Firefly Lane (39 page)

Kate came down the stairs at last, sighing tiredly, holding a pile of afghans in her arms. "Okay, Tully. What's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

Kate grabbed her arm and led her through the toy-strewn house. At the kitchen, Kate paused just long enough to pour two glasses of white wine and then they went outside to the chairs positioned in the grass. The quiet gurgling noise of the waves took Tully back more than twenty years, to those nights they used to sneak out and sit by the river, talking about boys and sharing smokes.

Tully sat down in one of the weathered Adirondack chairs and spread the knitted blanket over her. After all these years and no doubt countless washings, it still smelled of Mrs. M.'s menthol cigarettes and perfume.

Kate drew up her blanketed knees and rested her chin on the bumpy summit, then looked at Tully. "Talk," she said.

"What should we talk about?"

"How long have we been best friends?"

"Since David Cassidy was groovy."

"And you think I can't tell when something's wrong?"

Tully sat back, sipping her wine. The truth was that she wanted to talk about this—it was, after all, part of the reason she'd flown all the way across the country—and yet, now that she was here with her best friend again, she didn't know how to start. Worse than that, she felt like an idiot complaining about what was missing in her life. She had so much.

"I thought you were crazy to give up your career. For four years, every time I called you Marah was screaming in the background. I kept thinking I'd kill myself if that were my life, but you sounded frustrated and pissed off and amazingly happy. I could never quite get it."

"Someday you'll know what it's like."

"No, I won't. I'm almost forty, Kate." She finally looked at Kate. "I guess I was the crazy one, wanting nothing but the career."

"It's a hell of a career."

"Yeah. But sometimes . . . it's not enough. I know that's a greedy thing to say, but I'm tired of working eighteen hours a day and coming home to an empty house."

"You can change your life, you know. But you have to really want to."

"Thank you, Obi-Wan."

Kate stared out at the waves slapping the shore. "In the tabloids last week there was a sixty-year-old woman who gave birth."

Tully laughed. "You are such a bitch."

"I know. Now come on, poor little mega-rich girl, I'll show you to your room."

"I'm going to be sorry I complained, aren't I?"

"Oh, yeah."

They walked through the darkened house. At the guest bedroom door, Kate turned to her. "No more spoiling Marah, okay? She already thinks you hung the moon."

"Come on, Katie. I made more than two million dollars last year, what am I supposed to do with it all?"

"Give it to charity. Just no more pink limos, okay?"

"You are no fun whatsoever, you know that?"

It wasn't until much later, when Tully lay on the bumpy, sagging mattress of the hide-a-bed, staring out the window at the Big Dipper, that she realized she hadn't asked Kate about her own life.

Kate stared at the calendar that hung on the wall by her refrigerator. It seemed impossible to believe that time was passing so quickly, but the proof was right there in front of her. It was November of 2002, and the past fourteen months had changed the world. In September of last year terrorists had flown airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing thousands. Another plane had been hijacked and ultimately crashed, leaving no survivors. Car and suicide bombers had become part of the nightly news; the search for weapons of mass destruction had begun. Words like
Al-Qaeda
and
Taliban
and
Pakistan
came up in every conversation, were repeated on every broadcast.

Fear changed everyone and everything, and yet, as always, life went on. Hour by hour, day by day, while politicians and military personnel were looking for bombs and terrorists, and while the Justice Department was tearing down Enron's papery walls, families went on with their ordinary lives. Kate continued to run her errands and raise her children and love her husband. If she held on to all of them a little more tightly and kept them closer to home, everyone understood: the world wasn't as safe as it had been before.

Now Thanksgiving was a week away and Christmas lurked just around the corner.

It was the holiday season, the time of year that turned women into card-carrying split personalities. Torn between the joy of the season and the amount of work that joy required, Kate often had trouble slowing down, remembering to savor the precious moments. There was baking to do—for the school parties, for the ballet bake sale, for donations at Helper House—and shopping, of course. As magical as Bainbridge Island was, when it came time to do serious gift-combing, one was reminded forcibly that this was a body of land surrounded by water. Thus, malls and department stores were far away. She felt like a mountain climber sometimes, setting out for a vertical ascent without oxygen; the summit was Nordstrom. When you had three kids, it took time to pick out their presents, and time was in short supply.

