First Frost

  “She’s only eighteen,” Sydney said, guiding Bea to the back. “No one is set in stone at eighteen.”

  An hour later, Sydney was trimming Bea’s newly touched up and highlighted hair when Violet walked in. It made Sydney feel triumphant, because it meant she’d been right about her.

  “Violet,” Sydney said, wanting to draw everyone’s attention to her. “Would you mind changing out the coffeepot before you sit down? Where’s Charlie today? At the babysitter’s?”

  “He’s in the car. I’m not staying.” Violet was wearing tight, dirty jeans and a sweater so big it fell off one shoulder, revealing her bra strap. She stood there and nervously chewed on a fingernail.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Bea,” Sydney said, palming her scissors and walking to the reception area. “What car?”

  “I bought Roy’s old Toyota. I told you. I just need a little more money. I told him I’d give the rest to him today.”

  “I don’t understand.” Sydney went to the window. “Is Charlie out there alone?”

  Violet stood beside her and pointed. “I’m parked at the hydrant. I can see him from here. Can I have an advance on my paycheck?”

  Janey was still at the reception desk, since her next appointment wasn’t until three. She was listening with interest. “I can’t do that, Violet,” Sydney said.

  “At least give me the money from the days I’ve worked.”

  “You got your check on Friday. You’ve only worked Saturday so far.”

  “Then give me that!”

  Sydney paused for a moment, using silence the way she did with her daughter, as a reset button. “What’s going on?” Sydney finally asked her.

  “I’m leaving. I’m tired of this place. I’m tired of everything. I’m tired of Roy and Florence. I wake up almost every night and Roy is watching me. It’s creepy.” Violet started chewing her nail again. “I’m not putting up with that shit. Not again.”

  Again? Sydney thought, feeling a shiver. “If it’s that bad out there and you need a place to stay, you and Charlie can stay with me.”

  Janey, who had been taking a sip out of her water bottle, choked when Sydney said that.

  “I’m not staying with you,” Violet said, as if Sydney had suggested something farcical. “I know where you live. I’m not staying at a dairy farm. I want to be someplace where there are lights and people.”

  “So you’re leaving town, just like that?” Sydney asked.

  “If you give me my money, yes!”

  “Does Charlie even have a car seat?”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “Pay me for Saturday, plus my tip. Then I’ll go. That’s my money.”

  Sydney managed to look confused. “What tip?”

  “Everyone here gets a tip. I always give myself one at the end of the day. From the cash register. It’s only fair.”

  “Can I say good-bye to Charlie?” Sydney asked, hoping to take this outside. The entire salon was watching now.

  But Violet wouldn’t budge. “He’s sleeping.”

  Without another word, Sydney gave Violet some money out of her hip apron and Violet left.

  “She was stealing from you?” Janey asked.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Sydney said, not turning to her. She didn’t want to talk about the fact that she’d known for weeks now, but she’d been hoping that her persistence, her unfailing belief in Violet, would turn things around.

  But Violet really was set in stone, deep down, where Sydney couldn’t see. Sydney could only see the outer layer, which was young and malleable. And even that would harden with age.

  As much as that upset her, the fact that Violet was taking Charlie hurt even more. Charlie, that sweet, innocent boy. Sydney stood at the window and watched Violet pull away from the curb in a beat-up gray Toyota Corolla.

  And she felt an ache, a hollow, so large it brought tears to her eyes.

  * * *

  That evening, Sydney came home to a quiet house. She’d been hoping for a distraction: Henry in the kitchen burning corn cakes, which he would make at least once a month, because his grandfather used to; or Bay, ready to do battle over her grounding.

  But there was nothing. The house was so quiet that the silence actually hummed.

  Sydney walked to the staircase and called up to Bay, asking what she wanted for dinner. Claire had taken her home because Sydney had been slammed at work today, thanks to Violet. Bay called back flatly, “I ate at Claire’s.”

