The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender(62)

It might have been clear to anyone else that Jack was unhappy — that, perhaps, he had never even loved her at all — but Laura refused to see it. She didn’t see the way he avoided the bakery, didn’t see how his eyes squinted shut whenever they passed Pinnacle Lane. She didn’t notice that he rarely spoke to anyone during their infamous parties, that while she served guests from trays of cheese balls and deviled eggs, Jack spent most of the night standing in the corner, smiling blandly while the ice melted in his highball glass. She didn’t see it because when it came to love, she saw what she wanted to see. Laura had always been a good wife. The years she’d been married to Jack Griffith, she’d spent in a love-induced fog, believing that Jack was happy with the life they’d created together and, more significant, that he loved her.

On this summer solstice, Laura Lovelorn returned home late in the evening to find her husband sitting in the dark, an empty bottle clutched in his hands, his breath reeking of bourbon.

“I’m a fool, Laura,” he blubbered. “I lost the love of my life tonight.”

Laura leaned down to stroke her husband’s hair. “What are you talking about, sweetie? I’m right here.” She kissed his forehead.

Jack looked up at her, blinking. “I wasn’t talking about you.”

Laura smiled sweetly. “Who, then?”

“Viviane. Viviane Lavender.”

And as Jack continued to blubber on about a secret life, a life of love and betrayal, the fog finally lifted from Laura’s eyes.

“Oh,” Laura had whispered. “Oh my.”

When he was finished, she walked into the bedroom where she’d slept alone now for so many years. She pulled her suitcase from the closet and packed her belongings, carefully choosing the items she’d take with her and deciding which ones would have to stay until later. She dragged her suitcase out into the hall and told Jack she was leaving him. He only waved at her halfheartedly with his bottle, which told Laura how very wrong she’d been. Jack Griffith had never loved her, not as she thought he had and never as he loved Viviane Lavender.

Laura threw the heavy suitcase into the back of the car and backed out of the driveway. Turning out onto the street, she saw the flashing lights and swarms of people filling the end of Pinnacle Lane. She pulled the car to the side of the road and got out, shielding her eyes from the heavy current of rain pouring from the sky.

She saw Viviane Lavender’s son before she’d even had time to find out what had happened. Looking at him, she could only shake her head. Henry was a mirror image of Jack Griffith in his former years. Yet there was a look behind the boy’s eyes that was much different from anything Laura ever saw in Jack’s. It was as if Henry carried the world, misshapen and imperfect, in his lovely wide pupils.

How could she not have seen it?

Laura grabbed Wilhelmina’s hand in her own. “I just want to help,” she said. Wilhelmina peered over Laura’s shoulder at the crowd. “Help, huh? Well, we might need a bit of that.”

In the bakery Wilhelmina flipped the switch on the coffee pot. She pulled the porcelain cups and saucers from the cupboard, lining them up on the front counter, each cup balanced on its particular plate. The coffee would have to do until she got the oven started. Penelope sent Zeb off for supplies as Wilhelmina began feeding the brick oven with logs of dried eucalyptus, dismissing any ideas for pastries or other desserts. What everybody needed was bread. Hearty, sustainable bread warm from the oven, with thick crusts on the outside and soft on the inside, topped with butter, honey, or hazelnut spread.

When Zeb returned, Wilhelmina pointed him to the hand mill and set him to work grinding the fresh spelt, rye, and red wheat they would use to make pain de campagne. She gave Rowe and Cardigan the job of pounding the dough for the baguettes and showed Laura Lovelorn how to tend the fire.

It took all night for the bakery to fill with the aroma of freshly baked bread, but, no matter, no one had any intention of leaving. Besides, where would they go? Every once in a while, they would look up from their particular tasks, their faces smudged with flour, and catch in another’s eyes the look of despair. Then Trouver would shift in his sleep or Henry would start to hum, and the bakers would return to their work.

Outside, the crowd around Pinnacle Lane grew larger, the wet street bulging with neighbors who’d heard of the attack. For reasons they themselves couldn’t fully explain, each felt compelled to pay their respects. They battled the pelting rain in their Oldsmobile Sedans, their Studebaker Starliners, their Ford Model B pickups with the family dog sniffing the wet air in the bed of the truck. They gathered around Pinnacle Lane, spilling down the street and into the neighboring yards. They kept clear the place in the street stained by the black mark that was once Nathaniel Sorrows. They came with their children, their wives and husbands, their parents. They came dressed as if coming to church or to a funeral, or as if coming straight from bed, which most of them did. They came with tents and umbrellas, hats and gloves; they came with nothing at all, not even a jacket to protect them from the rain. By dawn a donation box had been set on the counter at the bakery, and people solemnly offered their spare change in exchange for a slice of bread, a warm croissant. The rain continued to fall. And still, the people kept coming.

Some brought with them their Bibles — the passages they thought most poignant underlined in red. Some sat in silent circles and walked their fingers around strands of beads in unplanned unison. Others brought along mats to kneel on as soothing chants rose from their throats. As water poured over their upturned faces, their prayers were sent to the sky. They weren’t prayers for forgiveness or salvation. They weren’t sent in gratitude for the angel walking among the wretched human race. They weren’t for the soul of a deformed and cursed half-human creature who lived at the end of Pinnacle Lane. They were, quite simply, prayers said for a girl.