Catching Air (26 page)

She’d reached into the refrigerator for oranges to juice, and by the time the girls had come downstairs in matching Juicy Couture sweat suits—apparently they’d purchased them specifically for the trip—the coffee was brewing and a platter of Kira’s banana-pecan pancakes was warming in the oven. In the light of day, the girls had seemed so very young, and Alyssa had felt silly for her momentary worry.

Later, though, she’d helped clean up one of the guest rooms. When she’d gone to empty the trash can, Alyssa had noticed a crumpled piece of paper in it and something had made her reach for it.

It was a to-do list for the bachelorettes:
Drink a fuzzy navel! Get as many guys as possible to sign your shirts! Dance on top of a table!

Some of the items were checked off. Alyssa had continued reading:
Find a guy who can wiggle his ears! Do three different kinds of shots!

And at the very end of the list was written:
Walk up to the hottest guy in the bar . . . and kiss him!

That final item had a big check mark next to it.

Alyssa had crumpled up the paper and thrown it back into the trash can. So what if Rand had kissed one of the bridesmaids? A quick peck on the lips while the other girls cheered and giggled would mean absolutely nothing. She, Alyssa, sometimes kissed her male friends full on the lips when she greeted them.

She wasn’t going to ask Rand about the hot tub. She wasn’t going to ask him how much he’d had to drink. And she was going to forget she’d ever seen the list, she’d vowed.

She was still trying.

Chapter Twenty-three

BY THE TIME KIRA
and Peter returned from town, the color was leaching out of the sky, leaving behind a dull, oatmeal-gray swath, and the wind was like a whip. Dawn had told them she had something important to do and would take a cab back to the B-and-B.

“Are you sure?” Peter had asked. “We’re not in a rush.”

“You waited long enough for me the last time we ran errands,” Dawn had said, and she and Peter had laughed together again while Kira had stood there, understanding the joke but not quite feeling in on it.

Dawn still wasn’t back a few hours later, when the B-and-B’s newest guests—a mother, a father, and their twin college-age daughters—arrived from the ski slopes, looking half-frozen and exhausted.

“I’m starving,” one of the daughters whined, even though she was clutching a mug of the cocoa that Kira had handed out practically the moment the family came through the door. “Is it always this cold here?”

Terrific, Kira thought. Most visitors were pleasant enough, and some were truly likable—such as the young woman named Becca who’d come with her boyfriend for a ski getaway a few weeks back. Kira had loved chatting with them about their life in Los Angeles, a city that had always fascinated her.

She’d gotten good at sizing up guests quickly, and she already knew this family fell into the impossible-to-please category. Peter had carried their bags up to the guest rooms while Kira hurried to the kitchen to put the finishing touches on her tray of après-ski goodies. Everything was hot, as a rebuttal to the weather: a pot of cheese fondue, kept bubbling by a lit can of Sterno underneath, and surrounded by things for dipping. There were chunks of crusty farmer’s bread, roasted Granny Smith apple slices, sweet potato wedges, and blanched asparagus spears with the ends artfully trimmed away.

She looked down at the platter that was worthy of a spread in
Gourmet
magazine, added a few more asparagus spears, and pronounced it perfect. She lifted the heavy platter and brought it into the living room.

“Just put it right here,” the father said, gesturing to the coffee table.

“Finally!” a daughter said. Kira couldn’t tell if it was the same one who had complained before; they looked exactly alike—long, blond hair; long, thin bodies; and long, unhappy faces. “I’m about to pass out!”

You’re welcome,
Kira wanted to say in a prim voice, but she merely set down the platter and returned to the kitchen. She pulled a pan of angel food cake out of the oven, saw that the edges had turned golden brown, and cut thick, fragrant slices. She fanned them out on a plate and started to bring the dessert into the living room, then circled back to the refrigerator and scattered a few ripe raspberries in the middle.

“Ouch!” one of the daughters cried as Kira came through the swinging doors with the cake. The girl dropped her fondue fork, and it clattered against the edge of the pot, sending a splatter of cheese onto the coffee table. She touched her lower lip and winced. “It burned me!”

“The cheese?” Kira blurted.

“No, the fork!” The girl looked at Kira accusingly.

“You should warn people about resting their forks near the flame!” the father said, frowning.

“But—I—” Kira began, then she took a deep breath. How was it her fault that the guests hadn’t realized metal would heat up when it was placed next to a fire? God forbid this family ever went camping; they’d probably try to use their fingertips to toast marshmallows. Still, the customer was always right—wasn’t that the hospitality industry’s motto?

“I’m sorry,” Kira finally said.

“Some ice,” the mother commanded, her tone indicating Kira was an idiot for not having brought it already.

