Table for five (16 page)

Cameron didn’t gouge the desk by accident. He did it on purpose, etching the word
FUCK
in the shiny surface, then
EVERYT
—He didn’t get a chance to finish. The bell rang and everyone surged up and out of their seats. He stabbed the compass into the surface of the desk, slung his backpack over one shoulder and left with everyone else.

Throughout the day, there were moments that made him regret coming back to school in the first place. When his English teacher, Mr. Goldman, put his hand on Cameron’s shoulder and said, “How are you doing?” Cameron almost lost it.

“Just swell,” he said. “Absolutely super.”

“Would you like to talk to someone about it?”

That was pretty much all he did these days. He talked to social workers, to counselors, to Lily and Sean. He was sick of talking.

“No,” he said.

The day was only going to get worse from here.

“A
ll right,” said Greg Duncan, helping supervise the bus circle on Friday afternoon, “what’s your excuse this time?”

Lily bade goodbye to the last of her students and then turned to him. “Excuse?”

“For not going out with me tonight.”

She paused and tapped her foot. “Um, you haven’t asked me yet?”

“So I’m asking.”

“And I’m saying no thanks.” She tried to summon a smile, but felt the corners of her mouth trembling. “I’m not very good company.” She wished he was the sort of friend she could unload on, wished she could tell him how physically and emotionally drained she felt from grieving. He wasn’t, of course. Come to think of it, most of their conversations revolved around his golf game and his gripes about paying child support for kids he never saw. She felt guilty for the thought and said, “Thanks, though. I appreciate it, Greg.”

“Tell you what,” he said, rocking back on his heels. “How about you call me when you feel like doing something.”

She nodded and managed to come up with a smile that was a little more genuine. “I will. That’s a promise.”

He went to join a group of other teachers standing around while the last of the buses pulled out. The easygoing conversation and occasional burst of laughter sounded so…so normal. Lily couldn’t find that anymore, couldn’t figure out what was normal. She went back to her classroom. She studied the calendar. Seven weeks left to the school year. Then it would be summer, her time for adventure and renewal.

She thought about the trip she’d planned so carefully. She imagined herself sitting at a lido café in Positano, all by herself, sipping a limoncello and watching the fishing fleet in their colorful boats. She knew exactly what would be going through her mind—Crystal’s children.

She grabbed her tote bag and headed out. It didn’t matter what Derek’s will dictated and the probate court decreed. She felt an obligation to that family that wasn’t written in any document.

Instead of driving home, she drove to Crystal’s house. She’d made a promise to Charlie that she would visit often, every day if Charlie needed her to, and she meant to keep that promise.

“Lily!” Charlie whipped open the door before she even rang the bell and leaped into her arms. “Come on in. We’re just having a snack.”

Sean came to greet her. Ashley yelled something, spraying crumbs from her mouth. “You hungry?” he asked Lily, gesturing at the coffee table. It was spread with squirt cheese and crackers, cans of soda and Crystal’s good highball and martini glasses.

“We’re having happy hour,” Charlie said. “I’ll make you one.”

Sean cleared a space on the sofa and Lily sat down. “Happy hour?” she asked.

“I’m never actually happy anymore,” Charlie said, “but Uncle Sean says we have to eat.”

“That’s true.” She turned to Sean and their gazes held fast for a strange, electric moment. There was something between them, the painful bond shared by shipwreck survivors. She looked away quickly with the odd feeling that he’d seen something he shouldn’t.

“Here you go.” Charlie offered her a Ritz with a tower of cheese.

It looked like a heart attack on a cracker. “That looks…delicious.” To avoid putting it in her mouth, she indicated a box on the coffee table. “Your Brownie badges?” she asked.

“Yep. I’m supposed to sew them on a sash to wear with my uniform.” She picked one up, looking completely lost. “Mom was going to help me do that.”

Lily tried to say something, but she couldn’t find her voice. This happened so many times a day to Charlie, to the whole family. It was the unbearable cruelty of untimely death. Things were left undone, interrupted.

While she was trying to figure out what to say, Sean poured 7-Up into one of Crystal’s martini glasses. “You and I will do it together, okay, Charlie Brown?”

“Okay.”

“Do you want an olive or a twist with that?” he asked.

“An olive? Eeuw.”

“Straight up, then,” he said, and handed her the glass.

