Perfect Glass (A Young Adult Novel (sequel to Glass Girl)) (13 page)

I felt her stiffen. “He’s just a friend.”

“I heard he’d like to be more.”

“No,” she said. “That’s crazy talk. Who told you that?”

“Who do you think?” I said, chuckling.

“Dylan
.
” She shook her head. “Quinn helped me put together a video for my UW application because the whole thing with Jo fell through. I was going to surprise you with it.”

“That’s it?”

She raised her head and searched my face. “Of course,” she said. “I promise.” She waved her hand in the air, already dismissing what she was about to say. “He said he’d help me edit it. We’re supposed to get together next week to finish it.”

“Hm.”

“Hm?”

I smiled at her. “Yeah.
Hm.
Just make sure he has editing on the brain and nothing more.”

“You’re goofy.”

“No,” I said. “I’m jealous.” I leaned down to kiss her. “How are you doing with the Jo thing?”

She sniffed and leaned into my shoulder again. “I mean…I’m not over it. But I don’t need volunteer hours with her for my application. I still worry about her.”

“I know you do.”

I resisted the urge to lie down on this dusty couch with her and hold onto her all night for comfort. I knew I couldn’t. Some of the best stuff in life has to be saved for the right time, so I kissed her goodnight, then stood and held out my hand to help her up.

“You’re sending me home?” she said.

“It’s not what I want.” I looked back over my shoulder at the lonely couch. “I promised Dad I’d rest tonight so I could put in a full day tomorrow.”

I smiled and touched her face, tugging her even closer, until her forehead rested on my chest. Somehow, that pose, Meg’s soft head pressed against my heart, her hair tickling my collarbone, made me invincible.

When she left, I locked up and drove home. I spent the rest of the night alone in my bed, physically. Emotionally, I sat on a fence. I’d missed Meg so much, but now that I was home, I missed the kids and the place I’d left behind.

***

By Monday morning at five, I’d pretty well shaken off the dust of Nicaragua and loaded up a new layer of rich Wyoming dirt. We raced against the calendar, getting the corn in for livestock winter feed. Dad and I divided up the fields. I got the big one, so I’d have to push myself and pray the equipment stayed healthy.

Ranch work, simple in all the ways other jobs aren’t, was hard in all the right ways. At the end of the day, I parked the combine for the night. My phone buzzed with a text from John—a list of random information.

The key to the lock box is in the pantry. Top shelf. Coffee can. Brisa needs refill of diabetes meds next week. Rosa needs grocery money on Wednesday.

He didn’t respond to my text—
Okay.

I called his cell. Multiple times. He never picked up. Neither did Kate.

The back of my neck prickled like lightning had struck somewhere near.

meg

“I
was just getting ready to call you,” Henry said, hustling me into his arms. I’d driven out as soon as I finished at the bookstore and we stood for a while, watching Mercy and Butch play in the frosty night.

“Annie needed me to close tonight or I would’ve been here earlier,” I said.

“Any earlier and you would’ve had to look for me in the fields.” He rested his chin on the top of my head. “Is Mercy a good pup?”

“She’s perfect. When I’m home, she’s right on my heels or in my lap.”

Mercy ran up on the porch. Henry caught her and started checking out her belly and her gums.

“Finished with my dog, Dr. Whitmire?” I laughed at the picture he made.

“Sorry.” He cradled Mercy like a baby. “I was just thinking about how much fun she’d have chasing cows with Butch, if you don’t spoil her too much while she’s little.”

In the family room, I settled in to work on calculus homework. Henry dropped down on the couch next to his mom.

“Did you get John yet?” he said.

Miriam looked down at her phone and shook her head. “They’re not answering any of their phones. Maybe he meant to text his ‘to do’ list to Kate, but he hit your number instead.”

“Maybe,” Henry said. “Doesn’t seem like a mistake he’d make, though.”

Sighing, Miriam laid her phone aside. “Well, we’ll just wait to hear from them.”

Clayton came in carrying two steaming mugs of coffee and handed one to his wife, joining her on the couch. They swapped stories about the day while I listened. When the conversation turned to Jo Russell, I put down my pencil.

“Henry tells me you’ve been trying to help her,” Miriam said. “How’s that going?”

