Come Home: a novel Part 2

"When are you guys getting married?"

"This summer, in July." Jill felt suddenly uncomfortable, telling her the details, and Abby smiled, shakily.

"So Steven's going to be your new stepson? Does that make this the steproom?"

Jill smiled, then the bedroom brightened from a flash of lightning, with a loud thunderclap.

Abby made a nervous face. "Do you think I could sleep in Megan's room tonight? Since she's not here?"

"Sure." Jill didn't think Megan would mind, in the circ.u.mstances. "Follow me."

"Thanks." Abby walked down the hall with Jill, and Beef stayed between them, panting and trembling, because of the storm. "He still hates thunder, I see."

"You have such a good memory, honey." Jill stopped at Megan's door and flicked on the light. "Here we are."

"Sweet room." Abby stood in the threshold, taking in the large room, with its white canopied bed and a pink-patterned comforter. The far wall had a panel of windows with a padded windowseat, next to full bookshelves and a matching oak desk. A bulletin board hung above the desk filled with swimming awards, team photos, and stills from the school play, as well as glossy pictures of Michael Phelps, the Phillies, and the Twilight crew, which Megan had cut out of magazines.

"Bathroom's to the right." Jill gestured, but Abby was already walking there with Beef.

"She was always so neat."

"She still is." Jill went to the threshold of the bathroom, and Beef settled down on the bathmat. She pointed at the shower stall, where overpriced shampoos and conditioners were lined up. "Put the caps back on, you."

"You remember the orange juice?" Abby smiled, sheepishly.

"How could I forget? It was funny." Jill smiled back. She'd taken a jug of fresh-squeezed out of the refrigerator and shaken it, but Abby hadn't put the cap back on and the walls were orange for a week. "You take a nice, warm shower, and I'll bring you some clean towels, okay?"

"Okay, thanks." Abby leaned over and kissed her suddenly on the cheek, and Jill felt a rush of emotion. It felt right to be taking care of Abby again, and at the same time, it felt strange to be taking care of Abby again. She left the bathroom, went to the linen closet, got the towels, then stopped to see Sam.

"Still up?" Jill asked, entering his home office, which was small, lined with bookshelves filled with medical textbooks and teaching awards. Sam taught at Penn's medical school and was also a researcher in diabetes.

"Just waiting on you." Sam looked up at Jill, with a worried smile. He was sitting at his old wooden desk against the window, raking his floppy hair with his fingers as he read a book online. "How's the kid?"

"Okay." Jill looked at him anew, after what Abby had said. His tortoisesh.e.l.l gla.s.ses reflected two white pages with tiny footnotes, and behind them were sharp blue eyes, full of intelligence and humor. Sam was only eight years her senior, and his deep crow's feet and laugh lines only made him more handsome to her, in a lived-in sort of way. The gray in his hair reminded her of the weathered cedar of a comfy rocker, and Jill felt lucky to have him. "Thanks for being so nice to her."

"No need for thanks."

"She's upset tonight, obviously. She's really a sweet girl."

"I'm sure." Sam slid off his gla.s.ses and set them on his desk, which was clean except for his laptop and iPhone. He touched her arm. "I'm sorry about your ex's death. How are you feeling, really?"

"Honestly, it's upsetting, mainly because of the girls." Jill set down the towels and looked behind her, to make sure Abby wasn't within earshot. "Megan will take it hard, because she was so conflicted. She loved him, but after the divorce, he didn't answer any of her calls or texts. That killed her, and now she'll never get the chance to ask him why, or understand."

"I'll be there for her. We'll get through it." Sam buckled his lower lip, pained. "I was supposed to meet Lee tomorrow, he's coming in from Cleveland. But I can see him after the memorial service, if you want to go."

Jill felt touched. "But Lee's flying in just to meet with you, isn't he?"

"Yes, but I can delay meeting him. It's a death in the family, more or less."

"No, don't. Thanks for the offer, but you don't have to come. If Megan wants to go, I'll take her."

Sam frowned. "You sure?"

"Totally."

"Okay, thanks. But please, promise me you won't get sucked into this murder business. It's absurd. We both know the Internet is full of idiocy about which drugs can kill you."

"I won't get involved. The cops are experts, I'm not." Jill picked up the towels and gave him a kiss. "Gotta go back now."

"Come to bed, soon. It's late."

"I know." Jill smiled, straightening up, then left the office and went back to Megan's bedroom. The bathroom door was closed, and she knocked. "I have fresh towels, honey."

