She was about to ask Rhoda what she meant when the crowd let out a collective whoop, and they looked up, startled. The moon had appeared in full above the canopy of branches. Randi came spinning toward them, pulling them to their feet. All around, people were laughing and embracing as if something wonderful had occurred—which, Izzy supposed, it had.
The dancers began to widen their circle around the fire, and she closed her eyes and joined in, letting go of her questions, her worries, her doubts. She’d almost forgotten how good it felt to simply allow herself to be pulled along.
20
If you want to know why I’m resigning, ask my husband. Maybe he can explain it to us both.
—One of several unfinished and unsent letters, dated over a two-year period, from Kristin Kirkland to her supervisor, found in the trash folder of her office computer
Had the woman arrived even a day earlier, Clara never would have answered the door. She had to admit Pam hadn’t been quite as off base as she’d thought; the attention was relentless. At the grocery store, she’d been accosted in the dairy aisle by a fellow shopper who seemed out for Paul’s blood, and then lectured by her cashier, who was quick to tsk “the parents who are supposed to be responsible for that Hallie girl.” At the library, she’d grown sure she wasn’t imagining the curious stares, and especially not the accusatory ones. At Benny’s office, his appointment calendar filled with “free initial consultations” that turned out to have little to do with accounting. Some people were just being nosy; others wanted the Tiffins’ take on how concerned they should be about Kristin; and a shameless few were stringers from Dayton media.
The weight on Benny bothered her most. Clara knew it was her fault just as sure as she knew that no amount of perfectly layered lasagna could make it up to her husband. By last night, she’d given up and canceled on Randi and Rhoda for the Harvest Moon Celebration, much as she’d have welcomed the friendlier company. She’d filled them in as briefly as possible on what had really happened with the Gazette, and the subsequent visit with Paul—leaving out the bit about the book cover—and was relieved when their response was only sympathy, not judgment. Maybe if she stayed out of sight for a while, the rest of Yellow Springs would put her out of mind.
When morning came and Benny left to put in some Saturday hours to catch up on the real work he’d been kept from, she answered the knock at the door without thinking, a reflex, and froze when she saw a stranger standing there, holding The Color-Blind Gazette.
“Please,” Clara pleaded. “Leave us alone.” She had the door halfway shut when the woman put out a hand to stop it.
“I’m Kristin’s sister,” the woman said simply. “Rebecca.”
Clara hesitated. What tactics might the media try to get her to talk? But then she caught sight of the two children at the end of the porch, kneeling to examine Thomas’s dump truck with a reverence common to young boys coming upon construction equipment.
“Sorry,” the woman said. “My husband is away for the weekend, and I work during the week, and … well, I had to bring them.” Clara looked her over. Rebecca’s shoulder-length hair was lighter than Kristin’s, but it had a familiar unruly curl, and she held her petite stature in the same delicate way Kristin did. She was dressed simply but stylishly in a fitted corduroy blazer with a gauzy infinity scarf looped around her neck.
“I probably shouldn’t have come,” Rebecca continued nervously, and Clara realized she was meant to have responded by now. “My husband didn’t think I should—‘If she didn’t want you in her life before, she doesn’t want you there now,’ he said. But…” She held up the paper. “Please, I’ve driven an hour, through construction. Can we talk?”
Clara looked over at the boys again. Thomas would be glad to see them, having lost his playmates in phases these past weeks. The twins gone. The preschool on hiatus. He hadn’t even had his usual entertainment in Hallie. Natalie had gotten permission to bring her daughter along to her afternoon classes until this thing with the paper blew over, so Hallie was taking the school bus directly to Antioch now. Clara had received a terse voice mail to that effect, and she had no idea whether they’d eventually revert to their old routine. Even through the recording, it was clear Natalie’s anger toward Clara, whether misplaced or not, hadn’t faded.
Rebecca’s boys were standing and staring at her now, and she smiled. “If you like trucks, you’re in luck,” she told them. “Would you like to see what else my son, Thomas, has inside?” They ran to duck under their mother’s arms and nodded up at Clara, wide-eyed. Rebecca placed a gentle hand on the head of the taller boy. “This is Shawn,” she said. “He’s seven. And Jeff. He’s six.”
“Nice to meet you, Shawn who’s seven and Jeff who’s six,” Clara said, opening the door wide for them to file inside. She led them to the family room, where Thomas and Maddie were constructing a tower of oversize Legos. It was only a matter of time before Maddie would knock it down and Thomas would burst into tears, but still, she loved these rare moments when they focused on something together, and hated that she was about to break the spell.
The boys instantly teamed up on plans for a Lego fort while Maddie gummed a block, warily eyeing their guests. “Love that name, Maddie,” Rebecca said. “Short for Madison?”
“Madeline.”
“Even prettier.”
Clara nodded toward the counter stools dividing the room from the kitchen. “Tea? Coffee?”
“Coffee would be great.”
“I don’t mean for this to hurt your feelings,” Clara said, moving to reheat the pot from earlier that morning, “but I had no idea Kristin had a sister, until that last night I saw her.”
“Oh? And what did she say then?”
Clara turned her back and stood on tiptoe to retrieve her best mugs, glad Rebecca couldn’t see her face. She said you were ‘shit,’ actually. Mind telling me why? Seems she could have used a sister around. “Just that she had one,” she said, careful to keep her voice even.
Clara plunked cream and sugar onto the counter as she stole a glance at the kids. Seeing those little heads of curly hair bent so intently over the blocks next to her own blondies tugged at her heart. From this angle Thomas and Maddie might have been playing with Abby and Aaron.
When Rebecca finally spoke, her voice was hesitant, shaky. “When Kristin was widowed, I felt so awful for her. Too awful. I was almost afraid of her grief, like it might be contagious.” She peered at Clara through eyes thick with years-old guilt. “I always had this irrational fear of something like that happening—that one day someone I loved would just never come home. As a teenager, I’d be babysitting Kristin—well, not really babysitting, but you know, I’m two years older, I was responsible—and thinking, What if Mom is in some horrible car wreck on the way home? Or, What if she gets mugged in an alley like Batman’s mom?” She laughed stiffly. “I even remember this one time, when my husband and I hadn’t been dating all that long, that he ran out for condoms. It was a short drive to the gas station, but he was gone for what seemed like forever. And as the minutes ticked by I was thinking, The cops are going to show up to inform his next of kin and find this girl who barely knows him naked in his bed!”
She dropped her head into her hands. “That was wildly inappropriate. I have no idea why I’m off on this tangent. I’m sorry. I’m nervous for some reason.”
Clara smiled and set a cup of coffee in front of her. “What took so long?”
“What?”
“To get the condoms.”
“Oh!” Rebecca laughed again. “The gas station was out. I’d have come back empty-handed, but he wanted the goods bad enough to go to the drugstore.”
“Ah, youth,” Clara said, still smiling.