“You’re leaving?”
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Nora, to join an international coalition of naturalists researching the impact of global warming. They need me. I need to do this. I can’t keep sitting by, watching what’s happening to this world and not doing a damned thing to understand it and to stop it. This is what I should have been doing all along, and I would have been, if I hadn’t put my career on hold to marry your dad.”
“On hold? So you expected it to be temporary?”
“No, my love. When I made the decision to settle down, it was for life. I didn’t want to travel around the world anymore. I wanted to be with Victor. I just never expected to wind up alone in this big old house.”
“You aren’t alone! You still have me.”
“And I will always love you more than anyone on this planet.”
“But the planet comes first,” Nora said flatly.
“Not first. Never first. Listen, I know I’m not the mother who brought you into this world, and that I couldn’t replace her, but in my heart, you’ll always be my daughter.”
“Then why are you leaving?”
“Because I have to accept this responsibility, just as you have yours that take you away from me.”
Nora didn’t really. Not then. Not yet. Her job had yet to blossom into a career, and her apartment didn’t feel like a home. With Teddy’s departure, she felt utterly alone in the world her stepmother had abandoned her to save.
Three weeks later, she met Keith. Six months after that, they were married.
He’d come from a large family and was eager to start one. He had old-fashioned values. The man should be the breadwinner, the woman should stay at home, just as his own mother had.
Nora was okay with that. She was okay with anything that promised the security, stability, predictability she craved. Okay, too, with preserving her initial instinct to keep her past a secret even from Keith. Sharing even a partial truth—telling him about Teddy, for instance—would open the door to questions, expectations, even an introduction when Teddy came to town.
It was much easier to let him think she’d been utterly alone in the world before he came along. In some ways, it was true.
Most of the time, she’s grateful for the traditional life they’ve built together. Yet just as Teddy could never replace the mother she’d lost, Keith and the girls can never replace the family she’d lost.
Nor the friend.
She looks up at the house, at the room that now belongs to Stacey. She imagines her troubled daughter peering out the window, believing a man was watching the house.
She turns away to gaze at the surrounding rooftops.
No one is there, and no one was there on Saturday night. Stacey imagined it, just as Nora had imagined Jacob’s face in the café window the day before.
She returns her attention to the task at hand, forcing her thoughts to the day ahead, burying the past along with the bulbs. Giving the fresh layer of soil a final pat with the back of the shovel, she sighs contentedly, envisioning the tender green shoots that will pop up in March, all around the butterfly bush . . .
All around the mulberry bush . . .
Spent, she returns the shovel to the shed, locks it, and looks around for Kato. There he is, snoozing beside the bramble border where he’d been nosing around earlier this morning, front paws outstretched.
“Come on, boy! Let’s go inside now.”
He barely stirs.
“Laziest dog ever,” she mutters. “Come on! Treat!”
The magic word does the trick once again. As he stands, she sees that he’d been holding something beneath his paws. He trots toward her, carrying his prize in his mouth.
“No!” she calls, anticipating a mutilated squirrel or bunny.
Then she realizes what it is, and the crisp breeze stirring dying leaves goes glacial as the dog drops a pair of binoculars at her feet.
Stacey
Stacey sits across from Lisa, hands outstretched, palms up, like the medium’s.
“That opens you up to energy and allows it to pass between us,” she’d said before they began.
“What kind of energy?”
“Whatever I get. I’ll share whatever pops into my mind. Some things might not make sense until later.”
So far, everything has, though Lisa seems to be offering insight and advice as opposed to the predictions and warnings Stacey had anticipated, and most of it is generalized.
“You can be introspective, but you’ll open up if the right person draws you out . . .”
“Sometimes you feel as if you’ve shared too much. It’s important not to second-guess yourself . . .”
“I see you in a classroom. School is important to you, and you do very well academically as long as you don’t let other issues distract you . . .”
Stacey listens to the rhythmic patter with her eyes closed and head bowed, half wishing the woman would say something to convince her of psychic powers, half hoping she won’t.
“There are days when you prefer books to people, but remember, you can learn from both . . .”
“You’re facing a fork in the path and you’ll have to make a big decision. Take your time. Weigh all your options. Don’t rush into anything . . .”
Stacey’s hands are starting to feel stiff, held in this unnatural position. Wondering how much Lisa is going to charge Lennon for this barrage of platitudes, she steals a glance at him, sitting next to her on the couch, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder. His eyes are closed, and he seems into the reading.
She bows her head again, trying to open herself to energy and absorb the medium’s hypnotic monologue.
“You aren’t comfortable with uncertainty . . .”
Yeah, well . . . who is?
“It takes a long time for someone to win your trust, but when they do, you’re fiercely loyal. Tread carefully. Not everyone close to you is as truthful as you believe . . .”
At that, Stacey’s eyes open.
“Someone in your life is hiding something . . .”
Stacey feels Lennon flinch.
Lisa’s head is tilted, as if she’s listening to a voice only she can hear. “You need to be careful. It could be dangerous.”
“What could be dangerous?” Stacey blurts, and the woman’s eyes fly open. “Sorry to interrupt, but . . . can you be more specific?”
“I’m giving you everything I’m getting.”
“But . . . I don’t think I get what you’re getting.”
“You need to be careful.”
“Don’t we all need to be careful? Shouldn’t you be more specific? This is so vague.” Her hands close into clenched fists. “I mean, I’m sitting here and you’re telling me that someone close to me is lying, and dangerous, and I think I deserve to know who he is and what you think he might do to me!”
Lisa just looks at her, wide-eyed. Stacey can’t tell if she’s dazed by the outburst, or listening for the silent voices to provide a response.
Lennon puts his arm around Stacey. “Lisa, sorry, but she’s been through some stuff, and I’m not surprised you’re picking up on it. That’s why we’re here.”