Beneath the Night Tree (9 page)

Little Gifts

I drove the boys to school on Monday, even though my shift at Value Foods was supposed to start at six. It was an extra two hours of vacation, time that I had worked hard for and—my manager assured me—I deserved. Though it meant starting my workweek a little behind, I was grateful for the opportunity to ease into my fall routine. The questions and uncertainties that collected in our house like a fine layer of dust were making a muddle of my already-confused mind. It didn’t help that after our picnic confrontation, no one said another word about Michael’s proposed trial. I wondered how they would react if they knew about Parker. The thought made me shudder.

Grandma tried to make the first day of school special by baking her famous cinnamon rolls and letting Daniel smear his with lots of real butter
and
peanut butter. And I caged my worries and chatted cheerfully, filling the hour before school with mindless conversation that was intended to put my boys at ease. My little plan seemed to work wonders with Daniel; by the time I told him we needed to leave, he was already wearing his backpack, waiting at the door. But Simon wasn’t quite so malleable. I put my hand on his shoulder as we left the house and he abruptly shrugged it off.

“Nervous?” I asked.

“No.”

“Good. There’s no reason to be. You’re talented, smart, fun to be around—”

“You don’t have to baby me,” Simon muttered.

“I’m not babying you.”

He rolled his eyes and slid into the backseat of the car. I almost told him to come in the front with me, but one look at the way his slender arms crossed his chest in defiance warned me that I should let it go.

“So . . .” I forced a smile and started the car with a flourish of jangling keys. “Who’s ready for their first day of school?”

Daniel’s hand shot up. “Me! I am!”

“I don’t know why you’re bringing us,” Simon mumbled.

“Because I thought you would want me to. After today you two are going to have to ride the bus. And it doesn’t leave at 8:00—it’ll pick you up at 7:25.”

“Whatever.”

I gave Simon a stern look in the rearview mirror, but he was staring out the window at rolling pastures and missed my reprimand. When had he become so irritable? so glum? Of course, I knew exactly when the shift had happened. I could mark his attitude change almost to the minute—his world had tilted in its orbit the day he overheard Francesca spill my secret. But hadn’t I assured him that we weren’t going anywhere? that nothing was going to change? What was he so afraid of?

In spite of the taut mood in the car, Daniel filled the seven-minute drive to school with stories and speculations about his upcoming year. His teacher was a seasoned veteran, a lovely lady with a graying bun and earrings that betrayed her quirky sense of humor. She wore tiny lassos for kindergarten roundup, dangly silver spoons and forks for the parent dessert night, and miniature stuffed teddy bears for the new student meet and greet. Daniel was completely in awe of her and more than eager to commit himself to her tutelage five days a week.

When we pulled up in front of Mason Elementary, he had his door half-open and one foot on the street before I could utter a protest.

“Hey!” I called, reaching over the back of the seat and catching his wrist. “You can’t leave without a good-bye!”

“Oh.” Daniel grinned. “Bye, Mom.”

“No hug? A kiss, maybe?”

He peered out the crack in his door at the shuffle of kids and teachers crowding the long sidewalk in front of his new school. “Nah. You can hug me tonight.”

With that, he slipped out of my grip and was gone.

“Don’t forget Grandma is picking you and Simon up this afternoon!” I shouted, hoping he could hear me through the open passenger window. Stifling a sigh, I turned to wish Simon a good day. My backseat was empty. He was gone too.

“Maybe I should go to Iowa City,” I grumbled to myself. “Apparently I’m not as needed here as I thought.”

It took me less than two minutes to get to Value Foods from Mason Elementary. My heart was still in the drop-off lane with Daniel and Simon, and my head must have been in the clouds because I drove to an empty spot at the very back of the lot before I remembered that there was a space next to the back door just for me. It didn’t have my name on it, but it did have my title: assistant manager.

