A Month of Summer (41 page)

I felt a sense of love for Rebecca. It grew in the part of me that loved Teddy, that loved Edward. It was a small and tender thing, like a tiny seedling just stretching above the earth. I curled my body to the side and held her while she wept. When she was cried out, I stroked her hair and shushed her as if she were a child.

Finally, she grew embarrassed, sat up and apologized. I shushed her again and held her hand.

“It’s been a . . . strange day.” Her voice was hoarse, her face flushed and tear-streaked.

“Yes,” I agreed.

She checked her watch, seemed surprised by the time. “I’d better head home before Ifeoma leaves for work.”

“Okay.” I caught her gaze and tried to smile, then nudged her fingers. Her face was a mask of sadness, as if she’d lost her mother all over again.

Her expression softened, became tender. “Thanks for telling me the truth. It . . . I needed to know.”

New words came to my mind, something we’d practiced today in speech therapy. “Lovvv you.”

Her eyes welled again, and she pushed them closed, her mouth trembling with emotion.

The cell phone rang in her purse. Rubbing her cheeks, she picked it up, checked to see who was calling, then put the phone away. “I can’t talk to him right now,” she murmured. I wasn’t certain whether she was speaking to herself or to me. She wiped her eyes, then stepped away from the bed, crossed her arms and rubbed her hands up and down them. “I’m sorry. That summer I wouldn’t come . . . when I was supposed to. I’m sorry I didn’t come.”

“No,” I soothed. “No. No.”
There’s no place here for regret.

Her phone rang again. She checked the caller, cleared her throat, and answered without putting it to her ear.

Ifeoma was on the other end. Her voice echoed through the speakerphone, deep and resonant. “Missus? It is time for me to depart to work, but—”

“I’m on my way home.” Rebecca checked her watch again. “If you need to leave, go ahead. Is everything all right with my father and Teddy?”

“Yes . . .” Ifeoma’s answer was tentative, unfinished. “Mr. Parker is asleep, and Teddy is about his work in the garden house, but . . . a man has arrived, and he has asked if I am the current resident of the home. He demands that I must sign a legal paper.”

Rebecca regarded the phone with a puzzled expression. “What kind of paper? Did he say what it’s about?”

“He says to me that the house has been sold by the owner, and we must vacate immediately.”

“What!” Rebecca squinted at the screen. She turned off the speaker and pressed the phone to her ear. “Ifeoma, tell him that’s not possible. He has the wrong address.”

Straining toward her, I tried to hear the reply, but I could only make out the increasingly rapid cadence of Ifeoma’s voice, and then Rebecca’s replies. “Well, that’s not possible, he . . . Let me talk to him. . . .”

Ifeoma replied again.

“All right, then tell him I’ll be home in twenty minutes. Ifeoma? Ifeoma? Can you still hear me? Don’t sign
anything
.” Dropping the phone into her purse, Rebecca spun around and hurried toward the door. Before crossing the threshold, she held a pacifying hand palm out in my direction. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s all a mistake.”

Then she was gone, and I was left behind, realizing that my grim premonition that morning might have been correct, after all.

CHAPTER 25

As I fought to make my way home through rush-hour traffic, the events of the day collided around me, flashing past like the bright white slashes of a meteor shower, rapid and random, temporarily blinding.

I felt myself floating in space, whirling through a vacuous place where there was nothing solid to grasp.
This can’t be happening. All of this can’t be happening at once.
A nervous sweat broke over my skin, made my heart race, and stole my breath as traffic backed up under a highway on-ramp.

I hadn’t asked for this responsibility. I hadn’t asked for an aging house, my father, Teddy, and Hanna Beth to care for. I hadn’t asked for a potential pregnancy, years after we thought we were done having our family, when the future of my marriage was uncertain.

I began counting the weeks as the car inched forward. How long since my last period? How long? It was the week of Macey’s regionals. A Saturday. I pulled out my DayMinder, flipped backward through time. Seven weeks ago, almost eight.

