The Next Best Thing
Page 50

2:47 a.m.
“Want to go for a ride, Blue?” she asked her dog, whose ears pricked up at the magic word. “Want to go in the car?”
* * *
FOR TWO DECADES,  FAITH had not been on either Lancaster or Hummel Brook roads. It had taken some doing. Hundreds of miles of avoidance. Her heart began thumping as she approached the intersection, and she exhaled shakily as she pulled over and turned off the engine. Rolled down the windows halfway so Blue could have some cold, fresh air.
It was beautiful here, the place her mother had died. The night was clear, the fields bathed in white from the nearly full moon. Faith had been afraid that the land had been sold to a developer, who’d slapped up some McMansions and stuck in a painfully awkward street named Ciderberry Circle or Owl Hollow Lane or some such ghastly moniker.
But no. It was the same.
Blue whined, wagging his tail, eager to go out.
“You stay here, boy,” she said, her voice loud in the perfect quiet.
Pretty soon, maybe even later this week, Dad would start the ice harvest, calling up the troops at two o’clock in the morning at the very second the temperature fell to seventeen degrees. But tonight, it was only in the twenties.
Only the twenties. Spoken like a true upstater.
Their car had been broadsided right here. Right in the intersection. Maybe her mom had died on impact, maybe it had taken a few minutes. She hoped with every molecule of her heart that her mother hadn’t suffered, but the truth was, she’d never know.
Faith went to the bank that ran along the edge of the road, climbed down. This was where the car had rolled. A long way, all the way to the maple tree. Kevin Hart had been going fast indeed.
Over the years, she’d looked him up on Google from time to time; he’d had a concussion from the accident, and broken the ring finger on his left hand. A college student at the time, not drunk, just driving far too fast on the lonely country road, unaware that during his first semester, a stop sign had been put up at the intersection. The judge had given him community service. He was a civil engineer now. Maybe the kind who studied where stop signs should go.
Faith had never blamed him, not really.
She walked through the field, the brittle grass crunching softly under her feet, and came to the tree that had stopped their car. She remembered that sound, that final crunch, the shiver of the car, the patter as the splintered safety glass let loose.
Running her hand over the rough bark, she felt the smoother place where the tree had healed from the gash their car had left. The wood was still strong and smooth, all these years after that long-ago afternoon when the sky had been so blue.
She sat under the tree, distantly noting the cold, unyielding ground. It was so quiet tonight. No crickets, no coyotes yipping, no night birds. Just the quiet.
Maybe her mother had been planning to divorce Dad. Maybe not. Maybe, Faith thought, her mother had just been having a bad day and vented, inappropriately perhaps, to her youngest child. Maybe, for some reason, she thought her frustrations would be safe with Faith, that for whatever reason, Faith would understand. Maybe wanting more for your child than you had yourself didn’t mean you were unhappy.
That was the thing with a sudden death. Some questions would never be answered.
Faith would keep her mother’s secret. She’d let the guilt slink away, but she wouldn’t sully the memories her family held. The truth was, they all probably knew Constance wasn’t perfect; they were all intelligent, sensitive people, more or less. Maybe their beatification of St. Mom was more a choice than ignorance, and each one of them had tiny shards pricking their hearts, memories of Mom’s imperfections kept to themselves.
Mom had loved them all. She’d been a good mother, and John Holland had been a happily married man. Nothing could ever erase those truths.
Faith looked over to the spot where she’d thought she’d seen her mom standing that day, telling her she’d be fine.
Mom had been right, hadn’t she? Faith had survived the wreck, had turned out pretty well for a girl without a mother. Had found a profession she loved and had become successful, had survived heartbreak, had created a life in a strange city, had become somebody who loved the life she was living.
Too bad Mom couldn’t see her now.
“I miss you,” Faith whispered.
Then she blew a kiss into the air, the same gesture she thought her mother had made to her, that last time she’d ever seen or imagined her. Connie’s kiss for her littlest girl, returned, finally, after nineteen and a half years.
And this time, the heat of tears in her eyes was welcome.
When Blue appeared, having apparently wriggled his way out of the car window, she was glad for his furry head in her lap, his silky ears and big heart.
* * *
FAITH APPEARED ON her father’s doorstep at seven that morning. She’d gone home, slept for a couple of hours, then awoke twenty minutes ago, sure of what she had to do.
“What’s the matter, sweetpea?” Dad asked, ushering her in. “Baby, are you okay?”
“Hi, Daddy, I’m fine. Hey, Mrs. Johnson.”
“Heavens, she needs coffee,” Mrs. J. surmised. “She, with her hair in a snarl and yet appearing in public.”
“This isn’t public, Mrs. J. It’s home. Is Honor up?” she asked.
“Honor is up,” her sister said, coming into the room, dressed for work, hair band firmly in place.
“Good,” Faith said. “Um...I need a minute with you all.”
“I’ll leave you alone,” Mrs. Johnson said.
“Oh, stay,” Faith said. “It’s not like you won’t be eavesdropping, anyway.”
“You are in my kitchen,” the housekeeper said with a hint of a rare smile, “even though this monstrous house has eleven rooms, half of which nobody ever uses.”
