“Sure,” Jude said. For the next hour, she concentrated on moving through the multicolored squares. She kept up a steady stream of conversation, and by the second game Grace had started to talk to her.
But she knew Lexi was right: Grace was not a happy little girl. Most of her talk was directed to the small mirror on her wrist, her imaginary friend. And why did children create imaginary playmates? You didn’t need to be a shrink to answer that question. It was because they felt too alone and had no real friends.
Jude was watching Grace so closely she didn’t hear the front door open.
Zach walked into the cabin, tossing his heavy backpack onto the coffee table.
“Daddy!” Grace’s face lit up as she ran into Zach’s arms. He scooped her up and kissed her all over her face, until she giggled and told him to stop.
Miles came in behind him, smiling.
Jude stared at the two of them—the husband she’d loved for so long and practically abandoned and the boy she’d nurtured like a rare flower for so much of his life and then turned away from. She saw the marks that grief had left on their skin, in their eyes, even in their posture, and she knew the part she had played in all of this. She had been the mud that kept them mired in grief. On their own, they might have healed.
You used to be the best mother in the world.
Jude stood up. “I need to talk to you two.”
Zach frowned. “Gracie, why don’t you get your coloring book and crayons? I love watching you color.”
“Okay, Daddy.” She slid out of his arms and scampered off.
Jude clasped her hands together. She had their full attention now, but she was afraid to say the words out loud. “Lexi came to see me today.”
Zach went very still. “What did she want?”
Jude looked at her son. He was a man; young, but a man, and she was so proud of him she could hardly bear it. When in the last few years had she told him that? “She asked me to supervise her visits with Grace. She can’t afford the court-ordered social worker.”
“What did you say?” Miles asked, moving to stand by his son.
“She can’t get to know … her daughter unless I agree,” Jude said, stalling now.
“What did you say?” Zach asked the question again.
Jude felt the rapid beating of her heart. “I’m scared,” she said softly. It was perhaps the most vulnerable she’d felt in years. She was out of control and uncertain and afraid. Usually she hid those emotions away from Zach and Miles, boxed them up; now she didn’t have that kind of strength.
She moved toward Zach, who had never been afraid when his sister was alive, and never lonely, but now she saw both of those emotions in his eyes. “I don’t want to do it,” Jude said, “but I will.”
“You will?” Zach said quietly.
“For Grace and Mia,” Jude said, gazing up at her son. “And for you.”
Twenty-five
Something weird was happening.
Grace and Ariel were on the sofa, curled up in Grace’s favorite fuzzy yellow blanket. The cabin lights were low and it was dark outside, so she couldn’t really see her wrist mirror, but she knew Ariel was there because she was humming. Ariel loved to hum.
Grace couldn’t tell time, but she knew it was late. She never got to stay up this long after dinner, and the movie on the TV had all kinds of bad words in it, and no one cared that she was hearing it. Or that she saw some guy shoot a bad guy in the head.
No one was paying attention to Grace at all. Daddy and Nana and Papa had been whispering together all night. They’d made a bunch of phone calls and looked at Daddy’s school calendar about twenty times. Grace didn’t know what they were talking about, but Nana kept snapping at Papa, saying things like, I know what you think, Miles, and, What will I say to her? Maybe I’ve made a mistake …
Papa said it was too late for that because Lexi knows and the loud whispering had begun again.
“Who’s Lexi?” Grace asked, looking up from the sofa.