Why the Sky Is Blue (18 page)

Spencer and I hadn’t had a moment alone since I told him over the phone that Mom and Dad were taking in the daughter they had given up for adoption when he was seven. He barely remembered that time in our lives. He never missed Lara like I did. He always thought our move to Blue Prairie was the most ingenious thing Dad had ever came up with, like it was all done so Spencer could get a big dog and a three-wheeler. Even as an adult, I don’t think he sensed the complexity of Lara re-entering our lives. To him, this was all new. There was no history to be reckoned with.

Noah, ever a happy baby, cooed and giggled on Lara’s lap, giving her plenty of reasons to smile back. It was nice to see her smile again. Lara said something about wanting to take Noah’s picture sometime. Natalie promised to bring him down someday soon.

We finally got home about six thirty. Michael had come over to my parents’ house and had steaks on the grill ready for us, and Bennett was scooting around on his toy tractor when we drove up. Wes, Nicole, and Seth were there too. We sat outside on my parents’ deck and ate supper, enjoying the summer night and the breeze that blew our napkins out of our laps but kept the mosquitoes from landing and biting.

We brought in Lara’s boxes and set them in the dining room until they could be sorted and unpacked. Then my mom and I carried in her clothes and took them up to my old room, which I had made ready the week between my first trip to Two Harbors and my second.

Lara came up a few minutes later with two photographs in her hand. One was the portrait of Ed on Galapagos; the other was of Rosemary with her long braid, holding a little Ecuadorian baby in her arms. She set them on my old dresser.

“This was your old room?” she said.

“Yes, it was,” I said.

She turned and smiled at me.

“I’m glad,” she said, and then she headed back downstairs.

25

For the first few days after we arrived home from Two Harbors, I tried to keep what I thought was a respectable distance from my parents and Lara. I went to the Table the day after we got home, not expecting to see Mom or Lara at all.

They came after lunch and stayed the whole afternoon. One of Nicole’s kitchen helpers was home sick, so Lara offered to help out. I guess I should have guessed Nicole would eventually offer Lara a job since we all worked at the Table. But it startled me anyway that it happened that very day. One moment Lara was sipping a white chocolate mochaccino, the next she was making one.

She was introduced to everyone she met as a friend of the family whose parents had both passed away and who would be living with my parents for the next school year.

The shop was busy that afternoon. Mom had been away for more than a week, so she had a lot of catching up to do. And since I had to cover for her while she was gone, I was behind on two paintings I was matting for a customer who had bought two watercolors from me on eBay. I also had a beginner’s sketching class that afternoon that I had done nothing to prepare for.

In the middle of trying to sort through all this, Seth arrived. He had just gotten off the phone with his social worker. He had been caught drinking two nights before, and his social worker was threatening to place him in a group home if he didn’t shape up. Nicole was pretty much at the end of her rope, I think. As she cleaned the glass-fronted bakery case, Seth told her he wanted a new social worker, that the one he had was a “total loser.” She told him he had better do whatever the social worker told him, because the group home idea was starting to look pretty good. I knew that would make him angry. And it did. He followed me into the back of my studio and told me Nicole never tried to see his side of things. I asked him if he ever tried to see hers. He shrugged.

I was working on a frame when suddenly he had the urge to help me.

“I bet I could do that,” he said.

“Maybe I’ll show you sometime,” I said.

“It doesn’t look that hard,” he said as I beveled the mat. “Let me try.”

“Another time, okay, Seth?” I just didn’t have time for him that day.

He turned and left. I felt bad for him, but he really wasn’t my responsibility. By closing time, my mom, Nicole, and I were worn out. As we readied the shop for the end of the day, my mom asked where Lara was. I hadn’t seen her, and Nicole didn’t know. We looked upstairs in the meeting rooms and in the bathroom, and just about the time Mom started to worry, I spotted Lara and Seth sitting at one of the sidewalk tables out front. Seth was talking a mile a minute, and Lara was sitting there listening to his every word.

