The Winters in Bloom (9 page)

“But at least you could have told her how betrayed you felt. It might have brought you closer.”

Now that Kyra was thinking about this, it struck her that her mother-in-law was concerned about her relationship with her son. Sandra had never directly asked Kyra why David didn’t call or come over more often, but didn’t that just prove the point? Her mother-in-law was so careful with her questions, like she’d been relegated to permanent outsider status in her son’s life.

“I don’t think it would have,” David said. “I think it would have pushed us apart, because she wouldn’t have understood my position. She would say something like ‘the past is the past,’ forgetting that I’m a historian.” He forced a smile. “The past is never over for us.”

Kyra doubted that her mother-in-law would forget David’s profession. Sandra tried to read every article David published, no matter how obscure the academic journal. She’d even tried to read his dissertation, all 237 pages, though she’d never mentioned this to him because she was afraid she hadn’t understood most of it. Kyra hadn’t read his dissertation because, as David said, it wasn’t all that interesting outside of his field, which was twentieth-century American history, specifically, the impact of the fifties and sixties on American notions of work and the work ethic. David had actually discouraged Kyra from reading it, and joked that it was too much work to read that many pages about work.

It was so odd for Kyra, who knew nothing about being mothered really, to understand that Sandra was trying hard to be a good mother. She understood it better than David himself seemed to.

She didn’t know what to say to her husband. Of course he felt betrayed by Sandra’s relationship with his ex-wife. Even Kyra felt strange thinking of her mother-in-law hanging out with Courtney, possibly going to the spa with her, too. It wasn’t until David was in the shower that she realized she was actually a little jealous. She’d seen pictures of Courtney in an album on the bottom shelf of Sandra’s media console—pictures of all three of them: David, Courtney, and little Joshua. Courtney had looked so confident of her right to be with David. Kyra, on the other hand, still marveled that a man like her husband would even look at someone like her, much less marry her and share her life.

Did her mother-in-law like Courtney better? Kyra wished this thought hadn’t sprung fully formed into her mind, while she was snapping beans for dinner, but now that it had, she felt so much worse. And there was no way to fix it. Even if she had the nerve, she couldn’t discuss any of this with her mother-in-law without breaking David’s confidence.

Kyra knew all too well how easy it was to lose touch with someone you loved, but even as she gently pushed her husband to see his mother more, she found herself seeing Sandra less often. She continued to enjoy her mother-in-law’s company, but she just couldn’t trust her, knowing she could keep something like this a secret from them. In addition, though Kyra didn’t fully understand this, now that Sandra was associated with Courtney in her mind, some of the feelings Kyra felt for her husband’s ex-wife were spilling onto her mother-in-law. And unfortunately, Kyra had a
lot
of feelings about Courtney.

They’d been married for only a year or so when David admitted that what had happened with Joshua had changed him from a person who was usually optimistic to a person who feared the worst. Kyra had already discovered how true this was. If she was ten minutes late from work, her husband called her cell; if she dropped the soap and he heard the thump in the shower, her husband came in to check on her; if she got a cold or cut her hand or had a bruise she couldn’t account for, he begged her to go to the doctor. He even worried that he was oppressing her with all his worries. “Ironic, I know,” he said. “I wish I could relax about all of this.”

It was all Courtney’s fault, that much Kyra knew. Although David’s ex-wife had not been found guilty of a crime, she was responsible for what had happened to the baby. And the older Kyra got, the more she blamed this woman she’d never met for David’s anxieties and even for something that seemed to be missing from her own life, something she couldn’t put her finger on. Indeed, by the time Kyra was thirty-two, she actively hated Courtney, especially when she thought about the pictures of Courtney and David and their child. Especially when she imagined what David must have been like, back when he trusted that he could have a family of his own.

EIGHT

A
lthough Sandra
didn’t like cell phones—the buttons were too small for her arthritic fingers; she felt like she couldn’t hear the person on the other end unless she sat very still, with the earpiece glued to her ear—she always had her cell with her, stashed in the pocket of her purse next to her medicines. It was convenient when someone at work needed her, but the real reason she carried it was to placate her son, who had given her several long lectures about the dangers of going without a phone. She knew he was just worried, so she didn’t remind him that somehow the human race had survived before the invention of all these annoying devices.

It was a little after three o’clock; she was still on her former daughter-in-law’s porch, dialing the number of the software company where Courtney worked. The receptionist told her Courtney wasn’t there, which she expected, but she also added that Courtney had left the company after an extended sick leave. “She’s sick?” Sandra said—or shouted. She was never sure how loud she had to be. The phone was tiny, way too small for her head. If the earpiece was on her ear, the mouthpiece didn’t come past her cheek.

“I believe so,” the receptionist said. “All I know is that she resigned a few months ago.”

A few months ago? Why hadn’t she mentioned this to Sandra? And if she was unemployed—and possibly sick—why wasn’t she home? Sandra had knocked a half dozen times and rung Courtney’s home phone a half dozen more, even though it was such a discouraging sound, the bright ringing of the phone echoing in the deserted house.

Sandra had given her cell phone number to Courtney reflexively, in case her former daughter-in-law had an emergency; however, she’d never thought to ask Courtney for hers. Why would she need that? They talked only once or twice every few months, usually on a Sunday afternoon, when both of them were puttering around their houses. They talked about what they’d planted in their gardens or new recipes they’d tried, books they found interesting or TV shows they were following. Courtney used to ask about David, but after he married Kyra, her questions became much less frequent, and soon after he had Michael, she stopped asking all together. Sandra figured her former daughter-in-law had finally accepted what she’d been telling Courtney since she got out of the hospital: that David wasn’t angry with her; he’d just moved on with his own life.

