Changing Lanes: A Novel (27 page)

I envisioned Nan and Don sitting together beside Grandpa’s grave, sipping hot tea. Oddly enough, I thought Grandpa might enjoy the additional company. I knew he’d enjoy seeing Nan happy again, if only she’d give Don a chance.

I turned sideways and made a sweeping gesture toward the library exit. “Fourth family plot on the right. Can’t miss it.”

The smile on Don’s face was almost as bright as the twinkle in his eyes. He pressed a quick kiss to my cheek and made a beeline for the door.

If anyone could break through Nan’s defenses, Don could.

After he left, I headed back outside, turning right instead of left. I cut across the grass toward the Paris Elementary playground and sank down onto the first swing.

I planted my feet in the sand and thought about Max Campbell’s offer. Then I took a deep breath and pulled my phone from my pocket.

While the position he’d offered might provide me with a financial boost, I needed more. Lots more.

I needed a career choice that was mine, not another hand-me-down column. I could imagine what Fred would say. He’d tell me to snatch up “Obituaries and Celebrations” and start channeling the voice of the former editor.

But I’d finally reached a point where what Fred said didn’t matter.

I didn’t want someone else’s section. I didn’t want someone else’s career.

I wanted my career. My risk. My failure. My reward.

All my life, I’d wanted to freelance feature stories and investigative pieces. I hadn’t pursued my dream because the uncertainty hadn’t fit my plans.

If Max didn’t want my ideas for the
Times
, surely some managing editor at another newspaper or magazine would.

There was no better way to encourage Nan to let go of her past than to start letting go of my own.

I called Max, got his voice mail, and left a message wishing him luck in filling the position. Then I extended my legs to push off from the compacted ground beneath the swing.

I sailed backward, bending my legs on the upswing, extending them on the downswing. Before I knew it, I flew through the air.

Backward. Forward. Higher. Faster.

My heart pumped with the exertion and excitement. The wind blasted through my hair and cooled my cheeks, yet I felt myself warm from the inside out.

I tipped back my chin and counted stars, reveling in the simplicity and complexity of their beauty and allure.

Some people lived lives of great moments. Some lived lives of mediocre moments. Some didn’t live at all.

During the past month in Paris, I’d learned to live wondrous, breathless, everyday moments.

And those were the most magical moments of all.

My room was still dark the next morning when Mom shook my shoulder. “It’s Detta.”

Her words catapulted me out of my dream and into the reality of her tone and the early-morning hour.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, scrambling out from beneath my covers.

“We think it’s a stroke,” she answered. “Nan’s going to stay with Missy. Your dad went with Mick.”

I pulled on a pair of jeans and haphazardly shoved my nightgown into the waistband before I pulled my sweatshirt over my head.

I trembled, adrenaline and nerves spiking inside me. “How’s Mick?” I asked as we raced down the stairs.

Mom only shook her head, saying nothing as she moved to where Frankie stood, face tucked against the wall, shoulders heaving with her sobs.

“Dad took my car.” Mom pointed to the credenza as she pulled open the front door and gathered Frankie into her arms. “He left you Bessie.”

He’d also left his fedora, but I reached past it, leaving it where it sat.

I wrapped my fingers around the cab keys and followed Mom and Frankie out into the darkness of early morning, filled with an overwhelming sense of urgency, as if my body already knew what my mind had yet to grasp.

Detta O’Malley regained consciousness long enough to tell Mick she loved him, long enough to tell him he was a good son.

She never lived to see her scrapbook or to see her granddaughter again. The bleeding from her stroke, her doctors explained, was too massive for her brain to survive.

She slipped away just after dawn, with Mick and my family by her side.

In her moment of lucidity, Detta had given Mick a gift. She’d given him a piece of her heart.

I could only hope that would be enough to carry him through the days that followed.

We buried Mrs. O’Malley on a cold Monday morning. I’d left Fred a message after she died, telling him I wouldn’t be keeping our Sunday meeting.

I needed to be with my family. And Mick.

Mick had demolished the greenhouse out of anger and grief immediately after his mother’s funeral. I left him alone to work out his anger through the physical exertion.

Frankie locked herself in her room, crying softly. Not even Don and Riley were able to draw her out of the isolation of her broken heart.

Mom, Missy, and I dug through the pile of discarded and dead plants Mick had piled by the curb, searching for a sign of life.

