Love Walked In (11 page)

On
Saturday morning, very early almost-morning, I woke up to an unearthly glow coming from the window next to my bed. Snow. Snow under streetlamps and a lightening sky. Bluish and clean and muting every edge. A day had never looked so new. “Silly girl,” I whispered to myself. “What is the matter with you?” How had I convinced myself that everything hinged on a single question? I’d blindsided him, caught him off guard. Shame on me. All wasn’t lost. All? Had I really thought that? Nothing was lost, not one thing.

I stood at the window, letting the relief wash over me. Then I took a shower, devoured an enormous breakfast, and walked to work in the snow.

It
was going to be busy at the café, busy with holiday shoppers and out-of-town guests, but it wasn’t busy yet. Jacques, the not-discernibly-French college kid I’d hired recently, was late, but I didn’t mind. I couldn’t have minded anything. Bathed in radiance, walking in beauty like the night, I did all the setup, breathing in the fragrance of cinnamon and chocolate, pouring the thick white cream into pitchers. I greeted Bob the pastry guy like a long-lost brother, sang an aria over the croissants and fruit tarts, and when Hayes and Jose showed up, I gave them both beatific smiles.

Ten minutes later I was slicing lemons, and I glanced up. In front of me stood Martin Grace, looking exactly like himself. And standing next to him was a tiny, chestnut-haired apparition in an antique floor-length mink coat.

I blinked and shook my head to clear it—I really did—and then I looked at the tiny woman again. A child, a pretty little girl. She had the most remarkable expression in her eyes: fierce and furious and terrified and bottomlessly sad. No one would need to ask this girl if her heart had been broken.

I noticed the expression in her eyes before I noticed the eyes themselves. When I noticed the eyes themselves, I knew them in an instant. An unmistakable resemblance.

“Cornelia, this is Clare,” said Martin, smiling a little. The girl began to tremble, and she lifted her chin.

“Clare Hobbes,” she said in a clear, proud voice, and then she burst into tears—exploded into tears. Long wails and deep, tearing sobs. Martin took the smallest step away. Hayes got up, signaled to Jose, and they walked out, their coffees still steaming on the table. The three of us were alone, two adults and one child. And because somebody had to, I ran over to Clare Hobbes and took her in my arms—we were exactly the same height—and I held on as hard and as well as I knew how.

Clare
lay on her side on the guestroom bed in her father’s apartment, not sleeping, trying to imagine herself as a piece of driftwood. She tucked in her knees and circled them with her arms, pulling in tight, making herself small. She wanted every part of her body to be touching another part of her body so that she was aware of all her edges, all the places Clare ended and the rest of the world began. Float, she thought, drift, although she wanted not to think at all. She looked at the lamp on the bedside table, an object that never had to think a thought, that only was. Thinking, imagining, deciding, worrying—Clare was through with all of that. Drift. She even rocked a little on the bed, letting waves and swells undulate beneath her, carrying her wherever they would.

But even as she lay there becoming an object, letting go of everything, she knew it wasn’t working. At that moment, true letting go would mean falling asleep, which her body wanted desperately to do. But as she began to blur and grow heavy, to sink away into sleep, the old human girl Clare was suddenly right there, saying, no—saying, last time, I said I would never sleep in this place again and I won’t. Never.

Who cares about that? She tried to tell herself. Who cares anymore? Drift. Float. Let what would happen, happen. It did anyway, didn’t it?

But there were those words in her head, insisting on themselves. “No. Never. No. No. No.” Reluctantly, Clare sat up, and as she did, what had been a kind of undefined rustling and hum in another room became voices. Her father and his friend, that very small woman with the boy’s haircut who had hugged Clare as Clare cried.

Clare hated having done that, having bawled out loud like a baby in front of her father, but she couldn’t help it. The crying had happened the way everything happened now, like weather—a thunderstorm that hit, then rushed away. The small woman had kept her skinny arms wrapped tightly around Clare, even as Clare sank to the floor. When the crying ended, the woman helped Clare into a chair and, never taking her hands from Clare’s shoulders, gave some calm instructions to a tall, astonished-looking, shaggy-haired boy who must have entered without Clare’s noticing. Then the woman had crouched in front of Clare, looking Clare in the eye. “Are you ready?” she’d asked. After a moment, Clare nodded, and without another word, not even to Clare’s father, the little woman led Clare out the door, down the street, through the square, to Clare’s father’s building, and finally into his apartment.