  They hadn’t talked much, or at all, since the dance Saturday. Bay seemed to be taking her grounding well, too well, as if her compliance was just another way of making Sydney feel like she was getting it all wrong.

  Sydney walked into the kitchen. There was a small grease board by the refrigerator, so old that years of messages scribbled and erased still made faint impressions under the surface, like words deep underwater. Henry had written that he was still at the dairy, working late on some machinery that had broken down that day. Like Bay, he never used his phone. She was living with a couple of Luddites.

  Still in her coat, her purse still over her shoulder, forgotten, she opened the refrigerator door and looked inside. She wasn’t hungry.

  She closed the door and reached for the kitchen phone.

  “Am I interrupting?” she asked when Claire answered.

  “No,” Claire said. She always said no. “How was your day?”

  “Horrible. Bay is in her room and Henry isn’t home yet and I’m feeling…” Barren, she wanted to say.

  “Have you talked to Bay?”

  “No.”

  “Have you talked to Henry?”

  “No.”

  “If you don’t explain things to them, they’re not going to understand,” Claire said, even though Claire herself was never one to explain anything to anyone, sometimes not even Tyler. Tyler was so often lost in his own thoughts. But that was what Claire needed, someone to float around in her life, to tease her and make her look up and out of her own world. Sydney had always needed someone to settle her down, someone grounding. Henry.

  “I know.”

  Sydney stared out the window above the kitchen sink, listening to the busyness of Claire’s house. It sounded like Claire was in her kitchen, too. She thought she heard the rattle of some dishes, the spray of water. Mariah’s laughter somewhere in the background. The sound of Tyler’s footsteps.

  “You know if you ever need me, I’m here for you, too,” Sydney finally said.

  “I know you are. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.” Sydney hung up and went out the kitchen door to the back porch. She sat in one of the two old cane-back chairs there.

  The back fields were so dark she couldn’t tell where the fields stopped and the night sky began. It had been hard to get used to a world without streetlights, but she liked how it made her and Henry closer. They used to sit out here every evening when they were first married. Henry said his grandfather and grandmother used to do the same, which is why he’d kept the chairs. He said sometimes he could still see them here, see the way his grandmother used to drop her hand to her side and his grandfather would pick it up and hold it.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but her cheeks were starting to tingle from the chill when she heard Henry’s footsteps in the kitchen. The kitchen door opened and he called, “Sydney?”

  “Yes.”

  He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked, taking a seat in the chair beside her. The rope seat creaked with the cold. He was still in his work clothes. She knew she should go in and fix him something to eat. He worked so hard. It was the least she could do. But she couldn’t make herself move.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Thinking.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, stuffing his hands into his barn coat.

  “My receptionist Violet quit today. She’s leaving town and taking Charlie with her. She’s been stealing money from work.”

&nbs
p; He was silent, processing it, knowing all that she’d been trying to do for Violet, knowing how much Charlie meant to her. “I’m sorry,” he finally said.

  “I want to go back and be that age again, knowing everything I know now.”

  Henry shook his head. “Being young is overrated.”

  “I don’t want Bay to make the mistakes I made,” Sydney said. “Bay. Violet. I want to help someone.”

  “You can’t fix things that aren’t broken yet. You’re only making yourself miserable. What’s going on, really?” Henry asked. “Talk to me.”

  “It’s been on my mind lately, why I can’t … I mean, we’ve been trying for a while.” Sydney stopped. Her eyes were suddenly blurry with tears. “I think it’s my fault. I lived a hard life before I came back. I was with a hard man who did hard things to me.” Henry knew about David, of course, but Sydney never mentioned him by name anymore, as if that might finally erase the memory of him. Yet somehow he was still there, like an accident she’d had long ago for which there would always be a scar. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s the reason I can’t have more children.”

  She heard, more than saw, him turn to her. “Is that what this has been about? The red hair and the visits to me in my office?” he asked. There was an undeniable relief in his voice, now that he understood. “The kitchen floor?”