Now, as Kate sat in the driver's seat of her car, parked in the first position in the carpool lane, she began her Christmas list. She'd only gotten a few items down when the bell rang and kids poured out of the middle school.

Marah usually came out of the brick building in a clot of girls. Like killer whales, preteen girls traveled in pods. But today she was alone, walking fast, with her head down and her arms crossed tightly.

Kate knew something was wrong. The question was: how bad was it? Her daughter was twelve years old. That meant hormones were boiling through her body, turning her emotions into a witch's cauldron. Everything was big drama these days.

"Hey," Kate said tentatively, knowing one wrong word could cause a fight.

"Hey." Marah climbed into the front passenger seat and reached for he seatbelt, clicking it into place. "Where are the brats?"

"Evan's birthday party. Daddy's going to pick them up on his way home."

"Oh."

Kate pulled out of the parking lane and merged into the stop-and-go traffic on Sportsman's Club Road. All the way home she tried to begin a conversation, but all her pitches turned out to be strikes. At best Marah offered a one-word answer, at worst an eye roll or a dramatic sigh. When they pulled into the garage, Kate gave it one more try. "I'm making cookies for the boys' Thanksgiving party tomorrow. You want to help me?"

Marah finally looked at her. "Those pumpkin-shaped ones with the orange frosting and green sprinkles?"

For a split second her daughter looked like a little girl again, her dark eyes wide with hope, her lips curving into a hesitant smile. Years' worth of parties were between them now, a net of shared memories.

"Of course," Kate said.

"I love those cookies."

Kate had counted on that. "Remember the year Mrs. Norman brought the same kind and you were so mad you made everyone try both just to prove that ours were better?"

Marah finally smiled. "Mr. Robbins got really mad at me. I had to help him clean up after the party."

"Emily stayed to help you."

Marah's smile faded. "Yeah."

"So, you want to help me?"

"Sure."

Kate took care not to react too sharply to that. Although she wanted to grin and say how happy she was, she simply nodded and followed her daughter into the house and then into the kitchen. She'd learned a few things in the last turbulent year about dealing with preteen girls. While they were virtual roller coasters of emotion, you needed to be calm, always.

For the next three hours they worked side by side in the big country-style kitchen. Kate reminded her daughter how to sift ingredients together and showed her how to grease a cookie sheet the old-fashioned way. They talked about little things, this and that; nothing important. Kate was gauging the scene like a hunter. Instinctively, she knew when the time was right. They'd just frosted the last of the cookies and were stacking the dirty dishes by the sink when Kate said, "You want to make another batch? We could take them over to Ashley's house."

Marah went very still. "No," she said in a voice almost too quiet to be heard.

"But Ash loves them. Remember when—"

"She hates me," Marah said, and just like that the floodgates opened. Tears gathered in her eyes.

"Did you two have a fight?"

"I don't know."

"How can you not know?"

"I just don't, okay?" Marah burst into tears and turned away.

Kate lunged for her daughter, grabbed her sleeve, and pulled her into a fierce hug. "I'm right here, Marah," she whispered.

Marah hugged her tightly. "I don't know what I did wrong," she wailed, sobbing.

"Sshh," Kate murmured, stroking her daughter's hair as if she were still little. When Marah's crying finally subsided, Kate drew back just enough to look down at her. "Sometimes life is—"

Behind them the door banged open. The twins burst into the house, yelling at each other, making their toy dinosaurs fight. Johnny came in after them, chasing them down. William bumped into an end table, upsetting a glass of water that shouldn't have been left there. The sound of shattering glass rang through the room.

"Uh-oh," William said, looking up at Kate.

Lucas laughed. "Wil-lie's in tro-uble," he chanted.

Marah wrenched free, and ran upstairs, slamming the door shut behind her.

