The Mill River Redemption (44 page)

Her daughters glanced up at her and then at each other without answering. Josie looked at Father O’Brien, who sat unmoving at the end of the sofa. She turned to see Ivy shrug her shoulders and open her mouth to say something when the theme song from
Seinfeld
broke the silence in the room.

Rose startled and then jammed a hand down into her jeans pocket. “It’s my phone,” she said as she pulled it out, glanced at the screen, and answered it.

“Sheldon? What’s going on?” Rose’s eyes blinked tightly, and she let out a strange half-laugh, half-sob as she listened. “I’ll be right there,” she gasped into the phone. Josie’s heart rose up into her throat as her older daughter jumped to her feet and smiled through fresh tears.

“Alex is awake,” Rose managed to say, “and he’s asking for me.”

O
N HER KNEES ON THE WOOD FLOOR IN THE MARBLE MANSION
, Emily paused for a moment to stretch her neck and back. All morning, she’d been crawling along the baseboard in the great room with an edge sander, removing the old finish on the floor where the large drum sander had been unable to reach. It was slow, painstaking work.

Still, it felt good to get back into her own bed and normal routine after those stressful nights at the hospital in Burlington. The physical labor of working in the marble mansion was more tiring than usual, given how the past few days had disrupted her sleep schedule, but it was cleansing, too. The exertion had helped purge the last of the stress she’d felt over Alex’s accident and injury. It also gave her time to think about how she would handle her mother’s despicable actions and what, if anything, she would do as a result of her conversation with Rose.

When Emily reached the corner of the living room, she switched off the machine and replaced the worn sanding sheet with a fresh one. But, rather than resuming her work, she sat back against the wall and ran her fingers over the smooth square of used sandpaper. What she wouldn’t give to feel that smooth and serene on the inside, to be able to get over the hurt she felt after her mother’s deception, on top of everything else. She felt far more rough and raw than even the coarsest sandpaper. She wished, too,
that in this one way, she were more like Rose. Her sister would simply explode at someone in anger rather than internalizing her feelings and allowing them to build up and eat away at her.

Going back to her hometown, facing all that had happened, was supposed to get her life on track. She had counted on using her time in Mill River to come to terms with so many things and leave the past truly in the past. Instead, she was more hurt and angry and confused than she had been when she arrived. The anger, especially, scared her.

This time, though, she would not suppress it and allow it to simmer away at her insides. And, she was finished running away.

“Em? Emily, are you here?” Her mother’s voice carried from the kitchen door through the house.

Emily frowned at her mother’s uncanny timing.

“There you are, honey.” Josie removed her sunglasses and stepped into the great room. “I thought for a minute that you might be gone for the day.”

“Hi, Mom.” She glanced up at her mother and fiddled with the palm sander. There was a long, awkward pause before her mother spoke again.

“Alex is doing really well. They moved him out of intensive care to a normal room. When I left this afternoon, he was sitting up in bed eating a normal lunch. No more broth and Jell-O. His doctor says all his brain function tests are normal, and he could be discharged in a week if nothing unexpected happens.”

“That’s great news,” Emily said. “I’m sure Rose and Sheldon are relieved. How are they holding up?”

“Better, now. They’re focused on Alex, on getting him well and bringing him home.”

Again, the silence. Emily felt the anger flickering inside her ribs and ran a finger over the switch on the edge sander. She was tempted to turn it on, continue working, and completely ignore
her mother. Her mouth curled into a half-smile as she realized that that was totally something Rose would do. But, even as angry as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to treat her mother that way.

“Look, honey, I know you’re still upset with me. I don’t blame you, and I know you need time to think through everything and … decide whether you can forgive me. I just wanted to tell you again how sorry I am that I hurt you, and that things turned out like they did.”

“I have one question to ask you,” Emily said. She stood up and looked into her mother’s tired eyes. “When you were planning your whole little disappearance, making arrangements to live in New York, writing the letter to us, planning your wake, did you even once really think about how it would be for me, or Rose, to get a call from Ivy to tell us you were dead? Did you really stop and think about how we would feel?”

