Fork. Knife. Mitch remembers now. One for each hand. He wonders if he still knows how to use them.
“Pancakes today,” Cooper says conversationally. “They make the batter from scratch with fresh buttermilk. A nice Christmas tradition.”
“It’s Christmas?”
“Not today. Tomorrow. But there’s something extra special about Christmas Eve, don’t you think? It’s all about the anticipation—the hope of what’s to come.”
Mitch doesn’t really know if Christmas Eve is all that special, or even what he would hope for if the holiday is all about expectation like Cooper says. But Cooper’s words have stirred something just beneath the surface, and all at once Mitch is overcome with a longing that he can’t describe. He wants something, wants it desperately, but he can’t remember what it is. It’s as if he’s been waiting for so long that he’s forgotten exactly what it is he’s been waiting for.
Mitch’s stomach growls. Maybe he’s just hungry. Maybe he’s been waiting for pancakes.
“My wife used to work at a truck stop,” Mitch says, surprising himself with the unanticipated memory. “She made the most amazing buttermilk pancakes.”
“I remember them.” Cooper smiles. “That was back in the day when no one blinked an eye if you melted an entire stick of butter on your stack of flapjacks. Real butter. Not that fake margarine stuff.”
Mitch can almost see the golden domes of sweet whole cream butter. They looked like tiny scoops of ice cream that left a warm trail across the surface of crisp-edged cakes. He returns Cooper’s smile. “Gorgeous.”
“Well, I’ve never heard anyone call a pancake gorgeous, but okay.” Cooper shrugs.
“Not the pancakes.” Mitch’s laugh is more like a cough, but at least it’s genuine. “The woman. She was a beautiful woman.”
Cooper nods, but his eyes seem flat. “She was definitely pretty.”
“You know my wife?”
“Knew,” Cooper says tenderly. “She’s been gone for a long time, Mitch.”
Mitch crumples the fabric of his pants in his sweaty palms. Of course, he knew that. He knew she was gone. But for just a moment he could see her. Slim hips beneath a white apron, eyes that sparked with fire and ice. She had a tongue on her, but Mitch couldn’t really tell you what that meant. He battles a vague sense of discomfort, a wave of quiet shame that makes him both love and loathe the woman who stands at the very edge of his broken memory.
All at once Mitch feels like he might cry. It’s a startling revelation, a feeling that he fights because there is something inside him that knows men are not supposed to cry. He knows he is not supposed to cry. There are old callouses on his hands, scars that line his arms and testify to the fact that he is—was—a man’s man. The sort of man who would scoff at tears. Mitch blinks hard, clears his throat.
“What do you remember about your wife?” Cooper prods lightly.
“She had lovely hands.” Mitch’s mouth curves at the thought of her slender fingers. “She wore her hair back when she waitressed, and earrings that dangled down her long neck. She had a great laugh.”
“That she did.”
Mitch frowned. “But she didn’t laugh often.”
“Why not?”
“She couldn’t. Someone stole her joy.” Mitch knows that it’s true, even though he can’t explain why or what happened to make his wife such a paradox. She was beautiful and cruel. Broken and harsh. He can feel the hurt radiate off her, a sparking, vicious energy like a current of electricity. To touch her was to expose yourself to the sting of a live wire.
“She was sad,” Mitch says.
“Why?”
“She was hurt.” His hands tighten into fists in his lap. “How anyone could ever hurt a child …” he can’t bring himself to finish.
“It’s beyond comprehension,” Cooper says quietly.
“No one really understood her.”
“Did you understand her?” Cooper asks.
“I don’t know. But I think I loved her.”
“I think you did, too.”
“She did bad things,” Mitch whispers.
“I know,” Cooper says.
“And I loved her all the same.” Mitch takes a shaky breath. “Was that wrong of me?”
Cooper leans across the table and Mitch is amazed to realize that his eyes are not the only ones that sparkle with unshed tears. “Of course it wasn’t wrong of you. Everyone deserves to be loved.”
