Night Road (33 page)

When Miles got there, hair still wet from his shower and smiling in the way that only he among them still could, Jude felt a weight slide off her shoulders. Miles was the glue that held their lives together. Around him, Jude and Zach breathed easier.

“There’s my girl,” Miles said, opening his arms wide.

Zach put Grace down and she ran for her grandfather, hurled her little pink polka-dot flanneled body at him.

Miles scooped her up and whispered something in her ear, and she giggled.

Jude felt a spasm in her chest. There were times, like this, when all that she’d lost hit her so hard she had trouble standing.

“Let’s eat while it’s hot,” she said tightly.

“Yummy!” Grace said, scampering out of Miles’s arms and running for the table. As always she sat next to a blank spot and an extra place setting. That was the place for her “invisible friend.”

The alien princess trapped in a jar.

“So, how’s the clinical stuff going?” Miles asked Zach when he sat down.

“I love the clinical. Diagnosing is awesome, but pharmacokinetics? That stuff is kicking my ass,” Zach answered, scooping eggs onto his daughter’s plate.

Miles reached over to stab a waffle with his fork. “Pathology was my downfall second year. I don’t know why. You just have to get through it all with the knowledge. Third year is when you really get into it.”

Jude watched the way her son buttered Grace’s waffle while he talked to his father, how he cut it up into small pieces for her and put her napkin in her lap, and she was so proud of him that she thought,
we’re all going to be okay
.
Someday we’ll be laughing again
.

She found herself smiling at the unexpected idea of happiness, of a future together. She listened to one of Zach’s stories about diagnosing some terrible disease, and how he’d screwed up, and she laughed along with her husband and son.

After breakfast was over, the unanticipated sense of lightness remained. Jude sent Zach off to the UW with a kiss on the cheek and a hug that was so fierce he actually frowned at her.

“Go on. We’ll have fun today,” she said.

“Thanks, Mom,” Zach said.

“No problema,” she answered without thinking. At the silly reminder of who they’d been, she fell silent.

And then he was grabbing his backpack and heading out the door.

“Papa, can I go to my playhouse?” Grace asked when her dad was gone.

“Put on your clothes and brush your teeth first,” Miles said distractedly. He was looking for the TV remote. When he found it, the screen thumped to life and a baseball game filled the screen. Miles flopped onto their old sofa and put his feet up on the coffee table.

While Jude washed the dishes, she saw a yellow flash blur past her. “Stay away from the water, Gracie.”

“Ariel and me are just gonna play Barbies in the playhouse,” Grace answered, grunting to open the sliding glass door.

“Ariel and I,” Jude said automatically. “Miles, do the ordinary rules of grammar apply to imaginary friends?”

He said, “Huh? What was that, babe?”

Jude went back to washing the dishes. She heard the sliding door thump shut and she glanced to the left.

Outside, Grace ran nimbly across the yard, toward the pink and yellow Princess Playhouse Santa had brought her last year. It was positioned just beyond the deck, on a patch of grass that looked out over the gray sandy beach.

“Come on, hurry,” Grace was yelling to her imaginary friend.

Jude dried the dishes and put them away. When she was finished, she glanced out at Grace again. She could see her granddaughter through the plastic castle’s open window. She was talking to the air while she made Barbie dance.

“You going out to the magic kingdom?” Jude asked Miles.

“In a sec. I just want to see this play.”

“Okay. I’m going to make them a chicken casserole for dinner,” Jude decided on the spot. She didn’t want Zach to be hungry when he got home from studying.

She moved through the familiar family recipe with almost no effort. Every few minutes she looked up to make sure that Grace was okay, and then she went back to work.

When the casserole was in the fridge, along with a note about cooking it, she cleaned up the kitchen again and then headed into the living room. She was about to say something to Miles when a flash of movement caught her eye.

She opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto the weathered deck. It was a beautiful June day, with sharp blue skies and no clouds. To the right of the property was a thick stand of evergreens that blocked the view of the neighboring house.

Grace was standing by the trees.

Beside her stood a girl dressed in faded shorts and a blue T-shirt. Was it Mildred’s daughter, from next door? Was she home from college?

Then the girl turned and Jude saw her face.

