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Authors: Elizabeth Bass

BOOK: Wherever Grace Is Needed
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“What would a bunch of software geeks know about an art program?”
Way to get what you want, Jordan,
Lily thought. She didn’t understand finesse at all.
In the spirit of the closeness she’d felt toward her sister that morning, Lily added helpfully, “The brochure says they’re careful about supervision, Dad.” Apparently, this program had to handle questions from lots of parents worried about sending their kids to San Francisco and having them freak out. “They have fifteen students per live-in supervisor, and besides, because of the rigorous program, students won’t have much free time to explore the city aside from supervised outings.”
Jordan blinked at her, astonished. “Did you go through my stuff?”
“No,” Lily said. “Dad left the brochure on his desk. I just happened to see it when I brought the mail in.”
“I must have skimmed over that part about the supervisors,” he said.
Now he was at least starting to sound as if the idea was worth mulling over.
Lily and Jordan exchanged looks.
See?
Lily tried to convey with hers.
I could be your friend if you’d let me.
Jordan’s lips quirked into a half smile—the closest she could probably come to a thank-you—and she turned back to their dad.
“Please?”
He looked down at his coffee, noncommittal but leaning favorably, Lily guessed. “I’ll think about it,” he said.
Dominic, his cheeks bulging like a squirrel’s, only with Mississippi mud cake instead of nuts, looked at them all with equal parts apprehension and wonder. Lily could read his thoughts.
Dad sort of interacting, no one fighting, dessert freely offered . . .
It had been forever since they’d gotten along this well.
The truce lasted all the quiet afternoon. The spring weather allowed them to keep the windows open, and they could hear violin music playing from Peggy’s house down the street, where the wedding reception was being held. Occasionally the sound of laughter would float their way, too, and Lily would feel a pang of envy for those people in Peggy’s backyard—guests at a wedding reception on a beautiful day instead of inmates in the house of perpetual mourning.
And then immediately she would feel awful for having such a terrible selfish thought. Even if it was true.
Anyway, weddings—even the weddings of senior citizens—made her think of romance, which made her think of her situation with Crawford. Granted, it wasn’t much of a situation, since nothing had actually happened, but she still had hope.
Restless, she went down to the living room and sat on the opposite side of the couch from Dominic, who was playing a handheld video game.
He immediately launched into a defense. “I know—it’s a complete waste of time.”
“I didn’t say anything,” she said.
“But you were going to, weren’t you?”
She shrugged. “Probably. You could have least given me the chance.”
“Chance to what?” Jordan came in and flopped sideways into a chair, dangling her legs over the chair arm.
“Nothing,” Dominic said.
“He thinks I wouldn’t be able to resist telling him that electronic games are a waste of time.”
“I’ll tell him.” Jordan fixed her gaze on him. “Nickel, games are a waste of time.”
He grunted and kept playing.
“Did my best,” Jordan told Lily with a shrug. “Kids these days.”
Lily hesitated to ask Jordan the question that had been burning in her mind lately. It seemed so stupid, but Crawford had mentioned it specifically, so she kept coming back to it.
“Jordan? Say you wanted to buy a formal . . .” she began in a casual tone. “What thrift store would you go to for that?”
Jordan’s eyebrows darted up. “Big date?”
Lily confessed, “Not really. But I hope I’m going to the dance.”
“Who with?”
“It doesn’t matter,” Lily said. “He hasn’t asked me yet.”
“Who?” Jordan insisted.
Some madness—some temporary amnesia regarding her sister’s true personality—made her confess. “Crawford.”
“Crawford!” Dominic yelled, appalled that a friend of his would be considered date material by his sister.
Jordan sputtered, almost laughing. “Whoa—that’s a seriously hopeless case.”
“Why?” Lily asked defensively.
“Because he asked me,” Jordan said.
At first, Lily thought she must have heard wrong. But she knew she hadn’t because the words kept echoing in her head.
She felt sick.
“When?”