  “I want to give you a son.” Her voice faded to almost nothing, just a thready hush. “You deserve a son. Maybe I don’t deserve it, but I know you do.”

  “You gave me Bay,” he said, without missing a beat. “I don’t care if we can’t have more children. I’ve never cared about that. Sydney, sweetheart, you’ve been holding on to this for too long. It’s time to forgive yourself. It’s long overdue.”

  Sydney nodded in the darkness, licking the tears where they were resting at the corners of her mouth. He was right, of course. There had always been a small part of her that didn’t think she deserved the life she had with him, that she deserved to be happy.

  Silence settled over them. Sydney realized, oddly, that her purse was still over her shoulder, like she was ready to leave instead of coming home.

  Henry broke the quiet by saying, “This feels like a good time for one of my granddad stories.”

  Sydney gave a snort of laughter.

  “I remember how devastated my granddad was when my grandmother passed away. He wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks. When he finally did show up for breakfast one morning, he was so thin I could see right through him. He sat down at the kitchen table and said, ‘Nothing will ever be the same because she isn’t in the world anymore.’” Sydney turned to look at his silhouette. “That’s how I know, how I’ve always known, that losing what you have is worse than getting anything new. You’re my world, Sydney.”

  When she smiled, she felt the tightness of her tears, freezing on her skin.

  She dropped her hand to the side of the chair and it dangled in the air between them. And, like it had been perfectly choreographed, Henry reached over and took it.

  10

  “So how do you know exactly where things belong?” Josh asked on the steps after school Wednesday afternoon. He was peeling an orange and a fine mist of citrus dusted the air around them.

  She shrugged. “I just do.”

  “So if I point to a person, any person, you’d be able to tell me where they belong?” Josh pointed to a redheaded junior sitting on his trombone case on the sidewalk, waiting for the late buses. “Tim Brown.”

  Bay laughed. “It doesn’t work like that.”

  “Then how does it work?”

  “I don’t know. It just comes to me. I walked into my friend Kennedy’s house for a play date in third grade, and her mother said Kennedy had to put away the laundry before we went to her room. While Kennedy argued with her mom, I just picked up the towels and went right to the linen closet upstairs. I knew where they belonged. That play date didn’t last long,” Bay said wryly. “With people, I can sometimes pinpoint where they’re supposed to be or who they’re supposed to be with. Sometimes it’s a very clear picture in my head. Dakota Olsen belongs at Princeton. I know it, just like that.” Bay snapped her fingers. “But with Tim Brown, I can’t see anything. It’s easier to tell where people don’t belong, because it’s an uneasy feeling, like when you lose your balance and you’re about to fall.”

  “That’s pretty amazing,” Josh said, setting the orange peel in a neat pile beside him on the step, then breaking the orange in two. He gave her half, which she took like he was giving her gold.

  “I’ve been this way all my life. It’s just who I am.”

  “Do you know where I’m supposed to be? What I’m supposed to do with my life?”

  She took a moment to answer, wondering if that was why he was here with her again today. “No.”

  “I don’t either. And you know what? It’s nice to talk with someone who doesn’t have a clear opinion about where I’m going to college or where I’m going to work when I graduate.”

  “I don’t have the answers you’re looking for.” She’d had people befriend her before, wanting her to tell their futures, or whatever it was they thought she did, but they’d always walked away disappointed.

  “That’s okay,” Josh said. “I think I need to find them out myself anyway. I envy you, you know. Your contentment.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not content.”

  “No?”

  “I know where I belong, that’s all.”

  “That’s not content?” he asked.

  “I guess it is. But, as my friend Phin pointed out, I’m not the only one who lives in my world, and I can’t convince everyone where they belong. I can’t make people believe anything they don’t want to believe. And that bothers me.” She looked at the orange in her hands. “It shouldn’t. But it does.”

  Josh seemed to mull that over, maybe thinking of her note. He finally nodded as he ate a section of orange. This felt so weird and intimate, eating with him.

  “Did you tell Phin thanks for me?” Josh asked.

