He arrived at the circle. The benches were bare.
Joe emerged from the aspen grove. He saw no sign of Ivy. The woman and her dog were gone. Joe sensed another absence. The patch of red. The Jeep. He’d left the keys on the floor.
Joe stomped down Highway 82 toward town. It had begun to rain. The tops of the mountains were sugar-dusted with snow.
The jolly convoy of Jeeps cruised by on their way back from the memorial. One skidded to a stop. It was Eleanor.
“That was the last time,” Joe said. “Do you hear me? I’m done with her.”
They returned to the Limelight Hotel. Ivy’s room was empty, her bags gone. Eleanor received a call. The missing Jeep had turned up at the Aspen airport, parked in a fire lane, engine running.
A few months before the memorial, Eleanor and Joe had decided it was time for Eleanor to go off the pill. The morning of the service, on the way to Wagner Park, sudden nausea had her retching into a wine barrel spilling with the twisted brown of last year’s petunias. She wrote it off as the thin air.
The next day, on her way back to Seattle, in the women’s room at the Denver airport, Eleanor coughed up bile.
“Are you all right?” Joe asked when she emerged.
“Fine,” Eleanor said. “Just a long line.”
Joe wasn’t continuing to Seattle with his wife but flying from Denver to Nairobi. He was already a day late to meet two other doctors for pro bono surgeries. He’d been raising money and making arrangements for the past year.
If Joe thought Eleanor might be pregnant, she knew he’d cancel his trip. She kissed him good-bye at his gate and hoped to have good news to spring on him when he returned.
Back in Seattle, the good news came in the form of a fierce underwater heartbeat and an ultrasound printed on delicate thermal paper. The baby would arrive around Thanksgiving. But, as Dr. Koo had said, Eleanor was forty and just eight weeks into her first pregnancy. “Best not get ahead of ourselves.”
On her way out of the doctor’s office, Eleanor received a call from Ivy.
“It’s over,” Ivy said. “I’m leaving him.”
For the next week, whenever Ivy could break free from Bucky—at the market, at the playground, in her parked car while she pretended to be at the gym—she’d share stories of his tempestuous jealousy and histrionics.
It wasn’t the end of Bucky that had Eleanor living in Technicolor. It was being a sister again. There was no relief deeper than being loved by the person who’d known you the longest. Eleanor’s heart giggled with mad abundance: so much to share, so much goodwill, so many notes to compare, so many ways to help and be helped. She went out into the world, everything a performance for her coconspirator, Ivy. It was Eleanor at her vibrant best.
“Oh, Eleanor,” Ivy sighed while Bucky was off getting takeout. “I lost myself and threw you out in the confusion. How can you not hate me?”
“All that matters is we’re back.”
They both recognized that Bucky would never let Ivy just walk away. So the sisters hatched a plan. While Bucky was receiving an honor from the city for hiring good-behavior prisoners to pull the Khaos float, Ivy would whisk John-Tyler to the airport. Eleanor had two plane tickets paid for and waiting. She’d found a divorce lawyer. She’d put down first and last month’s rent on a town house in West Seattle. Ivy could work in Joe’s office.
Ivy found it hard to believe Joe would approve. “He can’t be much of a fan after what I did to him in Aspen.”
“Joe is totally on board,” Eleanor said.
Joe wasn’t on board. Joe was in Africa without phone or Internet.
It was madness, the collision course Eleanor had set in motion. Her imagination became a battleground of incoming fire from Ivy and Joe.
Ivy: But Eleanor, without a good lawyer I’ll lose custody of my son!
Joe: Me bankrolling a custody battle between Ivy and Bucky, are you kidding?
Ivy: Don’t you have your own money from Looper Wash?
Joe: When I make money, it’s “our” money, but when you make money, it’s “your” money?
Ivy: Joe has never understood what you and I are to each other.
Joe: I have six siblings. And no drama. It’s called boundaries.
Ivy: I promise to pay you back when I win my settlement.
Joe: We both know Bucky will never give your sister a dime.
Ivy: I can work it off by being your nanny.
Joe: An insane child helping us with the baby? I don’t think so.
Ivy: What matters is we beat this guy.
Joe: Nobody beats the Troubled Troubadour.
And then horns would honk and Eleanor would snap to. She’d been sitting at a green light.
Ivy’s plane landed at noon. Eleanor bought a car seat and decorated the back of an envelope. Welcome to Seattle, Ivy and J.T.! She stood in the baggage claim among the limo drivers and watched.
Ivy emerged wearing a sleeveless shift, her hair blond again.
“Yay!” said Eleanor.