“Yesterday,” Jordan said. “I skipped last period and came home from school early. He must have been stalking me or something.”
Lily’s heart had stopped beating. She wasn’t lying. Crawford hadn’t been in band class the day before. “What did you say?” she asked, dreading the answer.
Jordan sneered at the question. “What do you think? I said no.”
No?
Lily couldn’t believe it. If Jordan had said yes, that would have been tragic. She wasn’t even sure she could have stood it. But instead Jordan had said no, and she couldn’t even feel relief. The nicest boy in the whole world! He probably felt awful. And now, so did she.
Jordan looked down at her black fingernails. “Dude’s gonna run around asking girls who don’t like him to the spring dance, he’s gotta expect an epic fail.”
“That’s so mean! I hope he realizes how lucky he is to not be going with you.” She tilted her head. “Who
are
you going with?”
“Nobody.
I wouldn’t be caught dead at a moronic high school dance again.”
The moronic high school dance that I’ve had my heart set on for months,
Lily cringed at all the hours she’d spent daydreaming, the hints she’d dropped—when it had been hopeless all along. He liked Jordan.
Rage mounted inside her until she could barely stand it. She wanted to get up and stomp out, but she knew that would make Jordan laugh at her.
“You really are a bitch!” Lily was immediately angry at herself for having sunk to Jordan’s level, but the word had just leapt out of her mouth.
Jordan’s eyes bugged, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d heard, and then she hooted with laughter. “And you’re pathetic! Lusting after the neighbor boy—you probably dreamed he was Prince Charming or something. That would be about your speed.”
Lily’s throat felt so choked she wasn’t sure she could speak.
To her shock, Dominic threw down his game. It glanced off her, and for a second Lily thought he’d thrown it at her on purpose, but apparently she was just collateral damage. He jumped up and faced Jordan. “Why do you have to be so mean?” he yelled. “Just when things were starting to seem a little better around here! You aren’t ever nice to anybody!”
Jordan reached out to grab him. “Come on, Nickel—
we’re
friends.”
“No, we’re not,” he said, wrenching his arm away. “You never think about me. Not really. I’m just a house pet or something. You act all nice to me for about five minutes and then you ignore me! I hate it!”
When he was gone, Jordan looked as if she’d been smacked. “What’s the matter with him?”
Lily shook her head. “You just don’t listen, do you?”
“What? You think I treat you like a house pet, too?”
“No!”
“No, of course not. Because you were Nina’s little pet. Nina and Mom’s.”
“I wasn’t anybody’s pet. Nina liked me because we had things in common, and because when you were in junior high you started behaving like an idiot. You even acted like you were too cool for Nina sometimes.”
Jordan glared at her. “You don’t know anything about Nina.”
Lily released a bitter laugh that felt so good. “You thought because she was your twin you owned her or something, so you resented me when she hung out with me and invited me places. And you’re still jealous!”
“Shut your yap!”
“Or maybe you’re just feeling guilty.”
Jordan’s cheeks flamed. “Why?”
Lily crossed her arms. “You know why.”
“Because I killed them, right? I’m a murderess—isn’t that what you called me in that pathetic diary of yours?”
Lily froze. “What do you know about my diary?”
“You left it on the kitchen table one morning. I had to read something with my Shredded Wheat. So you see, I already knew all about your sad little crush on little Crawdad McHeartthrob.”
She’d known? And she’d made her confess it anyway?
Lily tried to sound calm, but when she spoke her voice quavered. “You’ll be sorry.”
Jordan stood. “Oh—are you going to write me up in your diary again?” She walked away slowly, but once upstairs, she slammed her door. Seconds later, the thump of old punk music made the ceiling vibrate.
I’m not going to cry,
Lily told herself.
Crying does no good.
She rubbed moisture off her cheeks when her dad emerged from his study. “What’s going on?” he demanded. “I heard all of you yelling—even Dominic—and then doors slamming, and now the whole house is vibrating to the Sex Pistols!” He glared up at the ceiling. “How does she even know about the Sex Pistols? They were before
my
time!”