CHAPTER 4
RACHEL
October 8
My father once told me that we are powerless against the people we love.
I think he was trying to help his nine-year-old daughter understand why he loved the woman who had just passed out on our living room couch, but the lesson was lost on me at the time. I didn’t get it that he had no choice but to brush her hair back from her pale cheek and tuck a blanket around her arms with a tenderness that made my breath catch. He wasn’t doing it out of obligation—he was caring for her because it was all his heart knew how to do. My father was defenseless against my mother.
What did I know about that sort of vulnerability? About being completely laid bare before another person? I didn’t understand that sort of love until the day that Lily was born. As I marveled at her tiny fingers, the fresh-from-God scent of her skin, I knew that loving her was what I was created to do. In a way, I lost myself in that moment. But it didn’t matter. She mattered.
Although I gave myself over to all sorts of indignity and recklessness in my love for my daughter, the thought of losing control in any other area of my life left me with a hollow pit in my stomach. After just one week of working in secret with Max, my stomach was in knots and my blood pressure was undoubtedly through the roof. But though my clandestine job was utter foolishness, I couldn’t have gone back on my promise if I wanted to. I loved Max, and while he ministered to me during the long hours we spent together in his shop, for one of the few times in my life I felt certain that I was ministering to him, too. It was a heady feeling.
Yet, as much as I adored our time together, five measly work days assured me that the game I was playing was a dangerous one. My life was simply too ordered to withstand the sort of chaos that came hand in hand with deceiving my husband.
To say that I was a creature of habit would be more than a bit of an understatement. For more years than I could remember, I did the same thing in the same way day after day after day. My coffeepot started to perk at six o’clock. I woke to an internal alarm clock, crept out of bed so I didn’t disturb Cyrus, and showered in the downstairs bathroom—the one with the robin’s-egg-blue paint and white wainscoting that reminded me of a beach house. Though I kept my shower short, it was a few minutes of reprieve, a place where I could pretend that I lived the sort of life where a beach vacation with my family was a sweet and precious memory instead of something I tried to forget. But it was a fantasy. The truth was, I did my best to erase the week that we spent in Florida when Lily turned eight.
When Cyrus announced that we were taking a family vacation, I was stunned. He was well versed in solo trips with his friends—pheasant hunting expeditions into the heart of South Dakota, snowmobiling weekends to secluded corners of Wyoming, and even the occasional jaunt to Las Vegas for business—but we hadn’t attempted a holiday together since our pathetic stab at a second honeymoon on our fifth wedding anniversary. Florida with just the three of us sounded like a second chance to me. I tried to conjure up images of us laughing together, shelling on Sanibel Island or licking ice cream cones as we window-shopped in Naples. The pictures were fuzzy and indistinct, but if I imagined really hard I could make myself believe that Cyrus wanted that happy, postcard-worthy family, too. I could make myself believe that things were about to change. That they were going to go back to the way they had been.
There was a time when we were in love. Truly, madly, deeply. Like every story worth its salt. Cyrus was handsome and rugged, the sort of man who embodied every masculine stereotype and cliché. H
e could be prickly and gruff, but then, who would ever want to soften his rough edges? I didn’t care if Cyrus was a bit of a rogue, because he adored me. He treated me like a princess in need of rescue, and I complied because, quite simply, I loved being rescued by him.
A family vacation to Florida sounded like nothing so much as a daring rescue mission. Surely Cyrus had suggested the unexpected holiday as a way to sweep me off my feet. As a way to make up for all the time we had lost.
Of course, my daydreams were dashed. All Cyrus wanted to do was lie by the pool at our resort and watch the college girls who lounged at the edge of the water in bikinis made from scraps of cloth. He spent most of the week with his sunglasses on, eyes half-mast, but I knew what he was looking at—anything and everything but me, his wife of eleven years, the woman who bore him a daughter and had the nasty, emergency C-section scar to prove it. But, I suppose, who could blame him? My freckles came out in the sun, and my milky pale skin blushed pink even beneath SPF 50. And next to those strapless, slinky suits, my plain, black one-piece looked like a nun’s habit. I wasn’t surprised when Cyrus started going to the clubhouse to “hang out with the guys” after Lily was tucked in bed.
