When Secrets Die (18 page)

“Hey, sweetie!”

“Hey.” Semi-surly, and just a flicker of eye contact.

“How was school?”

“Ummm.” Blaine went to her bedroom and shut the door.

The thump of Blaine's stereo muffled the noise of a tractor that had been thrumming through the air as Emmet Michaels, who owned the farm behind them, worked his fields for the last cutting of hay. Emma preferred the tractor. She looked at the phone extension in the living room and saw that the red light flickered. Her daughter was already plugged in.

She went into the kitchen. Staying near the refrigerator would be the most likely place for the next sighting of her daughter, and by then maybe Blaine would have a few words to say. Emma did not expect conversation until Blaine had been home for at least an hour—what she called after-school detox. She remembered what hell high school could be, especially a new high school. It was the idiots who told teenagers that they were going through the best years of their lives who caused all the trouble.

Emma was making biscuits. She wore her favorite “Mom Cat” apron, and, as usual when she cooked, was unintentionally spreading flour all over the kitchen. It had not gone unnoticed, how Marcus had appreciated Aunt Jodina's homemade biscuits, and Emma was baking them for him. She was feeling a contented domesticity that would have panicked her in her twenties. It was different, cooking for Marcus and Blaine, cooking for the three of them. Different than it had been cooking for Blaine's father, a chore, and for Clayton, less of a chore but definitely not a pleasure. Of course, in those days, she'd been slacking if she wasn't doing at least two or three things at once. Now, she had the pleasure of doing one thing at a time, guiltlessly. It wasn't the world that had changed, it was Emma.

Blaine appeared in the doorway. Emma gave her a floury hug and was rewarded with a tense little body and a cringing squint. Daughterly love.

“I'm making biscuits,” Emma said to her daughter's back.

Blaine opened the refrigerator. “That's nice.”

Emma felt a curious role reversal. As if she were a three-year-old telling her very uninterested mother about the picture she had colored and awaiting her dollop of praise.
Motherhood sucks
.

Still, she pinched off a chunk of the dough she was kneading and offered it offhandedly to her daughter, who took it with an actual smile. A child's love for raw dough in any form was one of the few things that did not change as they grew into hellions.

“So how was your day?” her daughter asked, though her nose was still in the fridge. Blaine slouched sideways, and Emma did not recognize the jeans she had on. For one, they were too big and too long, which probably meant they were borrowed from that kid Twyla. She wondered what Blaine had handed over for the privilege of the jeans that someone had written “FART” on in blue ink.
Fart? This kid couldn't even come up with an original offensive slogan? No imagination at all
—
except for devising ways to set their house on fire
.

Emma knew that the more she openly disliked Twyla, the more Blaine would like her. She wasn't totally stupid. She just wasn't totally controlled. It was hard to keep her mouth shut, especially when she had so much so say.

“Hot Pockets in the freezer if you're hungry,” Emma said.

“The meatball ones?” The freezer door opened, closed. “Did you get that lotion I asked you for?”

“Next week, honey—that stuff is six dollars for a tiny little tube. Maybe it's cheaper at Wal-Mart.”

“I
hate
Wal-Mart. And meanwhile, I asked you for that, like, months ago, and my face is zit city, thanks to you.”

“Yes, I just read in
USA Today
that mothers are the surprising cause of acne.”

Blaine rolled her eyes.

Emma looked at her daughter over one shoulder. “Try to save up a little appetite, honey, because I've got a roast going in the oven, and I'm making a pie.”

“Is Marcus coming over? Good.”

Good?

Emma looked up in time to see her daughter's back, the part of her she saw the most often, as she headed into the living room to turn on the television.

She was pleased, but not entirely surprised. It was as if Marcus was the piece of the puzzle she and Blaine had always been missing. His ease around Blaine was inexplicable; he had no children of his own. But then, he had no preconceived notions of children either, and clearly, as far as he was concerned, Blaine was the definition of
wonderful daughter
. He gave her the kind of unconditional acceptance one might expect from a grandparent, who felt nothing but pleasure in your presence in the world. They talked together easily over the little dinners the three of them had eaten together in the kitchen, and during last weekend's pizzas in front of the TV. Watching movies at home wasn't loserlike if Marcus was there, like it would be with just Blaine and her mother. Blaine actually had fun when the three of them went bowling. Bowling with her own mom—her definition of hell, was what she'd said, but Marcus had just grinned at her, and they'd had a really good time. Blaine was fascinated by his work, and the dinner-table conversations between the two of them sometimes sent Emma running out of the room.

“Did he say anything about … you know?” Blaine was back again, watching her from the doorway.

“You know?
What do you know about
you know?”

“Mom, don't be like that. I know he's looking at Ned's organs, and running tests and things.”

Emma let the dough go and turned and looked at her daughter. “You've been eavesdropping?”

“No, Mom, he told me about it. The other night, when we were watching Glenn Close boil the rabbit in
Fatal Attraction
.”

“I hate that scene.”

“You were asleep, Mom, snoring away.”

“Oh, God, was I snoring?”

“No, no, I'm just kidding, you were all curled up really pretty.”

Emma knew when her daughter was lying, but she also knew when to be grateful. “I can't believe Marcus discussed that with you.”

“Oh, God, you've got that look.”

“What look?”

“The mush face you make whenever anything comes up about Neddy.”

“Go. Eat. Your Hot Pocket.”

“God, Mom. I'd think you'd want to know.”

But Emma wasn't listening. She was back down in the clinic basement, approaching the stainless steel table where her child's liver and kidneys were in jars, little tiny baby organs because he'd been only two and a half, stored away like he was produce in some big canning factory in Hell's Kitchen.

Emma had to be ready for whatever it was that Franklin would say. She had to be ready for finding out and for not finding out. How did you get ready for that sort of thing?