“Heather, probably,” Lily told him, pulling herself together.
“Who?” He shook his head. “I would think you all could try to get along—today of all days.”
Today of all days. The reminder pushed her over the edge.
“Dad, can I talk to you about something?”
He looked wary. “What?”
“It’s really important,” she said. “But I need to talk to you in private. And I need to run upstairs and get something first.”
“Okay,” he agreed. “But while you’re up there, could you please tell Jordan to ramp down the volume a little?”
“Sure,” Lily said, although she had no intention to. It wouldn’t matter to her if she never spoke to Jordan again for the rest of her life. She took the stairs two at a time and went straight to the second drawer of her desk, where she kept her journal.
Thinking of the journal, and Jordan looking in it, made her furious all over again.
No, she wasn’t going to cry this time. This time, she was finally going to get even.
30
A C
HANGE IN
C
ONSTELLATIONS
T
he first person Grace ran into at the reception was Wyatt, who was joining the herd around the champagne table. Pippa, a petite, pretty blonde who looked way too nice for him, was on his arm.
“All alone today, Grace?” Wyatt asked, raising a brow at her.
“You
don’t intend to wait till you’re eighty to get married, do you?”
“I’m not alone,” Grace said. “I came with the best man.”
It was something she had to repeat over and over during the course of the afternoon. Today Lou had dressed in a dark blue suit and looked more like his dapper old self. He outshone the groom, although Uncle Truman had actually sprung for a new suit for the occasion. Truman was even taking Peggy on a honeymoon—they were driving to Natchez, Mississippi, to look at the old houses and spring flowers. Peggy’s idea, surely, not Truman’s.
Grace had been hoping to see Ray at the reception at Peggy’s house. She’d spotted him earlier in the day wearing a suit, something he didn’t usually even wear to work, and she had anticipated having at least one other unattached someone to stand next to. But Ray had not shown up. She wondered why—and why he’d been so dressed up. Another function to attend, evidently.
She hung around the fringes of the backyard reception and watched Peggy and Truman doing some pretty lively dancing on the patio to a string trio. The swing music had a reversing effect on the dance floor: the old people jitterbugged while the younger demographic shuffled awkwardly or lingered on the sidelines. But it didn’t matter. The day was exactly right for a wedding—sunny and not too hot—and Peggy’s spring garden was a berserk flower display
.
Everything seemed perfect.
Grace spotted Crawford, whose glum expression proclaimed the fact that he was not bursting with joy.
She went over to him. “Not dancing?”
“Dancing’s not my favorite topic right now,” he said.
She remembered seeing him storm out of Ray’s house the day before. “Is something wrong?”
He held a glass of cola in his hands and kept his gaze focused on it, swirling the contents so that they made a noisy whirlpool of soda and clinking ice cubes. “Nothing’s wrong, except that I never get what I really want.”
“What happened?” she asked.
His face turned red. “Nothing.”
“Did you have a fight with Dominic and Lily?” she asked.
He snorted dismissively. “Nah,
they’re
all right.” He obviously had no intention of opening up to her about whatever subject was really bugging him. “Do you think it would be bad if I left now?”
“Of course not. Just say good-bye to Peggy, to be polite and rack up brownie points. She might need someone to help with her yard this summer. It will get you that much closer to your car.”
He smiled, obviously taking comfort in the reminder. Dreams were the best balm for disappointment.
She was chewing over what exactly might be going on to make Crawford so miserable, when Steven found her. He was alone. Even though Muriel was across the yard, wearing a low-cut fitted blue silk dress and pearls, Grace hadn’t seen them dancing. Nor had Muriel been standing next to Steven with the family during the wedding ceremony.
“I keep thinking it’s a shame Sam couldn’t be here,” she said as he approached her.
Steven eyed the cake. “I was thinking about Uncle Truman’s diabetes.”
