“Did he? Really?”
“He told his teachers it was his favorite vacation,” Janie said. The words hovered in her mind a moment, and she waited for the jealousy to follow. But she didn’t feel any jealousy, looking at that picture that seemed to contain the distillation of Noah’s joy. She felt something else flooding through her: gratitude. He had had a good life here, with Denise; for the first time, she realized that she couldn’t separate that from the loving, exuberant boy who had been born to her.
Denise gently took the picture from her hands and placed it back on the bedside table.
“He used to cry and cry when we had to go home,” she mused. “‘When we going back there, Mama? When we going back?’ In the car all the way back. Drove us all plumb nuts.”
“I can imagine,” Janie said. “He gets very attached. He’s always been that way.” But what did always mean? When did always begin?
“We haven’t been there in years.” Denise’s eyes clouded. “Maybe…”
The idea shimmered there in the room with them, a mirage of a lake with a blond boy jumping into it. Janie averted her eyes from the child in the photo; it was too much to contemplate. The fantasy faded before either one of them had dared to name it.
“You seem pretty calm about all this stuff,” Janie said.
“Calm.” Denise chuckled. “Well. We don’t know each other, do we?”
“No. We don’t.”
There was a burst of laughter in the living room.
“I guess I should go back in there,” Denise said. “There’s a lot of people in my house. And they are having too much fun. This is a funeral, after all.” The smile holding up the edges of her lips seemed fixed there by sheer will. She smoothed her hair back toward its bun, though nothing had gone astray.
“Okay. But— Just one more thing…”
The woman stood there, waiting. Janie felt all her questions bubbling up within her; she couldn’t hold them back any longer. “What if Noah doesn’t get over this? What if he wants to be here all the time, just like he wanted to be at the lake?”
Denise pressed her lips together. “Your son will be all right. His mama loves him like crazy.”
“Mommy-Mom,” she said.
“What?”
“I’m Mommy-Mom. You were Mama. That’s what he called you.” Denise frowned at her warily. I shouldn’t have said that, Janie thought. But it was too late now. “And what about your son?” she said.
“Charlie will be all right, too,” Denise said, but she didn’t sound certain. She sounded like she wanted to get out of there.
“I meant your other son.” It wasn’t the right way to say it; she didn’t know if there was a right way. What do you think of it all? is what she wanted to say. What does it mean?
It was as if Janie had stepped on a broken toe. Denise’s eyes flared. “Tommy’s gone.”
“I know. I know. But—”
“No.”
“But, Noah—”
“Is someone else,” she said fiercely. Her eyes shone. “Your son.”
“Yes. Yes, he is, but … but you yourself saw, didn’t you see, you said you did, that his memories—seemed real. They were real. Weren’t they? And the bones were—” There was no way to articulate what she wanted to say. She shook her head.
Denise stood wincing in the sunlight that sliced across her face.
“So—” Janie continued miserably—she couldn’t stop now. “Is it some comfort? Does it help?”
Denise said nothing. She was standing in a ray of sunlight filled with whirling dust. She seemed both transfixed and utterly at sea and Janie was suddenly ashamed of herself for asking.
“I don’t know,” Denise said slowly.
“It’s just that … you seem like you know something.”
“Really?” Denise started laughing. “’Cause I was kind of hoping you did.”
And then they were both laughing—the kind of hard, helpless laughter that made Janie’s stomach ache, cracking up at this joke the universe had played on both of them. The moment lasted longer than Janie had thought possible, until finally they both stepped back, gasping. Denise had tears running down the corners of her eyes and she ran her fingers over her cheeks.
“Oh, my. They’ll think I’ve been sobbing my eyes out in here,” she said. The words fell like a shadow across the room.
“I won’t tell them.”
“Better not.”
They glanced at each other. They were connected and yet they were each on their own with this.
“I guess I better get going,” Janie said reluctantly. “Before Noah eats all the brownies.”
Denise wiped her eyes with a tissue. “Ah, let him enjoy himself.”
“You’ve forgotten what a four-year-old on a sugar rush is like. They turn into tiny maniacs.”