But in spite of our failed family vacation, I still loved the beach-themed bathroom in our house. And for half an hour in the early morning before everyone else woke up, it was my sea-blue haven. A place where I could stand in the swirling, hot steam from my shower and put on the predictable uniform that would get me through my day.
When I first turned Cyrus’s head, he claimed my red hair was sexy. But my pregnancy with Lily darkened and thinned it, and the curls he once loved to wrap around his fingers loosened into waves. I swept my long hair back most days, let it towel dry, and then pulled the sides up into bobby pins so that Cyrus wasn’t constantly reminded of the way my ginger curls no longer framed my face.
Every morning I dedicated a few minutes to my hair, then applied light makeup and shell-pink lip gloss. I finished my personal routine with dark jeans and an expensive sweater—something fine-woven and cottony during the warm months, and wool or a bulky cable knit when it was cold. Though I shopped in the same stores that his friends’ wives frequented, my attire was a source of constant annoyance for Cyrus. It was too modest, too predictable, but it was one area where I didn’t give. I wore tops with high collars and sleeves that covered my arms all the way down past my wrists. My fingers peeked out, and my face. That was more than enough of me exposed.
I emerged from the bathroom at exactly six-thirty and went straight to the kitchen to start breakfast. Cyrus didn’t have to be at the dealership until eight, but he liked to leave the house by seven. It was common knowledge in Everton that the old boys’ club met at the gas station every workday morning for a cup of coffee as they discussed town business and shot the breeze. As the late mayor’s son and soon to be new owner of Price Automotive, Cyrus held a place of prestige that was something akin to a throne. He was small-town royalty, one of the richest, most influential men in town, and he wielded his position like a lord. And this particular sovereign liked two eggs for breakfast, over easy, on two slices of white, buttered toast, and a glass of pulp-free orange juice.
Cyrus swept into the kitchen at six-forty-five, just as I was situating the second egg on the second slice of softly browned toast. He sat down at the head of the table in the dining room, gulped the glass of orange juice that was waiting for him, and then dug into the plate that I set before him. Sometimes he acknowledged me. Sometimes not. Sometimes he found fault with his breakfast, or with the day that was breaking outside the picture window at his elbow, or with me. Cyrus didn’t usually yell in the morning, but there was always sometimes.
After he left, I threw in a load of laundry, got Lily up, helped her with her before-school routine, and shooed her out the door by eight. Then, when the house was empty and still save for the steady beat of my own muted heart, my day started in earnest. There were rooms to clean and supper to make. There was a long list of boards on which I was expected to volunteer, as well as my women’s Bible study and the Rotary Club.
I have to admit, I played the part well. My house was perfectly kept, my kitchen always warm with the fragrance of something freshly baked or a mouthwatering pot roast in the oven. And I had friends at my Bible study, a group of well-kept women just like me, with husbands who were bankers or insurance agents and who accompanied Cyrus on his frequent trips. We shared recipes and parenting tips, and if those ladies with their perma-smiles and French manicures suspected that things were less than storybook between Cyrus and me, they never let on.
When Max called, my perfectly ordered life went up in smoke. I knew my old friend couldn’t finish all those custom suits on his own, but I also knew that Cyrus would be furious if he found out what I was doing. And yet, even before Lily convinced me that I really had no choice—I had to help the man who had been surrogate father to me—I was already creating a smokescreen that would, I hoped, hide my subterfuge from Cyrus’s prying eyes.
Meetings were rescheduled, absences accounted for with claims of upcoming dentist appointments or haircuts. I resurrected my Crock-Pot cookbook and bought groceries for meals that I could throw together in the slow cooker and then transfer to appropriate pots and pans in the hour before Cyrus came home from work in the evening. And once Lily knew what was going on, she offered to help me keep up with the housework by vacuuming floors or scrubbing bathrooms in stolen moments before and after school.