Lily discreetly set down her cracker. Really, using the good bar glasses was no crime. Judging by the state of the house, those might be the only clean ones left. The place seemed more cluttered and chaotic each time she visited. At one end of the room was an indoor putting green. The stand by the door was stacked with old magazines and books. Cameron came downstairs, looking sullen and disheveled. “Hey, Lily,” he said. He
squirted cheese onto a cracker and ate it in one bite. Speaking with a full mouth, he said, “Anyone seen a compass? I need it to do homework.”

“What’s a compass?” asked Charlie.

He rolled his eyes. “Never mind, moron.”

“Uncle Sean! He called me a moron.”

Sean was preoccupied with wiping a smear of cheese off the baby’s chin. “Don’t call your sister names.”

Charlie stuck her tongue out at Cameron. “You’re just all mad because Uncle Sean put parental control filters on the computer.”

“Big deal, moron.”

“Uncle Sean! Lily!”

A timer sounded somewhere in the house, like the bell at the end of a boxing round. “That’s the dryer,” Sean said. “Cam, go get the stuff out and fold it.”

“But—”

“Now.” They locked gazes. Cameron’s eyes narrowed, then he stalked out of the room.

Charlie gave an injured sniff.

“You go help him fold,” Sean said.

“But—”

“Do it, Charlie.”

She looked to Lily as though for support. Lily said nothing. Charlie’s chin trembled, and she turned and marched away like a prisoner to an execution.

Sean held the 7-Up can so Ashley could drink from it. Lily bit her tongue again, and their eyes met over the baby’s head. “My world and welcome to it,” he said.

“You got through another day,” she told him, determined to be supportive. “You got through the whole week.”

“Good for me.”

Ashley climbed into his lap and laid her cheek on his chest.
His hand, big enough to cover her back, came up and cradled her with surprising tenderness. There was a smear of processed cheese on the baby’s temple, but a smile on her lips as she blinked a few times, then closed her eyes. Lily was fairly certain that it was too late in the day for a nap. The baby would have trouble getting to sleep tonight.

Stop it, she told herself. “I’ll take these things to the kitchen,” she told Sean.

He didn’t respond, so she gathered up the crackers, cheese, soda cans and glasses, making two trips to get everything into the kitchen. She took great satisfaction in dropping the can of squirt cheese into the trash. She spent a few minutes loading the dishwasher and straightening the kitchen. Other people’s casserole dishes, pie plates and Tupperware containers littered the counter. The Holloways’ friends had been generous with their offerings of food. After such an immense tragedy, the gifts seemed both inadequate and completely in earnest.

She finished with the dishes, then decided to sort through the mail. She’d promised Sean she would take care of Crystal’s business, closing her various accounts, canceling subscriptions, submitting bills to escrow. There was something particularly awful about going through Crystal’s bills, seeing her charged purchases for cosmetics and children’s clothing, gifts and gallons of gas for the car. Crystal had not been the most practical person, but she was generous to a fault.

Lily made stacks of bills and junk mail. An invoice from Riverside Medical Laboratories showed Ashley had had a blood test the Monday before the accident. Lily frowned, wondering if the baby was coming down with something. All the personal items seemed to be addressed to the kids, or to Sean and the kids. Most had the oversize shape and weight of sympathy cards. At the bottom of the stack, she found a few large, padded envelopes addressed to Sean Maguire, each in
different, loopy, feminine handwriting. They’d been opened already. One was from Kalamazoo, Michigan, another from Long Beach, California, and still another from San Diego. Friends in faraway places? she wondered, studying the return addresses. Kat, Nikki, Angelina.

Quit being so nosy, Lily told herself, even as she threw a look over her shoulder. The largest of the envelopes slipped through her fingers and dropped on the floor, its contents spilling out. Pink stationery, loopy handwriting:
Dear Sean, We’ve never met, but I saw in the paper about your terrible tragedy, and I just want you to know I’ll be there for you….
Paper-clipped to the letter was a photograph of a young woman with huge breasts.

Shaken, Lily put it back. Then she peeked into another envelope to find a different letter, different photos.
Now that you have all those kids, you’ll be needing a wife….
The picture of Kat made Lily gasp aloud.

“He gets stuff like that in the mail every day,” said Cameron. “Pretty rank, huh?”

Lily spun around, her cheeks flaming. “What?”

“Women sending him letters and pictures. They’re like, all hot for him because he’s been in the papers.”

“Oh.” Lily swallowed. “I…see.”

“It’s totally weird. Who knew this would make him bachelor of the year?”