Kira put down the cake and hurried into the kitchen, her cheeks flushing. She grabbed the ice pack out of the freezer and wrapped it in a clean cloth, then steeled herself to go back into the living room.

She handed the ice pack to the girl, who accepted it without a word. “Just let me know if you need anything else,” Kira said and escaped to the kitchen. Tears pricked her eyes. The jerks in the living room were treating her like a servant. They hadn’t even commented on the meal she’d so carefully prepared!

She swept apple cores and bread crumbs into the trash, then gathered up the block of cheese and wrapped it up tightly in plastic before returning it to the refrigerator.

“Miss?”

She ducked her head so the father wouldn’t see her tears. Not like he would care.

“We’d like some water.”

“Be right there,” she said, keeping her face averted as he let the kitchen door swing closed behind him. She wiped her face with a paper towel and blew her nose and washed her hands. She filled a pitcher from the tap instead of using the filter on the refrigerator, and stacked up four of the cheap plastic glasses they didn’t usually give to guests, and she brought everything into the living room. She left it on the coffee table and exited without a word.

The family hadn’t bothered to clean up the cheese splatter, even though they had plenty of napkins on the tray, she noticed. Well, she wasn’t going to do it either. Let Dawn or Rand or Peter deal with the guests for the rest of their stay. Where were they, anyway?

She hurried down the hallway toward her bedroom.

“Peter!” The word shot out of her—half shout, half accusation—as she opened the door.

He was bent over his laptop, his expression intent.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

He set his laptop aside. “Hey,” he said. “I was just checking something for Dawn. What’s wrong?”

“The obnoxious guests are ordering me around. Why wasn’t anyone helping me?”

“What do you need?”

“It’s all done now,” she said. She tried to peek at his computer screen, but he shut it.

“I was just trying to look up some legal stuff for Dawn,” he said. “To keep her ex away.”

Kira bit back the words:
Well, I’m glad you had time to help
her. She felt horrible for being so catty, but Peter had all but ignored her on the trip to town, and she’d been humiliated. Obviously Peter wasn’t just feeling angry, as she’d tried to tell herself after their argument on the anniversary of his mother’s death. He was angry with her, specifically.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about the background check for Dawn,” Kira said. “Before we give Alyssa the info to pass on to the agency, maybe we should check her out first.”

“Okay,” Peter said. “I’ll do it.”

“You need to get Dawn’s birth date and social security number,” Kira said. She sat down on the bed. “It was a little odd . . . Did you notice how she flinched when I mentioned the background check?”

“No,” Peter said. “I didn’t.”

“Well, she definitely flinched. She looked a little . . . not scared, exactly. But wary. Something seemed off.”

“Hey, the woman’s been through a pretty traumatic experience,” Peter said. “It’s understandable.”

“No, it was more than that,” Kira insisted. “And there’s something else: A knife is missing from the kitchen.”

“Kira, come on. Are you accusing Dawn of taking it?” Peter asked. “What, do you think she’s going to slice us all up in our sleep?”

“We have no idea who she really is,” Kira said. “Some con artists are really convincing. We need to be careful.”

“She’s a victim, Kira,” Peter said, his voice almost as cold as the air outside. “And she didn’t ask to stay here—we invited her. I practically had to beg her to stay after that first night.”

Kira exhaled. How did their conversation get so off track? “All I’m saying is, we need to uphold the promise to Alyssa and Rand’s adoption agency. It wouldn’t be right otherwise.”

“Well, I did a preliminary check and everything’s fine,” Peter said.

Kira turned to look at him. “You did? When?”

“A few days ago,” Peter said.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because nothing turned up!” Peter said. “Dawn’s exactly who she says she is: a young woman who got abused by a really bad guy.”

Kira was about to respond when she heard a sharp rap on the bedroom door: “Miss!”

She leapt at the sound. Had the guests overheard her conversation with Peter? She jumped up and opened the door. It was the mother of the group this time.

“We’d like some more water,” she said.

What was she, a waitress? “I’ll be right there,” she said, forcing a smile.

“I’ll do it,” Peter said. He got up from the bed and left the room.

Exhaustion suddenly crashed down on Kira. She wanted to lie in her soft bed and sleep for a year, but she’d gotten two texts from Jessica within the last hour. They contained her song choices for her first dance with Scott as well as the one with her father.

Did you listen to them yet?
Jessica had texted just a moment ago.
What do you think?

Kira downloaded the songs to her iPod, wishing Peter would come back. Then she straightened the comforter on the bed and checked the laundry basket to see if she should run a load. The basket was empty, so she swept the spare change Peter always left scattered on the dresser into the little jar she kept just for that purpose.

A disturbing thought flashed into her mind: Her mother had always turned on the vacuum cleaner instead of engaging in difficult conversations. Was she, Kira, so determined to avoid becoming like her father that she’d overlooked the fact that she’d taken on some of her mother’s traits?

