Leaving Haven (37 page)

Georgia looked up. “I don't want to raise a baby who is going to keep Alice Kinnaird in my life.”

“Alice doesn't want to be involved with the baby.”

“How do you know that?”

“You think Duncan would agree to raise him after all this? You think she'd want to raise him alone?” John paused. “If you really don't want him, then we have to consider putting him up for adoption. Because I don't think
I
can raise him alone.”

The baby in her arms shifted in his sleep. Instinctively, Georgia tightened her hold. At that moment Polly appeared in the doorway, with the diaper bag in one hand and a duffel bag in the other.

“There are enough diapers and wipes here for a few days,” Polly said. “His bottom is a little red, but just use that A&D ointment on him when you change him. His clothes are in the duffel bag. There are some receiving blankets in there, too, if he needs to be swaddled, and a couple of clean pacifiers.”

John looked as though she had just given him the code to launch the nuclear missiles that would blow up the world, and now expected him to go do it. Chessy walked onto the porch behind Polly, carrying Haven's car seat and the bundled-up Portacrib. She brushed past John, pushed open the screen door with her foot, and placed the baby gear on the ground next to John's car. Polly followed her and put the baby's bags down next to the car, too.

John looked at Georgia with the gaze she remembered from all those years ago, with those eyes so dark brown they were almost black, with that intensity that made you feel like you were the only person in the room, the only person in the universe.

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

26

Alice

June 26, 2012

A
lice didn't sleep well because the one-room cabin she had rented for the night smelled so musty she couldn't stand it. At one point, tossing and turning at 2:00
A
.
M
., she considered going out to find a twenty-four-hour store so she could purchase a sponge and a bottle of Pine-Sol, but the idea of driving through the blackness of an Adirondack night with no idea where she was going kept her in bed. She wore her running leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt so her skin had as little contact as possible with the sheets, which were also of dubious cleanliness. The thought of bedbugs crossed her mind, too, but she decided that in the big picture of her life right now, bedbugs were a minor concern.

She had crossed the Blue Line into the Adirondack Park around nine, shortly after dark. She had no idea where Duncan and Wren were staying in Lake Placid, and she didn't think she could drive an additional two hours on black and unfamiliar roads. When she hit Opal Lake she recognized the exit for Lake Con, where she had spent so many summers with the Bings, and remembered Dun Roamin', the motel just off the exit.

Every “room” at the motel was an individual cabin, with its own tiny porch and parking space. Alice's cabin had knotty pine flooring and walls and even a knotty pine ceiling, and the whole place made Alice feel claustrophobic for the first time in her life, as though she were in some kind of knotty pine coffin. The cabin was barely big enough to contain a double bed, a pine dresser, and a straight-back wooden chair.

After several more hours of wakefulness, listening to some small creature rustle inside the wall behind the knotty pine paneling near her head, she threw back the covers and got up and brushed her teeth. A hot shower seemed like her best hope for the day, but when she pulled back the shower curtain she found something vaguely green coating the tiles, and decided to skip the shower. She splashed cold water on her face, and brushed her hair back into a ponytail. She changed into a clean sports bra, T-shirt, and hoodie and pulled on a fresh pair of running tights. When she stepped outside she was surprised at the cold nip of the air, surprised, too, by the sharp, sweet scent of balsam, by the quiet. She threw her suitcase into the backseat of her car and drove into town to see if she could find a diner or a service station open this early.

Alice had always liked the little town of Opal. Several old homes with mansard roofs and dormers and turrets lined the main street on the way into town, and the town itself was a mix of the practical, like the Grand Union and the Town Store (which sold everything from camping gear to original works of art), and the fanciful, like the Internet café that also sold antiques. The commercial area of town stretched for two or three blocks, ending at a small park at the far end with a fountain that changed colors at night, something that had delighted Wren and Liza when they were little. Beyond the park was a bandstand overlooking the long expanse of Opal Lake.

Alice realized that in the ten-plus years they had vacationed with the Bings here, they had never once gone out to breakfast. She drove slowly down the main stretch, looking for signs of life, and noticed lights on in a little restaurant with a blue-and-white awning and several cars and trucks parked out front. She pulled over and parked across the street in front of the twenty-four-hour Laundromat, which was empty. A dog barked from somewhere by the park. She zipped up her hoodie and walked over to the door of the restaurant, where she read:

B
REAKFAST
A
LL
D
AY
.
B
EST
H
OME
F
RIES
IN
THE
N
ORTH
C
OUNTRY
.
O
PEN
5:00
A
.
M
.
TO
10:00
P
.
M
.

With a sigh of relief Alice pulled open the door, and walked into warmth and the smell of coffee and fried potatoes. She always felt self-conscious being alone in a restaurant, and looked around for a place to sit. Two police officers in uniform sat at the counter drinking coffee; an elderly couple at a table by the window picked at their sausage patties. She walked over and sat down at an empty table in the back.

The waitress had just filled her cup with steaming black coffee when the door opened again. A man came in sideways, pushing the door open with one elbow because he had both hands wrapped around the handle of a car seat, with a bundled-up baby inside. Alice's eyes went immediately to the baby, a very tiny baby, fast asleep. The baby wore a little strawberry cap and was wrapped in a silk rainbow blanket exactly like the one she had given Georgia at the baby shower back in January, back in another life, when she was an honest wife and Georgia was her best friend and John—

Alice looked up, at the man carrying the baby. He turned, and the door closed behind him. He didn't see her at first, but she saw him. And of course there was no place for her to go, no place to hide. His eyes searched the restaurant for a table, glazed over her, came back, opened wide. And then John Bing came over and sat down across from her, and set their baby in his car seat on a chair next to them both.

