Why the Sky Is Blue (21 page)

“Did you ever get into trouble when you were little?” I suddenly asked.

Lara looked over at me and smiled. “Didn’t you?” she said.

“Of course,” I replied, like it was a silly question for her to ask. It occurred to me she must have thought the same thing or she wouldn’t have turned the question on me.

“I have a hard time picturing you being defiant,” I said honestly.

Lara’s smile didn’t fade. She kicked at the water that covered her feet.

“I spent my share of time in the corner,” she said, laughing a little.

“Well, you seem to have now mastered the knack of always doing the right thing at the right time,” I said. “You haven’t been in the corner in a long, long time, I’m sure.”

It sounded like an indictment. I hadn’t meant for it to sound that way, but it did.

Lara looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I think we all struggle with trying to always do the right thing at the right time,” Lara said. “I know I struggle sometimes with even wanting to do the right thing.”

“But you always seem to win that struggle,” I said.

Lara looked surprised. Worried.

“Well, I don’t,” she said.

“Lara, you are annoyingly perfect!” I said, turning my face to her. “I’ve watched you. I have seen how you respond to people.”

I immediately wished I hadn’t said “annoyingly.”

But Lara just looked out over the water.

“My dad told me once that people usually see what they want to see,” she said, and then she cocked her head and looked back at me.

I wanted to believe I had no idea what she was talking about, but the funny thing was, I did. Somehow she knew I had only seen the part of her I wanted to see—the lovely, perfect, tender part—because it proved to God and to everyone else that I had been right all along about Lara. She wasn’t haunting evidence of the existence of evil in the world, though I was only just beginning to realize no one had ever really thought that about her. To me, Lara was simply a beautiful girl whose life began the way all human life begins—in the mind of God. This was the reason I had so desperately wanted my parents to keep her. I had not really understood the horribleness of the offense that had been committed against my parents. I had only understood my own twelve-year-old wonder of finally having a sister. And the frustration of having her for only one May morning.

There were several long minutes of silence between us. I wondered if Lara was thinking she had said too much.

I knew Lara couldn’t know what I was thinking at that moment, but she rightly guessed I was again pondering our common past, the little of it that we shared.

“Kate, I’m sorry so much had to change for you because of me,” she said.

I honestly didn’t know what to say to her. I hadn’t been aware that part of me held her accountable for the life I was now leading. Certainly it wasn’t her fault; she was an innocent victim. And while on the one hand she was tangible proof of the tragedy that had reshaped our family life, on the other hand if there had been no Lara, we likely never would have moved to Blue Prairie. I wouldn’t have met Michael. I wouldn’t have Olivia and Bennett. And I couldn’t bear to consider that.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I finally said. “You never had a say in any of this, Lara. And I can’t suppose my life would be better had I stayed in Minneapolis. Most of my dreams have come true in Blue Prairie.”

“Which ones haven’t?” she asked in a voice that sounded a little shaky.

“Just little ones that don’t really matter, Lara,” I said. “I’d like to see Manhattan sometime. Or San Francisco.”

“Me, too,” she said. “I have always wanted to take pictures of busy New York City sidewalks.”

“Maybe someday we’ll have to do that,” I said.

She smiled at me.

“Do you have any other dreams waiting to come true?” she asked.

I had never told anyone—not even Michael—of my unfulfilled desire to paint the sky at night. I guess I didn’t think anyone else would understand. I wasn’t sure if even I understood why that mattered to me. But while sitting on the dock on that hot August afternoon, I told Lara.

She just nodded her head like she knew exactly what I meant.

“And I can’t photograph it,” she said. “Not enough light. And it’s so frustrating because the midnight sky is so incredibly beautiful.”

“Yes, it is,” I said, amazed that we had this in common.

“But I know one day you will do it,” she said. “It’s too hard to remember the next day what the sky really looked like. You just have to bring your canvas out to where the stars are.”

At that moment I began to understand something about myself that I am still learning. I’m afraid to bring my canvas out to where the stars are, afraid to paint alone in the dark with no one but God for company. I’m not sure why. But I was beginning to understand that somehow it was tied in with my fear of bringing my love out to where Lara was.