Jude reached out to the sliding glass door to steady herself and was about to call for her husband when pain exploded in her chest. It hurt so much she couldn’t think, couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything except plaster her hand over her heart and fall to her knees.

*

Lexi rode down to LaRiviere Park.

As she got off the bike and looked out over the gray sandy beach, with its mounds of silvered driftwood tangled along the shore, she was assailed by memories.

She locked her bike into the rack and then moved past the driftwood, remembering the first time Zach had told her he loved her. They’d been right there …

She walked down to the pebbled beach. Here, the stones were polished to glassy perfection by the waves. Counting the houses, she knew when she reached her destination.

There it was: the old Tamarind cabin. There had been a party here once, back in her junior year of high school. Jude had never found out about that one.

Tall cedar trees ran in a thick line along one side of the property. To their right, on the lot next door, she saw a colorful plastic castle/playhouse, complete with a pointed gray turret and bright pink pennant. Beside it, perched like a baby bird at the end of the grayed deck, sat a little girl dressed in yellow. She was talking to her wrist again.

Lexi approached her daughter slowly, taking care to stay hidden by the trees. The last thing she wanted was for Zach to come storming out of the house like a Nazgul, telling her to get the hell away from his daughter.

Really, all Lexi wanted was to make sure that Grace was happy. Everything could go on as planned as long as Grace was happy.

She started to say, “Hey,” but her voice caught. She cleared her throat and tried again. “Hey, Grace.”

“I’m not s’posed to talk to strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger, Gracie. I’ve known you all your life.”

“Oh.” Grace cocked her face to the right, studying Lexi. Her lips pursed. “I saw you at school.”

“Yes.” It took everything Lexi had inside of her just to stand there. She wanted to fling herself at Grace and hold her in her arms and beg for forgiveness. Still, she took care to stand in the shade of the trees, out of the house’s view.

“You waved. How come?”

Lexi took a step closer. Her heart was taking flight. “I knew you when you were a baby.”

“Do you know my daddy?”

She nodded.

Grace’s face scrunched up. “Prove it.”

“Does he still like chocolate-chip-mint ice cream and hate anything that looks like a comb?”

Grace giggled and immediately covered her mouth to stifle the sound. “Nana says his hair looks like a beetle, which is funny cuz beetles are gross. Especially the ones who live on poop.”

Lexi battled a smile. “Can I stand by you?”

“Sure.”

Lexi moved closer, stood beside a huge tree. “How come you’re out here all alone?”

Grace’s little face drooped. “My daddy is gone.
Again
. Nana’s in the kitchen.”

“Does your grandma still dance while she cooks?”

Grace frowned up at her. “She hates me.”

“Your Grandma Jude hates you?”

“I look like
her
.”

A chill crept down Lexi’s spine. “Her?”

“Daddy’s dead sister. That’s why Nana never looks at me. I’m not s’posed to know that, but I do.”

“Really?”

“She was murdered by pirates. That’s why no one talks about it.” Grace sighed. “My daddy sometimes cries when he looks at me, too.”

“You do look like Mia,” Lexi said quietly.

“You knew Daddy’s sister?”

“I did,” Lexi said quietly. “She was—”

“Hey, do you have a dog?”

Lexi was startled by the change in subject. “No. I’ve never had one.”

“I want a dog. Or maybe a chipmunk.”

“Have you asked your dad for a pet?”

“We had rattlesnake for dinner last night. With peanuts.”

Something was going on here; Grace was throwing stuff at her, but why? Had the talk of Zach’s emotions scared her? Lexi said the only thing she could think of. “I ate ostrich once.”

“Wow.”

“So, your daddy’s not here?”

“Nope. I’m a big girl. I get to stay home alone all the time. I can take my own bath and everything. Last night I made dinner all by myself.”

“Does he go out a lot?”

Grace nodded.

Lexi studied her daughter’s gorgeous face, with its sad green eyes and pale skin, and wondered if she’d left any mark on this girl at all. “Do you have any friends at school?”

“F-friends?” Grace said, then grinned. “Tons. I’m the most pop’lar girl in the class.”

“You’re lucky. I was lonely sometimes in school,” Lexi said, watching her daughter closely. She couldn’t help herself; she took a step closer.

