“What’s wrong?” she asked again. Her heart was beating hard, and she thought of Rani’s little heart, so newly repaired and delicate. “Please tell me Rani’s okay.”
“Rani’s fine.” Her father touched her shoulder. “Sit down,” he said, and she dropped into the chair Rick pulled out for her.
“Nola just called me,” her father said. “She was trying to reach you, but didn’t have your number out here.”
All of a sudden, she knew. “It’s Jessica,” she said.
Her father leaned against the kitchen counter and nodded. “She died this morning, honey. I’m sorry.”
Lacey leaped to her feet so quickly that Sasha started barking at her. “Oh, Dad, no!” she said. “How could that happen? She sounded so good when I talked to her yesterday.”
“They think it was a blood clot from the surgery,” her father said. “It was fast. She probably didn’t even know what hit her.”
That’s what they had said about her mother, but her mother had known. Lacey would never forget the look of surprise on her face.
“Oh, God, I don’t believe it.” She sat down again, one elbow on the table, her fist pressed to her mouth. She was not aware of crying until she felt the tears falling over her clenched fingers. Rick rested his hand on her back. She knew he was trying to console her, but his touch felt like more of an intrusion than comfort.
“Nola said they weren’t sure about arrangements for a service yet,” her father said, “but that it would probably be Monday.”
“I’ll go,” Lacey said into her fist. “I have to go.” She turned toward her father and saw that he looked tired and drained. The O’Neill family had become all too accustomed to coping with unexpected loss. “How’s Nola taking it?” she asked.
“She’s in a lot of pain, as you can imagine. I had trouble understanding her, she was crying so hard. Oh.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a piece of paper, handing it to her. “She left this number in case you wanted to call her,” he said.
Lacey took the piece of paper from his hand and stared at it numbly.
“I have to get back to the office, hon,” her father said. “I still have some appointments today, but I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”
“Thank you.” She knew he had done some major shuffling of his patients to be able to make the trip to Kiss River.
Her father turned his attention to Rick. “How do you know Lacey, Rick?” he asked.
“We met at her studio,” Rick said.
“Well, I’m glad you’re here.” Her father surprised her with the words. “I’m glad Lacey’s not alone right now.”
After Alec left, Rick began unwrapping the items they had bought. “I’ll return these things for you,” he said.
She glanced at the puzzles and pens without seeing them. “You don’t have to do that,” she said.
“I want to. I know there’s not a lot else I can do to help out right now.” He stood up and began digging through the trash can beneath the sink for the receipts. “I’d like to go with you to Arizona,” he said as he pawed through the trash.
“Thank you, but no.” She didn’t want him there. He would feel like more of a liability than an asset. She stood up, the piece of paper her father had given her in her hand. “I’m going up to my room to call Nola,” she said. “You don’t have to stay.”
He looked up from his work in the trash can. “Your father didn’t want you to be alone,” he said.
“I’ll be okay. Gina and Clay will be home soon. And I really just want to crawl into bed and pull the covers over my head.”
He put his hands in his pockets, worry on his face. “It’s not even four-thirty,” he said.
She shut her eyes, drained of energy to explain her need for time to herself. “I just want to go to bed,” she said, and it came out like a plea.
He nodded. “All right.” He slid the trash can back under the sink, then walked over to her and hugged her tightly, and all she could think about was having him leave so that she could fall apart in peace.
Once he was gone, she carried the cordless phone upstairs and crawled, still dressed in her blue T-shirt and striped capris, into her bed. A breeze billowed the sheer curtains into the room, but it was still too hot for more than a sheet. She pulled the box of tissues from the night table to her bed. Hugging her arms across her chest, she thought, Should I let myself break down before or after I talk to Nola?
Without making a decision, she dialed the number on the piece of paper. A woman with a quiet voice answered.
“I’m trying to reach Nola Dillard,” Lacey said. “This is Lacey O’Neill.”
Her name seemed to mean nothing to the woman. “Nola’s lying down,” she nearly whispered. “Can I have her call you when she gets up?”
“Yes, I’m calling from the east coast, but please tell her to call me any time,” Lacey said. “No matter what time it is here, all right?” She gave the woman her phone number and made her repeat it back to her. For once in her life, she wanted to talk to Nola Dillard. She needed to talk to someone else who loved Jessica.
Once she hung up the phone, her tears started. They lasted for five or six minutes, then faded away, and just when she thought she was done with them, she pictured Jessica’s smile and thought about the fear and disbelief Mackenzie was enduring, and her sobbing started again.
She’d long ago given up asking why things like this happened. Her mother had died from a bullet meant for someone else. Her sister-in-law, Terri—Clay’s first wife—had died while doing search-and-rescue work. The losses seemed so random, so meaningless—although once this past year, she’d wondered if her mother’s death had been fitting punishment for all the cheating she’d done during her marriage. If God existed, though, she refused to believe he worked that way.
