Healing Stones (27 page)

“I guess that's how I knew not to panic that day when we'd been here
in Washington for about two weeks, and you disappeared. Christopher
freaked out and went off on his bike to check all the creeks. I made two
cups of tea with honey and milk—you'd graduated from hot chocolate—
and thought of hiding places where something might be normal for you.
I found you in the storage shed, sitting on a stack of boxes we hadn't
unpacked yet—your eyes closed—trying to understand why we left
everything we knew and loved and came to this place where no one
wanted to be your friend because you were an angel, not a regular girl.”

“Mom,” Jayne said.

“Okay, so that last part is my interpretation. Humor me.”

“It was hard for you to sort all that out,”
I read on. “
Dad and I
couldn't help that Uncle Eddie died—but
we
were the ones who chose
to rip you and Christopher out of your home, away from the friends
you'd grown up giggling and dancing with. You didn't know how to be
angry. That's still hard for you, I know.”

I swallowed hard. No crying—not when she was listening and hearing me be the mom.

“That must be why you won't talk to me now, or answer my e-mails
or text messages. You must be so angry with me—and that makes it hard
for you to know how to be—at all. I'm angry enough with myself for both
of us. That's all I know right now, Jay—that for a reason I'm still trying
to figure out, I went against God and turned to somebody besides your
dad for what I thought I needed. I didn't know how to be angry at all
the things that had happened to us—I think I just wanted to feel better.
I don't know—and I'm getting help to find out. But I promise you, it's
okay for you to be angry with me. If you don't know how, I'll teach you—
because I've had some practice. But I hope more that I can teach you how
to love me again. It's my turn to teach you, the way you've taught me.
Please, Jay, let me try.”

“How do you explain an affair to a thirteen-year-old you've barely had ‘the talk' with yet?”

Mickey tucked her feet under herself on my window seat. “I'm sure you were amazing.”

“How can you say that? All you've ever seen me do is cry over the mess I've made of my life.”

“Not true.” She pushed the bowl of sunflower seeds down the seat toward me and scooped a handful into her cupped palm to pick from, like a little bird-woman. “I saw you with Audrey.”

I fidgeted. Mickey held up a hand, two seeds poised between finger and thumb. “I'm not asking you to tell me what she said. As long as she has somebody like you to talk to, that's all I care about. By the way, she was like a different person after she cried on your shoulder.”

I poked into the bowl of seeds. “Why is it I can have such perspective with your kid, but when it comes to my own, I don't even know how to be with her?”

“Looked to me like you were doing fine.”

“It wasn't as bad as it could have been, I guess.”

Mickey dumped what was left in her hand back into the bowl and brushed her palms together. “Okay, I'm going to go ahead and jump into territory that's none of my business. Stop me if you want.”

I sank back against the cushions. “Go.”

“When you brought her in there, I thought,
That child needs to be
in the emergency room.
But ten minutes with you, and she came back from the dead.” She twitched an eyebrow. “She probably did, if you know what I mean.”

“She says it's bad at home.”

“Bad? She's scary-skinny. She looked like she was afraid of herself, until you started reading to her. Here's the thing: that child needs to be with you.”

I stared at my toes, now blurring before me. “It was so hard to take her home.”

“Home for that girl is where you are. You can bring her here. She could have the bedroom—you never use it anyway. We'd cut you slack so you could take her to school on your way to work. Audrey could pick her up after class.”

I shook my head.

“Why not? There's no legal document that says you can't have custody of your own daughter, is there?”

“There's no legal anything. Christopher said Rich hired a lawyer, but I haven't seen any paperwork yet.”

Mickey bugged her eyes. “Why does Rich get to control everything? Why can't you get legal representation?”

Sudden anxiety shot me off the window seat.

“I'm sorry, Demi, but I don't get why you are so cowed by this man when it comes to your kids.”

I stopped my march across the room and turned to her. “It's stupid, isn't it?”

“You have to stop it.”

I dropped into one of the chairs, pushing aside the afghan. “You know what—I think it's more Christopher than it is Rich. He's actually lying to turn Jayne against me.”

“Why are you letting him get away with that?”

“I just found out,” I said. “And I'm not going to let him get away with it.”

Mickey's eyes gleamed. “Now that's what I'm talking about. Do you have a plan?”

“I want to wring his neck.”

“That's good for a start.”

My cell phone rang. I picked it up and looked at the screen.
H
OME
.
I was almost too stunned to answer.

When I did, Rich said, “Demitria.”

I grasped at his voice, deadwood as it sounded.

“Rich,” I said.

“Look, did Jayne call you?”

“When?”

“Within the last hour?”

My mother antennae went up. “What's wrong?”

On the window seat, Mickey sat up straight and watched me openly.

“I don't know if there's anything
wrong.
” His irritation was forced. “She's not here, and I thought maybe she called you.”

“I haven't
seen or heard from her since I dropped her off at five.”

He was silent. Anger lapped at me.

“Rich.”

“I'll just keep looking for her, then,” he said.

But I already had the phone halfway closed as I said, “I'm coming over.” And I didn't wait for permission.

Someone different from the Demi I'd been living inside of barked half an explanation at Mickey and roared the Jeep all the way to the house. This Demi left her shriveling guilt back in the day- light basement and threw open the mudroom door as though she belonged there, confronting a husband who stood stiff at the kitchen counter.

“Are the police coming?” I said.

“No.”

“Rich, we don't know where our daughter is.” I snatched my cell phone out of my jacket pocket.

Rich reached across the counter and grabbed at it. I didn't even give myself time to gape at him.

