In the circle of their arms, there was a split second of hushed silence. Less than a heartbeat of stillness during which Cyrus’s eyes flinted with something that looked very much like fear. I could almost imagine him as a little boy, caught redhanded in the act of doing something deplorable. And Max had his number. But just as quickly as the expression flared, it dulled. Cyrus licked his lips as if he longed to spit at Max’s feet, but instead he turned to me. He gave me a brilliant, heart-stopping smile and pulled me toward him. My fingers slipped from Max’s arm, and just like that my fate was sealed.
The rest of the ceremony was a blur, but I’ll never forget what Cyrus said the moment we burst through the back doors of the church. Birdseed anointed our heads and the train of my hand-stitched dress was thrown over my arm so that I could run down the steps and into my new life. I was so caught up in the music and the tears, the vows we had shared, that I had all but forgotten Max and what he had said. But Cyrus hadn’t. My toe hadn’t yet graced the first stair when Cyrus put his mouth to my ear and whispered viciously, “You will never speak to that man again. Ever.”
Never. The word cut like a knife, slicing away what had been and what would be. Separating me from the closest thing I had to a father. Cyrus had already put the final nail in the coffin of my relationship with my dad. Now this?
In the beginning I thought that Cyrus would soften. That there would come a day when he would realize that he had been overreacting, and that Max and Elena meant the world to me. But he didn’t back down. Even when I lost the baby and couldn’t stop crying for days, he refused to let me see the couple that I considered my family.
So I lied. I snuck out to see them, and when Cyrus found out he hit me.
It was the first time he ever raised a hand against me, and though the unanticipated blow lashed straight through my wounded heart, I understood why he did it. I had defied him, hadn’t I? I had done the one thing he asked me not to do.
It was a slap. Nothing, really.
Maybe Max thought I would run then. Maybe he thought I would be done. But I had been hurt before. I think Max underestimated my ability to pick myself up and keep going. Done? Far from it.
But now, over a decade later, to hear my surrogate father say those words stirred something savage inside me. I didn’t even know that I could feel that way, that I could be filled with a longing so raw and unexpected that it brought tears to my eyes. Bowing my head over the sewing table, I took a shuddering breath.
“I know who he is,” Max said softly. “I see what he does. Please, Rachel. You don’t have to live like this. You know that, don’t you?”
I shook my head as if to clear it. “I have a daughter now,” I said. “Lily needs her dad.”
“Not like this.” Max moved around the table and reached a hand out for me. His fingers brushed the fabric of my sweater for just a moment before he seemed to accept that I wouldn’t respond to his touch. That I was unreachable. He changed tactics. “He still hits you, doesn’t he?”
“Not really,” I said. “Not often.”
“Rachel, abuse is abuse—”
“I am not an abused woman.” My voice was flinty, furious. “Don’t you dare make me out to be some weakling.”
“I don’t think you’re weak. I think you’re strong,” Max said. “But it kills me to see you like this. And I can’t stand the thought that he dares to raise a hand against you.”
All the fight went out of me in one long exhalation. “He’s just a big bully, Max. He likes to get his way and when things don’t go as planned he overreacts. I know how to deal with him. Besides, what would you have me do? Leave?”
“Exactly.”
I shook my head at that. “Where would I go? What would I do? I have a high school education and zero credentials. Everything and everyone I know is here. I’m not going anywhere. I can’t.”
“But you could—”
The sound of Lily’s backpack hitting the floor behind us cut Max off so quickly he seemed to inhale whatever it was he was about to say. We both spun around, shocked that we had let the time get away from us, and downright sickened to realize that even if she hadn’t heard our entire conversation, Lily had heard enough of it.
“Lil, honey,” I said, taking a tentative step toward her. “How long have you been standing there?”
Her face was stricken, her mouth a thin, serious line. She stumbled backward a bit and bumped into the doorframe.
