LITMIR.BIZ

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for him and I looked away, not wanting to embarrass him by noticing his frailty.

      “Why don’t you sit here?” I motioned toward the armchair in the living room, then rattled off the things I could offer him to drink.

      “Just ice water,” he said.

      In the kitchen, I took my time getting out the glasses, filling them with ice. I wished he had not come. I could see no point to this visit. I could have quite happily lived out the rest of my days without seeing my old neighbor again.

      When I returned to the living room, I saw that he had not taken a seat as I’d suggested. Instead, he was looking at the pictures on the mantel. There was one of the four of us—Charles and myself and Julie and Lucy, when the girls were fifteen and eleven. It was the last picture I had of Charles; he’d dropped dead from a heart attack in our kitchen only a few weeks after it had been taken. Then there were Julie’s and Lucy’s old college-graduation pictures and, next to them, Shannon’s senior picture. Ross lifted that last one up and looked toward me, a smile on his lips.

      “A granddaughter?” he asked.

      I nodded. “Shannon,” I said. “She’s Julie’s.” I thought of telling him more about her, how she’d been accepted to Oberlin, how accomplished she was already, but I didn’t want to extend my conversation with Ross any longer than I had to.

      “Lovely.” Then he poked a finger at Julie’s picture. “That’s Julie, right? She was the sharp one. The one with the brains and the spunk.”

      His words jolted me. Julie had brains, all right, but her spunk had gone out the window long ago. He was right, though. When he knew my girls, Julie was the one who’d had the most gumption.

      “Yes,” I said, to keep things short and simple. “She was always up to something.”

      Ross limped over to the armchair and sat down. “I have one granddaughter and a great-granddaughter,” he said. He took the glass I held out for him and looked up at me. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

      I set a coaster on the end table next to him, then sat on the hassock in front of the other armchair. “Why are you here?” I asked. The back of my neck ached a bit, and I rubbed it. My skin was slick with perspiration, more from anxiety than the heat.

      “Do you know that my Ethan and your Julie are meeting for lunch today?” Ross asked.

      “What?” I’d been about to take a sip of my water and nearly dropped the glass. “Why on earth?” As far as I knew, Julie and Ethan Chapman had had no contact since 1962.

      Ross shrugged. “Ethan just said he was thinking about her and felt like getting together. They planned to meet in Spring Lake.”

      “Well,” I said, recovering from the shock. “Good for them. They were friends when they were little.”

      “Anyhow,” Ross said, “when Ethan told me he was going to see Julie, it started me thinking about you…about your family. About how I…” He set his glass down on the coaster and looked directly into my eyes. “I mishandled things, Maria. In every which way. I—”

      “Water under the bridge, Ross,” I said. “It’s not necessary to rehash it.”

      “But I think it is,” he said. I recognized his earnest look as one he’d employed when running for governor. It was a look that made you want to trust him.

      “I’m old and tired,” he said. “I really doubt I’ll live much longer and I just want to make amends to any people I might have hurt during my lifetime.”

      “What’s wrong?” I asked him. I wondered if he had cancer. He was so thin. “Are you sick?”

      He shook his head, brushing my question away with his hand. “I lost Joan last year,” he said, then looked away from me, toward the pictures on the mantel. “And Ned…Ned died just a few weeks ago.”

      “Oh,” I said. I understood then how his world had been altered. Ned must have been close to sixty, but that didn’t matter when it came to burying your child. “I’m sorry, Ross.”

      “It gave me a new understanding of how you felt when Isabel died.”

      “Yes,” I said.

      “So, I wanted to talk to you about…I just wanted to apologize.”

      “And now you have and that’s fine and enough,” I said. I didn’t like the sympathy I felt for this old man. He was a politician, first and foremost, capable of talking out of both sides of his mouth.

      He looked at me so long and hard that I had to look away. I knew he wanted to say more, but whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it. So I stood up.

      “Come on,” I said, holding my hand out to help him from the chair. He’d hardly touched his water, but he had not come here for the refreshments.

      He clutched my hand hard as he struggled to his feet. I let him hold on to my arm as I walked with him back down the front steps and out to his car. Neither of us spoke, although I knew there was a lot we could have said if we’d had the courage. I opened the driver’s-side door of his car for him. It made me nervous to think of someone in his condition driving. I had not even asked him where he lived, how far he had to drive.

      “What did Ned die from?” I asked, before closing the car door.

      “Drinking,” Ross said. “Drowning his sorrows. I don’t think he ever got over losing Isabel.”

      I winced at that, then closed the door. I watched him drive away before returning to my seat in the garden. I pulled on my gloves and drew the trowel through the soil, barely able to see what I was doing for the tears. I don’t think he ever got over losing Isabel.

      “Neither have I, Ross,” I said out loud. “Neither have I.”

      CHAPTER 9

       Lucy

      Shannon spent most of the afternoon with me as we talked about her dilemma. It was a strange experience for me, watching her shift between tears of anxiety and worry and joy over the new love in her life. She had always been a very grounded, sane person, even as a young child, but listening to her talk about Tanner, I had the odd feeling that she had been taken away by some cult group, brainwashed and returned to us a different person. It was the same Shannon sitting there in my living room, the same beautiful girl who’d brought such joy into her family, but words were coming out of her mouth that were decidedly un-Shannon-like. I felt as though we needed a deprogrammer.

      She left about four, saying she had a cello lesson to give at the music store, and she’d been gone no more than fifteen minutes when Julie showed up at my door. I’d tried to reach her on her cell phone to see how the lunch with Ethan had gone, but was only able to get her voice mail, so I’d pulled out my violin, planning to practice for an upcoming ZydaChicks concert.

      “I’m interrupting your practice,” Julie said, glancing at the violin in my hand. There was a damp flush to her cheeks that made her look pretty, if uncomfortably warm. I knew she was grappling with hot flashes, something that was still in my future.

      “Haven’t even started,” I said, taking her hand with my free one and pulling her into my apartment. “So, how did it go?” I asked, as I put my violin back in its case.

      “Not bad.” Julie flopped down on my sofa. The two empty glasses of lemonade were still on the coffee table and I scooped them up and carried them into the kitchen before she could ask who had been there, but she didn’t even seem to notice them.

      I glanced at her when I returned to the room. “Are you okay?”

      She pressed her hands to her cheeks, which were nearly the color of her red shirt. “I’m just…” She smiled a sort of goofy grin. “Just freaking out, I think,” she said.

      “Hot flash?” I asked, although by

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