Value Foods was a pretty small operation, so my new job didn’t carry the same sort of prestige that it might at a larger chain. But the pay was better, and I liked working under Mr. Durst. He was fair and honest and straightforward—many of the same traits that he claimed made me perfect for the job. Since accepting the promotion in June, my days had consisted of a lot more desk work and a lot less on-the-floor melodrama. There was always some soap opera going on between the clerks, shift managers, and bag boys, but I felt impervious in my ivory tower. Actually, my office more closely resembled a windowless dungeon, but I had brightened it up with photographs of my family, a few pieces of art that I had scrounged from summer garage sales, and a stuffed green and blue snake that Simon had won at the county fair. He gave it to me as a gift when I was named assistant manager.

Michael had seemed less than enthusiastic when I told him about my new title, and though I hadn’t understood it at the time, I realized as I grabbed my purse off the floor of the car why my position caused him alarm. He thought that it would be harder for me to leave Value Foods if I was anything more than a clerk. I bit my lip when it struck me that he was right. At least a little. There was more to it than that, but I couldn’t help taking pleasure in a job that I had never hoped would be anything more than a way to earn some money. I had never imagined myself assistant manager material.

Sure, the scheduling and record keeping were mundane, but Mr. Durst also let me do some of the purchasing and sales, and after the first month he completely handed over control of the weekly Value Foods flyer and promotional discounts. I quickly discovered that I loved unearthing wholesalers who could provide items we’d never stocked before. It was like finding treasure.

At first, my manager had been skeptical that we’d be able to move items like garam masala or the fresh raspberries that I contracted from the farmer who lived just down the road from us. But I had provided a recipe for spicy pork curry with the masala coupon in our flyer and made a Local, Homegrown sign out of old barn wood to post by the woven tubs of gem-colored berries. Both had been a huge hit, with jars of masala disappearing off the shelf and people begging for more raspberries. Mr. Durst just laughed in wonder and told me to keep at it.

In spite of being more or less abandoned by my boys, I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as I wrenched open the heavy back door of Value Foods. The storeroom was cool and my favorite worker was filling a grocery cart with cans of tomato sauce to restock the shelves.

“Good morning, Graham,” I said, offering him a little wave. He had grown up so much in the years that I had known him. The scrawny boy who had stood a whole head shorter than me when I started working as a stock girl was now a star athlete who towered so high that I worried about neck cramps when I looked at him. He had even gone to a major university on a basketball scholarship. “Aren’t you supposed to be on your way to college?” I asked, confused that he was handling tin cans instead of basketballs and books. “I didn’t schedule you for this week.”

“Yeah, but I actually don’t start until next week. I commandeered a couple of shifts. Textbooks aren’t cheap, you know.”

“You could always quit and keep working here.”

He knew I was teasing, but he seemed to give my suggestion serious thought anyway. “You’re easy to work for, Jules, but I think I might still like to get my degree.”

“You’d better,” I told him, leveling a finger at him like the mother I was.

He winked and went back to work, but just as I was about to disappear through my office door, he called, “Hey, Julia! I thought we had something special.”

I gave him a puzzled look.

Graham’s smile was crooked and endearing. “I’m just jealous that you’re getting flowers from some other guy.”

Spinning a finger around my temple to let him know he was crazy, I edged my office door open with one hip. Suddenly I got Graham’s strange joke. In the middle of my desk was a vase of flowers so big, it stood nearly as tall as I did. Flowers had never really been my thing, but these were exquisite—not your typical bouquet of red roses. I recognized the tall spires of purple delphiniums and the smaller clusters of white freesia. There were magenta spider lilies and pale yellow chrysanthemums the size of dessert plates. When I looked closer, I saw that there were roses, too, but they weren’t red—they were the color of tangerines and sunrise, of a warm summer flame.

My breath was caught in my throat, and when I finally grasped that I was suffocating and took in a wheezing breath, the scent of all those flowers was nearly overpowering.
Michael,
I thought. It had to be Michael. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I paused. If Parker had my e-mail address, it wasn’t a huge leap to imagine he’d tracked me down. But the bouquet before me was too personal. He wouldn’t, I assured myself. He wouldn’t dare.

I lunged for the credit card–size note that was wedged between two waxy leaves. The envelope betrayed nothing more than my name, written in a curlicue script that was anything but masculine. So a florist wrote the note. No hint there. I ripped it open and found one line in the same handwriting.
Call me.
It was signed
M
.