“Listen to me, Lily. You overheard a conversation that wasn’t meant for your ears. I know you don’t understand, but you have to believe me—”
“Believe you?” Lily’s eyes went wide. “Believe you? You’re a liar!” She whipped around and flew out the back room of the bridal shop, letting the steel door slam behind her.
CHAPTER 6
MITCH
December 24, 10:00 A.M.
The atrium is warm and bright, filled with the contented hum of activity. There is a TV on in the corner, and there are little knots of people congregating around tables and in carefully arranged nooks. Mitch’s eyes flick past the shuffleboard table and pause for a moment on the aviary that takes up the entire south wall. It’s impossible not to admire the tiny birds and the way they make the air seem to shimmer with their songs. But though the birds are lovely, Mitch would rather watch the residents.
Three of the elderly inhabitants of The Heritage Home are with their visiting families. One gentleman—the one closest to where Mitch stands—is smiling as he unwraps a Christmas present. It’s a misshapen clay bowl, the sort of handmade work of art that is worth far more than diamonds or pearls. The little girl who made it grins as she points out its various attributes, and when her grandfather tells her that her gift is beautiful, just what he wanted, she throws her arms around his neck. Whispers loud enough for Mitch to hear, “I love you.”
Those words stab through Mitch and leave him breathless. How long has it been since he’s made so bold, so life-changing a declaration? Since he’s heard it? He can’t remember.
“I brought the chess board in case you’re up for it.”
Mitch turns to find a well-dressed man at his elbow. He can feel his brow furrow in confusion, but before he can formulate a polite question the man smiles.
“Cooper,” he says. “We were going to play a game.”
“I don’t know how to play chess.” Mitch gives the perplexing bag of stone pieces a furtive glance. For some reason he knows that the carved tokens are pawns and knights, rooks and royalty. But he can’t imagine what they are supposed to do.
“Good thing I brought the checkers, too.” Cooper spins his hand and reveals a second cloth bag. This one is filled with red and black disks.
“I don’t think I know how to play checkers either.”
“It’s easy. I can teach you in less than five minutes. You’ll probably mop the floor up with me.”
Mitch lets himself be led to a small table near a span of floor-to-ceiling windows. The day is soft and gray, muted with the silence of a storybook snowfall. It is a lovely sight, but one look at the gentle storm and Mitch knows that the roads will be a nightmare in no time at all. The plows simply won’t be able to keep up with the volume.
“I drove a plow,” Mitch says, staring out the window.
“You had a plow attached to the front of your work truck,” Cooper amends. He lays out the checkered board between them and begins to methodically place the red playing pieces on the black squares in front of him. “You could bolt the plow blade on in the winter, and take it off in the summer. It was a side job.”
“A side job?”
“A way to make some extra cash. Construction slows down a lot in the winter, you know.”
Construction. Mitch looks at his hands and is warmed by the certainty that he was good at what he did. The corner of his mouth tweaks as his body remembers what it was like to jump from one roof truss to the next. He had amazing balance. He could walk from one side of an unfinished building to the other, skimming t
he narrow boards with his feet and never once catching anything for support. A part of him would like to tell Cooper this, but the stranger beats him to the punch.
“You should have been an architect,” he says. “You had an eye for it. It takes someone special to build a home, and you built the best.”
The rush of pride that Mitch feels is short-lived as understanding spills over him. “A home is more than a building,” he says. It seems like a profound thought. Something he should have realized sooner.
Cooper looks up and meets his gaze. “You’re right. A home is much more than a building.” He seems to want Mitch to say something, but for the life of him Mitch can’t figure out what it might be.
Instead of responding, Mitch reaches for the checkers and begins to copy the pattern that Cooper made. Black tiles on black spaces.
When they start to play, the rules come back to Mitch like riding a bike. He jumps three of Cooper’s checkers and soon has control over the board. The game doesn’t require much thought, but when Mitch reaches for the bag of chess pieces and fingers the individual tiles, he’s disappointed to find that they are still meaningless bits of stone to him. He simply doesn’t feel up to trying.
