived and how reliable they might be. Not having the cell phone had made his day that much harder.

“You do look tired.” Erin leaned forward. “It’s hard without your wife at home, isn’t it?”

“Not as hard as it sounds. When she’s home she’s not home.”

“She’s been through a lot.”

Mack heard a dozen things behind the simple words.
Maybe it’s not time to give up. I don’t want you if you’re bringing Tessa along with you. Are you sure, Mack, that you don’t want to give your marriage more time? Because I’ll wait.

Or possibly he’d heard that last part wrong, and Erin was really saying that she wouldn’t wait, so he’d better be sure of his options.

“The death of a child is one of the hardest things a marriage can undergo.” Erin’s tone was warm, compassionate, and he was sure he heard something more in it.

“It may well have brought this one to its end,” Mack said, feeling for his words. “I’ll know by the time summer’s over.”

Erin was feeling her way, too. It was obvious in her voice. “Mack, it’s easy, when two people are sharing their feelings as closely as we’ve shared ours over the past years, to mistake the warmth we feel for each other for something it’s not.”

He looked up, and he knew Erin was trying to give him an out, to tell him that he still had that escape route if he wanted to take it.

“Are we laying our cards on the table?” He waited until Frankie took Erin’s order before he continued. “Are you trying to keep me from making a mistake? Or trying to tell me there’s nothing developing between us?”

Her fair skin colored a soft rose. “This is so hard.”

“Take your time.”

“I know better than to become emotionally involved with another member of the group, particularly a married one. It’s dangerous for the organization.”

“I see.”

She looked up from her placemat. “You don’t. I’ve asked Candace Grant to take over the jobs I volunteered for. She’s warm and caring.”

“And she’s not involved with me.”

She smiled a little. “I sure hope she isn’t.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Erin. I’ll back off.”

She reached across the table and touched the back of his hand. “Don’t.”

“I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know for sure that my marriage is over. I can’t make any promises. I can’t ask you for anything.”

“I realize that, and I’m not rooting for your marriage to end. But in case it does, I’d like to be ready to test those waters.”

He covered her hand with his. And that was when he looked up and saw Tessa standing five feet away, watching him.

His hand had already turned cold before he removed it. He stood and beckoned to Tessa. Her expression gave nothing away, but that had become increasingly true in the past three years. She had always been self-contained. These days she was hermetically sealed.