Grace’s lips trembled a little. “I really don’t have—”

“Grace!” someone yelled sharply. “Get in here.
Now
.”

Lexi jumped back into the trees. Peering around a shaggy green branch, she saw the cabin. The sliding glass door was open, and Miles stood there, frowning. He hadn’t seen Lexi, she was sure of it. So why did he sound so pissed?

“Grace, damn it,” he yelled again. “Get in here.
Now
.”

“Gotta go.” Grace popped to her feet.

“Does he always yell at you like that?”

Grace started to turn away, but Lexi dared to reach out and take hold of her girl’s hand. “I’d like to be your friend,” she said softly. It was hard to stop there. Suddenly there was so much more she had to say. She’d been a fool for thinking she could walk away from her daughter.

A smile broke over Grace’s face, its brightness warming Lexi. “Okay. Bye,” Grace said, waving. Then she turned and ran back for the house.

Lexi got up slowly. She understood at last how it felt to stop running.

She walked back to her bike, climbed aboard, and pedaled up the hill toward town.

An ambulance passed her, lights flashing, siren blaring, but she hardly noticed.

She was on her way to see Scot Jacobs.

Twenty-one

Jude was in the emergency ward of Seattle Hope. She lay in a narrow bed, connected to all kinds of monitors and machines and alarms, but it was all unnecessary. She hadn’t had a heart attack.

She looked up at her husband, feeling foolishly fragile. She’d broken so easily, again. “I thought all of that was behind me.”

He stroked the sweat-dampened hair away from her face. “So did I.”

“A panic attack.” She practically spit the words out.

Grace climbed up the metal bed rails. She slipped and plopped back to the floor, then climbed up again. The rattling
clang
reverberated through Jude’s tense body, made a headache blossom at the base of her skull. “What’s panic?” Grace asked, banging her chin against the bed rail.

“It means you’re scared,” Miles said.

“I saw a beach rat once. It was scary,” Grace said. “And those big hairy black spiders are scary. Did one crawl up your leg?”

“Nana’s really tired, Gracie,” Miles said. “Why don’t you read that book over there for a minute?”

“But I wanna know what scared Nana.”

“Not now, Gracie. Okay?” he said gently.

“Is it like when I had chicken pox and I just wanted sleep?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, Papa.” Grace slid down the side of the bed and shuffled over to the chair in the corner and sat down. She opened a tattered copy of
The Cat in the Hat
and tried to sound out the words.

Jude felt bad—shaky, headachy, sick to her stomach. “I’m losing it, Miles.”

“What do you mean?”

She loved the strong, steady movement of his hand through her hair. It calmed her more than any medication could. “I thought I saw her.”

“Mia?” he whispered.

“No.” Jude couldn’t help feeling disappointed by the question. She’d
tried
to see Mia. Neither psychics nor prayers had worked. And certainly, seeing Mia wouldn’t cause Jude to think she was having heart failure. The opposite would be true: such a vision would restart her heart.

She glanced sideways, saw that Grace was absorbed by the challenge of reading. “Lexi,” Jude whispered. It was the first time she’d said the name aloud in years. “She was talking to Gracie.”

Miles took her hand in his. He didn’t look at all ruffled by her admission, and his calm soothed her. “It’s common to experience dreamlike sensations or perceptual distortions during a panic attack. You know that. Remember the time you thought a car was going to hit Grace? If I hadn’t been there, you would have killed yourself running into traffic.”

“This wasn’t like that,” Jude said, but even as she said it, she questioned herself. So many weird things had happened to her since Mia’s death. “Her hair was short and curly. And she was really thin.”

“It wasn’t Lexi,” Miles said evenly. She loved how certain he sounded. Sometimes Miles’s certainty made Jude want to gouge his eyes out, but now she wanted to share his calm.

“How can you be so sure?”

“Her sentence was up in November. Remember how tense we all were, waiting to see if she would show up here?”

Tense was an understatement. Jude had spent the end of last year strung tighter than a trip wire. It wasn’t until mid-January that she had begun to relax. Miles had wanted to call the state and track Lexi’s movements, but Jude had been adamant about no contact whatsoever. She hadn’t wanted anyone in their family to even say Lexi’s name aloud, let alone find out where she’d gone.

