Broken Pieces: A Novel (17 page)

My father and I spent each evening that week fabricating the pieces we’d need to build a reading nook inside Ella’s closet.

I removed the door during my initial measurements, but Ella asked to keep it, loving the silence she found when she was closed inside.

Who was I to argue? I understood the love of silence, even if the only solitude I found these days was during the hours I worked alone at my shop.

Truth was, even though I missed the quiet, I’d grown fond of the sounds of life inside my once silent home.

Although Sydney had wanted to come to the shop to help with Ella’s project, she’d struggled with nausea and fatigue since her two days of respite over the weekend.

So I’d asked my father to help, taking my turn to extend an olive branch.

I worked feverishly all day on building the trim pieces for the opera house stage, and at night Albert and I sanded, finished, and painted pieces for Ella’s nook.

Some nights, we worked in silence. Other nights, we reminisced about the past, about how we’d once explored every inch of Paris, even though the memories we treasured the most were the ones we’d made on Third Street, in our own backyard.

Although I still hadn’t been able to forget the fact he’d known about the photo all my life, I began to forgive him, understanding his not wanting to shatter a little girl’s heart.

By the end of the week, we were ready to transform Ella’s closet. Not only were the component pieces cut, painted, and labeled for assembly, but the residents of Paris had been dropping off books at Jessica’s café with an overabundance of generosity.

Such was life in Paris. Word spread. Sometimes that was an annoying thing. On most occasions, like this one, it was a wonderful thing.

My father and I drove to the shop after dinner to transport the shelving pieces back home, and at one point, as we joked over how long it took us to load my car, he laughed, pure joy dancing in his eyes.

In that moment I saw the man he’d been, the father I’d loved so deeply, and I realized that somewhere along the way I’d started believing we’d find our way out of our damaged past and into our new future.

Soon we were sitting elbow to elbow inside Ella’s room, fitting pieces, securing mitered edges, and sinking nails.

Sydney sat back and watched as Ella excitedly read title after title from the boxes of books she’d gathered.

Marguerite had headed downstairs to retrieve the set of four padded floor cushions she’d sewn when the doorbell rang.

“Jackson,” I heard her say.

My heart flipped inexplicably, and I kept my focus down, afraid my father or Sydney would spot my reaction.

“What a lovely surprise,” Marguerite’s voice continued. “Everyone’s upstairs in Ella’s room.”

The stairs squeaked, and Ella sprang to her feet and ran to the landing.

“Mr. Jackson,” she called out. “What are you doing here?”

“The last time we spoke on the phone, your Grandpa Albert told me you were building a reading nook.” His deep voice reverberated in the hallway. “So I brought you some books.”

Ella squealed. “
Percy Jackson.
Is he your cousin?”

“No.” Jackson laughed, obviously amused. “But they’re autographed.”

“Thank you so much,” Ella exclaimed as she burst through the door. “Look what Mr. Jackson brought me.” She foisted the hardbacks onto Sydney’s lap. “They’re
autographed
.” She enunciated each syllable deliberately and carefully, as though she’d been handed priceless treasure.

“Lovely,” Sydney said, just as Jackson appeared in the doorway.

“I heard this was where the volunteers report to build the reading nook?” His voice boomed into the small space.

My father crossed to greet him, and the two men embraced warmly, patting each other’s backs.

“So glad you could stop by,” Albert said, and I found myself wondering when the two had spoken—and why.

Jackson’s hair had grown a little longer, the look softening his previous intensity. He wore blue jeans and a long-sleeved gray Henley, the sleeves pushed up casually.

His gaze found mine and held for a fraction of a second.

“That depends on how handy you are with a fistful of nails and a hammer,” Sydney replied, extending her hand. But instead of shaking it, Jackson bent to wrap her in a gentle hug.

His show of affection left my sister visibly affected, and something deep inside my heart softened.

Then he crossed to where I stood and shook my hand. And although we’d never done more than that, part of me had hoped he would surprise me with a hug also.

“I was passing through,” he said with a grin. “Thought maybe you could use some help. That, and I promised to check on Scarlet.”

Scarlet,
I thought. Thank goodness for Scarlet.

For the next hour he worked beside Albert and me, fastening pieces, fitting sections into the spacious closet, and anchoring each unit into the interior walls.

Occasionally Jackson’s hand would brush against mine, our eyes would meet, and we’d smile.

I knew that in the midst of everything else I had going on in my life, an attraction to the man was ridiculous, but for that shared time in that small space, I let myself simply enjoy the possibility that he might feel the same.

