Where Rivers Part (9 page)

Juliet's throat grew thick. “I can't. Besides, he seems to be doing okay. Won't be any time and he'll land in some pretty girl's lap,” she argued. She pointed her finger at her mother's friend. “You wait and see.”

Sandy stood her ground. “Do it for her.”

Juliet rubbed her forehead. The pounding had returned. She looked up. “That's not fair.”

“I agree. If life were fair, my best friend would be here. We'd be laughing and placing bets on whether or not Judith Montgomery would show up with her famous green Jell-O mold, gelled with that awful cottage cheese and pineapple.” Sandy's voice choked. She swallowed, her lips quivering. “Just—do it for her.”

Stubbornness had never been her crowning glory. Seeing Sandy's pain chipped at the cold chunk in Juliet's chest where her heart should've been for the past several years. There was no way she could make Sandy understand.

Juliet conceded. “Okay. Okay. I'll stay. At least tonight.” She folded her mom's friend into her arms. The warmth of Sandy's cheek against her own reminded Juliet she'd never again feel her mother's embrace. “But no promises after that.”

By the time her father bid farewell to the last guest at the door, Juliet had escaped to the kitchen and busied herself cleaning up the dishes. She grabbed a long-handled plastic tool filled with dish soap and a sponge attached at the end—her mother would know the name, but Juliet had no idea what the cleaning gadget was
called—and jabbed at a lasagna-crusted pan, trying to remove the hardened cheese clinging to the sides. Only partially winning the battle, she dipped the oblong glass casserole dish into warm sudsy water before placing it in her mom's new Kenmore dishwasher. Her mother had bragged she'd haggled with the salesman over extended warranties, never realizing how little it would matter.

“Hey there.”

Juliet looked up as her father joined her in the kitchen.

He kneaded the back of his neck. “You don't have to clean up, JuJu.”

Juliet's hands dove back into the hot water. “Perhaps you've forgotten, the cleaning lady doesn't come until Friday.” Immediately, she was sorry for her sarcasm. She regrouped and forced a weak smile. “Besides, I don't mind.”

Her father nodded. He moved to the counter and scraped off the turkey platter into the garbage can. “The service. It was nice, don't you think.”

“Yeah. Everything was really nice.” She slid a couple of plates into the waiting racks. “Mom would've approved.”

“So many people turned out.” Her dad's voice sounded tired. Exhausted, really.

Juliet turned and pointed him to the door. “You're like the walking dead. Why don't you go in and watch the news?” Immediately, she cringed at her choice of words. “I mean, you must be pooped. Go sit down in front of the television and I'll finish up in here.”

Her father looked dazed. Like a little boy, he complied with her order. “Okay.” He moved for the doorway to the living room, then paused and turned. “The hydrangeas we had flown in from Oregon were beautiful on top of her casket. She would have been pleased.” He swallowed hard as if something climbed up his throat. “Those were her favorites, you know. The blue ones.”

Not knowing how to respond to the raw pain in her father's voice, Juliet opened the cupboard door to the left of the sink. “We
need a bowl to store the olives—” She stopped talking and pulled a Barbie cereal bowl from the shelf. “She kept this?”

Her dad nodded. “There was about a year there where you wouldn't eat out of anything else.” A slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “You were a very stubborn little girl. You championed the temper tantrum.” His eyes brightened. “We didn't know what to do but give in.”

For several seconds, they stood in the kitchen—looking at each other as if they didn't know what to say next.

Finally, her father shifted his attention to the refrigerator. His fingers lifted a tiny Alamo-shaped magnet from a small square piece of paper. He pulled his reading glasses from his head and positioned them, then leaned forward to read.

His breath audibly caught, immediately followed by a high-pitched groan. A noise sounding like a tiny animal caught in barbed wire.

Juliet didn't try to hide her alarm. “Dad—what is it?”

The slip of paper floated to the floor. “She—she had an appointment this afternoon,” he muttered in a choked voice. “With a cardiologist.” He stumbled against the refrigerator, his eyes wrecked with tears.

Juliet rushed and caught his shoulders as he folded. She shifted his weight against her own, fighting to hold him up. “Oh, Daddy—”

They went to the floor together. There was no stopping her own tears then.

Time stilled while Juliet held her sobbing father.

 11 

T
he next two days passed uneventfully, though Juliet felt jumpy and unable to concentrate. She busied herself over the weekend with morning runs, followed with thank-you cards and organizing the mountain of details her father would need to take care of after her mother's death.