Her mother opened her mouth to answer, but Emily didn’t give her the chance.

“I don’t think you did, not really. If you had, you would have realized how devastating it would be for us, and you wouldn’t have gone through with everything. But, if you didn’t put yourself in our position, well, that’s even worse. You wanted a happy little family
—you
wanted it, not us—and you were willing to do anything for it. And that’s just selfish and cruel.”

“I did what I did for
your
future, Emily, yours and Rose’s, not mine. It might not be something you can truly understand until you have children of your own, but try to put yourself in
my
position. I can tell you that it is pure torture for any mother to see her child hurting, and it’s even worse when you can’t take the pain away. And what happened with you and your sister … it wasn’t something I could fix with a Band-Aid and a kiss. I watched you and your sister suffer year after year. As a mother, how could I not try to help you? I may have gone about it the wrong way, but I’d
tried everything else over the years, and I wasn’t going to give up on what I believed, and still believe, was the last, best chance for you both to find happiness again. I have
never
given up when it comes to you girls. What decent mother would?”

Her mother’s chin was trembling, awaiting her answer. Emily felt hot tears prick the corners of her eyes. “If you really loved us—”

“—I’d have done what? Left you alone, to live out your completely separate, miserable lives? Maybe I should’ve, but I made a decision wanting only the best for you. It would’ve been wrong
not
to try.

“Deep down, I think you know how much I love you and your sister. But I’m not perfect. No one is. And even people who love each other more than anything can make horrible, hurtful mistakes. I did it, and so did your sister.”

Emily didn’t say anything.

“I know how it feels to lose the love of my life, and to try to go on living after that,” her mother said in a halting voice. “But I knew your father would’ve wanted me to find happiness again, and I did that as best I could. Andy loved you so much, and he would’ve wanted the same for you. If you can’t forgive the past to find happiness for yourself, you should do it for him.”

Her mother quietly left the room. Emily stared at her tattered work jeans and steel-toed boots as tears left dark splotches on the sawdust-coated floor. It hurt to admit that her mother was right, and it was even more excruciating to think about what Andy would have wanted for her. Even after all the time that had passed, she still had his engagement ring and a folder of his silly stick drawings, and she could still feel his blue-green eyes gazing straight into her heart.

———

I
N HER HOUSE NEXT TO
S
T
. J
OHN
’
S
, C
LAUDIA LAY ON THE SOFA IN
front of the television. She’d spent most of the past few days there, moping, eating whatever she pleased, and ignoring the treadmill. She hadn’t seen or heard from Kyle since he’d stormed out of her house. Other than one of her teacher friends who called to tell her that Alex had been airlifted to Fletcher Allen in Burlington, she hadn’t spoken to anyone.

Watching one show after another for most of her waking hours had proved to be a decent diversion. Now, though, as she worked her way through a box of Junior Mints and flipped through the sorry late-night offerings, everything reminded her of Kyle. Old-time romantic movies, reruns of
Cops
, and even the ridiculous phone sex commercials … it was as if the television were taunting her.

Claudia turned off the television and closed her eyes. If she could only keep her mind blank and avoid thinking about him, maybe she would be able to fall asleep.

She must have drifted off, because a soft knock at the front door startled her awake. Or, had it been a dream?

Claudia sat up on the couch and listened. Another knock sounded at the door.

“Claudia?”

It was Kyle. She had no idea why he had come, but she had no desire to see him.

“Claudia, I know you’re in there. Look, we need to talk. I don’t want to leave things the way they are, and I need to explain some things to you. This is all a huge misunderstanding. Please, could you open the door?”

Claudia clenched her fists and jumped up. She hesitated before unlocking her front door, willing herself to keep calm, but once she was staring Kyle in the face, all the bitterness and hurt returned.

“There’s no misunderstanding. I know what I saw. You can leave now.”

Kyle gave an exasperated sigh. His expression was serious, but without the anger he’d shown a few days earlier. “You need to hear me out,” he said. “Once you listen to what I have to say, if you still want me to leave, I will. But not until then.”