Later, after the shelving was in place and Marguerite and Albert had fit the padded cushions into the floor space, Jackson worked beside Ella to build her library.

He hung on her every word and direction as if there were nowhere on earth he’d rather be, helping her shelve titles from Dahl, Bloom, Rowling, and Gutman. The kid had received enough books to fill her nook with hours of adventure, fantasy, and escape, thanks to the kindness of Paris.

I’d spent my whole life in the small town, and I’d taken part in numerous acts of kindness, and now the friends and neighbors I loved had welcomed my new family as warmly as they’d always embraced me.

I might be nervous about the idea of raising a child alone, but the truth was I’d never actually be alone. Not here. Not in Paris.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Sydney’s energy returned the next week, and she helped me in the shop for a few hours each morning before she headed home to rest in the afternoons.

Albert drove Sydney to the shop each morning, and together they worked beside me to assemble the façade pieces for the stage.

Sydney had become an expert at gluing and pinning the ornate façade woodwork, and I loved the way she beamed with confidence each time she helped me finish a new section.

My father had mastered the hard work of making sure the pieces would fit, fixing the scrolls and ornate cuts to each section before I readied them for transport to the opera house.

My subcontractors were scheduled to help with the actual installation during the coming weeks, but here, in my shop, the tradeoff of silence for family was one I was growing to count on.

Sydney returned to New York at the end of the week for one more MRI, this one to determine whether she’d continue chemo.

I picked up Ella after school, and she worked beside me in the shop, staining trim while we waited. My father had promised to drop off Sydney as soon as they returned from the city.

The late-September sun had partially set, casting long rays of violet and melon through the windows by the time Sydney walked through the door. She wore a careful smile as she hugged Ella, yet her eyes told me everything I needed to know.

A deep ache grew inside me as I watched them, mother and daughter, denial pushing at the tiny voice at the back of my brain telling me we were running out of time.

“How was your day, Momma?” Ella asked, her voice light with hope and innocence.

“OK,” Sydney said. “Hey”—she shifted Ella’s attention by pointing to a half-stained section of paneling—“is that your work?”

Ella nodded proudly. “Auntie D taught me how to stain.”

“She’s a natural,” I said, ruffling Ella’s hair. “What do you say we head over to Jessica’s for dinner? You’ve got to be starving.”

Dread slid through me, and I wished for a moment that we were alone, just the two of us, so that Sydney could let her hopes and fears and news pour forth.

“I’m actually not that hungry,” she said. “But I’d love to go along.”

Ella growled like a lion. “I could eat a horse.”

“Let’s go.” I sealed the stain, dropped our brushes in the work sink to soak, and reached for the keys. “I think I have the best crew in town, don’t you?”

I took Sydney’s hand to steady her as we headed down the steps. She squeezed my fingers, letting loose a shaky sigh. “Maybe a cup of tea,” I said.

“Maybe.”

We headed up Artisan’s Alley to Bridge Street. Pumpkins and scarecrows had begun appearing in shop windows and doorways, and Ella stopped to ooh and aah at the window of the gift shop, which overflowed with skulls and bats and broomsticks.

When Ella skipped ahead, Sydney and I took our time. I matched my steps to hers, never letting go of her hand, sadness building inside me as I wondered how much longer she’d be able to walk without some sort of assistance.

“I can’t thank you enough for the time you’re spending with Ella.” Moisture welled in her eyes. “She’s blossoming right in front of us.”

“She’s had a great role model.”

She hesitated a few moments before she said, “When you’re diagnosed with cancer, your world shrinks. For a while everyone rallies around you. They bring you meals. They take your kid on playdates. They offer to bring you groceries. They bring you coffee, and they sit and chat. But as the weeks and months stretch on, they get tired. Tired of the bake and take. They fade away. I get that. I don’t blame them.

“After my parents died and the cancer came back,” Sydney continued, “most people stopped meeting my gaze in the grocery store and at church, and I needed to go somewhere where I wasn’t defined by my disease.”

I grabbed her arm, pulling her around to face me. “I can’t believe you were ever defined by your disease.”

Moisture shimmered along her lower lashes. “That’s because you’re my sister. You have to say that.”

“I think you know me better than that.”

But I understood what she meant. I remembered the sad looks, the pitying stares. I hated being the girl whose mother had died.

Sydney’s lips trembled and her voice broke. “How will I ever tell her nothing’s working?”

A wall of grief built inside me, waiting to fall.

“The inflamed area’s gotten larger.”