29

School started a few days after our return from the lake, and a new routine developed. I would drop the kids off at school and daycare in the morning, and Lara would pick them up in the afternoon. From three to five o’clock, the three of them would do “fun things all the time,” as Olivia liked to say. Sometimes they went swimming at the community pool—Olivia could now dog paddle from one side of the pool to the other. Other times they went to the library or the park.

Sometimes they had tea and stories with Edith and Elaine, the sisters who owned the side-by-side Victorian bed-and-breakfast inns next to Tennyson’s Table. This was Lara’s idea. She began helping the sisters get their yards ready for the winter and developed a friendship with them. Olivia and Bennett loved going over to the inns with Lara. I could look out a side window of the Table to the porch of the East House and see my kids, each in a lap of one of the sisters, and Lara reading to all of them. Most of the books she borrowed from the Table.

On Fridays, Lara would bring Bennett and Olivia to the Table just before closing. I would take them home, and Lara would stay and get the place ready for Jazz Night. She also worked Saturdays at the shop and hosted the Tuesday-night book clubs.

That September was one of the least stressful months I had experienced in who knows how long.

There was only one day in that month that was not at all “routine.” In fact, it was unlike any day I have ever experienced.

It was a Monday near the beginning of the month. I arrived at the shop early to find my mother sitting at the little writing table by the bay window—the writing table that had given the shop its name.

She had a cup of coffee in her hands and was looking out the window, quite unaware of my presence. I couldn’t remember the last time she had sat at that table. And the look on her face was one I did not recognize. It scared me a little.

“You know you can only have free coffee at that table if you’re writing,” I said, wanting her to know I was there and, more importantly to me, wanting her to come out from under that spell.

She jumped a little as a weak smile broke across her face.

“Is it nine o’clock already?” she asked.

I came over to her.

“No, I’m just here a little early,” I said, and then added, “You looked like you were off in another world when I came in. Is everything all right?”

She looked out the window again and then up at me.

“Everything is all right,” she said, like she meant every word, but she turned to look out the window again like everything wasn’t.

“What is it, Mom?” I said, pulling up a chair.

She sort of smiled and sort of sighed.

“It’s the ninth of September,” she said.

It took me a few seconds to understand what she meant. But I finally clued in. It was the anniversary, the seventeenth anniversary in fact, of the attack that had changed everything for us.

“It’s been a long time since this day has mattered to me,” she continued, almost like she was talking to herself. “When we moved here, I taught myself to forget it was a day that mattered. But it’s different this year.”

“Because Lara is here with you?” I asked.

She nodded.

We were silent for a moment.

“Do you remember when we were driving up to Two Harbors and you asked me if I knew what had become of Philip Wells?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“And I told you I didn’t know or care?”

“Yes.”

“He died in a fight with another prisoner six years ago. They were arguing over cigarettes.”

She said it like she was telling me the forecast called for rain. Without emotion or engagement.

“How did you find out?” I asked.

“I thought Lara might want to know some day,” she said. “I thought she might ask me, and I didn’t want her to go looking for the answers. I wanted to have them ready for her so she wouldn’t have to. So I called the prison and asked.”

“Does Lara know?” I asked.

My mom nodded and her eyes got misty.

“You mean she asked about him already?” I thought that was pretty heartless, and I struggled to believe the Lara I knew would do it after living here only three months.

Mom shook her head.

“She didn’t ask about him, she asked about herself,” Mom said, starting to cry.

I didn’t understand.

My mom cleared her throat and sat up straight, trying to regain her composure.

“She asked me if it was painful for me and Dan to have her here because of... because of how she was conceived. She told me if it was, to just tell her, and she would call her uncle. She wanted to make sure Dan and I didn’t take her in just because Rosemary begged us. Lara said she would understand if it was too difficult for us to have her.”

“What did you tell her?” I said.

“I told her the truth,” Mom said, looking at me. “That it has always been difficult
not
having her, even when I pretended it was easy.”

I said nothing.