“What is wrong with you! This isn't about your stupid pride, Rich—this is our child. Somebody could have abducted her.”

“She left,” Rich said. “We had an argument, and she ran off.”

My thoughts rammed into each other like bumper cars—and somehow formed themselves into a line.

“I thought she might have gone back to you,” he said. “She said she saw you today.” He hissed. “You got her all upset.”

“No, I did not.”

I rounded the end of the counter and got close to him. He slanted away.

“We had a good talk,” I said into his face. “Which we should have had long ago, except that Christopher has kept her from hearing from me.” I shook my head. “What did she say to you?”

I could hear his teeth grinding. “I think I drove her out of here, Demitria.”

“What did you say? Tell me—please.”

He moved away, leaned against the stove, went restlessly to the refrigerator, where he supported himself with one hand over his head, his back to me. “I got up to get ready for work and she came into our—my bedroom. She told me I was being stupid and stubborn and that I ought to listen to you because this isn't all your fault.” He gave me a look over his shoulder that didn't harden all the way to its edges. “That could only have come from you.”

“No, because I didn't say any of that to her. All I said was that I am trying to figure out why I did what I did.”

Rich kept his face away from me.

“I know you don't believe me,” I said. “You don't believe a thing I say anymore.”

“Why should I?”

“Because this is not about you and me—this is about Jayne. What happened after that?”

Rich shrugged. “I told her it was none of her concern—that it was between you and me. She said she didn't see how it could be since we weren't even talking to each other.”

“And?”

“I told her not to take that tone with me,” Rich said. “She said somebody had to.” He stopped and set his jaw.

“Why did she run off?”

“Because—I told her to get out.”

I put my hands to my temples.

“I meant get out of the room—but she left the house.”

“How long ago?”

“About an hour.”

“Did you not go after her?”

“No.” He went for the stove again. “I figured she'd come back— where is she going to go?”

“Boys come back,” I said. I headed for the mudroom door. “Girls wait to be found. But I guess you haven't figured that out.” I nodded toward the stove that held him up. “Would you please put some water on for tea?”

Jayne was in the storage shed.

I peeked through a crack first and saw her narrow, diminished self almost fitting into it. She sat on a cooler between two pairs of cross-country skis, sorting out her mind. I knocked and heard a faint, “Go away, Dad.”

“It's Mom,” I said.

“Mom?”

“Can I come in?”

I didn't have to. She came to me—arms flailing to go around me, face searching for a neck to bury itself in. She cried until she went limp—that place where things can begin to make sense. I knew that place well.

“The tea water ought to be ready by now,” I said. “Let's go inside.”

“Is Dad there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is he going to hit me?”

I pulled her away from me and stared into her face. “Hit you?”

“He was so mad I thought he was going to slap me. He didn't, like, raise his hand or anything. But it felt like he was going to. That's why I ran.”

I crushed her against me, my hands tangled in her damp hair. She'd washed it since the afternoon.

“I'm with you,” I said. “Come on—we have to go talk to him.”

Talk
wasn't something Rich was going to do. After the gush of relief when he saw us come in together, he turned his face from us and muttered, “I'm glad you found her.”

It was the only cowardly thing I had ever seen my husband do. I wanted to claw the paneling.

“We have to talk about this,” I said. “I'm going to pour some tea, and we can sit down and—”

“What is there to say?” Rich pointed at our daughter. “You don't need to worry about what's going on between your mother and me.”

“Yes, I do,” Jayne said, “because nobody's telling me anything! What am I supposed to do but worry, Dad?”

Rich turned his glare on me.

I glared back. I had never disagreed with him in front of the children about anything pertaining to them, and at the moment I resented him for putting me in this position.

He looked back at Jayne, though I wasn't sure he saw her. “I don't know what to tell you,” he said finally.

She pawed at me until she found my hand at my side. “I'm scared,” she said to him.

“Don't be,” he said, tone short. “Everything is—”

“Going to be all right? It isn't all right! Mom's not living with us. Christopher has turned into Hitler. I don't even see you anymore.”

Rich's eyes bore into me. He wanted me to make her stop—but I longed for the kind of release my daughter must be feeling.

“I can only do so much.” Rich's voice was hard but thin, like a brittle bone. “What do you want me to do, Jayne?”

She squeezed my hand until I realized she needed me to squeeze back. When I did, she lifted her fragile chin and said, “I want you to let me go with Mom.”

I stopped breathing. Rich's eyes went to me, accusing, and Jayne shook her head until the angel hair trembled.

“She didn't ask me, Daddy,” she said. “This is my idea. This is what
I
want.”

I watched Rich's Adam's
apple rise and fall like an adolescent boy's.

“Jay,” I heard myself say, “why don't you give us a minute?”

Her hand went limp in mine, and for a moment I thought she'd change her mind, hate me for not marching off with her in victory. But I heard a tiny sigh as she let go and hurried soundlessly to the steps. I didn't wait to hear her door close.

“I didn't put her up to this, Rich,” I said.

He leaned, palms down between the burners on the stove. “I know that, Demitria. I hate this.”

“So do I.”

Rich lifted his face toward the ceiling. There was strain in every line—some of which I'd never seen before.

“I know you're sorry,” he said. “But it's not enough.”

“What more do you want?”

“I don't know!” His voice caught.

I pulled back. This had to be hope I was seeing, and I didn't want to breathe, lest I blow it away.

“I think Jayne should go with you.” He jerked his head toward me, but he didn't meet my eyes. “She'll get more attention from you—it'll be better for her.”

“And it
is
about her, Rich. Not about you winning or me winning.”

He straightened and absently patted his back pocket. “Will you need money?”