Leave it to her precious child to take the joy out of the afternoon.

FRANKLIN

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

The sound of someone trying his office door woke Franklin. The someone knocked, but did not wait to be invited in. His sister, Lucca, stood in the doorway and frowned at him.

“Did you spend the night here?” she asked. She was only half kidding.

Franklin nodded. He remembered watching the sun rise as he sat behind his desk, and that was the last thing he remembered, before now.

“What time is it?” he asked.

“Quarter to eight,” Lucca said.

So he'd slept then, a couple of hours anyway. He was hungry, but other than that he felt pretty good.

“What are you working on?” she asked. She knew full well what he was not working on. She managed the office, after all. “Marcus, are you doing some checking or extra work for somebody who won't go through channels? Because I hate to see you get taken advantage of.”

“What you mean is, you hate not to know what's going on.”

She shifted her weight to one hip. She was giving him the same look Blaine gave him when she thought he and Emma had stayed out too late. It occurred to Franklin that there were certain disadvantages to working with a nosy little sister.

He waved a hand. “I'm starved. I'm going to go to IHOP and have a steak omelet and pancakes. You want to come?”

“Some of us have work to do.”

She sounded prissy, and it made him grin.

“I'm the boss. I'll let you off work for breakfast. Come on, Lucca, get the stick out of your butt and come have breakfast with me.”

“I already ate breakfast.”

“Then eat again.”

“Marcus, what is going on with you?”

“What makes you think something is going on?”

“Because you are so weird lately. You're … you're erratic. You go home at five.”

“You always told me I worked too much. Now you're complaining?”

“You're not home at night when I call. And you don't return my calls.”

“I don't remember you leaving any messages. Or were you just checking up on me?”

“And all of a sudden, you have time to go out and get food?”

“I was here all night, Lucca. I think the office can live without me for forty-five minutes.” He gave her an evil grin, because he was just parroting back the phrases she'd been drumming into his head since they'd worked together.

“So what were you here all night working on?”

“Nothing I want to share, at present.”

Her chin came up. “Fine, then, I have work to do.”

“Lucca?”

She paused.

“I've met someone.”

“You've … like a woman?”

“Very much like a woman.”

“Oh. That's wonderful, Marcus.” His sister's voice was flat and joyless.

“What's the problem, Lucca? You've been telling me for years I need to find someone nice and settle down.”

“Settle down? It's a little early for that line of thought, isn't it, Marcus?”

“What, I should wait until I'm fifty?”

“I mean early in the relationship. I mean … you're not going to marry her or anything, are you?”

He'd been thinking about it. “Why not?”

“How long have the two of you been dating? You need at least a year, two even—”

He shook his head at his sister. “What am I, seventeen? We're not kids here, Lucca. And I seem to remember you telling me that you knew that Bill was
it
by the third date.”

“And Bill and I got divorced.”

“After eighteen years of marriage, which, from the outside looking in, were pretty happy years. Look, I can't help it if your marriage failed. There aren't any guarantees, Lucca. I've listened to you, I've listened to my own friends. Their relationships have to pass this test, and that test, and watch for this red flag with this man and that tendency with that woman.”

“You can't tell this soon, Marcus.”

“I think I can. But don't worry. I haven't asked her, and she'd probably say no.”

He waited for her to reassure him that any woman would say yes, but she didn't, she just gave him a tired, superior look, one that reminded him of their mother, and not in a good way.

“Is there anything else?” he asked.

“So now you're the big boss?”

“No, now I'm hungry, and I'm going to breakfast.”

“You never go to restaurants.”

“I'm going now. And I'm expecting some faxes this morning. If they come through while I'm out, put them right on my desk, if you would, please. No copies for the files.”

“That's a violation of office procedure.”

“These results don't fall under the purview of the office, Lucca. It's private and personal.”

“It's got something to do with this woman, doesn't it?”

“Why are you being like this? You remember my friend Ernesto? You remember what happened when he finally got married after being single for eleven years? Remember how his family reacted, and what they said?”

Lucca's face went dark red. “This isn't like that,” she said. And left, slamming the door.

But it was like that, he thought. Ernesto had been single eleven years after a horrible divorce. He'd become the single friend and fixture everyone loved, relied upon, and felt just a bit sorry for. And then he'd met a woman, Cilla. Strange name, nice woman. Not bad looking, and very much in love with Ernesto. And all those friends and relatives who'd encouraged Ernesto to “find someone” suddenly found fault after fault with Cilla, and Ernesto, fool of a man, had decided not to marry her after all. She'd moved away rather quickly, and six weeks later Ernesto followed her. He'd called Franklin just before he left. Said that he'd been sitting alone in his apartment, and thinking of all his friends, and the things they'd said about Cilla, and the things they actually put up with and overlooked in their own relationships. How there they were that night at home with their families, secure in the knowledge that if they called him to come over once in a while, he'd be available, and how right at the moment he never wanted to speak to any of them ever again, except Marcus, who actually liked Cilla. He said he was going after her, actually moving to her new city to show her he meant business, and he was investing in a ring even though there was a good chance she'd say no, because when she left she told him, kindly but firmly, that she never wanted to hear from him ever again, and what did Marcus think? And Franklin had said, Don't go into debt, but make sure the ring's impressive. And Ernesto had laughed and said, Thank God for you, Marcus. For a guy who's been single all his life, you give pretty good advice.

People always thought you gave good advice when you told them what they wanted to hear. Two weeks later he'd had an early-morning call from Ernesto to say that Cilla had relented and they'd put on their best blue jeans the previous afternoon and gone down to the courthouse and gotten married. Nobody ever heard from him anymore, except for Franklin, who got the occasional card at odd times of the year. Ernesto and Cilla were now living happily or unhappily ever after, however it may have worked out.