She sat down on the bed and began to listen to Jessica’s music. The first dance for the newlyweds would be lovely: Ray Charles’s “Come Rain or Come Shine.” It was an unexpected choice; she would’ve thought Jessica would select something contemporary and over-the-top rather than soulful. Kira was sorry when it ended.

Kira had never heard the song for the father-daughter dance before. In her text, Jessica had explained that her father had chosen it. Apparently he was content to let his daughter dictate every other detail of the wedding, but this song was important to him.

The music was by Paul Simon. His voice was gentle, but it soared into the room, filling the space:

I’m gonna watch you shine, gonna watch you grow, gonna paint a sign, so you’ll always know . . . As long as one and one is two, there could never be a father who loved his daughter more than I love you.

The DJ for her wedding had asked which song Kira wanted for the father-daughter dance, and she’d told him there wouldn’t be one.

She’d kept her composure when talking to the DJ, and she’d smiled when she walked down the aisle alone. So why, Kira wondered, was she crying now?

Chapter Twenty-four

TUCKER WAS HERE.

The knowledge crashed into Dawn suddenly and absolutely. Had she spotted a glimpse of him in the distance—the cadence of his walk tripping something in her memory and sending an electric charge through her body? Or maybe there was a current traveling through the air, linking the two of them together. She reached into her purse to grip the knife, which suddenly seemed too small for defense.

She wheeled around and hurried back to the grocery store, telling Kira and Peter she was going to run errands after checking into hiring the waiters, and that she’d take a cab home. Then she went back out to look for Tucker.

She wasn’t surprised, she realized, as she prepared to turn a corner, wondering if she’d come face-to-face with him. Vermont was a relatively short distance from New York, and she was hiding in a small town. Tucker was probably a gambler—Dawn had the feeling that could be why he’d needed so much money so quickly. Now, he was betting everything on finding her.

She looked into shops and cafés and peered down side streets, trying to formulate a plan, her father’s wisdom about thinking more than one step ahead echoing in her mind. If Tucker approached her on the street, she’d scream for help. There were a ton of guys around, strong-looking men who’d spent the day engaged in physical activity. Surely one or two of them would come to her aid. What was Tucker going to do? Drag her off somewhere and threaten her?

Probably, she thought, and she tightened her grip on the knife. He wouldn’t want the police involved any more than she did. He still thought she had the money, and he’d figure it would be relatively easy to get it back. He’d remember her as the mousy, quiet Dawn, pathetically eager for attention, still under his thumb.

She walked for hours, searching for a glimpse of his blond hair, her fingers and cheeks growing numb from the cold, an icy dampness seeping in through her cheap sneakers. The wind was picking up by now, but crowds still filled the sidewalks as people headed to the warmth of restaurants and bars.

Finally, as the sky darkened, Dawn called off her search. She needed to fulfill her promise to Kira and find waiters for the wedding. She stepped into an elegant seafood place, the sudden warmth as shocking as a slap, and asked to speak to the manager.

He approached her, smiling but looking harried, then stopped short, his eyes locked on her. After a beat, he closed the distance between them.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Dawn explained about needing waiters and bartenders for the wedding, and the manager nodded.

“Why don’t you come by tomorrow afternoon after I check schedules and I can give you a few names?” he said.

“We’d be really grateful,” Dawn said. “And we’ll keep a copy of the restaurant’s menu at the B-and-B and steer our guests here.”

The restaurant was busy, with waiters in white shirts rushing by with trays full of drinks and plates of food, and a cluster of people waited for tables by the hostess stand, but the manager didn’t make any move to get back to work.

“What did you say your name was again?” he asked suddenly. She noticed his eyes shift to the scars on her cheek.

“Oh. It’s D-Diane,” she said, then she quickly turned and left.

Why had the manager hesitated when he’d first seen her? Dawn wondered, trying to analyze the look on his face.

Something told her to get away quickly. She managed to find a cab outside a hotel, and as the driver started toward the B-and-B, she scanned every person they drove past. She’d tell Peter about her suspicion, and she’d ask him to call the restaurant to get the names of the waiters. She wasn’t going to return in person.

But as they got farther away from town, she began to doubt herself. She’d been on edge for so long. Paranoia could be warping her instincts. Still, if Tucker was showing people a photo of her, maybe telling a story about her being his long-lost sister, that could account for the manager’s hesitation, and the strange look that had come into his eyes. Or Tucker could be pretending to be a private detective. Maybe he was saying there was a reward for information about Dawn. He was a terrific liar, after all.

She’d made a huge mistake. She’d told the restaurant manager the wedding would be held at a B-and-B. Luckily she hadn’t said which one, but if Tucker really
was
searching for her, she’d just narrowed his search considerably.