Reality struck me like a painful blow to the stomach. I was never three weeks late. I was never a week late. Give or take a day, two, maybe three, my body operated like clockwork.

It could be stress. . . .
I knew better, of course. Our life was
always
stress-filled, in hyperdrive, all-out, all the time. The last few years of dealing with my mother’s lupus had been nothing but stressful. Yet I’d never once skipped a cycle. I’d never even been significantly late.

Ahead, traffic ground to a halt as a train crawled by. Impulsively, I pulled off to the right, bumped along the shoulder to a Mom-and-Pop pharmacy, hurried in, grabbed a pregnancy test from the shelf, felt silly paying for it. Back in the car, I wrapped the sack around it so the label wouldn’t show though. Traffic was moving again by the time I pulled out. Inching toward Vista Street, I tried to focus on the situation at the house.

When I finally pulled into the driveway, Ifeoma was pacing back and forth on the front walk, impatient to leave for work. There was no other car, no stranger with legal papers.

Ifeoma, normally unflappable, was rattled. She rushed to me as I stepped out. “Please, missus. I was afraid. I signed what he instructed me to. He said I must. He said to me, ‘This is not your problem. You should not bring trouble upon yourself for the people who live in this big house. They do not own this big house. You should not lose your permit to work in order to defend these people. They would not do the same for you.’ He said, ‘You are a guest in this country. If you do not cooperate with the court, the court will send you back to your own country.’ ”

Anger boiled hot inside me. I wanted to get in my car, find the man who’d coerced Ifeoma into cooperating, and ram the papers down his throat. How many times had I defended clients who, because of their immigrant status, because of a lack of knowledge of the U.S. legal system, were forced into making dangerous decisions? Now, when the issue landed on my doorstep, I wasn’t there to handle it. “He can’t have you sent back, Ifeoma. Justice of the Peace Court and Immigration Court are two completely different things. He was just trying to force you to sign for delivery of the eviction notice.” My body, tense and prepared for confrontation a moment ago, went limp and numb. There was nothing to do now but look at the papers, and try to make some sense of them. It was almost five on a Friday afternoon. No doubt, the J.P. Office wouldn’t be answering phones until Monday. “Where are the papers?”

“On the table in the front entrance.” Ifeoma’s expression moved from fear to anger. Tightening her fists at her sides, she glared down the street. “Please accept my apologies for my foolishness, missus. I was in consideration of my son. There is no life for us in Ghana.”

“I understand. It’s not your fault. I’ll take care of it. Are my father and Teddy all right?”

“Teddy and your father are watching a television program. They do not know of the man. I placed the papers inside, and I awaited your arrival.”

“Okay.” I felt the weight of the eviction notice, the pregnancy test, everything. I wanted to be alone, to think. “You can go on to work now. Thanks for waiting.”

She apologized again, then hurried toward her car, already late. I went into the house quietly and took the envelope from the table, then tucked it under my arm with the pharmacy bag and the bank folder into which I’d hastily scooped the contents of my father’s safe-deposit box before rushing out of the bank to confront Hanna Beth.

I walked silently up the stairs. Alone in my bedroom, I laid all three on the bed, stood staring at them, trying to decide which to open first.

Finally, I picked up the envelope, pulled the delivery slip off the front, sat on the edge of the bed and took out the papers. Leafing through the stack, I tried to make sense of the contents—notice of eviction, foreclosure paperwork, an official-looking document in which an LMK Limited, Inc., claimed to have legal ownership of my father’s house. Who was behind LMK Limited? My father had been transferring money to the company regularly—making investments? He’d always been known to lightly invest in various speculative drilling projects. Had he made some sort of bad investment with LMK Limited? Surely he wouldn’t have offered the house as collateral in some sort of business deal. The contents of the safe-deposit box made no mention of LMK Limited. There was a folder detailing some of his investments and a letter from a local law office—something to do with my father’s interests in Blue Sky Real Estate Trust—but I’d only given it a cursory glance.