She longed for the escape of sleep, but her nose was stuffy from crying and she could not prevent memories of Jessica from slipping into her consciousness. When they’d been very young, she and Jessica had been in Brownies together, with Lacey’s mother as their much-adored troop leader. Lacey could not count all the milk shakes and French fries they’d shared at McDonald’s over the years, or all the times she and Jessica had slept at one another’s houses. Jessica had changed dramatically during their time in middle school, when she’d become one of the “cool crowd,” leaving Lacey confused and envious, but after Mackenzie was born, she’d reverted quickly to the sweet person she’d once been.
She heard Gina and Rani come home, followed by Clay a half hour later, but she didn’t want to get up to talk to them. The only person she truly wanted to talk to was the person she could never talk to again: Jessica. Why hadn’t she gone to Arizona to visit her sometime in the past twelve years? She had taken their friendship for granted. She should have known better than that. Now she was finally going to Phoenix, just a little bit too late.
Someone knocked lightly on her bedroom door.
“You awake, Lace?” Clay asked.
“Yes.”
“Dad called to tell me,” he said. “Can I come in?”
“I want to be alone,” she said.
He hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry, sis,” he said, finally. “And I’m sorry for the things I said about Jessica yesterday.”
“It’s all right.” She pressed a damp, overused tissue to her eyes. “Clay?”
“Yes?”
“I love you. Please don’t die.”
She heard his soft laughter through the door. “I love you, too, Lacey,” he said. But he didn’t promise her anything. He knew better than that.
She did not sleep, did not even doze, the entire night. She lay with the box of tissues on the pillow next to her and the phone clutched in her hands, waiting for the return call from Nola. But the call never came, and it would be nearly noon the following day before she understood why.
CHAPTER 11
Lacey didn’t go into work at the animal hospital the next morning. It was Saturday, and the hospital would be
packed with patients, but she knew her father would understand. Instead, she sat in her home studio trying to reach Nola and getting no answer to her calls, not even an outgoing message on an answering machine. She studied the piece of paper on which her father had written the phone number. Whose number was it, anyway? A friend of Jessica’s probably. She knew Jessica had several good friends in Phoenix, since she’d talked about them over the years. Lacey had always felt an uncomfortable mixture of happiness and envy during those conversations, glad that Jessica had those friends, yet jealous that they had taken her place.
Between phone calls, she tried cutting glass for a panel she was making, but her heart wasn’t in it. She knew better than to cut glass when she could not give it her full attention. Finally, she took off her safety glasses and settled on staring out the window. She could see Clay working with one of his search-and-rescue clients, a tall man with a skinny golden retriever. She could not make out what they were doing, but the golden could barely contain his excitement. Lacey couldn’t help but smile at the happy, anticipatory dance the dog was performing in the sand near his owner.
She wanted to call a travel agent to make plane reservations for her trip to Phoenix, but hated to tie up the phone line in case Nola tried to reach her. Finally, though, she took the risk and contacted one of Olivia’s friends who was a travel agent. The fare to Phoenix was exorbitant at this late date, and although she wondered if she would qualify for a discount based on the fact that she was flying there for a friend’s funeral, she didn’t feel like going into the subject with the agent. Instead, she gave the woman her credit card number, wrote down the flight numbers and hung up.
The instant she got off the line, the phone rang, and she picked it up quickly.
“Nola?” she asked.
There was hesitation on the line. “No, this is Charles Rodriguez,” a male voice said. “Am I speaking with Lacey O’Neill?”
A telemarketer? “Yes,” she said, “but I’m waiting for an important call, so—”
“Ms. O’Neill, I was Jessica Dillard’s attorney,” the man said.
Lacey frowned. “Her attorney?”
“Yes,” he said, “and first let me express my sympathy over your loss.”
“Thank you.”
“I was the attorney who drew up Jessica’s will and her other legal papers. She was a very responsible young woman. Amazing for her age, the way she took care of everything. She even had an advance medical directive, although that turned out to be unnecessary. It’s still always good to have—”
“Excuse me, Mr…. Rodriguez? Can you tell me why you’re calling? I’m waiting to hear from Jessica’s mother, and I don’t want to tie up the line.”
That hesitation again. “Did Jessica talk to you about this?”
“About what?”
“Her daughter Mackenzie’s guardianship.”
Lacey searched her memory. As far as she could recall, it was a topic she and Jessica had never discussed. Why would they? Jessica was only twenty-seven.
“No,” she said. “Not that I remember.”
The attorney sighed. “I’d hoped she discussed it with you long ago. She said she would. She wanted you to be Mackenzie’s guardian if she were to die.”
“Her guardian? You mean…to make decisions about—”
“She wanted you to raise her.”
“I…Me?” She felt a moment of panic. “I live in North Carolina and I’m not even related to her. Mackenzie has a grandmother. And Jessica had some very close friends out there. And I haven’t even seen Mackenzie in three years. I’ve only seen her three or four times in her entire life.”
“I understand,” the attorney said. “And Mrs. Dillard, Jessica’s mother, was very upset when I told her about this last night. She may try to fight it, but I doubt very much she will win, because Jessica was adamant that she wanted you to be her daughter’s guardian. She stated clearly in the document that she did not want her mother to have guardianship of Mackenzie.”