I shook my head. “It went. Nowhere.”

“Ah.” She and Clayton shared a knowing glance.

“Do you know much about her?” I said. “Do you know if she had a son?”

“Yes, she had a son,” Miriam said.

Henry looked shocked. “Really? You never told me that.”

Clayton settled his gaze on Henry. “Jo’s a complicated woman. She’s lived through a lot of tragedy. Her son would be my age, if he were alive.”

“I didn’t even know she’d been married,” I said.

Miriam, always gentle, said, “Oh, she never married.”

“Who was the father?” Henry asked.

“An artist who lived here for a brief time to study with her,” Miriam said. “At least that’s what everyone assumed.”

“She and my mother were close friends when they were younger,” Clayton said. “She said that Jo had only been in love twice—once with my dad before he married my mom and once with this artist fellow.”

“Did the artist know he had a son?” I said.

Miriam shrugged. “Who knows? Andrew, her little boy, drowned. And because Jo never married the father, the people in town hardly acknowledged Andrew’s life or his death.”

I felt heat in my face, angry on Jo’s behalf that she and her son were treated badly.

“This was a long time ago and people were different,” Miriam said. “Jo pulled away and hurt a lot of people. But, in all fairness, a lot of people hurt her.”

Henry watched his Dad. “Did you know Andrew, Dad?”

Clayton raised an eyebrow and nodded. “I did. We played together when we were young. He was just a shy kid who loved to draw. That’s how I remember him.”

My chest was hollow, empty. “How did he drown?”

Clayton glanced at me and then down at his boots. “He’d walked over to the river to fish, I believe. Slipped, hit his head. That part always confused me.”

He leaned forward on the couch, rubbing his chin, remembering. “My parents helped Jo search for him late into the night. My dad found him quite a ways downstream and carried him all the way back to Jo’s house. It changed all of us. It felt…preventable. I remember being really sad for a long time.”

Henry and I were both quiet, processing the new knowledge that his dad had lost a friend, had grieved a playmate.

Miriam scooted closer to Clayton and she looked at me. “That’s really all we know. We always try to help Jo out when she’ll let us. She hasn’t looked emotionally stable lately.”

I swallowed. “I’m worried about her.”

“I know you are,” Miriam said.

Clayton stood then, helping his wife up and into his arms. “We’re turning in,” he said.

Henry stood to kiss his mom on the cheek. “’Night,” he said.

I settled back into my homework and Henry watched me. I mean, he stared, intensely. “What?” I mouthed.

“Nothing.” He slid my pencil from my fingers and laid it on the table, pulling me close. “Just that you scare me. I’m afraid of you and your big brain.”

His phone buzzed and, at the same time, the home phone rang. I watched Henry read his screen, knowing the two calls couldn’t be a coincidence. He held his phone up for me to read the text from John.

Packing
…
catching a red eye flight. Can you pick us up in Denver at 6 a.m. tomorrow?

Henry sent a short reply.

We waited. Five minutes of muffled conversation came through his parents’ door. Henry’s hand tightened around mine. Clayton walked in with his hands shoved in his pockets and his feet bare.

“What happened?” Henry said. He braced himself on the edge of the couch. He expected the worst, but I didn’t even know what the worst could be.

“Kate lost the baby.” Clayton’s eyes told the story. “We didn’t know. Did you know, Henry? Did you know she’d been worried for weeks?”

“I wasn’t sure.” Henry’s breathing sounded ragged, rapid. “Before I left, John said something that made me think there might be a problem, but he didn’t want to worry us.”

“Her doctor in Managua just kept telling her things were fine, but Kate knew better.”

Clayton paced, his hands rubbing the back of his neck. “They’ve been at the hospital for the last eighteen hours. Must’ve been pretty soon after you left that things went south. She had to deliver the little girl…stillborn. They named her Hannah.”

He covered his eyes with the heels of both hands, like he could push the tears back where they belonged. “They’ve got too much to bear right now. They’re flying out tonight. John wants to get Kate home so she can be seen by a doctor here. There were some bleeding complications.”

Moved by Clayton’s sorrow, I walked to him and put my arms around him, pressing my forehead into his shoulder so he wouldn’t see my own tears. This felt awkward, hugging Henry’s dad like he was my own. He leaned into me. His weight made me sway, but I steadied myself by planting one foot at an angle.