First, he'd need to meet with the attorney to start the probate process. Social Security forms would have to be completed and mailed in, health insurance and credit cards canceled, automatic payments for the gym membership stopped, and bank accounts changed over. He should schedule a meeting with the accountant to reevaluate the retirement plan and tax strategies, and collect on her mother's life insurance policies.

Juliet hoped creating the list might satisfy the guilty ache in her gut.

It didn't.

So she turned to cleaning her condo. Despite knowing the maid service would show up next Wednesday, she poured a generous amount of bleach into a bucket of soapy water and wiped down the shelves in her refrigerator. Using an old toothbrush, she scoured the baseboards. She shined the bathroom mirrors and scrubbed her toilets.

The smell of Comet and Windex reminded Juliet of her mother
in rubber gloves, working out her frustrations on the bathroom sinks. Back then, it seemed her mother cleaned a lot of sinks.

With her toilets and showers sparkling, Juliet resorted to watching television. She turned the set on and clicked past the religious channels, even the one with Pastor Roper. She couldn't bear to hear any more about how God would get you through hard times. Religious platitudes could never minimize the vacancy she felt inside.

She had her mother's Bible—one of many keepsakes she'd secreted away as mementos. Juliet tucked the worn leather-bound book away in a drawer, not ready to scrutinize the underlined passages and read her mother's handwritten notes in the margins. Someday maybe, when her heart didn't feel so splintered.

Juliet nestled back against the sofa and scrolled past any program too serious. She lost herself in a couple of commercials, one for a new migraine pharmaceutical and another promoting flood insurance, then caught the last few minutes of an old
Gilligan's Island
rerun. Something felt appealing about the group of castaways who ran into a storm and got lost.

When the episode wrapped up, she moved on to a shopping channel, drawn to a tube of highlighter guaranteed to erase dark under-eye circles and make a person look less tired.

On impulse, she ordered.

Juliet looked up at the ceiling. “Okay, Mom. No laughing. It's been a really hard week.”

Suddenly, tears formed. How could she spend a lifetime without her mother?

Using the back of her hand, she swiped her cheeks and clicked the remote again, this time stopping on a news channel.

“The nation's top disease detectives have gathered in central Texas tonight in search of the cause of a mysterious and deadly outbreak of E. coli. It is an especially virulent strain, with a number of victims already affected.

“There is concern that this outbreak will spread, extending past
the nearly dozen cases known so far. Sadly, one child has died, and scientists are continuing their search for a possible link.”

Juliet leaned forward and turned up the volume.

“Authorities acknowledge they are in a race against the clock to isolate the source and remove it from the market. Samples taken from those in the hospital reveal identical molecular and pathological structure, pointing to a centralized source. All known cases so far have been limited to San Antonio, giving officials reason to believe there is a local origin.

“Until the CDC officials determine the cause, the public is urged to take proper precautions. Thoroughly cook meat products, particularly ground beef and chicken. Clean fresh produce, and wash cooking utensils and hands after handling food items.”

Juliet chewed at the inside of her cheek. With everything that had transpired in the last days, she'd nearly pushed the news item from her thoughts.

The heated exchange between Juliet and her father replayed in her mind—and how her explosive reaction to his denunciation of corporate food safety had ignited a weapon of mass destruction. Her mother the target.

Despite her good intentions, anger flared yet again.

This time, Juliet doused her emotions with a dose of reason. A toddler was dead. Somewhere in San Antonio, a mother grieved the loss. Another person with a gaping hole in her heart. A condition Juliet found far too familiar.

Her hand reached for her phone. She scrolled through her contact list and dialed.

“Hey, you've reached Greer Latham. I'm unable to take your call. Please leave a message.”

Juliet scowled and waited for the beep. “It's Juliet. I know I'm scheduled to take another week, but I'm coming in tomorrow morning. I don't know if you've been listening to the news, but I think it's important I get back.”

She clicked off and put the phone on the counter. That was the second time they'd failed to connect this weekend.

When she stepped from the shower a half hour later, she heard her phone ringing in the other room. Juliet pulled on her robe and dashed down the hall, scrambling to pick up, but too late. She'd missed Greer's call. Almost immediately, an alert sounded indicating he'd left a message.

“Hey, babe. Sorry I keep missing you. And I wish I'd made the funeral on Friday. Things at work have been so crazy that I just couldn't get away. But hey, I heard your message and you don't have to rush back. Malcolm Stanford has the lab covered. Take the time you need. Call some girlfriends. Go shopping. You deserve it after . . . well, after everything. Besides, I'll call you if anything comes up. You know that.”

The phone beeped, cutting him off.

Several seconds passed before Juliet pulled the phone from her ear and slowly returned it to the counter. She clutched her robe against her chilled skin and let her hand trail across the granite, giving his message time to incubate.

