Before and Ever Since (9781101612286) (5 page)

I watched his back retreat with a sudden urge to call him back. I didn't, though. I wouldn't have been able to explain it if I did. I just—suddenly wanted to see his face again. The eyes that had once cried for me. The mouth that had once told me he loved me, right before he climbed off the roof and disappeared for over twenty years. Maybe that's what made me want him to turn around. Just to see what coming back looked like.

I shut the door and pressed my forehead against it, breathing deep and slow. When I finally turned around, my eyes landed on Cassidy's shadow box. The huge, gaudy reminder of why Ben needed to keep going and not come back.

•   •   •

B
ECAUSE
I
'M NOT THE SELF-CONFIDENT WOMAN OF STEEL THAT
I'd like everyone to believe I am, I found a reason to go to my mother's house the next day. Not that there needed to be a concrete reason; I mean, I could just drop by for the heck of it. I just usually didn't. Going to my mom's house was never a quick cup of coffee. It was a guaranteed two pots of coffee and possibly dinner if the timing fell right. That wasn't always a bad thing, but I did have to go armed with that knowledge.

And since I did already have the request to start going through my old room to help clean things out—well—there you go.

The only thing that really bothered me about my driving need to get myself over there was that I was freakishly concerned with my hair. And my face. And my outfit, which needed to look flattering and yet immensely casual in a boxing-up-crap sort of way.

I needed Ben to see me looking like I hoped I looked every day, and not like the drooling, sweating swamp thing he got right off the bat. And there again was the thing prodding under my skin like a hot poker. Why did I care? What I really needed to be doing was running in the other direction. Finding out when he'd be there and when he'd be gone, then show up the opposite time to do all this work. That would be the smart thing to do. That would be the mature, grown-up thing to do. Unfortunately, the fact that I spent all the previous night staring at the ceiling told me that when it came to Ben Landry I was still the twenty-one-year-old girl that sat on a roof all day, waiting for him to come back. That girl was not mature. Or grown-up. She was still living in her parents' house because she kept blowing her paychecks on new shoes.

So when I found myself rounding the corner of my mother's block at ten thirty in the morning and there was no old truck parked out front, I was a little peeved. And then annoyed with myself for being such a tool.

I had rescheduled showings till the afternoon. Postponed a walk-through till the next day. Completely not me. All so I could do what? Strut through my mother's house? Find out what he'd been doing for twenty years? Show him what he could have had?

“Jesus, I'm pathetic,” I muttered, parking and nearly stomping to the door.

Mom was nowhere to be seen, but the back door was open so I headed out through the attached garage and laundry room, to the backyard. It dawned on me for probably the first time ever that the laundry room wasn't in the house. I'd never looked at it from a Realtor's point of view before, it just always was what it was. My house.

“Mom?” I called out when I didn't see her.

“Over here,” her voice called from around a verbena bush.

I pulled off a stray group of leaves from the nearest bush, and tossed it aside. I hated verbenas. Out of control, grew like freaking weeds, and all those dumb little red berries that the birds would eat and poop out on your car. Okay, maybe I had a tad bit of an attitude.

“What are you doing?” I asked as I found her on her hands and knees digging in the dirt. “Oh. Looking for it again?”

“Yeah, yeah, y'all laugh, but I know your father. He said he put money away, so then he put money away.” She continued hacking at the clay-packed soil with a garden trowel.

“In the flower bed?” I asked, standing over her in my good suede boots, not about to get in that dirt unless the money started crawling out on its own.

“You never know,” she said. “And this area is the next on my list.”

“And after you sell, Mom? What are you gonna do, keep coming over and digging up the new owner's yard?”

She waved me off. “What are you doing over here this morning?”

I put my hands on my hips. “Didn't you ask me to come start cleaning my things out?”

She stopped and rocked back on her heels, moving gray blonde hair out of her face with the back of a gloved hand so she could peer up at me. And down. And up again.

“Like that?”