What if my father didn’t know LMK Limited existed? What if he’d never arranged for money to be funneled from his checking account into LMK? What if someone else had made those arrangements without his knowledge? Kay-Kay, Kenita Kendal? If she could siphon money from my father’s checking account, what else could she do? Convince him to sign over ownership of the house? Take everything he had?

It
was
possible. Of course, it was possible. In fact, my father, Hanna Beth, and Teddy were perfect targets. What would have happened if I hadn’t come to town? Trapped in the nursing home, Hanna Beth would have no knowledge of events taking place at the house. My father and Teddy could be evicted, perhaps turned over to Social Services. No one would ever know the difference.

Kenita Kendal could walk away a wealthy woman. . . .

Over my dead body. No way would I allow this to happen to my family.

Family.
The thought was surprisingly concrete, startlingly real. Since my mother’s death, family had included only Kyle’s relatives, myself, and Macey—a tiny group of kin with no biological ties remaining on my side of the genetic tree. Now, I belonged once again to the Parker family, whose history was rooted in this house on Blue Sky Hill.

If Kay-Kay was behind the eviction notice, she was about to find out that the Parkers didn’t give up without a fight. We’d file charges, fight this thing in court all the way to the end, if we had to. The first order of business was to more closely examine the papers from the safe-deposit box—study every scrap, see what clues my father had left for me.

Standing up, I tossed the eviction notice onto the bed. The pharmacy bag slid off, spilled open.
Sixty-second result!
the package touted. In sixty seconds, I could know for certain, rule out the possibility and concentrate on the immediate threat of the eviction.

I picked up the pregnancy test, read the instructions as I walked to the bathroom.
Over ninety-nine percent accuracy in less than sixty seconds. One line, not pregnant. Two lines, pregnant. Easy-to-read results. . . .

Why wait?
the box said. I stared at the words as I closed the bathroom door, performed the test, set it atop the box and stared at the indicator, uncertain of what to hope for.

What would I do if it was positive? Would I tell Kyle? When? Before confronting him about Susan Sewell? After? What was the proper order?

There was nothing proper about a pregnancy in this situation. Nothing. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around the idea, couldn’t picture myself showing up at the kindergarten door, one of those perimenopausal moms the twenty-somethings looked to for advice. Macey would be in high school, a sophomore by the time this baby entered first grade. What in the world would Macey say if I told her there was a baby on board? For so long, she’d been the only one.

How could I bring a child into our life? Our crazy, mixed-up, disintegrating situation didn’t even allow time for the three of us, and now included responsibility for the care of my father, Hanna Beth, and Teddy. . . .

I couldn’t possibly be pregnant.

I couldn’t be.

My head swirled as the results took shape on the test strip. Faint, at first. One line, then two, the second wavy and pale, as if the test kit were toying with the idea.

I wished the second line away, closed my eyes.
No. No. No.

I heard Mary and her boys come in downstairs. My hands jerked self-consciously toward the test, my heart raced, and I glanced toward the door like a teenager smoking in the bathroom.

Swallowing the acidic, pulsating lump in my throat, I turned back, met myself in the mirror—tired hazel eyes and sallow skin from so many nights of not sleeping. Worry lines around the corners, still faint, but in a few years I’d either have to resign myself to aging or to having those treated. In Southern California, plastic surgery is always on the leading edge, a socially acceptable topic of conversation.

The idea pushed a painful, sardonic laugh past the lump in my throat.

Bracing my hands on the counter, I turned my gaze downward, past the ornate gold mirror frame, past the black and white octagon tile backsplash, past the clamshell-shaped sink, to the right, to the right, to the right, until the test came into view. I stood staring at it, feeling the room, the house, the world spinning around me, whirling, whirling, until I couldn’t keep my balance. An oozing blackness closed in, tightened around the corners of my vision. I tried to blink it away, dimly felt myself reeling backward, floating like the leaf in the Japanese garden, twirling, falling. I heard myself crash against the cabinets, felt the slight stab of pain as my head hit the counter, and then, mercifully, everything was quiet. I let the breath go out of my lungs, and sank into silence.