Mom and Nicole both froze. On their faces were twin, worried-mother looks.

“Good grief,” Nicole said. “Something else to worry about.”

“No kidding,” Mom said and headed for the front door.

She stepped outside and said as cheerfully as she could, “Hey, Seth. How’s it going?”

He had barely said, “It’s cool,” when Mom asked Lara if she was ready to head home.

I watched Lara rise from the little table and push the chair in. “Bye, Seth,” she said.

“See you ‘round,” he replied, and there was no mistaking the trepidation on my mother’s face as she heard those words.

Mom and Lara drove away, and I headed back into the studio to turn the lights off. As I was leaving, Nicole handed Seth a bag of trash to take out, and I heard her tell him to “leave that young girl alone.”

“Why?” he asked, obviously challenging her.

“Because, Seth,” she answered. “She’s just lost her mother. She doesn’t need to hear about your problems or catch your problems.”

I hadn’t been home more than fifteen minutes when Mom called me and invited us over for spaghetti.

“I thought you might want some time alone with Lara,” I said.

“There will be plenty of other evenings alone with her,” Mom said in reply. “I was hoping you could...talk to her about Seth.”

I was slightly perturbed at realizing the invitation had strings attached. I toyed with saying something like, “Tell her yourself,” but the truth was, I was worried about Lara getting mixed up with Seth. He was trouble with a capital T.

I told her we would come.

Olivia and Bennett monopolized every moment with Lara after we arrived. I wouldn’t have gotten a word in at all if my mother hadn’t distracted them after supper with news that there were new kittens in the barn. While she showed them the kittens, I volunteered Lara and myself to do the dishes. Dad and Michael went outside to tinker with my dad’s ailing riding mower.

The table was half-cleared when I finally summoned the courage to advise Lara to be careful developing a friendship with Seth.

“Lara, I think I should tell you that Seth has some pretty significant problems,” I said, “and that being his friend can be very ... complicated.”

“I don’t think I understand,” Lara said.

“He’s had a tough time lately with choices. Maybe he shared some of his frustrations today?”

Lara looked utterly confused.

“He didn’t tell you he had a fight with his social worker today or an argument with Nicole?” I asked.

She just shook her head.

“Can I ask what he was talking about when you were sitting out in front of the shop?”

“He was telling me his dreams,” Lara said. “He was telling me what he wanted to do with his life.”

I was speechless for a second.

“He was?”

“Well, yes. He wants to design and build houses.”

I couldn’t believe Seth had never shared this with Michael or me before, but I tried to shake it off. She still needed to know Seth was dangerous.

“Look, Lara. Seth has a problem with alcohol and a problem with authority,” I said. “He has some pretty tough friends who tend to bring him down. That’s why a friendship with him can be complicated. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Lara smiled at me. “Thanks, Kate. I promise I will be careful.”

And I knew at that moment that Lara had no intention of avoiding a friendship with Seth, like my mother was hoping for, and was instead intending to cautiously yet conscientiously rescue Seth from self-destruction.

The phone rang then, and I answered it. It was my grandmother in Ann Arbor.

“Is she there?” Grandma asked me.

I looked over at Lara as she wiped down the place mats. “Yes, she’s here.”

Lara looked up and I winked.

“Do you want to talk to her?” I asked.

“Yes!” Grandma said.

I brought the phone over to Lara.

“It’s Mom’s mother,” I said, with my hand over the mouthpiece. “Her name is Sophia. She really wants to talk with you.”

Lara smiled and took the phone.

“Hello?” she said and strolled into the living room. I stepped outside to see the kittens for myself.

The barn was warm and sweet-smelling, and the kittens were nestled with their mother in an unused sheep pen. The kids were still gushing over them as I approached.

“Well?” Mom asked.

“I told her Seth has a lot of problems and to be careful.”