They all sat around the table, Mrs. J. handing Faith a cuppa joe. “Thanks,” Faith said. “So here’s the thing.”
At that moment, the back door opened, and Pru and Jack came in, bickering. “So what?” Pru said. “Who cares what you think? Just because you’re the boy—”
“You sound like you’re eight years old,” Jack said.
“And you sound like the ass you are. Hey, guys! What’s everyone doing here?”
“I live here,” Honor said. “As does our father.”
Faith waved her hand. “I need to tell you guys something.”
“You pregnant?” Pru asked.
“No,” Faith said, even as Mrs. Johnson clapped her hands together in joy.
The housekeeper’s expression fell back to thunderous. “Is it really out of order?” she said. “Four of you adults now, but only two grandbabies, and they nearly grown at that. It’s not fair. The three of you are wretched children, and Prudence, why did you not have more?”
“She has a point,” Dad said.
“And back to me,” Faith said. Such was the way of family gatherings. She should’ve emailed instead. “This is important.”
“Shoot,” Pru said, rummaging in the cupboard. “Where’s that mug I made in fourth grade?”
“I’m starving, Mrs. J.,” Jack said.
“So eat something, you rude boy,” Mrs. Johnson said, cutting a muffin in half for him. “I see hands attached to the ends of your arms. Am I expected to feed you like a baby bird?” She handed him the plate.
“The day Mom died,” Faith said loudly. That shut everyone up. Pru sat down; Jack froze with the muffin halfway to his mouth. “The day Mom died,” she said in a more normal tone, though her heart began to gallop sickly in her chest, “I didn’t have a seizure.” She swallowed. “I—I just said I did.”
Her siblings exchanged looks. Dad took her hand, which, Faith noted, seemed to be shaking.
“Go on, sweetheart,” he said.
She swallowed. “Well, you know how everyone said Mom never saw what hit us? She...she did. She did try to stop. There were skid marks. But the other car was coming too fast. I told you I had a seizure because I thought the accident was my fault.”
Another silence.
“Why would you think that?” Dad asked.
Faith drew a slow breath. “Mom asked me something, and I didn’t want to answer. Um, I was a little mad at her over something. So she turned around to check on me. I always thought that’s why Kevin Hart hit us, because she was looking at me and not the road. But Levi did an accident reconstruction, and it showed that Mom couldn’t have seen him until we were almost in the intersection, and then it was too late. Even though she tried.”
There was another silence while her siblings, Mrs. J. and Dad exchanged looks.
“Honey,” Dad said, squeezing her hand. “No one ever thought it was your fault. Not ever.”
“But you thought I had a seizure, and Mom was distracted, and that’s why we got hit.”
“It was that stupid kid, Faithie,” Jack said. “A kid in a muscle car, blowing through a stop sign.”
“No one thought it was your fault, Faith,” Honor said slowly. She looked at the others. “Did you guys think that?”
Pru shook her head. “Of course not.”
“I was actually glad you had a seizure,” Dad said slowly. “Because that way you wouldn’t have remembered anything.”
Silence fell around the table.
“Do you, sweetheart?” Mrs. Johnson asked, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Do you remember the accident?”
Faith hesitated, then nodded. “I... Yes. I do.”
“Oh, God, Faith,” Honor whispered, her eyes filling with tears. Her sister’s arms around her was such an alien feeling that for a second, Faith didn’t know what to do.
Then Pru hugged her, too, then Jack, and Dad, and Faith found that she was sobbing.
“I thought you blamed me,” Faith whispered, and Honor seemed to know the words were for her. “You were so mad at me.”
“Oh, honey,” she whispered back. “I was jealous. You were the last one who got to be with Mom. You were with her in the end.”
A little while later, when eyes had been wiped and an extra box of tissues had been brought to the table and Mrs. Johnson was making sweet potato pudding for everyone and crying a little herself (though she wouldn’t admit it), Dad reached out and put his hand on Faith’s shoulder.
“Was that why you stayed in San Francisco?” he asked. “Because you felt responsible?”
Faith took a deep breath. “Maybe a little. I mean, at first, I just wanted to get away from Jeremy. But I remembered something Mom said, about how she always wanted to live somewhere far away. And it just felt...right. Like I was doing what she never got to.”
“That’s really nice, Faith,” Honor said.
“And what now?” Dad asked. “Are you going to stay in New York?”
“You and Levi seem hot and heavy,” Pru observed. Dad and Jack winced in unison.
“I’d like to stay,” Faith said, her eyes filling again. Home had never felt more precious than it did at this moment, here in the kitchen of the New House, where Mom had cooked and laughed, where Mrs. Johnson had worked so hard to take care of them all these years.
“Oh, crap, another sister,” Jack said, sighing, but he messed up her hair.
“I do have to pack up my apartment, both at the Opera House and in San Francisco,” she said, wiping her ever-leaking eyes. “Sharon Wiles found a tenant. So I might have to live here for a little while, once I’m back from California. Please don’t make me move back with Goggy and Pops.”
“Live with me,” Pru said. “Carl’s staying at his mom’s indefinitely. I like having a long-distance marriage. The bathroom is certainly more pleasant. And you know the kids and I would love having you.”