Now? She did none of those things. These days she was a funereal dirge, played one-handed on an out-of-tune organ.
When my sixty seconds were up, I reversed out of our driveway and headed for work.
I had no clue how to help my mother heal. I’d made appointments for her with a therapist, but she refused to go. So I took over the grocery shopping. And the cooking. So long as a meal appeared on our family table each night, my father could pretend that we weren’t an entirely dysfunctional family. And since my mother was never going to rise to the occasion, the shopping and dinner making had become my problem.
Nobody wanted my dad in a snit, that was for damned sure. That would solve nothing. He was a bully and didn’t seem to care that my mother never improved. The situation at home was bad, but I had a job that I liked, and I was six weeks away from finishing my college degree.
On autopilot, I headed through our neighborhood, toward the state highway linking my smaller town with Montpelier. Since I was a bit late for work already, I didn’t have time to stop at the new bakery for a latte.
Driving over the speed limit was out of the question. When your father was the police chief, it was bad form to violate any traffic laws. Not that I minded a little rule breaking, it’s just that it caused me too much grief later. The deputies enjoyed ratting me out to Daddy.
These were my thoughts as I put on my brakes for the stop sign at Harvey and Grove streets. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement just inside the open bay doors at the Nickel Auto Body Shop.
I looked. (Of course I looked. Anyone would.) But I didn’t really expect to see him there, standing beside a beat-up Dodge that was up on the lift. And even when my throat seized up around the single, shocking word that flew to my lips—Jude—I still didn’t truly believe it.
Because he couldn’t possibly be standing there, right inside the garage, running a calm hand along the tattered bumper of an ugly car. But that arm stretching up to the car—I knew that arm. There was a bramble of roses tattooed on the bicep. And that hand had touched my body everywhere.
Forgetting myself, I just sat there, one foot planted squarely on the brake, staring at what could only be a Jude mirage. A few of the details weren’t right. Jude’s hair would never be that lightened, sun-kissed color. And he wouldn’t be caught dead in that flannel shirt. We used to mock the standard Vermont uniform. Mirage-Jude was too big, too, with a broad chest and visible muscles on his back when he moved his arm. My Jude had always been lean, and when he’d left my life he’d been downright skinny.
At the time, I hadn’t wanted to understand why.
Most crucially, Jude couldn’t possibly be standing twenty feet away from me on an ordinary November morning, right in the center of Colebury, inspecting a heap of a car. If he were actually here, I’d know it. I’d feel it deep inside, the way the bass line of a good song vibrates through your chest.
Behind me, a car tapped its horn, and I barely registered the sound. I was still taking in the shine of his too-light hair and the muscled line of his forearm. The horn tap turned into a full-blown blast, which finally brought me out of my dream state. Vermonters never honked, which could only mean that I’d been staring at Jude for quite some time. With a hasty glance in either direction, I let up on the brake and gunned the accelerator.
Somehow, I arrived at work ten minutes later, which was miraculous since I didn’t remember any of the drive. But there I was, shutting off the engine in a parking space behind the hospital. I jerked the keys from the ignition and tossed them into my bag, but I didn’t get out of the car yet.
Deep breaths, I coached myself. Gripping the steering wheel, I put the side of my face against its cool center. My heart shimmied along at a disco rhythm while I tried to get over my shock. I knew Jude was out of prison. We’d been notified when he was released. But that was six months ago. I’d been on edge for a few weeks last spring, but he never turned up. After that, I forgot to worry about seeing him here in Colebury. My heart believed he had left Vermont just as thoroughly as he’d left my life.
My heart was a goddamned idiot, obviously.
A tap on the window startled me so badly that I spasmed upright.
“Sorry,” mouthed the man outside my car.
“Jesus and Mary, mother of God.” I fumbled for the door handle. “Denny, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “But you were slumped over, like someone having an aneurism. Like someone who needed the hug of life.”
“That’s for choking.” My tone was a little harsher than I meant it to be. Denny was a good guy, if awkward, and it wasn’t his fault that I was freaking out. I got out of my car and followed my coworker toward the building on shaky knees.
“Seriously, are you okay?” He held the hospital door open for me, and I took my first lungful of the institutional air that we breathed all day.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just having a moment.”