Lacey winced, thinking about how hurtful it must have been for Nola to hear those words. No wonder she hadn’t returned her calls.
“But when did she make out this will?” she asked. “I mean, was it years ago? We were much closer friends years ago, so maybe—”
“She did initially file all these papers several years ago. That’s what I mean about her being so responsible. What twentysomething-year-old takes care of things like that? But she also updated all the documents only last year. She just made a few minor changes, and she was still clear that she wanted you to be Mackenzie’s guardian.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Lacey said. “I’m sure she never thought she’d die this young. Maybe she just wasn’t thinking.”
“Ms. O’Neill, she and I talked about it at length,” the attorney said patiently. “I suggested her mother might be a better and more logical choice, or failing that, the parents of one of Mackenzie’s friends, perhaps, but she said she trusted you to be the same sort of mother she had been.”
Lacey started to cry, moved by the sentiment and yet frightened by its meaning. Jessica had been a good mother. A superlative mother. She wanted to tell this stranger how motherhood had forced her to grow up quickly, how beautifully Jessica had risen to that challenge. But she would never be able to get out all those words.
“Ms. O’Neill? Are you still there?”
“Yes.” She reached for a tissue from the box on her worktable and pressed it to her nose. “I’m here.”
“I suggest you plan to stay out here a few extra days when you come for the funeral so that you and I can take care of the necessary paperwork. And more importantly, so you can get to know Mackenzie better before taking her back with you.”
Bring her back? To Kiss River? The sense of panic was so strong that she could barely breathe. She didn’t want to do this; she had never wanted a child and certainly didn’t want one thrust on her when she was so totally unprepared. Her thoughts shamed her, yet if someone could tell her how she could get out of this new and unexpected responsibility, she would jump at the chance.
“I don’t know if I’m suited to be anyone’s mother,” she said, more to herself than to the lawyer.
“Do you think Jessica was more suited at the age of fifteen?” he asked.
“That’s not the point.”
“This can’t be forced on you,” the attorney said. “If you can’t take on the guardianship of this girl, we’ll have to work out some other arrangements.”
Jessica had wanted her to do it, to be Mackenzie’s mother. She’d been adamant about it, the lawyer had said. She knew the other options open to her and she’d chosen her. Lacey thought of the little trinkets she’d wrapped the previous day to send to her friend. The gel pens and jigsaw puzzles suddenly seemed as insignificant as a grain of sand on the beach, silly gifts for a woman who would trust her with the life of her daughter. She had the ability to give Jessica a far greater gift—her life, her dreams for the future, her freedom.
“I’ll do it,” she said. “I’ll bring Mackenzie home with me.”
CHAPTER 12
One of Jessica’s friends, a very young-looking woman named Amelia, met Lacey in the baggage area of the Phoenix airport. She was holding a sign that read “Lacey” in huge red block letters. Once Lacey introduced herself, Amelia hugged her tightly, and Lacey let herself remain in the embrace for a long time, breathing in the scent of the woman’s dark hair, knowing she was finally connected to someone who felt her loss as deeply as she did.
“I’m so glad to meet you,” Amelia said as she let go of her. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” Her voice was sweet and high-pitched. She looked about twenty-two and sounded fifteen. Her nearly black hair was long and swung free around her shoulders, and freckles were spattered across the bridge of her nose.
Lacey had to rack her brain to remember if she’d ever heard Jessica talk about this particular friend. She supposed she had. Jessica had been one to say “my friend this” and “m
y friend that,” rather than speak of them by name.
“Same here,” she said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t have met under better circumstances, though.” The trite words slipped out of her mouth and she was relieved at having found them without a struggle.
The day before, she had finally been able to reach someone at the number she had for Nola, and although Nola was purportedly “still sleeping,” the woman on the phone told her she would be picked up at the airport and she would have a place to stay. The woman had sounded frazzled, as though she was trying to organize too many things at once and Lacey was just one more ball for her to juggle.
“I could get a hotel,” Lacey had told her.
“No, no,” the woman said. “We’ve got it all worked out.”
“You’re going to stay with me,” Amelia told her now as she started rolling Lacey’s suitcase toward the exit.
“Thank you,” Lacey said. “That’s great.”
Amelia didn’t say another word until they were in her car in the parking lot. It was a convertible, but the top was up and the air-conditioning on, and Lacey was glad of that because the temperature had to be at least a hundred degrees.
“I’ve never been to North Carolina,” Amelia said. “How’s the weather there now?”
“Just really starting to heat up,” Lacey said. She knew they were about to get into a conversation about the difference between Arizona heat and North Carolina heat. Jessica used to talk about it all the time. “It’s 115 degrees here today,” Jessica would tell her over the phone, “but it’s a dry heat. Not like the Outer Banks.” Sure enough, Amelia started down the same path, and Lacey played along. Why did every conversation between strangers always begin with the weather?
“How did you know Jessica?” Lacey asked when they’d exhausted the topic of the heat.
“We worked together,” Amelia said, then shook her head. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to go back to work without her. She made it bearable.”