• • •

Alyssa awoke before dawn, a burning sensation erupting in her chest. For a brief, terrified instant, she wondered if it was a heart attack. Then she remembered the lasagna she’d had for dinner. Heartburn, she thought, and she propped another pillow under her head. She suddenly felt wide awake, so she turned on her tiny reading lamp and picked up the journal she was keeping for the baby. She had one for Grace, too—a pretty fabric-bound book with unlined pages.

She wrote down all sorts of things that she thought her children might be curious about one day: her memories of the first time she’d seen Grace’s photograph, the first time she’d felt the baby move, how the snow glittered when the early-morning light shone down on it . . .

She wrote for a long time, then set aside her children’s journals. Rand was sleeping soundly beside her, but she wasn’t tired.

When she’d first arrived home from the hospital, she’d wondered if she’d feel confined by bed rest, if it would chafe at her. Curiously, all her traveling was what had prepared her for it. She’d once spent three days on a rickety bus moving through India, squashed into a too-small seat next to a woman in a blue-and-gold sari. The woman had pulled fresh samosas out of a sack and handed one to Alyssa without a word, as Alyssa had admired the intricate henna patterns painted onto her seatmate’s hands. When Alyssa had broken apart the golden, crispy crust, steam had wafted out, and the filling was studded with peas and chunks of potatoes. It was the best thing Alyssa had ever tasted. They’d ridden in silence for the rest of the trip, with nothing to occupy Alyssa’s mind but the view out the window and the rhythmic snores of the old man across the aisle. She was practiced in the art of patience.

Alyssa picked up a novel from her nightstand and read a few pages, then dozed for what felt like a moment, but when she opened her eyes again, Rand was gone and a bowl of homemade granola with yogurt had appeared on her nightstand. Alyssa could smell the toasted oats even before she peeled back the Saran Wrap. Kira knew it was her favorite breakfast.

Poor Kira, Alyssa thought. The burden of the wedding was falling on her shoulders. Although Peter and Rand and Dawn were assisting, Kira was the one running the show, and Jessica had to be making her life difficult. Yet she’d never once complained to Alyssa. Instead she brought in trays of food, and left new books and magazines on her nightstand every time she went into town. She and Peter had even bought a DVD player for Alyssa’s room—a pre-baby shower gift, Kira had said.

Alyssa was just scraping the last mouthful out of the bowl when the bedroom door slowly opened.

“Hey,” Rand said as he stepped inside. Bits of snow clung to his eyebrows and hair. Just looking at him made her feel cold.

“Hey,” Alyssa repeated. She put down her spoon, and it made a bell-like sound as it met the empty bowl.

“So . . . ,” Rand said. He cleared his throat. He was still standing by the door, still wearing his boots and gloves. “I wanted to show you something.”

He walked out of the room and came in a moment later carrying something. He set it by the window and then looked at her, apprehension on his face. “If you don’t like it you don’t have to use it . . . I just thought, it would be nice for both of them maybe . . . for Grace and the baby . . .”

It was a rocking chair, made of wood that seemed to glow. Soft amber mingled with lighter shades of butterscotch and honey. The arms were wide and generous, and there wasn’t a sharp edge anywhere. The chair was a collection of graceful curves, one flowing into the next.

“The back braces are flexible, so it’ll be comfortable even without cushions,” he said. He shifted from one foot to the other.

This was why he hadn’t been around much lately. He must have been in the garage, selecting wood and cutting it into the right sizes before fitting the pieces together. He’d been smoothing and shaping, easing away the splinters and rough edges, then polishing his creation until it gleamed.

“It’s a little wider than most chairs, just in case . . . I thought maybe if one of us were rocking the baby, and Grace wanted to sit there, too . . . see, there’s plenty of room.”

In just over a week, two days after the wedding to be precise, he’d go to China to pick up Grace Elizabeth Lopez-Danner. His ticket was on top of the bureau, along with his passport. Every time Alyssa looked at it, she felt a little stab of worry. Would Rand feel differently, once he’d seen Grace? Would he carry her in his arms as he wound his way through the final bureaucratic hurdles in China, making silly faces to get her to laugh, feeding her tastes of different foods, stroking her hair and staring down at her while she slept at night?

She’d gone online and lurked on some adoption chat groups, notably one with the headline
Help —my husband is freaking out!
A few women had rushed to give counsel, writing that their husbands—or they themselves!—had also panicked once the adoption was imminent, but that their fears had evaporated when the child came home.

It was so hard to know if this was a temporary state or if it would be a permanent one for Rand.

“Do you like it?” he finally asked. He touched the back of the chair to set it gently rocking.

At least this one question was easy to answer. “It’s perfect,” she answered truthfully, and she reached out her hand toward her husband.