  “Not yet. I only see him at the bus stop, and my mom has been taking me to school lately. Why are you thanking him?” She finished her half of the orange and wiped her hands on her jeans.

  “Have you seen the video?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You’ll understand when you see it.” The late buses began to pull in. “I guess you don’t want a ride home?”

  “No, thanks.” She stood and grabbed her backpack.

  “I won’t be here tomorrow afternoon,” Josh said, eating the last of his half of the orange, then picking up the peel he’d set beside him. “I have a student council meeting.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, winking against the sun now in her eyes. “I have to admit, I’m kind of confused why you’re out here at all.”

  “I told you, I like talking to you. I don’t know why I waited so long.” He stood. “Do you want to come hang out at my house tonight? My parents aren’t home, but our housekeeper, Joanne, is there.”

  Bay thought of how she had run through the woods only last week, just to spend a few moments watching him with his friends. She would never fit in there like that. “I don’t really know your friends that well.”

  “Oh, they won’t be there tonight. That’s why I asked. My parents call on Wednesday evenings. It puts their minds at ease when they don’t hear a party going on in the background.”

  “Don’t take this personally, but I don’t belong at your house.”

  “Let’s go out then,” he said. “I mean, private. But not private. I can get some takeout and we can eat on the green downtown after dark.”

  Keep her a secret, he meant.

  But the strangest thing was, she didn’t mind. Because she wasn’t the secret. The fact that he felt happy about something was. And, for whatever reason, Josh wasn’t ready to let other people know it yet.

  “Okay,” she said, for purely selfish reasons, ones that concerned eating with Josh and talking af
ter dark, which she considered a date, even if he didn’t. Her breath quickened at the thought of something so simple, yet so incredibly wonderful. Eating and talking after dark. Maybe there would even be snow flurries tonight, like the image of how she first saw herself with him that would make things perfect, settled, real.

  But then this simple, wonderful thing suddenly hit a snag. Because that’s when she remembered she was grounded.

  But just as quickly, she decided it didn’t matter. Rules didn’t matter, she found herself thinking.

  Not when they were wrong.

  Right?

  * * *

  It was cloudy and cool that night, with the moon behind the clouds. It was even darker and cooler on the ground behind Horace J. Orion’s head on the green but, truthfully, Josh didn’t feel it. He and Bay had on jackets and gloves and hats, and they were laughing too much to truly feel the chill.

  Josh finished his sandwich and leaned back against Horace. Bay was sitting across from him, cross-legged, the coffee he’d brought her in her hands. He told her the story of the time he’d almost run away from home because his parents had let his older brother, Peyton, stay up to watch televison, but not Josh. Their housekeeper, Joanne, had caught him and had taken him back to his room before his parents ever knew. “I never tried again,” he said. “Joanne had me convinced there was a camera on me at all times and I could never leave without her knowing. I showered in my shorts for months. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone that before.”

  “I’m glad,” Bay said, laughing. “It’s pretty embarrassing.”

  He watched her in the shadows. He knew she liked him. And he was certainly fascinated by her, to the point of fixation these days, but he wasn’t sure his feelings ran romantic. Then again, he’d never felt that way about anyone, so how would he really know? He’d kissed girls before. And he’d almost gone all the way with Trinity Kale in eleventh grade, before she’d stopped them and said they should just be friends. He’d agreed so quickly that he’d hurt her feelings. Sometimes he wondered if something was wrong with him.

  What was he really doing out here? Did he really think this sweet, odd, fifteen-year-old had all the answers? He wanted so much for it to be true. Even if it wasn’t true, Bay made him believe in the possibility of it being true, which was more hope than he’d had in a long time. She made him feel happy and safe and excited. He’d even begun to look forward to spending time on the steps with her at school. He’d driven by the front of the school on his way home every day for months now, specifically to see if she was really going to wait for him, like she said in her note. This was something he was choosing to do, these were steps he was taking on his own. It felt so strange. He didn’t trust it.