“You seem sad today,” Cooper comments when Mitch deposits the bag back on the table between them.
It’s a rather forward thing to say, but Cooper seems to think that they’re on pretty familiar terms. Mitch decides not to be cranky because he doesn’t want to offend the only person in the entire atrium who has paid him an ounce of attention. “I have a hard time remembering some things,” he admits.
“Don’t we all.” Cooper slides a checker into an unprotected corner of the board. “King me.”
Mitch obliges, crowning Cooper’s red disk with an extra from the pile he’s amassed. “This feels different,” Mitch says. “It’s a different kind of forgetful.”
“It’s Alzheimer’s.” Cooper’s proclamation is matter-of-fact.
“Is it bad?”
“Bad enough.”
Mitch considers this for a moment. “My memory feels like Swiss cheese. Full of holes.”
Cooper laughs. “I like that. Swiss cheese.”
“I can almost taste it,” Mitch says. “Swiss cheese, I mean. Why can I remember the taste of cheese, but I can’t remember how to play chess?”
“You were never a very good chess player.”
“I wasn’t?”
“Nah.” Cooper gives Mitch a serious look. “You only started playing because your daughter joined the chess club in high school. You wanted to be able to play with her. Do you remember that?”
Mitch holds his breath, trying to conjure up the image of playing chess with his teenage daughter. How tall was she? Did she have dark hair or light? Blue eyes or brown? Green? It breaks his heart that he can’t picture her, but just as he is about to give up he feels a flicker of her at the very edge of his memory.
She’s a wisp of a thing, slight and lovely with big, haunted eyes. Mitch is leveled by a yearning to pull her out of the past and hold her, she looks so life-weary and broken. But as much as he wants to hug her now, he can’t fight the sudden knowledge that he didn’t often hold her when he had the chance.
“I was a bad father,” Mitch says, his voice cracking.
Cooper shakes his head. “You weren’t a bad father.”
“I didn’t know how to be a father. Especially the father of a daughter. What did I know about little girls?”
“Well, it’s not like children come with instruction manuals. You did the best you could.”
“I don’t think my best was good enough.” Mitch battles the quick and furious desire to fling the chess-board off the table. To shout. To break something. But what would that accomplish? He knows that things were thrown in his home, and that they had no peace to show for it. All the fight fizzles out of him. “She was sad, wasn’t she?”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Cooper says, but it’s little consolation. “Life is sad sometimes.”
“My wife …” Mitch trails off, afraid to finish the sentence. “My wife said things, and she did things …”
“See?” Cooper sweeps his hands as if Mitch’s unfinished thought excuses everything. “Your wife did things. Not you.”
“Does it matter who did what?” Mitch may not remember his address or what his teenage daughter looked like, but he does know that there are sins of omission as surely as there are sins of commission. Whether or not he did anything, he carries the guilt of turning a blind eye. It’s devastating. He can’t stand the man that he thinks he was, and he can’t recognize the man that he is. The past is a blur of emotion and fragments of memories that make him feel dizzy and bewildered. He wants nothing more than to be able to lay the years out before him—ugliness and all—and see his life for what it really was. He can’t shake the feeling that it was one colossal failure.
“I can see her, Cooper.” Mitch takes his head in his hands and tries to make the flicker of a girl in his mind’s eye stay put. “I can see her but I can’t touch her. I can’t say the things that I want to say to her.”
Cooper’s silence stretches on so long that Mitch finally looks up. The man across from him is wearing an expression that is rife with pity. With compassion. “What would you say to her if you could?”
Mitch doesn’t pause for a second. “I’d tell her that I’m sorry. That I should have protected her.” He squeezes his eyes shut and makes a wish on every single flake of falling snow. “I’d tell her that I love her.”