It was so unlike Kyle to speak to her in such a firm tone. And she was a complete mess—no makeup, stringy hair in a lopsided ponytail, and a nasty case of indigestion. But, it didn’t matter anymore what he thought of her. He’d betrayed her trust in the worst possible way. As much as she loved him, there was no way she’d take him back now.

“Fine. The sooner we get this over with, the better.” He nodded once and pushed past her, heading toward the living room.

“Come sit with me,” he said as he sat down on the love seat and patted the empty cushion next to him. His face was calm and devoid of anger.

She sat down on the corner of the sofa facing him and waited.

“I’ve been in Emily DiSanti’s house three times,” he began. “Once on that day when she moved in and we helped her carry some stuff inside. Once this past Sunday, when I spoke to her in an official capacity about the vandalism of her sister’s yard. And once on the Monday after that, the day you saw me, when I went over to pick up this.” Kyle removed a small box wrapped with a ribbon from his jacket pocket and set it on the coffee table.

Wonderful
, Claudia thought.
He’s going to try the presents-and-groveling approach
.

“She told me that the heavy box that she and I carried into her house on the day she moved in was full of glass. To my knowledge,
you’ve
never seen the studio she has set up in there. If you had, you’d know that Emily is a stained glass artist, a very talented one. I asked her when she came to the police station, the day you
brought the surprise lunch for me, whether she could make something special, for you, for our six-month anniversary. I had something very specific in mind, and she agreed to try to create it for me.

“She finished it Sunday evening, and I had just gone to get it when you saw me coming out of her house. You should know that Emily wasn’t even home at the time—she was still at the hospital with Ivy. The package was waiting for me on her dining room table. She called my cell to tell me that she’d left the door unlocked for me.”

Claudia stared at Kyle. Nothing he’d said so far had been remotely what she’d expected.

“When Allison died,” Kyle continued, “I really didn’t think I’d ever fall in love again. At least, not in the same way I loved her. I always thought I’d raise Rowen myself and maybe date a few women, casually, once she was older and I felt like I was ready. I never expected to find anyone else I’d want to spend the rest of my life with. But then I met you, and all those thoughts of myself as a single father went out the window.” He paused and looked at the wrapped box. “Before I say anything else, I think you should open that.”

She looked down at the box on the table and then up into his brown eyes. The little gift was rectangular, a bit larger than a deck of cards, but it was far heavier than she’d expected.

“Go ahead,” he urged. “Open it.”

Wordlessly, Claudia untied the ribbon around the box and pushed back the lid. She stared for a moment, then reached inside and lifted out a tiny dark-blue stained-glass box framed in silver. The lid, though, was what truly took her breath away. It depicted a wintery scene, with a thin thread of silver wire separating white iridescent glass in the foreground from the deep blue glass of the background. Tiny, brilliant, heart-shaped crystals were embedded
in the blue glass.
It’s a snowstorm
, Claudia thought, and she had to blink back tears as she suddenly realized why Kyle had chosen this particular image.

“The blizzard we had on Valentine’s Day,” she started to say, but she stopped speaking as Kyle slowly moved forward, off the love seat and onto his knees in front of her.

“Look inside,” he said in a low voice, and Claudia knew now what she was about to see and what was happening. She was crying again, and her nose was running, and she couldn’t even imagine how red and swollen her face must look. She did her best not to think about that as she lifted the beautiful glass lid.

The box was lined with blue velvet in the same shade as the glass, with a sparkling diamond solitaire nestled in the very center of it.

Claudia gasped and tried to cover her mouth, but Kyle grabbed her free hand and trapped it within his own.

“Claudia, look at me,” he said. She sniffed loudly and squinted into his face, and it made her cry harder when she saw how moist his own eyes looked. “I love you. I love the person that you are on the inside—your sense of humor and kindness, your intelligence, your dedication to children, and your love for my daughter. I love that even though you’re so beautiful on the outside, you don’t act stuck up or feel the need to flaunt it. I love your determination and creativity and sense of adventure. I really love your wild imagination, even though it gets you into trouble sometimes.”