They all knew that Jude couldn’t look at Grace without feeling an overwhelming grief. Everything Grace did reminded Jude of her loss, and so she kept her distance from her granddaughter. It shamed Jude and embarrassed her, this weakness, but there was no way she could fix it. She’d tried. But in the past two years, she’d gotten better. She picked Grace up regularly from both kindergarten and the day care she went to after school. It was only on the worst of days, when Jude fell into that gray world, that she crawled into bed and forgot everything she had to do and everyone around her. Especially her granddaughter.
“I’m better now,” she said to Zach. “You can trust me.”
“Tomorrow is—”
“I know what tomorrow is,” Jude cut him off before he could say what they all already knew: tomorrow would be a bad day for all of them. “But you can trust me this time.”
*
It should have been raining. The landscape beyond her window should have been ominous and black, like ink spreading, with swollen charcoal skies and cobwebbed black leaves skidding across dirty sidewalks and crows gathered on telephone lines. A scene out of The Stand. Instead, the sixth anniversary of her daughter’s death dawned bright and sunny, with the kind of cornflower-blue sky that turned Seattle into the prettiest city in the world. The Sound sparkled; Mount Rainier came out to play, its vivid white peak resplendent over the city’s shoulder.
Still, Jude felt cold. Freezing. All around her, tourists walked through the Pike Place Market, dressed in shorts and Tshirts, carrying cameras and eating food off sticks or out of greasy white bags. Long-haired musicians staked out the primo street corner locations, hammering away at their accordions or guitars or bongo drums. One even had a piano.
Jude wrapped the heavy cashmere scarf around her neck and resettled the purse on her shoulder. At the end of the market, a triangular patch of grass provided a resting spot for the homeless. A giant totem pole looked down on them.
She crossed the busy street and walked up a steep hill to a swizzle stick of a building that poked high into the clear blue sky.
“Ms. Farraday,” the doorman said, tipping his ridiculous hat at her.
Unable today to smile, she nodded and walked past him. Waiting for the elevator, she tapped her foot on the tile floor and bit her lip. She took off her scarf and put it back on. By the time she reached Dr. Bloom’s austere glass-walled office, she was so cold she expected to see her own breath.
“You can go in, Ms. Farraday,” the receptionist said at her entrance.
Jude couldn’t respond. She passed through the waiting area and went into Dr. Bloom’s elegantly decorated office. “Turn on the heat,” she said without preamble, collapsing onto the plush chair beside her.
“There’s a throw beside you,” her doctor said.
Jude reached down for the camel-colored mohair blanket and covered herself with it, shivering. “What?” she said, realizing the doctor was staring at her.
Dr. Harriet Bloom took a seat opposite Jude. She was as austere as her office—steel-gray hair, an angular face, and dark eyes that noticed everything. Today she was wearing a houndstooth sheath with black hose and fashionable black pumps.
When Jude had first folded under Miles’s relentless pressure to “get help” and “see someone,” she’d visited a string of psychiatrists and therapists and counselors. At first her sole criterion had been their ability to dispense prescription drugs. In time, she’d weeded out the touchy-feely purveyors of hope and the idiots who told her boldly that someday she would smile again. The minute someone told her that time healed all wounds, she got up and left.
By 2005, only Harriet Bloom remained—Harriet, who rarely smiled and whose demeanor hinted at a personal understanding of tragedy. And she could prescribe drugs.
“What?” Jude said again, shivering.
“We both know what day it is.”
Jude wanted to make a smart comeback, but she couldn’t. All she could do was nod.
“Did you sleep last night?”
She shook her head. “Miles held me, but I pushed him away.”
“You didn’t want comfort.”
“What good is it?”
“Are you going to do anything to mark the anniversary?”
The question made Jude angry, and anger was good, better than this free-falling despair. “Like send balloons up to her? Or sit by that granite stone in the grass where her body is? Or maybe I should invite guests over and celebrate her life … which is over.”
“Sometimes people find comfort in such things.”