“I . . .” I fell silent, unable to push a single word past the anger that flooded every inch of my body. Sydney didn’t deserve this. Ella didn’t deserve this. None of this. “I’m sorry,” I said finally, my voice barely audible.

“Hurry up,” Ella called out from up ahead, where she’d dutifully stopped at the curb to wait for us. “I’m starving.” She grabbed her stomach dramatically and rocked back and forth, her smile huge, her eyes bright.

Beside me, Sydney cleared her throat. “Smile,” she said. “She’s watching.”

But even as I plastered on the best smile I could muster, a little piece inside of me fractured, and I held tightly to Sydney’s arm, wanting to never, ever let go.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A few days later I sat at the counter inside the Paris River Café and watched Jessica work her magic. Customers chatted, sipped her fabulous coffee, and dined on their made-to-order breakfasts.

I played with the pieces I’d broken off my chocolate-glazed doughnut without ever taking a bite. My coffee sat untouched, and my mind raced with the various scenarios the future might hold.

I remembered my mother’s last weeks and how I’d vacillated between wanting to hide and wanting to be by her side. My father had kept me away at the very end, in her final hours, and I’d never quite gotten over the guilt of not being there as she took her final breath.

I didn’t want the same guilt for Ella. Not if she and Sydney were OK with her being there.

I wanted to do whatever it took to make sure Ella would have no regrets looking back.

“Hey.” Jessica tapped the counter beside the plate with my mangled doughnut. “You’re still going to have to pay for that, you know.”

Even though I knew she’d intended to make me smile, I felt myself sag, the effort to eat simply more than I had in me.

“I should just go,” I said. “Maybe I’ll feel better if I get to work. Stay busy. You know?”

“Or maybe you should try to eat something more than a doughnut and coffee,” she said. “You can’t afford to get sick. You’ve got a lot of people depending on you.”

Her words landed with a heavy dose of reality.

My days of skimming through life as one were over.

Jessica tapped the table again, like she’d had a brainstorm. “I’ll grab you some fruit and a large orange juice.”

I groaned. “Please. Just let me mangle my doughnut, and I promise I’ll drink my coffee at work.”

She studied me, sighing deeply. “I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

“How can I not be? You’re my friend, and I love you.” She dropped her voice before her next question. “How is she?”

“Fading, I’m afraid.”

Fading.
There was a word that should only apply to paint or curtains or a crayon picture taped to a wall. It shouldn’t apply to people, especially people you loved.

People shouldn’t fade, and yet they did.

“Anything I can do?”

I started to say no, but then realized there was something Jessica could do.

“Would you bring the kids over sometime? Ella could use some kid time.”

“Of course. They’d love to see Ella.”

“Maybe after work one night soon?”

She gave my hand a quick squeeze. “You bet.”

Another customer called to her from the end of the counter, but she held up a finger, then leaned quite close. “Hospice?”

“Not yet.”

Jessica’s features tensed, and I knew she wanted to ask me something, something she wasn’t comfortable with.

“What?” I asked.

“Am I that obvious?”

I nodded. “For as long as I can remember.”

She drew in a slow breath, then exhaled before she spoke. “I know you weren’t there when your mom died, but I can’t imagine you want Ella seeing her mother die, either. Right?”

Some of the warmth I’d felt a moment earlier cooled.

I’d spent the last two nights before my mother’s death sleeping at Marguerite’s, sort of a phony slumber party while my life crumbled in the house next door.

“You’re not going to let Ella stay there, are you?” she asked.

I shot her a warning glare. “What if I am? More important, what if Sydney is? It’s her choice.”

Color flared in Jessica’s cheeks. “What if she reaches a point where she’s not able to make that choice? Will you step in and protect Ella?”

“From what? Her mother’s going to die. Don’t you think that’s about as bad as things get for a nine-year-old girl?”

Jessica’s customer called out again, and she excused herself, attending to his bill and returning quickly.

“Look,” she said, “I’m not trying to second-guess you, or tell you what to do, but I don’t want you to do something that might scar Ella just to ease the guilt you feel over not being there with your mom at the end.”

Her words pushed every button I’d tried to bury for twenty years. I hadn’t been there when Mom died, and I’d wanted to be. In the eyes of a child, I’d failed her, and I had no plans to let Ella carry similar regrets into the rest of her life.

“I know you mean well, Jessica, but how Sydney dies and whether or not her daughter is by her side during that entire process is up to Sydney.”

I pulled out my wallet, but Jessica pressed her hand across my arm. “This one’s on me. After all, you’re walking out of here with the same empty stomach you walked in with.”

“Thanks.”

I moved to stand, but Jessica tightened her grip on my arm.