At his typically unsentimental remark, Grace inhaled champagne and nearly choked. Her brother had to pat her on the back a few times, and she was so grateful to him in that moment for making her laugh that she forgot the resentment that had been seething inside her since her encounter with him and Muriel at the coffee shop.
Steven obviously didn’t see anything the least bit funny in what he’d said. “I don’t know what they needed a cake for,” he grumbled. “This crowd’s arteries are probably clogged enough already.”
“You have to have cake at a wedding,” she said. “Remember? You’ve had two of them.”
His lips flattened into a grim line. “Not likely to have a third.”
She glanced at Muriel, who was dancing with one of Uncle Truman’s contemporaries, her head tossed back in laughter.
“I’m sorry about the other day, Grace,” Steven said, his gaze following hers. “But in a way, I’m not sorry. I saw a side of her . . .”
A side that Muriel was probably hoping he wouldn’t see—at least not for a while yet.
She let out a breath. That was one disaster averted, at least.
“Let’s forget about it,” she said.
“Agreed.” He held out his hand. “Dance?”
The band was playing “The Tennessee Waltz.” “Do you know how to waltz?” she asked him doubtfully.
“No clue,” he said. “But how hard can it be?”
She laughed. “I guess my toes are about to find out.”
 
She and her dad were both too full from snacking at the wedding to want to bother with dinner that evening. After he had beaten her at a game of chess, she set up the tea set on the back porch, but Lou had already resumed watching
The Forsyte Saga.
She went out alone, flipped on the porch light, and sat down with her dad’s battered copy of
Modern Chess Strategy.
She was determined to learn enough chess maneuvers to win once or twice in her lifetime.
Her eyes were just beginning to glaze over halfway through a section called “The Equilibrium of the Position” when she became aware of someone nearby. She looked up and realized Ray was standing in his yard. From her vantage point on the porch, she could just see the top of his head over the fence. She closed her book and stood. He still wore the suit she’d seen him in that morning, only without the jacket. His hands were in his pockets and he was staring up at the new night sky.
“All dressed up and nowhere to go,” she said, just loud enough to carry over the fence.
He didn’t seem surprised to hear her voice. “Can you tell the Big Dipper from the Little Dipper?” he asked.
She glanced up. “I usually have a hard time just figuring out which one is Venus.”
“Jen knew all the stars—all the ones you could see with the naked eye. She was forever rattling on about Taurus and Cassiopeia—and I would just sort of look up and nod. I think she said something about how the dippers weren’t actually constellations anymore . . .”
“Really? The way Pluto isn’t a planet anymore? I know science is always advancing, but I wish they’d leave the third grade basics alone.”
“Jen knew all that stuff, but I wasn’t paying attention. Now I wish I had. I feel that way about a lot of things. It was as if she was telling me how to get along all those years, but I just wasn’t listening. I took it for granted.”
“You thought she would be around.”
He kept his gaze focused overhead. “It’s been one year.”
For a moment she didn’t follow, but in the next second, looking at the way he was standing there, so alone, she understood what
it
meant. She felt like an idiot for having made that crack about his being all dressed up with nowhere to go.
“Come over and have some tea,” she said. “I made a cup for Dad, but he’s staring at the television.”
Ray came around through the gate and stepped up on the porch. When he sat down, the way his legs and elbows jutted out from the thin iron arms of the patio furniture emphasized how tall he was. In his everyday clothes he never looked so gangly. Or maybe it was the rawness of his hurt that made him seem so awkward and brittle. As if one more blow just might snap something.
Some of what she was feeling must have shown in her face.
“I didn’t tell you about the—the anniversary to earn your pity,” he said, apologizing. “It’s just I haven’t been able to think of anything else. I shouldn’t have come over. I’ll probably be a bore to talk to.”
He was on the verge of popping out of the chair again, but she put a restraining hand on one shoulder and with her other hand lifted a cup of tea in front of him. “You won’t bore me. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a chance to talk. We’ve been ships passing in the night.”
Which was a gentle spin for what they’d actually been doing—studiously avoiding each other after Jordan threw her hissy fit.
