You Could Be Home by Now (25 page)

Ben chuckled at her ludicrous formality. Veronica and Sadie had deeper wells of self-control. The flatness of Mona's mouth outright dared him to laugh again. “Sorry,” he said. “I don't have any idea what you're talking about.”

“She does.” Mona pointed.

Sadie blanched not a bit at that finger.

When Mona spoke again, she spoke blandly, as if reading out the minutes of a meeting where nothing vital had been discussed. “She's already done enough damage. That girl of yours. C'mon, Ty.” The crowd parted for them, but that didn't mean anything in particular. It was simply the nature of this place. Everyone had been around long enough to know how to behave.

Veronica asked what on earth
that
was about; Sadie sketched in the basic details. The woman who had been his wife, the woman who might be—
what?
They were simply women now, bandying a bit of gossip. They had nothing to do with him. The jeweler said that Tyson was a sweet boy. Sadie said, “He's struggling.” People had said that about Tara, too. For their daughter, there had seemed to exist a finite list of adjectives. The women's voices all had similar cadences. The jeweler, too, a comment here and there as she tidied her display.

Ben wanted to be among men.

It seemed ages since he'd even talked to one. He looked around. He waved to Ed Runch and called his name. To someone who looked like Marvin Baum in the distance. He nodded in the direction of a fellow in a Panama hat who he was fairly confident went by Bing. The young man who'd started all the trouble yesterday headed toward The Homeplate and Ben saluted him as well. Everyone waved back. Everyone smiled. It was that kind of place. It was a fine day. A scorcher, yes, but brilliant.

You could see Ronnie tallying the greetings. “Mister Popular,” she murmured.

He said, “They're good people.”

“Maybe, but they've got questionable taste in friends.”

“You're right. No one actually likes me. I paid them to be nice while you're here.”

“You didn't even know I was coming.”

Hard to say which was lovelier: these tart exchanges with Ronnie or the unvarnished back-and-forth he'd been building toward with Sadie. “True,” he said. “But I keep them on retainer. Just in case.”

“You don't have that kind of money. I know. Diesler is very good.”

Diesler was May Diesler, Ronnie's attorney in the divorce. The air went electric. That she could be so arch about it. He said, “You're forgetting the account I've got in Sweden. I had Rand Danovic set it up.” A dud of a comeback and he knew it. Still, the PI's name was bound to cut. And he'd gotten the tone right: airy and flirtatious. Trouble was, Sadie had heard him use it. She'd think of Ronnie any time he trotted it out with her. His neighbor stood a little aside, letting them bicker with a semblance of privacy. She tried on a necklace, tugging at the chain as if to lengthen it. The jeweler indicated she'd be happy to custom adjust.

Veronica said, “Switzerland, Benji. Switzerland's the one with the banks.” If you didn't know her, you'd never guess he'd scored a hit.

“That's what May Diesler thinks, but Rand—”

“Yes. Let's really talk about Rand right now.”

“Look.” He picked up an ornate, disc-shaped pin, the closest thing at hand. “Aren't these beautiful?”

“You just literally tried to distract me with something shiny.”

Sadie's lips quirked. She'd heard the whole thing but would pretend she hadn't. She would allow him to pretend as much, too.

“You know Anjali's Christmas bracelet?” he asked. “The green one?” Veronica wasn't looking at the baubles. Sadie wasn't either. Their eyes were on him and once again he felt displayed for sale. “It used to be antique bottles, I think. This gal recycles things.”

“Repurposes,” the jeweler said. “Please. Recycles sounds like I'm using pop cans.”

Sadie raised the necklace and let it fall against her chest. “It really is lovely.”

“Garnet. I popped the big stone there off this god-awful filigree brooch.”

Veronica rubbed her own neck, conspicuously bare. “Garnets. Those are supposed to be bad luck, right? If they aren't your birthstone.” Now that she was done with the wedding ring, Veronica wore no jewelry. She'd had quite the collection way back when. They had bought a minisafe and put a rider on their homeowners' insurance. There was the engagement ring that she was fonder of the punier the rest of their successes made it look. The graduation pearls from her parents and the black Tahitian pendant brought back from vacation. The glittering studs she'd inherited from her father's mother that, as a bride, she'd used as something borrowed. A handful of glinting brooches she treated herself to with each promotion. A small, square-cut emerald pin she'd been uncharacteristically unable to resist. A Cartier watch. Bracelets from their trip to Venice. A choker from a gallery in Santa Fe. The earrings passed down from some great-aunt or other that they were shocked to hear from the appraiser were real. The anniversary gifts: an upgraded diamond shaped like a pear, a necklace of semiprecious stones set in hammered gold, the intricate globule that you could either hang from a chain or pin on a lapel.