Mom nodded, like that was the end of it, but I knew it wasn’t.

“But I have this feeling she will want to befriend him
because
of his problems, Mom,” I said.

She looked up at me like I had failed, and yet I could tell she quickly realized how stupid that was. Lara was so much like Rosemary. Rosemary could never let a needy person pass her by.

“What’s she doing now?”

“Talking to Grandma,” I said.

“On the phone? Right now?”

“Yeah.”

“Good heavens,” and she headed for the kitchen door.

“Grandma said we could have ice cream,” Olivia said to me.

“Well, then let’s go get it,” I said. I wanted to hear the conversation in the kitchen too.

Lara was sitting on the floor of the living room, her back against the sofa and her feet pointing toward the kitchen. She saw us come in and smiled.

“That sounds great,” she was saying.

Then there was a pause as Grandma said something.

“Well, actually, my mom’s parents died before I was born. I did live with my Grandma Prentiss for a while, but she passed away a few years ago,” Lara said.

And then, “Well, maybe.”

I knew what Grandma was asking her. She was asking Lara if she wanted to call her “Grandma.” And if she wanted to come visit her and Grandpa Stuart in Ann Arbor. Mom could tell too. It was a little awkward.

“Okay,” Lara was saying. “Here’s Claire.” And she handed the phone to my mom. Mom took the phone into the adjoining study.

“So she asked you to call her Grandma, huh?” I said to Lara.

“She did,” Lara said. “But I don’t know that Claire would like that...”

“And she asked you to come to Ann Arbor this summer?”

Lara smiled. “Yes. How did you know?”

“She always liked having us kids out there for the summer.”

“Are you and Spencer her only grandchildren?” Lara asked.

“Yep. My Uncle Matt didn’t get married until he was forty. He and Marta never had kids. I’m not sure if they couldn’t or if they just decided not to. They’re both history professors and travel a lot,” I answered.

“I see,” Lara said. Then after a pause she asked, “Do you think I should go visit them?”

I felt a peculiar sense of envy at the thought of Lara spending a week or two at Grandma and Grandpa’s, doing all the things with them that I used to do. I knew once they met Lara, they would be crazy about her. That bothered me too. It was a weird feeling. Like I was proud of my little sister and I wanted my grandparents to meet her and like her, but I also didn’t want them to because it would mean sharing them with her. I didn’t know what to tell her. I didn’t know what was true and what was just jealousy.

“I guess that’s for you and Mom to decide,” I finally said. “But I always had a great time at their house.”

Both statements were true.

That weekend at Nicole’s Saturday brunch, she and Mom decided to throw a big Fourth of July party and family reunion at my parents’ house. It didn’t surprise me at all that Nicole would think of throwing a huge party with less than two weeks’ notice. She was always coming up with grandiose ideas on the spur of the moment. I was a little amazed Mom jumped on the wagon with her, though. Mom’s a planner. She likes everything to be perfect at her parties.

But then I realized Mom just wanted the family to meet Lara, especially the family members who really knew who Lara was, including both sets of grandparents, Matt and Marta, Karin and Kent, and my mom’s Aunt Elizabeth. She wanted to show her off.

The two of them fell into a crazed, party-planning-in-a-hurry mode. I felt a little left out and got up from the table to start the dishes. Olivia and Bennett disappeared into the TV room, and the men went out into Wes’s shop to see his new fishing rod. Lara started to help me, but I was grumpy and wanted to be alone. I told her to just relax, that I’d take care of the dishes. She hesitated and then stepped outside, unsure of where to go or what to do.

I rinsed a dish and looked out the window to see if she had decided to follow the men into the shed, which I thought would be rather pointless.

But she hadn’t.

She had been joined on the porch.

I watched as she and Seth strolled out to a bench under a cottonwood in the backyard and sat on it. Seth was talking; she was listening.

I turned back to the dishes and didn’t look out the window again after that.