But even with all my careful planning, my days were so scheduled, so dictated by Cyrus and what he required of me that balancing my life with my short-term work in Max’s shop was nearly impossible. And it wasn’t long before I started to trip up.
“Dad will be home in fifteen minutes,” I told Lily as I pulled an apron over my head. “I’m going to stick the chicken in the oven to brown, and I want you to quick run the vacuum in the living room. It’s been a couple of days.”
Lily looked like she was about to protest, but my eyes must have held a convincing level of desperation. I considered myself a good secret keeper, but this ruse was already wearing me thin. There was a laundry basket of dirty clothes hidden in one of the spare rooms, and a gray ring developing in the downstairs toilet. I just couldn’t keep up with it all.
“Fine,” Lily huffed, rolling her eyes.
“Watch the clock,” I warned. “Make sure the vacuum is put away by five o’clock at the latest. If Dad closes up on time, he could be home as early as five-oh-two.”
“Is there a certain pose you’d like me to strike when he comes through the door?”
My hands stopped in the middle of knotting my apron strings. “Don’t be like that,” I said. “Please. I need you to help me with this.”
“It’s been a week, Mom.” Lily put her fists on her hips with an authoritative air. She gave me a look that made me wonder if I was the child and she was the adult. “Don’t you think it’s time to let Dad in on our little secret?”
My heart stopped beating in my chest. “What?” I whispered as it thudded back to life. “No, honey. We can’t tell your dad what we’re doing.”
“But it’s Dad,” she complained. “He might be mad at first, but he’ll understand.”
Sometimes I forgot that Lily was just a little girl. A little girl who loved her daddy even though he was distant and uninterested. And though I could congratulate myself for shielding her so well from the dysfunction of our broken family, apparently I had done too good a job of convincing her that everything was just fine. On the outside, we truly are the perfect, All-American family, I thought. We hide our bruises beneath designer sweaters and pretend that Garrison Keillor was right about idyllic small-town life. Maybe I was doing my daughter a disservice by allowing her to believe such falsehoods. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth.
Staring at Lily’s sweet, trusting face, I did the only thing I could think of: I stalled. “We’ll tell him,” I said, hoping God would forgive my small, wh
ite lie in light of the giant lie I was living. “But not yet. Okay? I need a bit more time to sort this out. You wouldn’t want Dad to forbid us to go to Eden, would you?”
That had the desired effect. Lily already loved Max almost as much as I did, and I knew that she would do anything to preserve our afternoons in his tranquil shop. “No,” she said. And then she pretended to lock her lips and throw away the key. It was a reluctant pantomime, but I breathed a sigh of relief all the same. A moment later I heard the sound of the vacuum roaring to life.
After transferring the garlic chicken from the Crock-Pot to a roasting pan, I took a pot of potatoes I had peeled and quartered that morning from the refrigerator and set it to boil on the stove. The table was already set, and I stood in the middle of the kitchen, turning a slow circle and trying to see everything as Cyrus would see it. Did anything look amiss? Was it obvious that I was letting my home life slide?
I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I nearly jumped out of my skin at the staccato of cheerful raps on my front door. Someone was knocking, and it was so unexpected I didn’t know what to do for a moment. The Price family didn’t get visitors, at least, not unannounced visitors. I swallowed nervously. Had someone seen me sneaking in the back door of Max’s shop? Had they come to confront me?
Straightening my apron, I hurried into the entryway of our elegant home. There were no windows in the solid oak door, so I wasn’t afforded a sneak peek at my guest. I took a deep breath and fixed a smile on my face. In the moment before I grabbed the handle I caught a glimpse of a telltale silver thread that wound its way around my arm. I plucked it off and let it drift between the leaves of a potted plant in the corner.
My knees were almost shaking by the time I finally opened the door, but the person standing on my front step regarded me with concern, not accusation.