Night Road(128)

“Okay, Mommy.”

Mommy pulled Grace into a fierce hug and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be here to pick you up when school’s over.”

“Promise?”

“I promise,” her mommy said, and then she backed away.

Grace looked nervously into the classroom, where kids were busy doing all kinds of things. She saw Samantha standing by the cubbies, all by herself. “Ariel? Are you here? I need you.”

Go on.

Grace looked down at her wrist; she saw a flash of yellow and heard a sound that was like laughing, or maybe like the waves in front of Nana’s house. “I’m scared,” she whispered. “What should I say?”

You know what to say. You don’t need me anymore, Gracerina.

“I do! Don’t go.” Grace started to panic. Her cheeks got hot. She was afraid she was gonna cry.

Go on, Gracerina. You have your mommy now. Trust her.

Grace looked at her mom one last time and then walked into the classroom.

Her heart was beating like crazy. Taking a deep breath, she walked over to Samantha and just stood there beside her. “My mommy came home last night,” she said finally.

Samantha turned to her. “The spy?”

“She’s not really a spy.”

“What is she?”

Grace shrugged.

“Oh.”

“You wanna sit by me today?” Grace said, biting her lip.

“Are you gonna punch me?”

“No.”

“Do you like hopscotch?” Samantha finally said. “Cuz I do.”

“Yeah,” Grace said, smiling. It was a lie. Really, she didn’t know how to play hopscotch, but she wanted to learn. And anyway she didn’t think it was a bad lie. “I love hopscotch.”

*

The day woke Jude gently. She lay in bed with Miles, feeling his body along hers, hearing the catch in his breathing that meant he would soon start snoring.

She kissed his stubbly cheek and peeled back the covers to get out of bed. Through her bedroom windows, she saw a brilliant salmon-pink sky glowing above the steel blue Sound, and, for the first time in years, she went in search of a camera.

Standing outside in her terrycloth robe and bare feet, she took several pictures of the black cedar tree silhouetted against the pink sky. It looked new to her all of a sudden. Dew sparkled on the dense green lawn and on the stone patio. She thought about the parties they used to have in this backyard, the laughter that used to fill it, and she hungered for a time like that again. She’d bought that huge outdoor table for her future, assuming that she would have grandkids clustered around it one day. It hadn’t been used in years.

She walked purposefully outside and pulled the plastic covering off the table, exposing it to the sunlight again.

Then the garden caught her eye.

In bare feet, she walked across the dewy grass and stared down at her runaway garden. Everything was a mess; the rows she’d once clipped so carefully were impossible to distinguish in the riot of color. There were flowers everywhere—blooming in spite of her absence, their colorful blossoms tangling up with one another.

Before, she would have seen disorder here, plants that grew where they weren’t supposed to and bloomed with abandon. She would have gone in search of her tools—clippers and trowels and stakes—and set about the task of re-creation.

Now, though, on this bright morning, she saw what she hadn’t seen before. There was a beauty in chaos, a wildness that hinted at things gone wrong and mistakes overcome. She stood there a long time, looking down at her ruined and yet still beautiful garden. Finally, she knelt in the grass and began pulling up weeds. When she’d cleared a space, she got shakily to her feet. It was a start.

She went to her glass-sided greenhouse, where once she’d poured her heart and soul into trays filled with black soil. Things were forgotten in here now, draped in cobwebs. A watering system had kept everything alive; plants, like people, learned to grow in rocky terrain. Up on a high shelf in the back, she found what she was looking for: a small white packet of wildflower seeds. She’d bought them years ago, from a friend of Mia and Zach’s who’d been selling them outside of Safeway. For a trip somewhere, she thought. She’d never intended to plant them, not wildflowers that could sprout anywhere.

Taking the packet of seeds from the shelf, she walked out and stood in the center of her overgrown garden.

She poured the mismatched seeds into her palm and stared down at them, reminded of how small things were in the beginning. With a smile, she threw the seeds across the garden. Someday, she would be surprised by what would grow from these seeds. And soon, maybe tomorrow, she would plant a white rose right there, where Mia had lost her first tooth …

Returning to the house, she made a pot of coffee. The smoky, roasted scent of it filled the house, drew Miles stumbling into the kitchen with his hand outstretched, mumbling, “Coffee.”

She handed him a cup, black. “Here you go.”

“You’re an angel.”

“Speaking of that…”

“Speaking of what?”

“Angels.”

Miles frowned. “You know I have trouble before coffee, but were we talking about angels?”

“I’m going to the cemetery today,” she said quietly. “I decided yesterday.”