That this wasn’t exactly true never stopped Sandra from saying it. The girl desperately needed to believe that David had forgiven her, and Sandra figured maybe he had forgiven her somewhere deep in his heart. Certainly, it didn’t seem possible that her son would never forgive his ex-wife. Holding on to anger like that couldn’t be good for David. And he didn’t even know Courtney anymore, if he ever had; they’d been so young. Otherwise, how could he be so convinced that Courtney had taken Michael?

David had promised to call after he talked to the police. He kept his promise, but Sandra couldn’t help noticing how curt he sounded, like calling his mother was nothing but a task on a long to-do list. At least he had some relatively good news. The detective in charge felt sure it was someone the family knew, and whoever this person was, their intention wasn’t to harm Michael.

At first Sandra didn’t understand how this detective could be sure of that, though she was immensely relieved, and even more so when David told her a note had been left.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Sandra said.

“They just found it in the back of the house, slipped under a rock by the porch steps.” He paused. “It says that Michael is fine and he’ll be back in a day or two.”

She took a breath. “Well, that’s encouraging, isn’t it?”

“Come on, Mom. We’re dealing with a lunatic who stole a child from his own backyard. Why should we trust what she says?”

“It’s a woman?”

“One of the police officers said the handwriting looks female.”

“But it doesn’t look like Courtney’s handwriting, does it?”

“I don’t know.” He sounded distracted. “The police are going to check that. They’re also going to run fingerprints.”

A lifetime ago, Courtney had been fingerprinted. Though the charges had been dropped, David was obviously assuming they still had the fingerprints on file somewhere. Sandra had no idea if that was true. She knew very little about how the police worked other than what she’d seen on television.

She watched someone get out of a truck across the street. It was Courtney’s neighbor, Rita, a friendly woman and quite the talker. Sandra waved with her free hand and pointed at the cell phone, and thankfully, Rita headed in the direction of her own porch.

David was still talking about the letter. The woman who wrote it said to think of her as a babysitter. She also wrote that she loved Michael. She claimed she was part of his family and just wanted to get to know him.

Sandra swallowed hard. The words sounded familiar. She remembered when Courtney had said something similar to this. But it was almost six years ago, right after Michael was born. She wanted to know if David would allow her to just
meet
the baby. “I won’t even touch him,” she said, which broke Sandra’s heart. “I just want to see if he looks like . . .”

Sandra had said no, because she knew David would say no. But she’d given Courtney a photograph of little Michael, dressed in a sweet yellow-and-white romper, asleep in his bouncy seat. Courtney had thanked her; neither of them had mentioned the resemblance.

The wooden slats of the porch swing were digging into Sandra’s back. After she said good-bye to David, she stood up and headed down the walk. There was no point in staying here; the police would be arriving soon enough. Obviously, they’d have to question Courtney. At this point, even Sandra couldn’t be a hundred percent positive that she hadn’t done it, though it was so hard to fathom that sad girl doing something like this, after she’d worked so hard to have an almost normal life.

When Sandra was back in the car, she let herself cry, but only a little. She had to be there for her son—there was no time for a big boo hoo.

She’d just merged onto the highway when she considered telling David’s father what was going on. If only she could tell Ray and have him offer to help in any way he could. If only Ray would be a decent man and a decent father for once in his life. But even the thought of turning to Ray made her realize how desperate she was. Yes, she wished she had someone with her right now, but Ray was the last person to call in a crisis. He’d never had much sympathy for other people’s problems, mainly, Sandra thought, because he’d had so few problems of his own. He rarely even got sick, which allowed him to continue with his cruel belief that sick people were
weak
. This, in particular, had always infuriated Sandra, who, after all, knew a heck of a lot more about sick people than Ray ever would.

In a way, her ex-husband had led a charmed life. Though the things he did echoed forever in the lives of the people around him, he himself seemed to remain forever untouched. It was unfair, yet Sandra had given up wishing the world would teach Ray a lesson. The truth was the only people who needed the world to teach them a lesson were people who hadn’t been paying attention to the lessons their lives had already given them. People like Ray, whose inability to pay attention had cost him two wives—Peggy, the woman he’d married after Sandra, had left him, too—and most important, his son.

Of course she never regretted marrying him. She couldn’t, because the marriage had given her David. But in every other respect, getting together with Ray was proof of how stupid she’d been. Her high school boyfriend and first love had escaped to Canada when he got drafted. By the time Ray came along, she was twenty-one and finished with her nursing degree. Most of her friends were either engaged or already married. And Ray was undeniably handsome; people said he looked like that actor Christopher Plummer. He seemed incredibly sophisticated because he’d been to South America, or was it because he knew how to make martinis?

She’d been married for three years when she had her baby, more than enough time to discover that marriage was no remedy for loneliness. Having a baby wasn’t, either, though little David could be downright good company at times. In fact, all these years later, she still remembered what an excellent companion her baby had proved to be during the swimming competitions of the Summer Olympics. She’d watched the games on the old-fashioned rabbit-ears television while five-month-old David sat on the rug, surrounded by pillows, chewing on his rattles. She was on the floor with him, so she could retrieve the rattles when he dropped them. He was too young to crawl or even scoot yet. She held his hands together to clap every time Mark Spitz broke another record. Her baby grinned and laughed, and she pointed at the screen and told him, “Maybe that will be you someday!”

Sandra had once dreamed of being an Olympic swimmer herself. Every summer when she was a kid, she’d spent her days in the water, swimming back and forth, while her little brother, Beau, timed her with the old railroad pocket watch their uncle had given them. She got faster and faster, but she could never catch Debbie Rendell, the star of their local swim team. By the time she was a teenager, she’d stopped going to the pool to swim, though she still went to sun herself with her friends. They would get into the water only when they were very hot, and then only up to their chests, so they wouldn’t have to put on swimming caps and flatten their hair.