I looked down at my black jeans, snug white long-sleeved sweater, and the aforementioned boots. Okay, maybe I missed the mark on the boxing-up-crap outfit.

“I—have an appointment later,” I kind of lied. I did have an appointment later, just six hours later. “Thought I'd come get some things done first.”

“Shouldn't have worn white,” she said, going back to her hacking. “Lot of dust in those closets up there.”

“Great,” I said on a sigh.

“Why didn't you bring Cassidy? You could have gone down memory lane with her.”

Oh, there were some lanes Cass never needed to travel, I thought.

“She's working a double shift at Dock Hollidays today,” I said, which was miraculously not a lie. “Did she tell you she got waitress of the month?”

“No,” Mom said, her voice clipped with the exertion of digging. “You dragged her out of here yesterday before she could even finish her tea.”

“Oh,” I mumbled. “Yeah. Sorry. Well, I'm gonna go—see what's up there,” I said, pointing, although she wasn't looking at me to see it.

“Just stay out of Mr. Landry's way,” she called back, stopping me in my boots. “He's coming to start working on the windows around noon.”

I nodded, mentally thanking her for not making me ask. Tandy met me at the back door, sniffing like I was an imposter, clearly miffed that she'd missed my entrance the first time. I stepped around her and reached for the bag of treats that always resided on top of the fridge.

I wasn't above bribing.

“Here, psycho,” I cooed as she simultaneously growled and took the bacon treat under a chair to devour it.

I looked around the kitchen that had never changed in all my memories of it. The same ceramic plaques adorned the wall over the pantry—the ones we made in vacation Bible school of strawberries and praying hands. The same flowerpots sat on the ledge over the sink holding notes and forgotten jewelry instead of flowers. Handmade pot holders hung in the same place they'd hung for four decades. I could close my eyes and tell anyone who asked exactly where the large square CorningWare dish was kept—in the cabinet under the bar, on the far left, behind the glass lids. The silverware drawer above it was immaculate, but the drawer across from it held everything from playing cards to batteries to old cigarette trading stamps that had expired thirty years earlier but my mom wouldn't throw out because they reminded her of when she quit smoking. The electric stove with the drip marks down the front of the door from when Mom's vegetable soup boiled over and we never could get it all out of the tiny stainless-steel grooves. The perpetual dish towels that always draped from its handle. All of those things made it my mother's kitchen. I couldn't imagine them being gone, packed up in a storage building somewhere.

“Ugh,” I said as I shook off a body shiver.

I thought of what I'd seen the day before in my weird little delirium. My parents, young and eager, coming into this empty house with its bare walls and no cabinets or towels or even the stove, for that matter. How they had seen it, so different from how it currently looked. And how the previous owners must have felt, taking their items out of it. All the things that made it home to them.

I trailed a finger along the bar as I headed to the stairway, glancing underneath at all the crap she had stored in those lower shelves, when the dizziness hit me. I stopped and gripped the bar, hearing the blood rush in my ears, and the timing couldn't have been worse. I heard the back door open, and as I struggled to suck in air I saw Ben walk in wearing old jeans and an open flannel shirt over a T-shirt, looking more like the version I remembered. The most random question rolled across my brain asking why he'd just walk in without knocking, and then the blackness came. I was aware of groping around in the air with my left hand, but I couldn't see it. And my breath felt caught in my chest. The spinning sensation as I blinked free a different scene made my stomach tighten up.

“Oh my God, it's doing it ag—”

•   •   •

I was holding my breath, and I slowly released it, shaking my head to clear it. I was holding on to a wooden table instead of the bar, which wasn't there. Neither was Ben. I whirled in a circle, searching for where he went, and then realized I was back there again. In the house, but not in the way I knew it. I looked around and saw that it wasn't completely bare like last time, however. There were new cabinets, freshly hung and lighter in color than what I was familiar with.

“Oh, shit,” I muttered under my breath. “Shit, shit.” I took a deep breath and let it go, still gripping the table. It seemed like I needed to touch something tangible, even if that thing kept changing.

