Lock and Key(55)

“Ah,” I said.

“You should have seen it when we got married,” Cora said. “I felt like I’d crashed my own wedding. I didn’t know anybody.”

It took a beat for the awkwardness following this statement to hit, but when it did, we all felt it. Jamie glanced up at me, but I focused on finishing the bite of cereal I’d just taken, chewing carefully as Cora flushed and turned her attention to the toaster oven. Maybe it would have been easier to actually acknowledge the weirdness that was our estrangement and the fact that my mom and I hadn’t even known Cora had gotten married, much less been invited to the wedding. But of course, we didn’t. Instead we just sat there, until suddenly the smoke detector went off, breaking the silence.

“Shit,” Jamie said, jumping up as ear-piercing beeping filled the room. Immediately I looked at Roscoe, whose ears had gone flat on his head. “What’s burning?”

“It’s this stupid toaster oven,” Cora said, pulling it open and waving her hand back and forth in front of it. “It always does this. Roscoe, honey, it’s okay—”

But it was too late. The dog was already bolting out of the room, in full flight mode, the way he’d taken to doing the last week or so. For some reason, Roscoe’s appliance anxiety had been increasing, spurred on not only by the oven but anything in the kitchen that beeped or had the potential to do so. The smoke detector, though, remained his biggest fear. Which, I figured, meant that right about now he was probably up in my bathroom closet, his favorite hiding place of late, shaking among my shoes and waiting for the danger to pass.

Jamie grabbed the broom, reaching it up to hit the detector’s reset button, and finally the beeping stopped. As he got down and came back to the table, Cora followed him, sliding into a chair with her waffle, which she then nibbled at halfheartedly.

“It may be time to call a professional,” she said after a moment.

“I’m not putting the dog on antidepressants,” Jamie told her, picking up the paper and scanning the front page. “I don’t care how relaxed Denise’s dachshund is now.”

“Lola is a Maltese,” Cora said, “and it wouldn’t necessarily mean that. Maybe there’s some training we can do, something that will help him.”

“We can’t keep coddling him, though,” Jamie said. “You know what the books say. Every time you pick him up or soothe him when he’s freaking out like that, you’re reinforcing the behavior.”

“So you’d prefer we just stand by and let him be traumatized? ”

“Of course not,” Jamie said.

Cora put down her waffle, wiping her mouth with a napkin. “Then I just think that there’s got to be a way to acknowledge his fear and at the same time—”

“Cora.” Jamie put down the paper. “He’s a dog, not a child. This isn’t a self-esteem issue. It’s Pavlovian. Okay?”

Cora just looked at him for a moment. Then she pushed back her chair, getting to her feet, and walked to the island, dropping her plate into the sink with a loud clank.

As she left the room, Jamie sighed, running a hand over his face as I pulled the family picture back toward me. Again, I found myself studying it: the varied faces, some smiling, some not, the gentle regalness of the elderly women, who were staring right into the camera. Across the table, Jamie was just sitting there, looking out at the pond.

“I do like the ad, you know,” I said to him finally. “It’s cool.”

“Thanks,” he said, distracted.

“Are you in this picture?” I asked him.

He glanced over at it as he pushed his chair out and got to his feet. “Nah. Before my time. I didn’t come along for a few more years. That’s my mom, though, in the white dress. It was her wedding day.”

As he left the room, I looked down at the picture again, and at the girl in the center, noticing how serene and happy she looked surrounded by all those people. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one thing was for sure: like it or not, you’d never be alone.

Fifteen minutes later I was standing in the warmth of the foyer, waiting for Nate to pull up at the mailbox, when the phone rang.

“Cora?” the caller said, skipping a hello.

“No,” I said. “This is—”

“Oh, Ruby, hi!” The voice was a woman’s, entirely perky. “It’s Denise, Cora’s old roommate—from the party?”

“Right. Hi,” I said, turning my head as Cora came down the stairs, briefcase in her hand.

“So how’s life?” Denise asked. “School okay? It’s gotta be a big adjustment, starting at a new place. But Cora did say it’s not the first time you’ve switched schools. Personally, I lived in the same place my whole entire life, which is really not much better, actually, because—”

“Here’s Cora,” I said, holding the phone out as she got to the bottom step.

“Hello?” Cora said as she took it from me. “Oh, hey. Yeah. At nine.” She reached up, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear. “I will.”

I walked over to the window by the door, looking for Nate. He was usually right on time, and when he wasn’t, it was often because Gervais—who had trouble waking up in the morning and was often dragged to the car by his mother—held things up.