As a food safety professional, she'd learned to distill facts and come to a calculated and reasonable conclusion. But it didn't take a highly trained microbiologist to connect these dots.

In the middle of an outbreak in their city, Greer Latham wanted her to go shopping.

In that moment, she knew returning to work tomorrow was the right decision.

Juliet pulled her keys from her bag and unlocked her parents' front door. She gave a quick knock, then pushed the door open. “Dad?” she hollered.

“In here, JuJu.” His voice came from the kitchen, where she found him wearing one of her mother's aprons. He stood in front of the stove with a pair of tongs in his hand.

Juliet placed her purse on the table, next to a bowl of half-eaten Cheerios.

“You're a little early,” he said, and turned down the flame.

“Sorry, traffic was light on a Sunday night.”

“Hope you're hungry.” He grabbed the shaker and sprinkled salt across the food in the sizzling pan.

Stopping short of kissing him on his cheek, she tentatively placed her hand on his back and peeked over her dad's shoulder at the pan filled with chicken, fried crispy golden. “What's this? You don't cook.”

He gave a halfhearted shrug. “I—I guess I just wanted some of her smell around.”

She frowned, confused. “You think Mom smelled like fried chicken?”

“Ah, you know what I mean.”

Juliet patted him, noticing how gray his hair had become at the temples. “Well, what can I do to help?”

He reached for the pepper. “You don't cook either.”

She stepped back and rubbed her hands together. “Can't be that hard, can it?” She handed him the platter from the counter and watched as he pulled the chicken from the pan with the tongs. “What do you want me to do?”

“You can make the gravy,” he said. “I'm no good at it.”

Turned out neither was she. But neither of them mentioned the fact as they sat at the table, silently eating.

Juliet could tell her dad was struggling to cope. His face was stubbled with growth, and he hadn't bothered to put on his standard button-down, wearing only a white undershirt. She doubted he'd even taken a shower since Friday, from the looks of his hair.

After being so angry with him for all those years, Juliet barely knew how to comfort him. Only that she wanted to somehow.

“So, how do you like the gravy, Dad?”

He glanced up. “The gravy? It's good—really good.”

“Liar,” she teased. “It's as lumpy as an armadillo's back. But thanks for the compliment.”

“Tastes just like your mother's.” To prove his point, he scooped a large bite of potatoes and gravy from his plate and into his mouth.

“Like you often said, nobody could cook like Mom.” Juliet reached for her glass of tea. “Least of all me.”

He placed his fork down along his plate and looked across the table. “She lives on in you, you know.” His eyes filled with emotion. “You have her pretty eyes, and your hands are identical. You're smart as a whip. Just like Carol.”

Juliet savored the rare compliments. She found herself wondering what it would be like to reach across the table for his hand. No person on earth shared her pain and understood the depth of this loss except him. Likely he'd suffered the same guilt too—the remorse she battled in her mind over the role they'd both played in the fact her mother was no longer here.

Despite medical evidence that might prove otherwise, Juliet knew their verbal altercation that night had fatally wounded the person they both loved the most.

And so did he.

Later, as they sat on the couch going through some old family photos, Juliet draped her mother's afghan over her legs and ventured a compliment of her own. “You—uh, I can see why she was drawn to you . . . Well, what I mean is, you were a looker back then.”

Her comment hit its mark, and her father grinned. “Oh, I don't know about that.”

Their relationship sat atop a fault line. One wrong move by either of them and the foundation of this fragile relationship might crumble. Despite the risk, Juliet wanted to move ahead.

For her mother.

She pulled a snapshot from the box. “Remember this?”

Her dad took the photo of her and her mother running hand in hand toward a hillside covered in bluebonnets. “Yeah, I do,”
he said softly. “We took an extended weekend and headed to the Hill Country for a little getaway. Your mother had that station wagon crammed to the hilt. I suggested she might save some room for you.”

Juliet nodded. “And she gave me a history lesson during the drive.”

He rubbed his chin, smiling. “Ah yes. You leaned forward from the backseat and asked why there was a sign pointing to Lyndon Johnson's ranch.”

Juliet laughed. “Which prompted an introduction to his presidency and the Kennedy shooting.”

“And the whole conspiracy theory, from her very liberal Oregon point of view,” he inserted. “I glanced in the rearview mirror and you rolled your eyes, bored to death.” He fingered the photo. “So I diverted her attention by pointing out the bluebonnets, and she squealed and told me to pull over. You quickly took advantage of the opportunity and begged to get out for a closer look.” Her father placed the photo back in the box. “One of the rare times you and I joined forces and pulled one over on your mom.”