I slip into sleep, my body tired after the physical exertion of the bike ride and the hike. I dream of Cain and Trudi, the three of us walking along the dunes on a vacation in North Carolina. The wind buffets against us, pulling me away from them. Caintakes my hand. “I’ve got you,” he says. “Nothing’s going to happen. You’re safe. Even if we get separated.”
I wake with a great, loud sob, then sit straight up in bed. The room is dark except for a band of sunset effusing through the clerestory window and the soft, yellow glow from the star I stuck on the ceiling. When I saw a pack of the stick-on stars at Greene’s, on the bargain catch-all shelf, I snatched it up. I only stuck one on the ceiling, but Trudi’s bedroom ceiling in Montana had as many constellations as Cain could fit on it. Cain would tell her stories about the constellations and point at each grouping until she saw the patterns. He’d have her repeat the names until she could point them out to him. After their funeral, when I came home to an empty house, there were ten stars that had fallen from the ceiling, just lying there on the ground as if the sky itself was mourning Cain and Trudi’s death.
Sometimes that one star stuck on the ceiling plunges me into depression when I see it. But mostly now it reminds me of how lucky I was and how wonderful it felt to hold Trudi, rocking her in the nursery, her warm, soft, sweet-smelling body in my arms. A reminder of a time in my life that was right and good and perfect, even in its imperfections. And a reminder that if I had something so wonderful once, maybe, just maybe, I could create a life that has some wonderful in it again.
I open the drawer in the small cane bedside table beside the bed and pull out the photo of Cain I nabbed from the library. It’s a book jacket photo of Cain’s last published book. His most recent photo, taken just a few days before Cain and Trudi died while the two of them were flying to one of Cain’s book signings. It was the first time I didn’t go with them in the small plane piloted by one of Cain’s dear friends.
Do I feel ashamed about vandalizing a book from the library? Yes. But I would do it again, just so I had a photo of him.
Out of all my belongings, everything that I own, there is one photograph of Cain, Trudi, and me that I miss the most. At first, after I moved to Monterey, I had to keep it tucked away, so it wasn’t always out, chafing my heart. Back then, looking at that photograph was its own exquisite torture. It was snapped in an old-school photo booth, the kind where you jam in together and make funny faces and it spits out a black and white strip. We look achingly young, Cain and I, and Trudi had just lost a tooth. A canine, although it was too soon. She was only seven. Cain made a mistake and teased her, telling her she could no longer turn into a wolf. It was Trudi’s dream. A real, honest to goodness dream—that if she wished hard enough, she would become a wolf—and it broke her heart, so Cain lied again, telling her that he had looked into it further and that he was wrong and her real canines would come in later. I told Cain that soon enough, Trudi would figure out we were lying, and then she wouldn’t trust us. I was so, so wrong. We should have told more lies. Gobs of lies that would have made her short, sweet life even more joyous.
I kept the photo in a glass frame, and one time, when it was out and Trey visited, he knocked the frame over, and the glass broke, ripping the photo. Soon after that, Trey asked me to put away all the photos of Cain in the house. He explained that it would be cathartic. If he had his choice, he would have gotten rid of all Cain’s books. He told me once, “It’s amazing how much your husband made for producing droves of drivel.”
It was around that time that I told him I didn’t want to see him anymore.
And then, he pulled me back in somehow.
Monster pads into the room, cocks his head, and stares at me.
“Don’t give me that look. Stealing this photo is my only crime.” I tuck the photo back into the nightstand, slip out of bed, and pull on my robe.
“What did you make for dinner?” I bend down, rubbing his ears. “You haven’t just been lying around doing nothing, have you? Did you at least get the dishes washed or make those cookies I was planning on making?”
Monster follows me to the bathroom, where I splash my face with cold water and study my fading bruises in the mirror. Just a few more days and my face will be back to normal, except for the gash on my forehead, fortunately tucked close to my hairline.
The pregnancy test I bought at the pharmacy is on the bathroom counter, unopened and ignored ever since I returned to the cottage. I was hoping I wouldn’t need it. That by the time evening rolled around, my period would be a happy surprise, and my worries would have been for nothing. I’ve been telling myself for weeks that my body’s adjusting to all the changes—the stress of the accident and everything after.Of courseI’m going to moody. Or, I told myself, this is just one of the many fun changes perimenopause has brought with it— a sporadic cycle.
But there are other changes I am noticing now. Changes that I so acutely remember from when I was pregnant with Trudi—the constant cravings for sweets, the way my boobs ache, the nausea.
It’s time to find out.
7
FOX
“What’s this?”Ava says, getting in the truck and reaching down to pick something up at her feet.
I glance over. “It’s a flip phone.”
“Wow! Like from last century? Can I open it?”
“It’s not mine. It must have been Wren’s. Did you see her with a phone?”
“No, but it could’ve fallen when everything slid out of her bag. She must be wondering where it is. My mom freaks out every time she loses her phone.” She puts her fingers up in quotation marks when she says the word loses. “But it’s always under something—the paper she was reading or something.”
I laugh. “Be patient with her.”
“I’m trying.” She sighs dramatically eyeing me while I drive.
“You’re staring for some reason. I got something on my face besides strikingly good looks?”
“I was just wondering. How come you and my mom don’t date?”
“We’re friends.”
“Friends with benefits?”
I glance over at her, and she’s biting her thumbnail to a nub. “Do you know what that means?”