"Don't need them." Abby opened the door. Steam clouded the air, and she was wearing one of Megan's nightgowns, a red-striped Lanz, of worn flannel. "Is it okay I'm wearing this nightgown? Remember, it used to be mine?"

"How could I forget? It was so nice of you."

"It's even better than it used to be, it's so soft. Megan kept it, huh?"

"She wears it all the time." Jill smiled, remembering when Abby had given Megan the nightgown. Megan had coveted it for so long, and they'd tried to find one like it in Nordstrom's, but they couldn't. So Abby had folded her own, put it in a box, and gift-wrapped it for Christmas, and Megan had been delighted.

"G.o.d, I'm so tired." Abby padded past her and climbed into Megan's bed, and Beef bounded up behind her. The dog settled down, stretching out his tufted front paws while Abby ducked beneath the comforter. "It's so cozy here."

"Good." Jill went over to the bed and tucked Abby in, on mom autopilot. "I remember when you and Megan would get into the same bed, even though you barely fit."

"I know." Abby smiled, her breath minty from the toothpaste. "It was fun, and we would whisper so you and Dad couldn't hear. Beef used to get in bed with us, too, especially when it rained." She stroked the wavy fur on the dog's back. "I bet Megan misses those days."

"I'm sure she does." Jill sat down and moved Abby's wet hair away from her forehead, noticing a stray streak of electric blue. "You want a towel for your head?"

"No, thanks." Abby paused. "Can I ask, what happened with you and Dad? I know what Dad said, but I want your side of the story. Why did you guys get divorced?"

"Let's not talk about that tonight, honey." Jill felt her chest tighten. If she told Abby the truth, it would make William look terrible, and she knew from her practice that kids who felt terrible about their parents somehow ended up feeling terrible about themselves. "Maybe someday, but not tonight." Jill brushed Abby's hair back again. "Blue, huh?"

"Yeah." Abby smiled softly. "Do you like it?"

"Yes, but the tattoo is another story." Jill mock-frowned. "No more tats, please. I don't have my mom powers anymore, so it's just a request."

"You'll always have your mom powers, to me." Abby raised her arms for a hug, and Jill embraced her.

"I'm sorry about your Dad. You shouldn't have to go through this."

"It's just that he looked so horrible, lying there. I found him."

"Oh no." Jill hadn't realized.

"I came home, and the house was so quiet and the cat was meowing, which she never does. I went upstairs and he was lying in bed, with the TV on. His face was all, like, slack."

Jill imagined how traumatic that would be, at Abby's age. Jill had dissected cadavers in medical school and she never got used to it. It took her months to shake the images, and some never left her.

"His mouth was open, but just hanging there." Abby emitted a new sob, her body hiccupping. "His eyes were open ... stiff, like they were cold ... but they weren't looking anywhere."

Jill held her close. She knew the unfixed gaze of the dead, but it was one thing when it was clinical, and another when it was eyes you had loved, in life. She had been there, too. One minute she'd been in anatomy cla.s.s, locating the trigeminal nerve in the cheek, and the next minute, she'd come home to find another body, dead. This one, of someone she had loved, with a cheek she had kissed.

"I was ... calling him ... I put myself right up to his face ... trying to get him to see me ... but he couldn't see anything."

Jill was the one who'd found Gray, her first husband, lying dead on the kitchen floor. She'd tried CPR and heart ma.s.sage, but he was gone, from a brain aneurysm. A week later, she would learn that she was pregnant with their child, Megan.

"I grabbed him and held him ... and his mouth was, like, hanging open ... and his head hung back like his neck was rubber ... like he didn't even have a ... neck bone."

Jill felt tears come to her eyes, her thoughts immersed in the past, reliving every emotion of finding Gray, the agony and the shock and the surreality. She felt terrible, mourning her first husband while Abby was mourning her second, but she couldn't help herself.

"Please, Jill ... help me figure out who killed him ... I can't do it alone."

"Let's not talk about it now, honey."

"Please ... just think about it? Please?"

"I'll think about it, but just breathe for now, just breathe." Jill held Abby until she stopped crying and finally dozed off. Then Jill eased out of bed, covered Abby with the comforter, and turned out the light.

Plunging herself into darkness.

Chapter Four.

Jill answered email from her patients, working in bed, her laptop warm on a pillow she'd set on her lap, an improvised desk. Sam slept with his back to her, Beef slumbering near his feet, and the room was quiet except for the snoring of man and beast. She felt tired but she couldn't sleep until she'd answered the questions that came in before the weekend: how many drops in a teaspoon, do I give it again if he throws it up, it's finally yellow and that's good, right?