“I’m just trying to help,” she said.

“I know,” I said. Then I turned and headed out the door, leaving my battered doughnut and untouched coffee behind.

That day I worked alone, my hands going through the motions of my job while my head and heart weighed Jessica’s concerns.

Sydney wasn’t ready to die, but she was growing quite weak. I knew Jessica had stated her concern out of love and friendship, and I understood. I also understood that the question of whether Ella stayed with her mother in her final hours was a personal one.

Even that day, Ella had chosen being with Sydney over coming to my shop after school. My dad had agreed to meet her after school to walk her home.

While he still spent an hour or two with me in the shop each morning while Marguerite visited with Sydney, his attention had shifted to home, to staying as close to Sydney as possible.

I couldn’t help but contrast the way he’d dug in to help now with the way he’d vanished to do a show or make an audition when the going had gotten tough decades earlier.

So when I found him late that afternoon sitting beside the garden, his hands in the dirt, surprise flickered through me.

“Hey,” I called out. “What are you doing out here?”

“Marguerite and Ella are painting her nails,” he answered.

I sat down on the grass beside him, not quite ready to go inside, suddenly craving a moment alone with him, just us two, as I’d once imagined our life would have been.

“Not in the mood for a manicure?”

“No.” He shook his head and smiled, even though his momentary amusement couldn’t quite edge out the worry that bracketed his eyes.

“How’s Sydney?” I asked.

“She slept a lot today.”

He pulled the remains of a stubborn vine from between the branches of my mother’s azalea as he spoke. I studied the way he worked gently, tenderly, careful to extract every rogue tendril and root. I thought of how he’d sacrificed his time here, in the garden he loved, to help me in the shop, and I pushed up the sleeves of the heavy sweatshirt I’d worn for my walk home.

“Can I help you?”

His hands stilled, and his gaze met mine, surprise flashing in the depths of his pale eyes.

I shrugged. “Can’t a girl help her dad?”

A small laugh slipped between his lips. “Of course. Yes. That would be nice.”

We worked together, side by side, hands in the dirt, until it was time to go inside. And I realized that if my father believed this garden might one day bloom, so could I.

That night, not long after Ella had fallen asleep, I heard stairs creak. I turned, expecting Ella. Instead Sydney stood at the bottom of the steps, clutching the railing.

“Do you have a pair of clippers?” she asked.

“Clippers?”

She ran a hand over the clumps of hair that remained intact. “It’s time. I’d feel better with it gone.”

Manny, who’d been the only barber in Paris for as long as I could remember, walked through our front door a half hour later, just moments after nine o’clock.

“I can’t thank you enough,” I said as I led him back into the kitchen.

Sydney sat at the table with my father, sipping on the cup of tea he’d made her. Even in her visibly fragile state, she held out her hand to Manny, greeted him warmly, and thanked him for coming.

Then she sat, spine straight, stoic, as Manny buzzed the remaining strands of her hair. They fell on the towel I’d anchored around her neck and onto the floor, as if she were shedding her last vestiges of hope.

She’d been beautiful with them, and she was beautiful without them. I looked at the cape around her shoulders, and I knew. I knew exactly who she was.

“Superhero,” I said.

But even as my dad kissed her cheek and Manny brushed the loose hairs from her neck, she shook her head slightly. Because in Sydney’s eyes, she was no stronger than anyone else fighting a battle.

In my eyes, however, she was the bravest person I knew.

An hour later, after Sydney had gone to bed, and my father, Manny, and I finished a snack of milk and cookies, I thought of Sydney and her hair, and made a decision.

“I know it’s late, but before you head home, do you think you’d have time to do the same thing to my hair?” I asked.

“You sure?” Manny asked as I pulled off my ball cap.

“I’m sure.”

My father’s eyes went wide, and confusion danced across his tired face.

“Why?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Why not?”

I wanted to give Sydney some tangible sign of my support. She wasn’t defined by her disease or her hair. I could match her in that.

“I have my shears,” Manny said. “We can braid the length before we cut it.”

“Wigs and Wishes,” I said, thinking of a regional charity event that helped children and women who were going through treatment.

Manny took one last bite of his cookie. “Perfect,” he said.

I waved my hand over my head. “Let’s do this.”

“One more thing,” my father said, as he reached for the towel that had been around Sydney’s neck.

He smiled as he wrapped it around my neck, knotting it lightly in front, and I wondered if he remembered all the times he’d done this in my youth.

Then he looked at me, his stare locking with mine, and he simply said, “My girl.”

And I knew.