The stove was there, and I had the oddest longing to go see the front. To go see if the soup stain was there. I tested movement with my foot, but it just confirmed what I seemed to already know. I was confined to my little circle.

A little girl with red hair toddled past me, barely staying on her feet as she scooted along, nearly touching me. She held a bottle of juice tight in her grip and wore an outfit decorated in watermelons. I stared at her, kneeling to her level to see her face.

“Holly?” I whispered. I felt the goose bumps on my back, so I knew I was really feeling it.

She moved along, headed to the living room where toys littered the floor and random furniture filled the spaces this time. The corner table was there, adorned with only the red glass bull and matador, pushed back out of the baby's reach. I had to laugh to myself, knowing that those two pieces they picked up on their honeymoon would still be in that spot forty years later, only surrounded by pictures.

“Holly bug,” called a voice I recognized as my mother's, only lighter, less gritty.

I turned to see a very pregnant version of the girl in my last dream—vision—whatever it was. She walked slowly out from the hallway in a large smock and pedal pushers, one hand on her belly.

“Holly bug,” she repeated, and then laughed as the baby ran faster, like it was a game.

“Holy crap, that's me,” I said, staring at her huge stomach. I'd always heard I was a big baby, and that she'd felt like she was carrying an elephant when she was pregnant with me, but I'd always thought it was a joke. Looking at her there, about to topple over with a strong breeze, I'd say most definitely not.

“Hang on there, speedy,” she said, pushing locks of strawberry blonde hair behind her ears. “Mommy's a little slow on the take these days.” She scooped Holly up in her arms with a laugh, making her giggle in that way that only babies can, when you want to make them do it again and again just to hear it.

I noticed the hardwood floors still uncovered by carpet, the carved scratch still there from the last time. The paneling on the walls, darkening the room, and the vinyl couch that I found myself vaguely remembering from my childhood. The chairs were different as well, just plain chairs instead of the recliners that would replace them later. On the chairs were stacks of Avon books and small sampler bags.

“Oh, lord, this was the beginning of it,” I said, chuckling, and then slapping a hand to my forehead as I looked around. The beginning of what? This time wasn't as fun as the last one, since then I'd thought I was dying and thus made sense. This time was just downright freaking creepy. Especially how I kept thinking I was really looking at the past. There was no way. That crap was for science fiction movies and bad dreams. And I already knew it wasn't that, either.

Mom held Holly facing forward, and they went to look out the back window while she sang to her, rocking from foot to foot. I wanted to go sit on the floor by them and just watch. I wanted it so badly I almost couldn't stand it.

The back door opened, catching my eye, and in he walked. My dad, young and smiling for his girls, in blue jeans and a button-down shirt that had come untucked on one side. He held an arm out to wrap them up. Holly giggled as he nibbled her neck, but I noticed his eyes were tired as he hugged them both.

“Hey, little bit,” he said, kneeling to kiss my mom's belly.

My breath caught in my chest at the words he'd called me ever since I could remember.

“How'd you do today?” my mom asked, while he got back to his feet.

Dad rubbed his face and raked fingers through his dark hair before taking Holly from Mom's arms. “Slow,” he said. “I think I sold a handsaw and some sandpaper.”

I figured the timing in my head around Holly's age and grudgingly accepted that in this movie I kept falling into, he must have just opened the hardware store with Uncle Tommy. He looked beat, but yet had that spark in his eyes that he would get when he believed in something and was excited. Kind of made me proud and sad at the same time, to know how he started it from nothing and would end up losing it two decades later to his brother's gambling debts.

He hung Holly upside down to make her giggle, and Mom righted her back up. Dad went to sit in one of the chairs but stopped when he saw the stacks of catalogs.

“What's this?”

“Avon,” Mom said. “It's sales. Makeup and perfume and stuff. I just have to pass out some catalogs to the other ladies in the neighborhood, and—”

“Frannie, I told you I would take care of the family,” Dad interrupted, and the look on his face said it wasn't a new conversation. He sank onto the couch with Holly on his knee.