They’re talking about me, Clare thought. And even though she wanted so much not to do it or anything else, silently Clare slid off the bed and walked down the hallway to hear what they were saying. She sat on the floor and rested her chin on a chaise made of leather and metal, a piece of furniture that Clare remembered from last time she was there. Then, back when she was a child, she’d thought it resembled a caterpillar. Clare sat like that, not hiding really. Her father and the woman were at the dining room table, facing each other. Clare could see the woman’s face, but not her father’s. If the woman had glanced in the right direction, she’d have seen Clare.

“These past few months, I’ve been learning how to read your face, Cornelia. It speaks a subtle language, that face.”

Cornelia.
The name took Clare by surprise. She hadn’t realized she’d been thinking about the small woman’s name at all, but as soon as her father said “Cornelia,” Clare knew she had been expecting something else: Meg. Kate. Jill. Something short, like the woman and her hair were short, something snappy and take-charge.
Cornelia.
Long—three syllables or even three and a half—and old-fashioned. There was a character in
Anne’s House of Dreams
named Cornelia. She was Anne’s friend. This Cornelia was her father’s friend, and Clare wasn’t sure she wanted to know her at all. But if Clare ever decided to call her anything, Cornelia was a name Clare could use.

“Martin,” the woman—Cornelia—tried to begin. Clare decided it was all right to use the woman’s name inside her own head, where no one would know she was doing it.

“I was getting it, though, I think I was getting it. But I must be reading it wrongly now because I can’t find any anger in it. You have to be angry at me. Anyone would be.” His voice was low and serious. Clare thought he was right: Cornelia’s face was something, but not angry.

“Angry.” Cornelia said the word neutrally, as though considering it. She sat very still.

“For showing up like that, with her. This situation, I don’t understand what it is yet, but I know it’s a mess. And I know it’s not your mess, and now you’re in it.” Clare’s father reached across the table and slid his palm under Cornelia’s hand. He examined the hand for a few seconds and then said, “You were good with her, you know. Thank you for that.”

“Don’t thank me.” Cornelia’s voice seemed strained and her face tightened. “Do you think I mind that? Helping a little girl? Your daughter.” Cornelia spoke the word “daughter” as though she had just learned it, as though it were a foreign word she was working to get right. Clare saw Cornelia look down at their hands on the table. Then Cornelia took her hand back and sat up a little straighter in her chair.

“We’re talking about the wrong things, Martin. We’ll have to talk about me and us and whether I’m angry and all of it, but not now. What happened? What happened to Clare?”

“I don’t know very much. A girl called me early this morning—a spitfire of a girl, mad as hell. At me, I think. About what, I’m not sure. She’d come to clean and found Clare alone. All Clare would say is that her mother left.”

“What do you mean, ‘left’?” asked Cornelia.

“That’s it. Left. Clare wouldn’t say anything more than that. When I got to the house, this girl—Max was her name—she was waiting with Clare. Clare was sitting next to her on the sofa in that coat with her backpack on her lap, just sort of staring into space. Max walked out to the car with us, and for a minute there, I didn’t think Clare would let go of her hand.”

Clare noticed that Cornelia’s eyes were full of tears. “Poor Clare. Poor little scared girl,” but in a way that didn’t make Clare feel mad at her, even though she didn’t want pity.

“Max whispered to Clare and put something in Clare’s coat pocket. After that, Clare let go. She got in the car.”

“And did she say anything more about her mother? About what happened?

“She didn’t speak at all, and I thought it best not to push her. When I asked her if she’d had breakfast, she shook her head.”

“So you brought her to the café. To eat breakfast,” For the first time, Cornelia’s voice sounded angry or accusing, maybe, just a tiny bit, but when Clare’s father spoke again, his voice was regular, as though he hadn’t noticed the change.

“Yes. I thought maybe she’d like a croissant, some hot chocolate.”

Cornelia stared up at the ceiling and let out a breath. “Never mind,” she said. “Can you think of why her mother would have done this? Has she ever done anything like this before?”

“I really can’t say for sure. I don’t think so, but Viviana’s always been—”

Clare hated hearing him say her name. She stood up, then, and shouted, “No! She wouldn’t leave me. She didn’t mean to. Something happened to her.”