CHAPTER 7
RACHEL
October 8
I found Lily in the center of her four-poster bed with the white lace curtains drawn. Her knees were pulled up to her chest and her eyes were squeezed shut, but even from behind the veil of translucent fabric I could see that she wasn’t asleep. My Sleeping Beauty who was too heartbroken to slumber.
“Is this seat taken?” It was a lame attempt at humor, and Lily didn’t respond. Instead of waiting for an invitation, I pushed aside the sheer screen and perched on the edge of her bed. “I know you’re not sleeping, honey.”
“Yes, I am.” Lily rolled over, giving me her back. She was curled in a tight ball, her knees pulled up to her chest and a teddy bear tucked amid the tangle of her slender limbs. “Go away,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whispered. Maybe it was the wrong thing to say, but I believed at that moment that what she needed to hear more than anything was that I would stay. “I’m here for you, Lil. I always will be.”
We stayed like that for a long time. I smoothed her lavender duvet with my fingers, and Lily breathed in and out, trying to ignore me. She was wrapped around herself, hemming me out as if she was the only person in the world she could trust. I could hardly blame her. I hadn’t exactly been honest with her throughout her eleven years of life. Perhaps I was wrong for thinking that some things are better left unsaid.
“I was only trying to protect you.” I spoke quietly. “I know what it’s like to be alone, to feel like no one will stand between you and the monster under your bed.”
“There’s no monster under my bed.” Lily’s voice was muffled by the fur of her teddy bear.
I gave a hollow laugh. “There was no monster under my bed either. It’s an expression.”
“I know.” Lily went perfectly still for a moment, I could tell she was holding her breath, trying to decide if she could say the words that crowded her mouth. After a long moment, she dared. “Is Dad the monster?”
It was an impossible question. Yes. And no. “Dad has a funny way of dealing with life, Lil. That doesn’t make him a monster, but sometimes he does some pretty monstrous things.”
“I hate him.”
The ferocity of her declaration shocked me. Lily had never shown anything more than polite detachment toward her father. Cyrus hadn’t been very involved in her younger years, and when her attempts at a relationship were steadily rebuffed as she got older, Lily learned
to exist in a home where the man she called her dad was little more than a prop. He brought home the paycheck and sat across from her at the dinner table every night, but he didn’t take much interest in her and she learned to mimic his behavior. Lily was no daddy’s girl, but she had no reason to hate him either.
“You do not,” I said.
“I do!” Lily pushed herself up and whirled to face me. “He hurt you! How could he … how could anyone…?”
“It’s not as simple as it sounds.” I put a pacifying hand on her arm and gave her a gentle squeeze. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes, too. And I’m not the same woman that he married all those years ago.”
“What do you mean?” Lily passed a hand over her cheeks, swiping at imaginary tears even though her eyes were dry.
I smiled wryly. “You might not believe this, but your mom was once passably pretty.”
Lily’s mouth dropped open a bit. “What are you talking about? Mom, you’re gorgeous. All my friends think so. Amber’s mom even told me that Dad married you because you were the best-looking woman this side of the Mississippi.”
“Were. I’m an old lady, Lil.”
“Give me a break. You’re thirty-one.” Lily looked me in the eyes, her gaze earnest, insistent. “You really are beautiful, Mom. If Dad doesn’t think so, he’s blind.”
“That’s nice of you to say,” I murmured, patting her arm absently.
“You don’t believe me, do you?” Lily looked confused. “You really don’t believe me. How can you not see yourself the way everyone else sees you?”
“Enough.” I didn’t mean to sound harsh, but my daughter shrank back a bit anyway. “This is silly.”
“But I just want you to know that—”
“Lily, stop.” I took a deep breath. “It doesn’t matter what I look like, honey. What matters is you. All I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is for you to be happy. I’ve tried to shield you from …” I fumbled for the right words, my hands fluffing the air as if to encompass the whole of our fabricated lives. “From this.”