She answered them all, but her thoughts kept straying to Abby, William, Megan, and Victoria. She remembered back to the beginning, the very first day when they all began, a sunny flash of beach and sand and boogie boards at the Jersey sh.o.r.e. She had been seeing William for a while, having met him when she worked at her old pediatric group. All but one of them were women, and William was the handsome pharmaceutical sales rep who called on them every Friday, the one they all buzzed and joked about, and some of them, like Jill, nursed secret crushes, none of them immune despite their advanced degrees, so that even their happily married office manager put up a sign in the ladies' room that read, TGIW, THANK G.o.d IT'S WILLIAM. He charmed them all with his dark good looks, breezy confidence, and easy smile, but more than that, he was a widower, alone with two little girls.

The hearts of every woman in the office went out to him, they all wanted to hold him, comfort him, and ease his pain, and what they didn't know about him, they filled in with their imagination, projecting onto him all kinds of qualities he'd never showed, a.s.signing to him all of their own values and emotions, fleshing out their fantasy. He began to pay special attention to Jill, the only single doc and a widow to boot, and he struck up conversations about their mutual daughters, listening thoughtfully to her answers until his sales calls became a sort of date, with Jill putting on a little extra eye-makeup, making up a story of her own about a lonely widow and a lonely widower meeting for a last chance at love, like an announcement in the wedding section of the Sunday New York Times, so that by the time she and William had the girls meet each other for a day at the beach, she was stone in love.

With a fantasy.

William played his character to the hilt, and Jill marveled at how rough-and-tumble he was with Abby and Victoria, letting them jump off his broad shoulders into the crashing surf, diving under the biggest waves with them, even dunking them underwater, so different from the way Jill played with Megan, which was protective and careful, mindful always of the undertow. Megan watched William and the girls for a long time, hanging back, taking in the scene of the laughing daughters and the hunky, handsome daddy, so that by the time William turned around to grin at the fatherless girl, jerking his head back to flick his wet hair from his forehead, twisting his strong body from his tapered waist, reaching out to her a tanned and muscular arm ending in a large hand with its fingers extended, offering her a chance to be with him, the shy little girl would have begged to go.

Come on, come in, I won't bite!

Jill had watched delighted, seeing her daughter thrilled in the company of this unusual and exotic creature known as a man, and the five of them bobbed into the water together, Megan migrating to William, who played the father she had never known, and for her part, Jill took naturally to being a mom to the motherless Abby, who clung to her like a girl barnacle. Victoria took her time coming to Jill, always the closer daughter to her father, not wanting a rival for his attention, but she had no such problem that day with Megan, who carried with her the promise of a sibling without the rivalry.

Looking back now, Jill could visualize all of them in the water, seeing their heads from the back so that they were faceless, as if she were watching her younger self from the sh.o.r.e, which was exactly the vantage point her mother Conchetta had had that day. Her mother was her best friend, and the three of them-Jill, her mother, and Megan-had been on vacation when William and the girls had joined them. Her mother had always come to the beach after the hottest part of the day, sitting in her plastic lattice chair, and she'd read a book under the yellow-striped umbrella.

But this time, when Jill went back to check on her mother, her book remained unopened in her lap. Her mother had frowned up at her, her gnarled hand shading her hooded eyes, an uncharacteristic scowl replacing her usually welcoming smile, her lined features collapsing into deep, unhappy fissures, as if her very face had folded up as tight as her beach chair.

I don't like him, her mother had said.

Jill had been astonished. It didn't occur to her that her mother still hadn't warmed up to William. Everybody liked William, and her mother liked everybody, so it should've been a natural. Jill had asked her why.

I don't trust him. Don't trust him. He's no good for you. He'll do you wrong.

And Jill knew now, her mother had been right. Her mother had looked at the scene and had seen what was really happening, not the projections and the roles and the acting that had fooled Jill. Jill would turn out to be William's sucker, not his wife, and the only saving grace was that when it all came to light, her mother had already pa.s.sed away. Because it would have broken her heart.

Jill blinked away tears that she hadn't realized were there, looking down at the laptop, and she found herself opening her My Pictures file and navigating to the older files. She clicked, and a photo of Abby popped onto the screen, one Jill had taken on the front steps of another house, in another town, in another time. Abby had just gotten her braces adjusted, and other kids might have whined, but Abby made the best of it, sporting red rubber bands in honor of the Phillies. She was thirteen, the same age Megan was now, still what Jill's mother used to call a tomboy. Her hair was in a messy braid, and she had on her swim-club jersey, its white letters forming a half-circle, Strafford Strokers.