Cornelia pushed away from the table and stood up, knocking over her chair. ‘We should call the police, Martin!” She turned to Clare, “Did someone come and take her? She’ll be OK, I know she will, but you have to tell us. Did she just go out and not come home? Was she in the car?”

Clare froze, trying to figure out how much to tell. She’d been keeping the secret for so long, and she didn’t even know these people—not even her father. She couldn’t trust them. But she couldn’t let them call the police.

“Don’t call the police. You can’t do that. No one took her. She was sick. She wasn’t herself. And she left. And I don’t know if she’ll ever come back. But you can’t call the police because she didn’t mean to do anything she did.” The words came out in a rush, and Clare saw Cornelia begin to walk toward her. Clare held up her hand to stop her.

Clare looked right at her father, who was still sitting at the table. “She was sick,” Clare said in an icy, deliberate voice. Cornelia looked at Martin, waiting.

“I didn’t know,” he said to Cornelia, lifting his hands in the air, as if to demonstrate their emptiness. Clare listened to him say it. He didn’t matter. He had never mattered, and he didn’t now.

“I want to go home now,” said Clare to Cornelia. “She might come back.”

Cornelia said, gently, “Do you think she will?”

Clare remembered her mother in the Land Rover, saying she was sorry in that sad, sad, final voice. Clare shook her head. She felt tears sliding down her cheeks, so she covered her face with her hands.

“Your father will go back to the house, and he’ll leave your mom a note,” said Cornelia. She was standing close to Clare now, but not touching her. Clare didn’t want to be touched. “That way, she’ll know you’re here and she can find you. But even if she doesn’t come back, we’ll find her. We’ll find her and help her get well.”

For weeks, Clare had worked hard to let go of hope, had been very stern with herself about giving it up, so, although she was tempted, she didn’t allow Cornelia’s words to make her hopeful. Still, Clare was glad Cornelia was there, saying those words to her. If Cornelia weren’t there, Clare would be alone, so when Cornelia said, “OK?” Clare nodded.

She sat down on the caterpillar lounge and Cornelia sat next to her. “But I won’t stay here. I hate it here. I’ll stay at a hotel or something. Maybe I can stay with Max. She gave me her cell phone number.” Clare took the card from her pocket. “Any time” was written next to the number. The “any” was underlined three times. “But I won’t stay here.”

Cornelia looked at Clare’s father. He shook his head as though he were confused by it all and then clasped his hands and put them on top of his head. He made his face look unhappy and helpless. Then, he got up and went into the kitchen.

“Why don’t we go someplace else right now and talk about that?” Cornelia said to Clare.

“OK,” said Clare, dully, even though she was finished talking. She felt tired. Her eyelids felt heavy. The fur coat felt terribly heavy.

“Wait here just a minute, then. I want to talk to your father.” Cornelia got up and went into the kitchen. Clare could hear them. They might have been arguing, but she couldn’t tell for sure. When Cornelia came back, her eyes looked tired too, but she smiled.

“Your father is going to leave the note for your mom at your house. And we’ll go to my apartment, if that’s all right with you. It’s not far. He’ll come later, won’t you, Martin?”

“Of course, I will,” said Clare’s father. He was talking to Cornelia.

Cornelia and Clare walked across the apartment, and Clare’s father walked with them. As they all three stood at the front door, he started to say something, stopped, and then reached out a hand to touch a lock of Clare’s hair, one that hung next to her face. He didn’t give it a playful tug or tuck it behind her ear as her mother might have done, but held the ribbon of hair between his thumb and forefinger, one second, two seconds. She waited for him to take his hand away, and then she and Cornelia walked out the door. Outside, Cornelia started down the snowy sidewalks, turning now and then to be sure Clare was still there. Clare, in her fur coat, her breath hanging in the air in front of her, walked a few steps behind, weary like the bears in her story.

When they got to Cornelia’s apartment, Clare stood just inside, swaying slightly. A chandelier sparkled overhead, but everything else in the room felt smudged, fuzzy, half-real. Cornelia took one look at Clare, then caught hold of her elbow and guided her into the bedroom. Clare fell onto the bed, kept falling and falling and falling. When she woke up, it was dark and, into the dark, Clare was calling for her mother.