The door swung open. Mama and Mira and Livvy stood there, all dressed in their Sunday best.
“It’s Advent,” Mama said. “You’re coming to church with us.”
“Maybe next Sunday,” Angie said tiredly. “I was up late last night. I didn’t sleep well.”
“Of course you didn’t sleep well,” Mama said.
Angie knew when she’d hit a wall, and the DeSaria women with their minds made up were solid brick. “Fine.”
It took her fifteen minutes to shower and dress and towel dry her hair. Another three minutes for makeup, and she was ready to go.
By ten o’clock, they were pulling into the church lot.
Angie stepped out into the cold December morning and felt as if she were going back in time. She was a girl again, dressed in white for her first communion … then a woman in white on her wedding day … then a woman in black, crying for her father. So much of her life had happened beneath these stained glass windows.
They went to the third row, where Vince and Sal had the children lined up by height. Angie sat next to Mama.
For the next hour, she went through the motions of her youth: rising and kneeling and rising again.
By the closing prayer, she realized that something had changed in her, shifted suddenly back into place, though she hadn’t known it was out of alignment until now.
Her faith had been there all along, flowing in her veins, waiting for her return. A kind of peace overcame her, made her feel stronger, safer. When the service was over, she walked outside into the crisp, freezing air and looked across the street.
There it was: Searle Park. The merry-go-round from her dream glittered in the sharp sunlight. She’d grown up playing in this park. Her children would have loved it, too.
She walked across the street, hearing laughter that had never been: Push me, Mommy.
She sat down on the cold, corrugated steel and closed her eyes, thinking about the adoption that had failed, the babies who’d never been, the daughter who’d been taken too soon, and the marriage that had been broken.
She cried for it. Great heaving sobs that seemed to crack her chest and bruise her heart, but when it was over, she was dry inside. At last.
She looked up to the pale blue sky. She felt her father beside her, a warm presence in all that cold air.
“Angie!”
She wiped her eyes.
Mira was running across the street, her long skirt flapping against her legs. She was out of breath by the time she reached the park. “Are you okay?”
It was surprisingly easy to smile. “You know what? I am.”
“No kidding?”
“No kidding.”
Mira sat down beside her. They kicked their feet in the sand, and the merry-go-round started to turn.
Angie leaned back and stared up at the sky. She was moving again.
Lauren spent all of the next day gathering her courage. It was dark by the time she reached Mountainaire. The gate was closed and the guardhouse looked deserted. A man in a tan uniform was stringing Christmas lights along the tall wrought-iron fence that protected the houses within.
She went to the guardhouse and peered through the window. An empty chair sat behind a desk cluttered with car magazines.
“Can I help you?”
It was the man with the lights. He looked irritated by her presence, or maybe it was simply the job.
“I’m here to see David Haynes.”
“He expecting you?”
“No.” Her voice was barely there. It wasn’t surprising. Last night’s party had been Thunderdome loud. She and David had had to shout at each other just to carry on a conversation. Later, after he’d gone home—just in case his folks showed up—she’d cried herself to sleep.
This wasn’t a secret she could keep. It was ripping her up inside.
In front of her, the gate jerked once, and then arced inward slowly.
Lauren nodded at the guard, though she couldn’t see him through the small window. In its square surface all she could see was her own reflection: a thin, frightened-looking girl with curly red hair and brown eyes that were already filling with tears.
By the time she reached David’s house—she’d gone the long way, walking up and down several unfamiliar streets—it had started to rain. Not much of a rain, really—more of a mist that beaded your cheeks and made it difficult to breathe.
Finally, she came to his house. The majestic Georgian home looked like a Hallmark Christmas card. The perfect holiday house with lights everywhere, fake candles in the windows, and evergreen boughs draped above the front door.
She pushed through the gate at the perimeter of the lot and walked up the patterned stone path to the front door. When she reached the door, a light automatically came on. She rang the bell. It played a symphonic melody; Bach, maybe.
Mr. Haynes answered the door, wearing a pair of expertly creased khaki pants and a shirt as white as fresh snow. His hair was as flawless as his tan. “Hello, Lauren. This is a surprise.”
“I know it’s late, sir. Almost seven-thirty. I should have called. I did call, actually. Or I tried to, but no one answered.”