“She didn’t show. Didn’t call or send a note. And she sent Zach’s letters back unopened,” Miles said reassuringly. “Lexi made her decision. She thinks G-R-A-C-E is better off without her.”

“You sound as if you disagree.”

“I’ve always disagreed. You know that.”

Grace looked up. “Did you just spell my name, Papa?”

Miles smiled tightly at his granddaughter. “I was testing you. Good job, Poppet.”

Grace beamed at him. “I’m the best speller in my class. I’m getting a trophy for it.”

“She’s not coming back, Jude,” Miles said softly, leaning down to kiss her forehead. “All of that is behind us.”

*

Grace loved hospitals. They were grownup places, and because her Papa was a surgun—or something like that—people brought her books and juice boxes and gave her paper and crayons. Sometimes, when a doctor wanted to be alone with Nana and Papa, one of the nurses would even take her for a walk through the busy hallways. Her favorite was seeing the newborn babies in the see-through plastic boxes. She loved their tiny pink and blue caps.

Even so, after a few hours, she was bored. Ariel was hiding; she hadn’t come to Grace’s wrist mirror since the playhouse, and Grace’s hand was hurting from coloring so many pictures.

She was about to whine—again—when the door to Nana’s room burst open. Dad rushed in, carrying a huge stack of books under one arm. “How is she?” he asked Papa.

“I’m fine,” Nana said. She smiled, but it looked sorta flat. Like she was tired. “You two don’t need to go into doc speak. I had a panic attack that felt a hell of a lot like a heart attack. They’re discharging me now. It’s embarrassing, really.”

Dad put his books down on the chair beside Grace. Ruffling her hair, he moved past her and went to the bedside. “Panic attack? You haven’t had one of those in years. Not since—”

Nana held up a shaking hand. “We all know the history.”

“She thought she saw Lexi,” Papa said.

Daddy drew in a sharp breath.

This was news. Nana had a reason, and the reason had a name. Grace scrambled up the metal bed rails again and hung on. “Who’s Lexi?”

No one answered her. They just looked at one another.

“A delusion?” Daddy asked quietly.

“Your dad thinks so,” Nana said. “Hopefully.”

“She’s made her feelings pretty clear,” Daddy said. “Lexi, I mean. She’s probably in Florida with Eva.”

Grace reached over and put her hand in his back pocket. It made her feel connected to him, even if he hardly noticed. “Who’s Lexi?” she asked again.

“Mildred’s niece is back from school,” Daddy said. “She has dark brown hair.”

“I’m sure that’s who it was,” Nana said.

Grace bounced a little on the bed rail. The metal clanged. It bugged her that no one was paying attention to her. “I saw a baby with four arms,” she said. “He’s in the nursery.”

“Why don’t you take Gracie home, Zach?” Nana said. “She’s been really good.”

Grace slithered down from her perch and went to the desk, where she gathered up all her pictures and crayons. Taking one drawing of a butterfly on a flower, she handed it to her Nana. “This is for you.”

Nana stared at the picture. “Thanks, Gracie. I feel better already.”

“They’re magic crayons. They make anyone better. That’s why the hospital has ’em,” Grace said earnestly. “The yellow ones can fly.”

“Come on, Grace,” Daddy said. He gathered all their things together and took her out to the car.

She climbed into the car seat in the back, and he strapped her in.

All the way home, Grace talked to her daddy.

She’d been quiet for
hours,
and she had so much to say. She told him about the new game Ariel had taught her and the sand dollar she’d found by the playhouse and about the new friend she’d made today and the seagull that had landed right in front of her.

“Look, Daddy,” Grace said, sitting up straighter as they drove through town. “There she is. There’s my new friend. Hi!” Grace yelled at the closed window, waving furiously. “Did you see her, Daddy? That’s a cool bike she has. It’s magic. I think she’s a movie star. She said she ate an ostrich once.”

Daddy kept driving. A few minutes later, he turned into their driveway and parked.

“You believe me about the ostrich lady, don’t you? She says she—”

“Enough, Gracie. No pretending tonight, okay? Daddy’s had a tough day.”