All at once I felt winded and dropped into my office chair with a moan of relief. In comparison to Parker’s loaded e-mail, Michael’s unexpected gift of flowers felt safe, almost homey. I was overwhelmed by the reminder that whether or not Michael had proposed to me a week ago, he loved me. I loved him. He was my best friend and confidant. He made my pulse race. Somehow I had lost sight of that in the midst of my disappointment that everything had not turned out exactly as I dreamed it would. I had lost sight of us.

I fumbled in my purse for my cell phone and dialed Michael’s number with trembling fingers. “Pick up,” I whispered. “Pick up.”

It rang only once.

“Hey, you.” Michael’s voice was soft and familiar. It sounded as if he had been expecting my call.

“Hey, you,” I echoed.

“Got the boys dropped off at school?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re at work now?”

“Yeah.”

“So you . . .”

“Are staring at the amazing flowers you sent me.”

“I hoped you’d like them.”

“I do. And I’m not the sort who goes all wobbly at the sight of flowers, but . . .”

Michael laughed. “You’re wobbly?”

“It might have more to do with you than the flowers.”

His low exhalation spoke volumes, but I was surprised when he whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“You’re sorry? For what?”

“For putting you in such an awkward place. How could I expect you to just pack up and leave everything? Your job, Nellie, your home . . . And all I offered you in return was a social experiment.”

I giggled. “You’ve been in med school too long.”

“Yet I’m nowhere near done,” Michael said, his voice low and serious.

“I know.” It broke my heart a little that what had started out so innocent—a moment of renewal, of reconciliation even—had turned into something somber in the span of a second. “So . . .”

“So we forget my ridiculous—my insensitive proposal.”

I wondered if he realized the way that word stirred my soul. A proposal was a promise, a pledge, the assurance of forever. His offer in the grove hadn’t been a proposal. Far from it. And yet it was something. “You want to just go back to the way things were?” I asked, my words light as the air it took to voice them.

“No.” Michael’s answer was immediate. “No, I think we’ve come too far to turn back now.”

Hope pricked at my heart, made tiny holes where everything I felt for him began to leak out, slow and warm. It filled me, made me believe for the first time since his awkward proposition that we could still make this work. “What do you mean?” I whispered.

“I have an idea.”

“You do?”

“But I’m not going to tell you over the phone.”

“What?”

“This is more of a face-to-face sort of a thing.” Though I couldn’t see him, I could imagine the smirk that graced Michael’s lips.

“You’re kind of a jerk,” I told him.

“You’re kind of quick to jump to conclusions.”

I clutched the phone, pressed it to my forehead for a moment, and wished that I could wrap my arms around Michael instead of the small piece of plastic in my hand. “When do I get to see you?” I asked.

“Well . . . I just started eight weeks of microbiology, and it’s pretty intense.”

“Eight weeks? I can’t wait that long!”

“What are you talking about? Our entire relationship has been long-distance.”

“You don’t have to remind me. Holidays and summer break are like endless appetizers. I feel like I never get to eat a full meal.”

“I’m a snack to you?” Michael snorted.

“Bad analogy. But you know what I mean. We’ve never been together for more than a couple of weeks at a time.”

“So eight weeks should feel like nothing. The syllabus eases up a little at the halfway point. I might be able to squeeze in a quick trip home then.”

I worried my bottom lip, doing the mental gymnastics necessary to calculate if I could fit in a visit to Iowa City. It just didn’t seem plausible. I let go of a shallow breath. “Okay. Just make sure you grow some nice microorganisms for me.”

“We’re dealing with bacterial meningitis and pathogens. You wouldn’t believe the—”

“Too much info, Dr. House.”

Michael laughed. “Okay, okay. I’ll see you soon.”

I thought his definition of
soon
was a little loose, but I didn’t tell him so. “A month,” I declared, trying to put a time frame on it so I could start counting days.

“A month,” he agreed. “But more likely two.” He sounded rueful, almost despondent, and my heart trembled at the realization that he hated the distance between us just as much as I did.