N
EITHER
OF
THEM
spoke for a minute. Alice was too stunned to speak, and John—John looked so exhausted that he seemed beyond words, beyond surprise. Alice pushed her coffee cup across the table toward him.

“Here,” she said. “I'll get another.”

He wrapped grateful hands around the mug and took a sip.

“Have you found Georgia?”

“Found her and lost her,” he said.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“She's here, at the cabin at the lake. That's where she came when she left the hospital. Her sisters figured it out and took the baby and brought him up here, and then I drove up after them yesterday or the day before or today—whatever day it is.” He looked at her. “Sorry. I haven't had much sleep.”

“Georgia's here?” Alice's eyes flew to the door of the restaurant, as if a wronged Georgia might walk in at any moment, crying,
How could you? How could you? How could you?

“Yes. And she told me yesterday she doesn't want anything to do with the baby, or our marriage. She and her sisters practically threw the baby at me with all his stuff. I hadn't slept in so long I didn't think I could drive back to D.C., so I rented one of those claustrophobic little cabins at that place down the road, Finished Wanderin' or Stop Ramblin' or whatever it's called. I tried to nap all day, but the baby wouldn't sleep for more than twenty minutes at a stretch. I was up most of the night with him, too.”

“Dun Roamin',” Alice said. She had driven right up the driveway to her own little cabin after checking in. Of course she had paid no attention to the other cars parked in front of the other little cabins, not that she could have seen them in the dark.

“Yeah.” John rubbed a hand across his eyes. “At least it had a microwave, so I could heat the bottles.” He glanced over at the sleeping baby. “This is the longest he's slept since yesterday afternoon.”

John propped one elbow on the table, rested his chin in his hand, and looked at Alice. “I should be stunned to see you here, I suppose,” he said. “But I'm beyond being surprised by anything.”

“I'm here for Duncan,” she said.

The waitress came over and put down another coffee cup and filled it. “Cute baby,” she said. “He looks like you, Mom.”

Alice glanced at her in terror.

“It's supposed to be a compliment,” the waitress said. “You folks know what you want?”

“I'll have oatmeal,” Alice said. “With fresh fruit, if you have it.” She reached for the cream and poured a splash in her coffee.

“I'll have two eggs over easy. Tell the chef to flip them as soon as the whites are set on the bottom. I'd also like bacon extra crisp, and home fries, also crisp,” John said. He turned to Alice. “Are you telling me Duncan is here, too?”

“Duncan and Wren. They're spending the week in Lake Placid. Today is Visiting Day at Liza's camp and they worked it all out with Georgia that they'd come up and take Liza for the day. I guess I thought you knew.”

“Shit.” John rubbed his forehead. “I forgot about Visiting Day.”

“It's okay. Georgia didn't. She arranged it all with Duncan. Then Duncan and Wren are spending a few more days in Lake Placid. Wren was really disappointed about not coming to Lake Con this year.” She wrapped both hands around her coffee mug and stared down into it.

“Yeah,
that
would have been a fun family vacation.” John looked at Alice. “Georgia is not going to forgive me. And she says she doesn't want the baby. I don't know what I'm going to do.”

Alice closed her eyes. “I'm sorry,” she said. She opened her eyes again to look at him. “What do you want?”

He sighed. “Alice—”

“Oh, God, don't.” She leaned forward toward him. “Don't say something about how much I meant to you and how you're sorry but Georgia is the love of your life. I don't know what happened. You were like an earthquake in my life. And I care about you and in some strange way I'm grateful to you, but I don't want to waltz off into the sunset with you. Duncan is my touchstone.”

John nodded. “I think Georgia is my touchstone, too.”

An uncomfortable silence fell. John looked and felt almost like a stranger to Alice, like the quirky, somewhat unreliable, intense, disorganized man he had always been. How she ever could have seen him as anything else, as anyone other than Georgia's husband, was a mystery to her now.

John looked down at the gold-flecked Formica tabletop, and cleared his throat. “I do want to say I'm sorry, Alice. I started something I never should have started, and I'm sorry for the effect it's had on you and your family and your life. I knew it was wrong, and I did it anyway, and I'm sorry.”

“I did it, too,” Alice said. She thought of what Rita had said,
Maybe now that you've screwed up a little you'll understand that's what happens; that's how people are.
She did understand; she didn't blame John. It was her own choice, her own failing. “It's not you, John,” she said. “It's forgiving myself that's hard.”

The baby stirred in his car seat, opened his mouth, and yawned. Alice looked at Haven, but didn't feel the yearning for him she had felt before. The yearnings she felt now were for her
family,
for Duncan and Wren and herself together, the three of them, the way they had been before.

“What are you going to do about the baby?” she said.

“I don't know. I can't raise him by myself. I work fifty or sixty hours a week, and don't get off most nights until midnight or later. I've spent the past eight weeks sleeping on a couch in my office at the restaurant, and taking showers at the gym. How is that going to work with being a single parent?”

The waitress appeared with two dishes in hand, and placed Alice's oatmeal in front of her, sprinkled with small, bright red strawberries. She put John's breakfast down. “Chef says if he gets those home fries any crisper they'll be home cinders,” she said.