Jill had encouraged her to join the school team and had loved teaching her to swim, and Abby had run to her with open arms, willing to learn anything, needing a mother like a wildflower needs sunshine. Victoria had come around only slowly, and Jill had built a relationship with her during silent car trips to the mall and awkward greetings after school plays, the cameo appearances of the suburban stepmother. Jill had saved every greeting card the girls ever gave her, and the dearest to her was a Mother's Day card from the both of them, given the first Mother's Day after she and William were married. Victoria had handed the card to her, and it was covered with pink lace, so Jill knew Victoria had picked it out. Jill had opened it up, and she'd never forget the message, written in Victoria's perfect penmanship: It's official. You're our Mom now.

Jill felt a pang at the memory, bittersweet because it had been so hard-won, and now was lost just the same, and the wound still felt acute, defying the very powers of nature, to heal. Jill knew there was no stronger bond than between mother and child, and she didn't feel like an ex-mother, nor were the girls her ex-children. She had lived long enough to learn that families didn't dissolve or reconfigure neatly, but left debris lying everywhere, and it was human debris. And sometimes, like tonight, she felt as if she were tripping over the bodies.

She pressed a key and advanced to the next photo, taken after Megan had mugged her way into the picture. She was eight years old at the time, and she and Abby had become best buddies. They could have pa.s.sed for big-and-little sisters because Megan had big brown eyes and dark blonde hair, too, which she wore in a copycat braid.

Jill thought ahead, to having to tell Megan about William's death. Megan was a year old when she met William, and he'd been in her life until the divorce, when she was ten. He hadn't been especially doting or attentive, never fulfilling the promise of that day on the beach, but he'd been there, more father figure than father, and sometimes for kids, that was enough. Even now, Jill could remember trips they took as a family, one to Linvilla Orchard to pick pumpkins, or another to Great Adventure, screaming down the roller coaster. It looked like family fun on the surface, but you didn't need a microscope to see what was really going on. Jill would be having fun with the girls, and William would be off to the side, on the phone, or complaining about the long lines or the cold French fries, or withdrawn, lost in his own thoughts.

Jill hit Start Slideshow and watched Megan, Abby, Victoria, and William flash by in a continuous stream of swim meets, DQ Flurries, and guinea pigs. The divorce ended the pictures of the five of them, and the following photos were of her and Megan, like leftovers, only of family. It hadn't been an easy transition, then Jill met Sam, who turned out to be real in all the ways that William was false, and in time, the three of them had moved forward as a new family, with a second stepfather stepping into the shoes of the first stepfather, who'd stepped into the shoes of the father who had died.

Jill froze the slideshow on a photo of Sam, Megan, and Steven, who looked like a younger version of his father. Tall, lean, and brainy. Steven wouldn't replace Abby and Victoria, because n.o.body was ever replaced in life, no hole completely filled or loss totally healed. You didn't need a medical degree to know that the human body really wasn't stronger in the broken places. Like any bone, the cracks would always show if you looked hard enough.

"Babe?" said a voice, and Jill looked over, startled. Sam had turned over and was propped up, squinting against the lamp light. His brow furrowed, and his fine nose had two permanent pink indentations from his gla.s.ses. "You all right?"

"Sure, yes." Jill hit a key to stop the slideshow.

"What are you up to?" Sam lay back down, his eyes a calm blue now, like the sea without waves, and he regarded her with an unhurried air that told her he really wanted to know. "You upset about your ex? Or the kid?"

"Both, but mostly, I was thinking about my life."

"What about it?"

"Just that there's so much of it." Jill felt oddly embarra.s.sed. "I have a lot of past."

Sam chuckled. "Not as much as I do."

"But my past is so much messier than yours. Two marriages, and two ex-stepdaughters. It's a mess, isn't it? Have I made a hash of things?"

"No, it's life, that's all." Sam smiled. "Is that what you're fretting about? I was worried that you'd been looking up Temezepam in the PDR online."

Jill hadn't been, but she'd thought about it. "I feel for her."

"I know you do."

"And it does seem strange, about the drugs. Not like William."

"You don't know what he's been up to the past few years."

"True."

"So?" Sam lifted an eyebrow. "If they found drugs on his tox screen, he took them."