Veronica fingered a delicate strand of mixed beads.

The worst small dark truth of his life was that they didn't know, not to the hour or even the day, exactly when Tara had left. She came and went that whole last fractious year. The overnight at a friend's that ballooned into three, that vanished week she claimed passed hitching to and from a concert up in Seattle. He and Veronica set down rules, an explicit curfew. They hid car keys. They switched out their mattress for the pitted guest room futon and forwent pillows. The point was to sleep lightly, to wake at her footsteps on the stairs. Tara's absences lengthened. Their frequency increased. They guessed it was for keeps when Veronica went for her pearls and found an empty safe. The combination had been a mishmash of Tara's birth date and Stephen's. They never filed a claim with State Farm. There were things you couldn't bear to write down.

The jeweler said the birthstone superstition was actually about opals.

Veronica frowned. “I like a stone with some zing. Opals . . .”

“They never seem like they can quite make up their mind.” Sadie finished the thought. The women smiled, briefly in accord.

“You'd like this.” The jeweler indicated a ring. “You hardly ever get rose quartz quite this shade.”

Ronnie fingered the ring.

Sadie encouraged her to try it on.

Veronica did. Right hand, not left, which looked strange. She held it showily aloft. She didn't make her usual crack about plebe paws, but she wouldn't in front of Sadie. “It's beautiful.” She sounded young, but she wasn't. Well on her way to old-woman's hands, veins obvious as earthworms. Sadie's were, too; he checked in the spirit of fairness. Ronnie ran a thumbnail along the stone. “I'm not sure about these threads here. With the pink and all. You don't think it looks like a giant shrimp?”

Sadie said, “I like shrimp.”

Veronica mimed popping the ring into her mouth and swallowing. Sadie laughed and Ben bristled. Petty but true: it offended his sense of, well, of
something
how quickly they had slid into getting along. His sense of how these things were supposed to unfold, maybe. His sense of self-importance.

Sadie unclasped the garnet and turned the necklace over in her hand, inspecting the craftsmanship. “I really do think this would suit my Lily.”

Veronica murmured her agreement.

“I love that piece,” the jeweler said. “It's based on Victorian mourning jewelry. You see the craziest old stuff. All these bands and chains woven out of hair.”

Sadie set the necklace down. Her skin had gone mushroomy; the faint freckles he'd always liked could just as well be age spots. “I can't believe I tried to put that on Lily.” She scanned the crowd, and Ben remembered: the same crowd last year, Gary in his final, unknowing hour, waving, hearty, from across the midway. Ben was a thoughtless bastard. He felt bleached and ironed. Sadie rubbed her arms as if chilled. “I can't believe I did that to her.”

“No, no, no.” The jeweler was all assurance. “It's not real hair. I use a kind of synthetic floss. The only thing actually period is the stone.”

Sadie fingered the necklace. “Her grandfather died last year. To the day. We're trying for a pleasant outing and here I go, reminding her.”

Ronnie was either being discreet or seriously contemplating something at the far end of the display. Sadie shook her head. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. She shouldn't have come here. She wouldn't have if he hadn't blathered on about it in front of Veronica.

“Lily's tough,” he told her. This was Sadie. Just Sadie, here and now. None of that usual sense of another Sadie along for the ride, younger, adroit, green within this one like a wick.

“Oh, I know that.” She let her hands drop. She smoothed her hair. He inspected a pair of earbobs, letting Sadie return to herself by increments. “But sometimes . . .” She ended the sentence there, punctuating with a shrug.

And then Veronica's hand dove, a raptor on the wing, toward a stamp-sized square of green. It was set in an oblong metallic squiggle. She picked it up. Crazed light refracted. “Everything's repurposed?” she asked. Ben couldn't work out how the item was meant to be worn. Add a top tassel and it would become a very expensive bookmark.

