She sat cross-legged on the floor and stroked Bird. Instead of lying down like most dogs and exposing his stomach, Bird remained on his haunches, his front legs pressed primly together. “Don’t worry, you’ll be back home before you know it.” Bird sniffed the air and sneezed.
Rose became exhausted just thinking about relocating to Maddy’s apartment, which was as chaotic as Griff’s was minimal, with crayons and Barbies scattered everywhere. Never mind the strain of putting on a brave face in front of Maddy and her family each day. And, of course, she had to worry about Bird’s behavior, too. Hopefully, he wouldn’t nip at the kids.
She wished she had a real home to go to. A place in Connecticut maybe, on a tree-lined street where her parents would greet her with a hug and a homemade meal; then she’d go up to her room, which was just as it was when she’d left. Maybe she’d meet their handsome landscaper and fall in love, and realize that small-town life was for her. After several wacky misunderstandings, they’d fall into each other’s arms and marry in the backyard.
Instead, her mother had left their Upper West Side brownstone one day while Rose was in first grade, never to return home again. Her father said that she’d gone on a long trip. By the time Rose knew to ask for details, she’d gotten used to their quiet existence together, cooking a simple dinner, reading before lights-out. Later, in high school, he informed her that her mother had passed away in Arizona somewhere, from a drug overdose. By then she was an apparition anyway, more theoretical than real, and Rose tucked the information away in the dark recesses of her mind.
Life with her father was filled with routine and order. She read Austen and the Bront?s over and over, and although she never admitted it to anyone, she used to wish she’d been a lady’s maid in the 1800s. Rose enjoyed Saturday mornings when she gave their apartment a good cleaning, knowing that she had full control over the five small rooms, while the rest of the world loomed so large and noisy outside. If she were a maid, she’d know what was going to happen in five years, or ten, the same thing, day after day. Lighting coal fires, cleaning gowns, going to bed exhausted and then doing it over again. All oddly comforting. Funny how far that was from the life she would have had with Griff, one half of a power couple taking Manhattan by storm.
On Saturday nights, Rose and her father went out for dinner at the local diner, where she ordered the open-faced turkey sandwich, which came with mashed potatoes and gravy and a big helping of cranberry sauce, and her father would get a Reuben. On a napkin, he tested her in algebra, making silly faces out of the symbols. And when she moved out, off to college and then to a shared apartment with friends in Chelsea, they still met for dinner at least once a week. Until the day the school called her, worried about his dazed manner during a sophomore chemistry class where a student had almost been burned during an experiment. Then tests, and the sad knowledge that he would soon lose every last memory. He apologized to Rose, over and over, sorry to be a burden on her. She held his hand and promised to take care of him. And she would.
Unfortunately, as the synapses in his mind frayed, he spent most of his savings, buying things he didn’t need online and sending money to strangers. She moved him to the assisted-living community and sold their apartment at the bottom of the market, paying off his debts with the bulk of it. When Griff came into her life, he brought a renewed sense of hope with him. Everything always turned out fine for Griff, so why not let some of his optimism and confidence rub off on her as well?
Her head began to ache and a familiar aura shimmered wherever she looked. Outside, a flash of lightning was followed by a giant clap of thunder that made Bird jump and run into her lap, shaking. Sometimes when the barometer changed suddenly, the pressure in her head would grow until the inevitable migraine took her out of commission for the next twenty-four hours.
If she didn’t do something soon, get somewhere, she’d be stranded with a dog and four suitcases in the pouring rain, unable to focus or even speak without throwing up.
She scrambled to her feet and grabbed two suitcases and the leash and stumbled to the elevator. But instead of pressing the lobby or even the taxi button, she hit four. Stella’s apartment was quiet, the only sound the hum of the refrigerator. Miss McLaughlin’s key was on the counter and Rose snatched it up. For the first time she noticed a series of photographs that lined the wall between the bedroom and living room. All in black and white, showing Stella in different clothes, different poses. In one, she stood in a shirred strapless bathing suit and cocked one hip toward the camera, her hair falling in shiny waves to her shoulders. Stella had been a beautiful woman.
Outside Miss McLaughlin’s apartment, Rose fumbled with the lock, worried that someone would open up their door and demand to know what she was doing. She let the dog inside, placed the two suitcases in the narrow foyer, then headed back upstairs. She left the key to Griff’s apartment next to the mail that had accumulated, then returned to Miss McLaughlin’s with the last of the suitcases.
The apartment was the same layout as Stella’s, but faced north and seemed much smaller. The living room held a mid-century, angular couch, one chair, and a simple walnut coffee table. An old record player sat on a small writing desk, and a bookcase lined one wall. Bird lapped up the last of the water in his bowl in the hallway and curled up on one corner of the sofa, clearly at home.
What was she thinking? She wasn’t. The migraine was getting worse, growing steadily on the right side of her head, just behind her eye. Miss McLaughlin wasn’t expected back for two and a half weeks. If she went to Stella’s and the woman returned home from the hospital, she’d have to explain, and she didn’t want to explain anything at the moment. She just needed a day or two to collect herself, figure out a plan.
Squinting through the throbbing in her head, she filled a glass with water and took a couple of sips, then lay down on the sofa with Bird snoring softly at her feet. As the room whirled around her, she gave in to the pain, thankful for a place where she could suffer in silence.
Four suitcases and a dog that wasn’t even hers. It was all she had left.
CHAPTER TEN
New York City, 1952
Darby’s heart soared when she received the envelope with Mother’s familiar, elegant handwriting. She’d stifled memories of home ever since she’d arrived, afraid to think too much about her room, her beloved old house, and the screened-in patio where she’d sat with her dogs and read. Mother wrote with her usual reserve, making no mention of Mr. Saunders, and encouraged Darby to work hard and do well. However, at the bottom she’d drawn a detailed picture of the two dogs lolling in the grass. Darby knew this was Mother’s way of saying she was missed, and she carefully taped the letter on the wall above her small desk.
She’d apply herself and make Mother very proud, and go home for Christmas break with perfect marks. With a sigh, she returned to her homework for her secretarial accounting class, a soporific mess of figures and columns. Her favorite class so far, and the one in which her scores were consistently above average, was typing. While she typed, she remembered how Stick’s fingers had flown along the keyboard, as if they were independent of the rest of his body. He wasn’t thinking about the individual notes but the whole phrase. And Darby found when she looked at sentences, the whole thoughts, of the practice test, she made fewer mistakes than when she focused on the individual letters. Her fingers were becoming more nimble.
A knock at the door broke her concentration. Esme poked her head in, then quickly came in and closed the door behind her.
“I don’t have much time. Eustis is after me. How about we head downtown again?”
Darby hadn’t seen Esme much the past week, and part of her had been relieved. She proved to be a strong distraction, one that Mother would definitely not condone.