“Camilla.” Her father’s voice was firm. “She said it made her feel nosy. Which you are now being.”
Oh, how Izzy had missed her father. If Izzy had yet to find her kindred spirit in this world, it was partly because no one could measure up to their born-in solidarity. He never dug into her personal life the way her mother did, nor was he purposefully aloof like so many of her friends’ dads. Rather, he’d taught her about life simply by showing it to her: striding through the woods, or floating downriver, or even huddled in a tent during a rainstorm. Penny had been a far less willing participant in these little demonstrations, and thus Izzy had doubled her own enthusiasm to compensate, and gladly.
“Now, Iz,” her mother was saying, “you’ve got to visit soon. Remember Samantha Greene from down the road? She bought the old Gingham Café, and it’s amazing what she’s done with the place. I stopped her just the other day to say…”
Izzy reveled in the normalcy of her mother’s running commentary. Now that the mimosa had taken the edge off her annoyance, she could appreciate that Penny and Josh had given her a reprieve from the tense morning she’d been anticipating. Though granted, this did nothing to make amends with her sister. Or Josh. A part of her had needed to get their next meeting out of the way, to override the taste left by the last one.
As she relaxed a bit more with every bite, she hardly even minded that her mother was now going on about the baby. Izzy’s niece or nephew, who would be half Penny, half Josh—combining in essence some of her own DNA with Josh’s. Not that she and Penny looked alike, though they did have the same almond shape to their eyes. If the baby had those eyes too, set in a face like Josh’s—
No. She couldn’t think that far ahead.
She wasn’t ready yet.
And then her mother was excusing herself to “powder her nose”—a too-polite expression she habitually used even at home—and her father’s eyes were on her, and they were not comfortable or familiar anymore. They were stern.
“Isabel.” He leaned forward. “Your mother seems content to fret happily away in her own oblivious world, so I’m going to make this quick.”
She pulled her cardigan around her futilely as the cold wave of his words sent goose bumps racing across her skin.
“Whatever it is between you and your sister—and Josh—the triangle of you, or the line of you, or whatever shape it is, it’s going to stop.”
Her mouth went dry. “I don’t know what you mean…”
“You might well not. You might not know how to put your finger on what’s gone wrong, but it’s still up to you to fix it. Because I’ll tell you this: Penny can’t take responsibility for anything she didn’t knowingly do now that it’s too late to undo it. Can she?”
Izzy sat stricken. To have her father call her out this way on anything was unprecedented. To have him call her out this way on this particular thing was unthinkable. Worse, even, than Josh showing up at her door. She managed what she thought might be a shake of her head.
“She’s hurting, and I think Josh is too, though I don’t care so much about that. He might have it coming, for all I know. And I don’t want to know,” he added quickly, his hand in the air, his head shaking vehemently. “But Penny does not have it coming. And I’m not going to see her hurt. Not anymore, and especially not now.”
A noise came from inside, and they both turned to look at the door, which remained closed. “I love you like none other, Iz. I’m imploring you—out of your mother’s earshot—to find a way to fix it. It’s the best thing for everyone, most of all you.”
Her eyes filled with tears. No one had ever asked how she felt about Penny and Josh getting together, though she, not Penny, had been the one dragging him to family outings for years. She wouldn’t have told them if they’d asked, but she’d always been a bit hurt that they hadn’t.
Now it seemed that perhaps her father had guessed, at some of it, anyway. And this would be the beginning and the end of the discussion. A swift shutting down of feelings she had no right to give voice to and yet wanted to scream at being denied.
He tapped the top of her hand with a fingertip. “I don’t want to see you hurting either. And that’s why I know we won’t have to speak of this again.”
Her mother reappeared, grinning na?vely, just as her father moved to help himself to another croissant from the basket she’d so carefully warmed earlier. She didn’t need to touch it to know that it had gone cold.
25
Here’s what I know about waiting: It starts as agony, as anxiety. When will the proverbial second shoe drop? It keeps you up nights. But then it gets easier. Because outside of the worry churning in your brain, life is happening. You can’t only wait. So the waiting fades to the back burner, and you can leave it there, moving it to the front occasionally for a stir and then putting it back where you hope it belongs.
Until one day, when something wakes you up from your perch at the stove, and you realize that the wait won’t be much longer. The drop is no longer a distant possibility, it’s a likely outcome. And that’s when you face the facts you’ve been avoiding: That even at the lowest setting, the burners are too hot to stay on forever. You’ll either slowly scorch, or burst into flames—and either way, it won’t be pretty.
That’s when you know deep down that you have to run.
26
Your dog seems stressed. Have you gotten insights from an animal communicator?
—Question called out in the glen from a fellow hiker, at which Clara, exhausted from the baby pack on her back and her own many stresses, laughed too hard before realizing it was serious
Clara didn’t need to see the other mother’s face to feel her fear. She sprang into action, leaving Maddie half unstrapped from the stroller—because Maddie, at least, was a mere foot or two off the ground. This child, not much older, had scrambled out of reach at the top of the playground’s highest ladder before his mother had registered the danger—the perilous open sides of the small rectangular platform—and was headed in determined caveman steps toward the alluring sliding board tunnel at the far end.
“Wait for Mommy! Wait for Mommy!” the woman was crying, lunging to grab one of his limbs, coming up empty, and Clara watched her body jerk in indecision between running along the ground beneath the edge and climbing up after him. She herself had long cursed whatever clueless engineer had designed this breed of playground. The fireman’s pole, rope ladder, and stepping pads were great fun for older kids, but the vertical drops surrounding them were a nightmare for any parent trying to keep hold of one of the younger, eager-to-follow set.
“Need a hand?” Clara called, and without waiting for an answer took off running toward the opposite end of the platform, arms outstretched as if she were a seasoned pro at catching free-falling children, something she had no idea if she could actually do.
The boy was mere inches from the edge now, oblivious of the danger. Catching sight of the fireman’s pole, he reached out a curious hand, tottering.
My God. She wasn’t going to make it in time. He was really going to fall.
Clara lunged. There was a clank, a collision of bone on metal, an underwater popping in her ears, a spear of pain. She stumbled back, her hands flying to her forehead, a moan escaping her clenched jaw.
“Holy hell, are you okay?”
Clara blinked in confusion, registering the horizontal monkey bar she hadn’t seen, perfect for practicing chin-ups, or hanging upside down from, or head-butting at full speed.
With some effort, she lifted her gaze upward—and into the eyes of Detective Marks, whose arms were now wrapped tightly around the child, safe on the platform. And who looked curiously unsurprised to see that it was Clara who’d just rattled the structure to its core.