“Yeah. I've always been into—”

“Where do you get the things
to
repurpose?”

Veronica was being kind now, distracting the jeweler, giving Sadie a chance to resettle. Veronica did that sometimes. She didn't suffer fools, but if she'd decided you weren't one, well, she could be wily on your behalf. She could be ferocious. He'd thank her, later. He'd explain about Gary and his ex would give him the same grief she always gave when he let her walk into a room without knowing the full social context.

The jeweler said, “Oh, everywhere. Around. Estate sales, eBay. Sometimes pawn shops.”

“Pawn shops?” The keening quality of his ex-wife's voice jolted through him. Her finger grazed that square green smear. He knew what she was thinking. Oh, Ronnie. He knew it with the operatic clarity of a high
C
.

“We should dance,” he said, to distract from the hurt he knew was coming. A person's heart was a muscle, yeah, but that invisible thing that yearned, that was a sponge. Go upright about your business and it goes around with you, sopping up hope. Which was fine, as far as the day-to-day went. It kept things clean and you got by. But there was always a saturation point. A squeeze and then a wrung-out flood of feeling.

Veronica ignored him; the jeweler prattled on. “Pawn shops, sometimes, yeah. I don't like to—there's this sadness—but you get these really cool pieces.”

“We should dance,” he said again.

“Dance?” Sadie pronounced the word as though it were new to her. Her color was on its way back. From the stage, a song began as if he'd cued it. Sadie grinned at the timing, herself again. She had that unflappable kind of vigor that would be called dashing in a man.

“
Local
pawn shops?” Veronica asked.

“Yeah, mostly. Sometimes I'll look around when I travel.”

“Veronica,” he said. He'd never been one for the dance floor, but he bowed like he knew what he was doing. “Come on. Please.” The green gem in her hand was easily twice as big as the one that had vanished with Tara. The emerald his wife had bought just because. They'd had a good year. Cost hadn't been a major issue. Still, when quoting the price she had managed the considerable feat of blanching and blushing at once. Portland wasn't a flashy town, so Veronica didn't wear it as often as she would've liked. He hoped—foolishly, fervently—that the stone had gone toward the security deposit on a small apartment, a place with natural light and good locks.

Veronica asked, “What's the story with this one?”

The jeweler thought a moment. “eBay. I got this insane lot of eighties costume jewelry.” She touched the base of her throat. “The green came off a horrible Lady Di choker.”

He watched Veronica's face absorb the information, and then he watched Veronica rebuild her face.

“It's not real,” he said. It sounded like he meant the gem, but he meant the story she'd been building, the one they'd both dreamed in a thousand permutations. The one where the green was emerald, not glass. The one where it was Veronica's emerald. The one where the jeweler remembered the pawn shop she'd found it in and the owner was the furthest thing from seedy. The one where the owner remembered the girl with the emerald, talkative, lively, and unquestionably wholesome. The one where the emerald girl had left an address.

“I'm not an idiot,” said Veronica, which meant she was pulverizing herself and thinking that, really, she was.

He laid a hand on her arm. He hadn't touched her since her arrival. “We should dance.”

She nodded.

Sadie looked away. “Lady Di,” she said. “I remember getting up early to watch the wedding. The whole thing was garish, but even so.”

“Was she ever beautiful,” the jeweler said. “I had the paper dolls.”

“Gary teased me, about wanting to watch the whole thing. But it was such a good story when you didn't know what was coming. Everyone fell in love a little.”

A new wan pool of sadness seeped through Ben. Once a dumb lug, always one. He should've cottoned on. Sadie had thought he'd been asking
her
to dance, back then. And he should've. She was down and in need of distraction. He and Veronica were beyond each other's helping anyhow. His ex-wife led him toward the floor and he allowed himself to be led. A brief crest of triumph swept him up. He was still young enough to make a mess of asking a woman to dance. Then, after the crest, the trough. All this time and you still haven't figured it out. He didn't look back at Sadie but the woman beside him did. Ronnie's hair brushed his cheek as she turned. Its texture was different somehow. Friable. The encroaching whiteness was at fault there, that or the chemicals she used to cover it.