The front door opened and closed behind me. I turned around.

“Let him go.” Clayton backed up a step and watched Henry’s headlights bounce down the driveway. “All his life he’s needed a little space to process things. He’ll probably head to the cabin where he goes to think.”

“Should I follow?”

He took a cloth out of his back pocket, wiped his face, and turned toward his bedroom. “In a little while.”

We both stared at doors. I watched the one Henry had used and he watched his bedroom door where his wife was, no doubt, distraught.

“I’ll go to Miriam now. Goodnight, Meg.” He squeezed my shoulder and walked to his room. When he opened the door, I saw Miriam sitting on the edge of their bed. She was on the phone with someone.

I packed up my homework and turned out the family room lights. Mercy had fallen asleep next to Butch, but she woke when I lifted my backpack onto my shoulder. Closing the front door behind us, we climbed into the Jeep to look for Henry.

His truck sat crookedly next to the little cabin, like he’d been in too much of a hurry to find the grooves where he usually parked. Our similarities here stood out like highlighted words on a page. We run. We are runners. Throw something hard in our path, something we must confront and deal with, and we can’t move fast enough. The details roll off our shoulders and drop behind us.

This was okay, though. As long as we know how we’ll react to trouble, we can plan accordingly. And we always came back eventually. That’s what mattered.

When I opened the door, the room was too dark to make out where Henry might be.

“You’ve been here,” he said. “You put up some paintings. And it smells like a girl with all the dried flowers.”

“Where are you?” I put my arms out and walked toward his voice.

“Sorry.” He shuffled around, flicked the lighter that stayed on the table, and used it to light a couple of candles. “Come here.”

I moved into his open arms and sat on his lap. He was cold.

“I like what you’ve done with the place.” I could feel his chest move like he was laughing a little. I put my hand there, over his heart to stop it from breaking.

“Hannah is a beautiful name, isn’t it?” I said.

His silence stretched out for long moments until finally he took a deep breath. “Yes. Poor little Hannah. And Whit. And Kate.”

“And John. I know he’s devastated.”

“I know he is.”

“He’s sweet,” I said, nestling closer to Henry to warm him.

“He’s a good man.” He groaned and I felt his hands close into fists. “Meg?”

“Yeah?”

“I shut my eyes and I see Kate. Pregnant and laughing. Playing with the kids. Reading to Whit. And her face when she tried to tell me something was wrong and I walked away. I was hell-bent on coming home and I didn’t listen.”

“Everything will be okay, Henry.”

“Yeah. But I never wanted to be the kind of person that leaves when things get tough,” he said. “That’s exactly what I did.”

“I did, too,” I whispered.

He pushed me away a little so he could see my face. “What do you mean?”

“I walked away from Jo. I was relieved I’d never have to see her again.”

Henry tilted my chin up and searched my face silently for a minute. “But I’d bet she hasn’t been too far from the center of your thoughts in days. Am I right?”

I burrowed my face into his shoulder again and breathed him in. The feeling of being known by someone was a powerful thing.

“We’re a couple of compulsive over-feelers with follow-through issues,” I said. “We should get help.”

“We have help.” Henry turned me in his lap so he could lean forward a little, then he bowed his head and whispered a prayer for both of us.

I couldn’t stop crying because it was so intimate, in that way I always thought being physical with him would feel. If someone had walked in they might have thought Henry was barely touching me. I knew the truth of it.

He was opening me up, to him and to God.

There wasn’t a more intimate act. I would never recover from this.

When he finished, he wrapped his arms around me. “I love you, Meg.”

“Henry—”

He stopped me by laying his hand on my cheek. “Wait,” he said. “I need to say this. I’m going to the airport soon. I’ll leave my truck for them to drive home, but I’ll get on the next flight to Managua.”

“No. Please, just….”
Stay. Just. Please. Stay. A little while longer. It’s been so long. I need you here
. I swallowed the words that would make this harder on him, as he pressed his finger to my lips to make sure I did.

“They’ll rest easier knowing I’m there. I’m sure they left Rosa and her husband in charge, but that’s not enough. Even I won’t be enough.”