The Things We Keep(54)

By the time I get to Anna’s room, I’m exhausted. I get out the duster and idly wander around, pushing dust this way and that. It’s on the lower shelf of her dresser, under a carpet of dust, that I find her notebook. I recognize it—it’s the one Anna had stuck my photo in on my first day. My instinct is to open it, but with my fingers on the inside of the cover, I hesitate. I ought to respect her privacy. I return the newly dusted notebook to the shelf.

And immediately snatch it back.

Maybe I’ll just read the first page and see what it says? Then, before I can change my mind, I toss it open.

November 1, 2013

Dear Anna,

Today you made a promise. You promised the young guy with the tea-colored eyes that you would stay with him until the end. No cutting out early, no taking the fast exit. It’s hard to believe you agreed to that, right? I can hardly believe it as I write this.

So why did you agree?

You agreed because this guy is the one you didn’t know you were waiting for. You agreed because, as it is, you’re not going to have long enough together. And you agreed because this guy is a pretty good reason to hang around.

Soon you won’t remember this promise—that’s why I’m writing this down. And if you are reading this now, there’s something else you should know: Anna Forster never breaks a promise.



Anna

There’s a tap at the door and I jump.

“Just me.”

It’s Angus, holding up my basket, which contains precisely one carrot. “I thought you might be needing this. Sorry, did I scare you?”

I point at the notebook. “Look at this.”

Angus comes closer. I give him a minute to read.

“See!” I say. “She does love him. And he loves her, that’s obvious after today.”

Angus frowns. “You know … I did read once about a woman with dementia who didn’t remember that she’d ever been married, but when someone showed her her wedding dress, she burst into tears. The article said that the memory center of the brain is right next to the emotion center, so the emotional power of the dress was still there, even though the memory was gone.”

“So maybe Luke knew he had to protect Anna from the dog, even though he didn’t remember why.…”

“Blows your mind, doesn’t it? The way it all works—the heart, the brain.”

“It does,” I say. “It really truly does.”

Angus’s gaze floats over my face, and the twinkle is replaced by something … more intense. A frisson of energy runs through me. “Angus—”

“Shh,” he says, and then Angus’s arms circle my waist and we are kissing. He smells of the grass. His arms hold me upright, and it’s a good thing because I’m a feather in a cyclone—powerless, light, swept away. It feels so strange, and so, so right.

“Mom?”

I stumble backwards. Clem is in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” I push back my hair, straighten my ponytail. “Angus was just … returning my basket.” My head is spinning, and the proximity of Angus isn’t helping. “Are you hungry, honey? I was about to go make a snack, would you like to—?”

“Were you kissing?” Clem asks.

I flick a glance at Angus. He looks apologetic, and also a little dazed. Like I feel.

“Why don’t we go into the kitchen?” I say to Clem.

“Were you?”

I don’t know what to say. My head feels full of air; my mouth is suddenly dry.

“You were,” she says finally. “I saw you.”

“Yes,” I admit, “I was.”

Clem’s jaw becomes tight. It occurs to me that this is the opposite of how things were supposed to go. I am her mother. In six or seven years’ time, I am supposed to catch her kissing a boy. I am supposed to give her the third degree.

“I don’t want you to kiss anyone,” she says. “Ever. Again.”

I feel a surprising urge to cry. Mostly because her request, unfair as it feels, is wholly appropriate. Her father died only four months ago. Four months. Did the fact that he had done terrible things reduce my mourning period? Or the fact that I found Angus impossibly attractive?

“Okay, Mom?” she says.

“Clem—”

“It’s Alice.”

“Okay, Alice.”

“So you won’t kiss anyone ever again?”

I glance at Angus, and he shrugs. It’s a shrug that says, Don’t worry about me. Do what you need to do.

I wish there were a handbook for parenting daughters whose whole world had been turned upside down in the past few months. A girl who had been having trouble at school and who, in time, would have to come to terms with the fact that her father wasn’t the man she thought he was. Then I realize I don’t need a handbook, because I already know what it would say. “Yes. Never again.”

I take Clem’s hand and lead her out of the room, leaving Angus standing there. And, no matter how much I want to, I can’t bring myself to look back.





26

That afternoon, Clem and I make a peanut butter Bundt cake. I wait for her to bring up my kiss with Angus again, but she doesn’t, and I don’t either—kids talk when they’re ready—but the quiet worries me. Even before she could speak words, Clem was loud. As a baby, she’d sit up in her high chair at the kitchen bench while I cooked, making high-pitched baby noises and banging toys and laughing toothlessly. As I watch her serious little face, I have such a pang for that Clem, I almost double over.