“I wasn’t pretending,” Grace said, stung by the accusation. She dragged her blanket off the seat beside her and wrapped it around her neck. Her daddy was in one of those moods where he wasn’t listening to her; even when he looked at her, she got the feeling he wasn’t paying attention. Like he was seeing someone else in his head. And he looked sad.

Grace had grown up around sad. She knew it was best to stay quiet and cuddle when he was like this. But she’d been quiet all day, and she was desperate to talk to someone. To him.

In the house, Grace went right to the fridge and pulled out the heavy casserole Nana had made. She worked really hard not to drop it. “This goes in the oven, Daddy,” she said, holding it out proudly.

He took it from her and put it in the oven. “I’m going to go take a shower. I’ll put a DVD in for you.”

She started to say she didn’t want to watch a movie, but he was already turning away, going into the living room.

She climbed up onto the sofa with her blanket and sucked her thumb. No one was paying any attention to her, anyway. It seemed like Daddy took the longest shower in the world, and, when he was done and walking around in his baggy sweat pants, with his wet hair dripping onto the red USC T-shirt, she followed him around, talking about anything she could think of.

“On the way to the hospital, I got to sit in the front of Papa’s car. We followed the am’blance. And he let me drive … just onto the ferry. I went really slow. I’m a good driver. I saw a killer whale eat a seal. It was gross.”

Nothing made him pay attention. He hardly even looked at her, and his face just got sadder and sadder, so much that Grace started to feel sad herself. Lonely.

By the time he put her into her jammies and tucked her into bed, she felt like crying.

Dad curled up alongside her. “I’m sorry if I’ve been weird tonight, Princess. Being in the hospital reminded me of my sister.”

“Mia,” she said solemnly, showing off that she remembered the name they hardly ever said aloud. “I bet you
hate
hospitals.”

“I wouldn’t be much of a doctor if that were true.” He smiled down at her. “Besides, I got you in a hospital.”

Grace snuggled against him. This was one of her favorite stories. “What did I look like?”

“You were a perfect little princess. Your eyes were sort of brownish-blue then. You hardly even cried.”

“And my mommy was there?”

“She named you Grace.”

“And you named me after your sister. Then you took me home.”

“I loved you from the very first second.”

“I know, but how come—”

“Enough, Gracie,” he said, reaching over for the book on the nightstand. “Daddy’s had a hard day. How about if I read more of
The Secret Garden
to you?”

“But don’t you want to hear about my new friend?”

“The movie star who ate an ostrich and rides a magic bike?”

“She might not
really
be a movie star. Maybe she’s a spy who—”

“Enough, Gracie,” he said, opening the book. “Now, where were we?”

He knew, though; he always knew. Grace smiled sleepily and murmured, “Colin is better.”

“Oh. Yeah,” Daddy said, turning to the right page and starting to read. “One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever…”

Grace popped her thumb into her mouth and listened to the music of her daddy’s voice.

*

“They yell at her, Scot. And she’s always alone. No one bothers to come out and play with her. Her only friend seems to be invisible.”

“My son’s imaginary friend is a duck. What does that say about him, I wonder?”

“This is serious,” Lexi said. She had spent endless hours wrestling with her own emotions, and no matter how often or how forcefully she told herself that Grace was better off without an ex-con for a mother, she couldn’t trample the new feeling that she’d been wrong to abandon her daughter. It was like opening the door on a tornado—there was no stopping the damage that would be done inside, and no closing the door again.

Abandon
. The word ate through Lexi’s best intentions and stripped her bare. In all her attempts to be unlike her own mother, had she done the same thing? And how was it that she’d never asked herself this question before?

“You’re right,” Scot said, pushing back his chair. The metal wheels screeched on the Pergo flooring. “It’s
very
serious. Why don’t you sit down? You’re moving like an egg beater.”

She did as he asked and sat down.

“Talk to me, Lexi.”

She took a deep breath. “Giving Grace up was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” Her voice dropped; it was difficult to say the words, even after all her therapy. “The only thing that kept me going was this image of what her life would be like. I saw pink dresses and birthday parties with ponies and bedtime stories and family Christmas dinners. I saw a little girl who grew up knowing she was loved, knowing where she belonged.”