He took his tea and settled back again. “I know there was the wedding today. Peggy invited me. I couldn’t go—not today. And I was too much of a coward to RSVP, because I thought I’d have to give a reason for not going, and I didn’t want . . .”
“It didn’t matter. No one missed you.” Grace’s words echoed for a split second before she added, “Bad word choice. Of course you were missed.
I
missed you—missed having someone sane there to talk to, I mean. I’m sure Peggy didn’t mind.”
They both sipped.
“Did you have a nice time?” he asked.
“It was fine, even though there’s been some family weirdness lately.”
A shadow passed over his face, and he sighed. “Yes, I’ve had my share of that, too.”
“Today?” she asked.
“Everything seemed fine,” he explained, “and then half an hour later all the kids were fighting. I couldn’t understand where it all came from. Then, after the blowup, Lily marched into my office and informed me that Jordan had snuck out of the house one night after her curfew.”
“Oh, no,” Grace said. “Are you sure it’s true?”
“Lily showed me dated journal entries, and she also had photographic evidence of Jordan getting into a car at night with some older woman. All the people she hangs out with seem to be too old now.”
Grace assumed he was talking about crazy Heather. “What did Jordan say about all this?”
“She was livid, but she didn’t deny a thing. I told her that she couldn’t go to California this summer. There was a summer arts program she had her heart set on, but if I can’t trust her here at home, how can I possibly let her loose in San Francisco?”
Grace nodded in sympathy. And yet she felt sympathy for Jordan, too. And a pang of guilt. After the second Heather incident, and seeing that awful apartment, maybe she should have warned Ray that Jordan’s best friend was a serious oddball. Or at least told Jordan that she was heading down a path full of pitfalls.
Not that Jordan would have listened to her.
“Now all of a sudden it’s as if war has broken out in the house,” Ray continued. “I don’t know how it’s going to end. I don’t know what to do for the kids. It’s all I can do to hold
myself
together.”
She thought for a moment of Crawford, and how upset he’d been. And how just the mention of his dream car had cheered him a little bit.
“People need something to hope for,” she said. “To look forward to. Especially kids. I imagine Lily and Dominic and Jordan are dreaming of a time when they won’t be so unhappy. A time when they won’t wake up thinking about the worst thing that’s happened. Jordan probably does, too.”
“Something to look forward to,” he said. “Like California.”
Grace shrugged. “I don’t know. You could start smaller. Maybe just interact with them a little more.”
His eyes narrowed. “Family activities, you mean? Jen always took care of most of that—outings, vacations, birthday parties.”
She felt a spike of frustration. “
You
have to step up, Ray. Don’t say you can’t and just hide away from them, working.”
His brow tensed. “I know I’ve been distant. I’ve hardly been able to function myself. Oh, I realize you were probably thinking I was terrible last year—a workaholic dad. Or maybe you thought I was burying my grief in work, but the truth is, I had to work twice as much because it took me twice as long to do things. I was always dreaming about Jen, and wishing she were back with me. I’ve been going crazy, and the only way I knew how to hide it from the kids was just to avoid them. Obviously, that was a mistake.”
“Yes, it was. But I understood. I think the kids understood, too. But you can’t go on ignoring them, Ray.”
He sighed. “We went out today and it was a disaster. My efforts to bring us all together just made things worse. What can I do for them?”
“You must have been good for something all those years.”
“I don’t know. I worked. I mowed the yard. I never even prepared the meals, except for grilling things every once in a while.”
Her ears perked up. “See? That’s something.”
He straightened. “Is it?”
“Of course.”
He thought about it for a moment. “We had backyard cookouts sometimes. Everyone enjoyed them.”
“There you go.”
“I could do that again.” His eyes glistened with a growing enthusiasm. A crazed enthusiasm, actually. “I could have one next weekend, or the weekend after that. Or Easter, maybe. That would give me time to plan. I could invite the whole neighborhood.”
Whoa. “You might want to start with something a little more intimate.”

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