“Then I told her I didn’t even remember that night, that I didn’t even know what Philip Wells looked like,” Mom continued. “And then I told her what had happened to him in prison.”

Mom hung her head like she was ashamed she had told Lara, like maybe she had tried to use the news to her own advantage.

“What did she say?” I asked.

Mom shrugged.

“She said she hoped he had come to faith before he died.”

Now it was my turn to look out the window.

“I don’t think she ever thought of Philip Wells as her father in any sense other than simple biology,” Mom said, as a tear slipped down her left cheek.

I hated to ask it, but I needed to.

“So where does that leave you?” I said.

My mom dabbed at her eyes with her shirtsleeve.

“I asked Lara that same question,” she said, smiling nervously.

I waited to hear the answer.

“She said Rosemary was her mom, but she has always thought of me as her mother, too, even when she didn’t know me,” Mom said. “I gave her life, and I gave her a family. She said she always thought I had been a good mother to her in the short time I had her.”

We were both quiet for a moment. I wondered when this conversation had taken place. I asked my mom, thinking maybe it was just after the wedding. They had actually had the discussion the day before the July Fourth party—more than two months ago.

“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I asked. “I mean, about Philip Wells.”

Mom turned to look at me.

“I didn’t say anything because until just recently you seemed like you were...I don’t know...like you were distancing yourself from Lara,” she said. “Like you already had more than you could mentally deal with. I didn’t want to intrude.”

“It was that obvious?” I asked quietly, not looking at her.

“It was to me,” she said. “But I understood why. I even expected it.”

I looked up at her.

“You were so young when you had to give Lara up,” Mom said to me. “And you wanted a sister so badly. You loved her before she was even born, just like I did. You loved her because of who she was—your sister—not because of how she came to be, just like I loved her because she was my daughter. Then you had to let her go. And that hurt you because you loved her. Loving Lara had been painful for you, Kate. Now she’s back in your life, and you have to decide how much you will allow yourself to love her again. I think that’s why you’ve kept her at a distance.”

I now found that my own cheeks were wet but didn’t raise a hand to wipe the tears away. It was almost as if I didn’t want to admit I was crying and that everything my mother was saying was true. I asked her in an unsteady voice how she so easily let Lara back into her affections.

“I decided loving her completely was worth the risk of getting hurt because I wanted the joy of it,” she said.

“So it’s that easy?” I said curtly, finally wiping my cheeks.

“No, but it is that wonderful,” she said.

“Why is God doing this?” I said after a moment’s pause. “Why did he give her to us in such a terrible way, then take her away for years only to give her back?”

“I don’t know,” Mom said, looking out the window to a cloudless, blue sky. “I’m not sure I will ever know.”

Then she turned back toward me.

“Grandma told me once, when I was still pretty young, that sometimes God’s reasons for allowing certain things to happen are too complex for us to fully appreciate,” she continued. “What he doesn’t tell us, I think he wants us to trust him for, because he is good and he cares for us. But I think I do finally understand something God has been trying to tell me, ever since I was a little girl.”

She paused.

“What?” I asked. “What has he been trying to tell you?”

My mom shifted in her chair, like she was sure of what she knew but unsure of how to explain it to me. She took my hands in her own.

“I haven’t told very many people this, Kate,” she said. “But I awoke the morning I found out my real father had been killed with a voice in my ear, a voice I was sure was ... God’s voice. It was like he whispered something to me just as I was waking, something terribly important. Kate, he whispered the same thing to me three decades later on the day I knew I was pregnant with Lara. And I heard him say it again the day we came home from Atlanta and I called you to see if everything was all right. Do you remember that day, Kate? You had just read Rosemary’s letter the day before. I was going to be reading it that night.”

I felt a shiver come over me. Mom held my hands tighter.

“What did God whisper to you?” I said, whispering myself.

“He told me not to be afraid.”

“Not to be afraid of what?”

“I have never really understood that until now.”

I waited.

“Not to be afraid of love,” she said.

I knew what she meant. She was telling me that the risk in giving love and receiving love is better than the safety of not loving at all.

Deep down I knew she was right, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. Not to her and not to myself.