The peace lily Mick had lovingly rescued from the street beside Maxwell Mortuary had sprouted a single green stem.

Perhaps Detta had been right all along. Maybe her plants had been destined to bloom again, with a little time and love.

Maybe we all were.

I took the pot to Frankie’s room, where she sat cradling the delicate plant in her lap as I wrapped her in my arms and told her how much Mrs. O’Malley had loved her.

She and Mom cleared a space in the living room for the lily’s large pot, and Frankie busied herself trimming dead leaves and feeding the soil.

In Paris tradition, the entire town gathered to celebrate Detta’s life later that same evening.

We crowded inside the Paris Inn Pub and shared songs and stories, toasts and cheers. Although I found comfort in the outpouring of love, I had yet to spot Mick’s face in the crowd.

“He’s not here,” Destiny whispered from the stool beside me. “You can stop twisting your neck around like some desperate giraffe.”

“You have a real way with words. You know that?”

“So I hear,” she said, forcing a smile.

Jessica had attended the funeral services earlier, but was home now with Max and Bella, so Destiny and I sat together. As resident after resident took the stage to sing or talk, regret built inside me.

How many times had I sat here, on this very stool, too nervous or upset to lift my voice in song?

I focused on determination and I slid off my stool, waving to where Jerry sat handling the microphone.

“Abby Halladay?” he said, his tone quizzical, as if he wondered how close I’d get to the stage this time before I changed my mind.

But this time I wasn’t singing for me. I was singing for Detta. I planned to lift my voice in song for the woman who had known the words even when no one would have thought her capable.

I told Jerry my song selection and climbed the steps to the small stage, feeling a bit like the Little Engine That Could.

I think I can. I think I can.

I gripped the microphone in my hand, smiled at the faces of my family, friends, and neighbors, and froze.

The music began, but I sang nothing.

I said nothing.

I did nothing but wonder how many years it had actually been since I’d stood up here and sung.

Suddenly someone took my hand, startling me. Destiny moved beside me, giving me a conspiratorial wink.

“How do you feel about a duet?” She signaled to Jerry to start the song again.

“I thought this wasn’t on your bucket list,” I whispered.

She gave my fingers a squeeze. “I’m not up here for me.”

Jerry restarted the song, and this time, when the first notes sounded, I held tight to Destiny’s hand and sang.

My voice started softly, then grew louder and louder, until before long I stood belting out the first song I’d ever heard Detta O’Malley sing.

“Stars shining bright above you…”

Destiny stood beside me, joining me on the choruses, providing backup, all the while never letting go of my hand.

“Dream a little dream of me…”

As my song filled the enclosed space of the Pub, I said a silent good-bye to Detta O’Malley.

And as I returned to my place at the bar and hoisted my beer in a toast for Mick’s mother, I said good-bye to sitting on the sidelines.

Once and for all.

Early the following afternoon, I found Mick clearing away the pile of rubble that had once been his mother’s greenhouse.

His movements slowed as I approached, and in the slump of his shoulders I saw the exhaustion that only grief could place upon a body.

Even though he’d come home to Paris knowing the road would be filled with bumps and free falls and warning cones, Mick thought he’d have more time.

Yet Detta was gone.

I clutched the scrapbook to my chest, sorry that I hadn’t taken more pictures, that I hadn’t captured more moments.

Mick straightened, pain etched across his face, his eyes full of the grief I’m sure his mother never intended to put there.

“Will you sit with me for a minute?” I asked.

“Where’s Fred?” he asked, an emotion I couldn’t quite read flashing through his eyes.

“I have no idea,” I said honestly.

I hadn’t seen Fred since his return from the other Paris. He hadn’t returned my message, and I hadn’t given him another thought.

I hadn’t thought about anything but the man standing before me.

“Please sit with me.” I moved to the O’Malleys’ back step and sat, giving the concrete beside me a pat.

Mick hesitated before he stripped off his work gloves and strode toward me, his features shifting from exhaustion to defensiveness.

Who could blame him? If I’d suffered the losses he’d suffered in his life, I’d be wearing a full set of armor just to go outside to check the mail.

He sat beside me, and I fought the urge to wrap my arms around him and pull him close. Instead, I released my grip on the scrapbook, set it on his lap, and traced my fingertips across the cover.

I’d slipped a photo of Detta into the front sleeve, choosing one of the shots I’d taken on the morning we ripped out Mom’s garden.