"Lucas," Johnny said. "Stop teasing your brother. And stay back from the glass on the floor."

Kate sighed and reached for a towel.

The next day, Kate pulled into the school drive-through lane just three minutes before the lunch bell rang. Parking illegally, she hurried into the office, signed Marah out for the day, and then walked down to her classroom. Last night, after the moment of conversation and connection between them, Marah had shut Kate out again. No amount of prompting could restart the engine, and so Kate had had to formulate plan B. A surprise attack.

Peering through the rectangular glass window, she knocked once, saw the teacher wave at her, and went inside.

Most of the kids smiled at her and said hello. That was one of the benefits of constant volunteering: everyone knew you. All the kids looked happy to see her—or at least happy for this disruption in class.

All the kids except one.

Marah's face wore the what-are-you-doing-at-school-embarrassing-me grimace. Kate was more than familiar with it. She knew the middle school rules: parents should be invisible.

The bell rang and the kids ran from the room, talking loudly.

When they were alone, Kate went to Marah.

"What are you doing here?"

"You'll see. Get your things. We're leaving."

Marah stared up at her, obviously assessing the situation from every possible social angle. "Okay. I'll meet you at the car, okay?"

Ordinarily Kate would make a comment about that and force Marah to walk out with her, but her daughter was emotionally fragile right now. That was why Kate was here. "Okay."

The easy victory surprised Marah. Kate smiled at her, touched her shoulder. "See you in a minute."

Actually, it took a bit longer than that, but not much. In no time, Marah was in the passenger seat, buckling up. "Where are we going?"

"Well, first we're going out to lunch."

"You got me out of school to have lunch?"

"And something else. A surprise." Kate drove to the diner-style restaurant that was next door to the brand-new multiplex theater on the island.

"I'm going to have a cheeseburger, fries, and a strawberry milkshake," Kate said when they were seated.

"Me, too."

After the waitress took their orders and left, Kate looked at her daughter. Slouched down in the blue vinyl seat, she looked thin and angular, a girl bursting into adolescence. Her black hair, messy and unkempt now, would someday be a crowning glory, and her brown eyes revealed every nuance of emotion she felt. Now she looked bereft.

The waitress delivered their shakes. Kate took a sip. It was probably her first ice-cream product since the twins' birth and it tasted like Heaven. "Ashley still being mean to you?" she finally said.

"She hates me. I don't even know what I did to her."

Kate had been thinking a lot about what to say, how to handle this first heartbreak. Like all mothers, she would do anything in the world to keep her daughter safe and whole, but some dangers couldn't be fully protected against, they could only be experienced and then understood. That was one of the many lessons this country had learned this year, and even though some things had changed for them all, some things had stayed the same.

"In fifth grade, I had two very best friends. For years, we did everything together—showed our horses at the fair, had slumber parties, hung out at the lake in the summer. Grandma called us the three horse-keteers. And then one summer, when I was almost fourteen, they stopped liking me. I still don't know why. They started hanging around with boys and went to parties and they never called me again. Every day I went to school and sat on the bus by myself and ate lunch by myself, and every night I cried before I went to sleep."

"Really?"

Kate nodded. "I can still remember how much it hurt my feelings."

"What happened?"

"Well, when I was at my very most miserable—and I mean miserable, you should have seen me with my braces and dork-o-rama glasses—"

Marah giggled.

"I got up and went to school."

"And?"

"And Aunt Tully was waiting at the bus stop. She was the coolest-looking girl I'd ever seen. I figured she'd never want to be friends with me. But you know what I found out?"

"What?"

"Inside, where it counts, she was as scared and lonely as I was. We became best friends that year. Real friends. The kind that don't purposely hurt your feelings or stop liking you for no reason."

"How do you make friends like that?"

"That's the hard part, Marah. To make real friends you have to put yourself out there. Sometimes people will let you down—girls can be really mean to each other—but you can't let that stop you. If you get hurt, you just pick yourself up, dust off your feelings, and try again. Somewhere in your class is the girl who will be friends with you all through high school. I promise. You just have to find her."