Lily busied herself with putting the bills in her bag. “I should go,” she said, her stomach churning. This was Crystal’s house, and it was being turned into something else altogether. Yet Lily had no authority to change things, even if she knew what to do.

“See you later,” Cameron said, bending down to explore inside the refrigerator.

As she walked to the door, she tried to figure out what to
say to Sean. He sat very still on the sofa, the baby snuggled against him. Holding a balled-up blue nightgown, Charlie leaned against his other side. Late afternoon light fell over them, and she realized all three were fast asleep. Grief was exhausting business; they were discovering that.

She stood for a moment, watching them sleep. Watching
him,
studying the fine shape of his jaw, the muscles of his arms. She felt an unexpected wave of yearning and melancholy. No wonder perfect strangers were proposing to him.

Lily came home tired and troubled, but on this particular day, an unexpected distraction awaited her. She found her sister’s thirty-seven-foot Winnebago parked alongside her house. As Lily got out of her car, the door of the RV opened and out jumped Violet, her face pinched by strain. Behind her came Megan and Ryan, her children, who were nine and ten respectively. They were a rambunctious pair who always seemed to be either fighting or being best friends. At the moment they were having a shoving contest, and Violet looked too exhausted to discipline them. Before her sister even spoke, Lily knew the news was bad.

“Okay, before you say anything,” Violet began, “it’s only temporary, I swear.”

“I was going to say hello to my niece and nephew, actually,” Lily told her. “Hello, niece and nephew.” She doled out the hugs, and they returned them with firm enthusiasm. Vi’s children were usually slightly disheveled and grubby, but they were a happy pair, as affectionate and easygoing as their mother.

“Why don’t you two go around back and play,” Lily suggested. “I’ve got a tetherball set up.”

“How come you got a tetherball but you have no kids?” Megan asked.

“Maybe I play with it all by myself,” Lily said with a wink. Honestly, she didn’t want to go into it as she felt a now-familiar twinge. She and Crystal had put the ball up together only a few weeks ago when the first signs of spring appeared, so Charlie could play with it when she visited with her mother. The reminders of Crystal sneaked up on Lily and seized her heart, and the sense of loss took her breath away. When did it end? she wondered. Did it ever?

Megan and Ryan resumed their shoving contest as they made their way to the backyard.

Lily gave her sister a hug. “I barely got a chance to talk to you at the funeral, but thanks for coming. So how are you?” she asked.

“Fat, that’s how.” She ran a hand around the cinched-in waistband of her jeans.

“Oh, come on. You look great.”

“I look fat. You know I always overeat when I get stressed out.”

“What’s stressing you out?” Lily asked, though she could probably guess. Violet’s life seemed to have been designed for stress. She had married straight out of high school and had the kids soon after. Her husband, Rick, rarely held a steady job. He had a habit of starting oddball businesses that were marked for doom from the start, and when they failed, no one was surprised except Rick himself. Plant day care, professional clowning, ice delivery, fly-tying lessons and extreme topiary were just a few of the enterprises that were supposed to earn him his first million.

“So what’s up?” she asked Violet as she unlocked the door and led the way into the house.

“We had to move,” Violet said, sinking down on the couch. “Our lease was up and the landlord raised the rent ridiculously high. We’re living in an apartment in Troutdale now.”

Lily got two bottles of organic juice from the fridge and handed one to Violet. “I take it the, ah, voice-acting business didn’t work out?”

Violet shook her head. “Disaster. He dubbed one Japanese commercial and they sent him packing. He said he had to talk so fast, he sounded like he was on helium. I feel so bad for Rick.” She met Lily’s gaze. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Bull, nothing. You’re giving me a look. What’s that look mean?”

Lily offered a smile to cover her frustration. “You’re amazing.”

“I am? In what way?”

“Your devotion to Rick. Does he know how lucky he is to have you?”

Violet sipped her juice. “I’m the lucky one.”

Lily bit her tongue. Lucky. The man had all but ruined them financially several times in a row. Still, she conceded, he never stopped trying, and his wife adored him. Love was such a strange business. No wonder she didn’t understand it.

Violet took her silence for disapproval. “All right, so he’s not exactly Donald Trump. But I didn’t marry him for his ability to make a buck. I married him because I love him, and here we are eleven years later and I love him more than ever.” Violet’s eyes shone, and Lily had no doubt she believed her own words.

“That’s wonderful for you,” she said. Was it? she wondered. Was it wonderful to adore someone in spite of his flaws, or was it madness?