“Absolutely,” she says, but of course it’s not. It’s been almost a week; the burn should have faded by now. What does that mean? Not every exposure is equal. Some inflict damage; some can be benign. The terrible thing is not knowing which is which. She forces a reassuring smile on her face, and after a moment, Tyler forks off another bite of food.
She pours more batter and lowers the lid on the waffle maker. All’s quiet from Melissa’s room. Suspiciously quiet. “I’ll go get your sister,” she says.
Melissa lies tangled in her sheets, breathing through her mouth, the way she did as a baby, with her hand curled tight beneath her chin. When Melissa was tiny, she would rub her right foot back and forth to soothe herself to sleep, and Eve would later find the sock wedged between the mattress and the crib. Why the right foot? Eve had mused, and David had replied, I don’t know, and they’d laughed.
Eve flips on the overhead light. Melissa groans and rolls over. “You don’t want to miss your ride,” Eve warns.
“I know.”
Back in the kitchen, she uncaps the bottle of vitamin D pills and shakes one into her palm. Tyler takes it and swallows it down with a big gulp of milk. “Want me to make you another waffle?” she asks.
“I’m okay,” he says.
Dr. Brien might ask her to take some more pictures, or he might tell her to bring Tyler in right away. She glances to the dark window. They were predicting rain, a blessing.
Melissa shuffles in. Her face is puffy, her hair hanging loose. This is her purest self, the one that’s just for family. She’s already in her jodhpurs and wearing the T-shirt with the name of the stable stitched across the front. It looks a little tight. She’s growing so fast. Eve’s always running her old clothes to the donation center, or passing them on to Charlotte for Amy.
Melissa slumps into her seat. “The Internet’s down again.”
“I’ll fix it,” Tyler says.
Eve slides a waffle onto Melissa’s plate. “Your last day of camp,” she says to her daughter. “Looking forward to it?”
Melissa breaks off a corner of waffle and nibbles it. “I’m looking forward to getting paid.”
Melissa and Brittany have taken it upon themselves, as senior counselors, to provide prizes for their small band of campers. They’re going early today to hide them all around the stable, having spent the evening before writing clever horse-themed clues and filling the house with their giggles.
“What did you get?” Tyler asks. In another life, he would have been a pirate, lured by the sparkle of jewels, the shine of precious metals. For years, he’d lugged around a metal detector everywhere on their walks. Eve would find it lying on the bathroom floor or leaning against a kitchen chair. He’d unearthed all sorts of intriguing things from the woods around their house, and they’d carry them home to clean and examine: the bone-shaped dog tag; brass and aluminum keys; a real silver spoon, bent and battered; a man’s watch, the links crusted with dirt, the glass face cracked and cloudy.
“Stuff,” Melissa mumbles.
“Things from the dollar store,” Eve says, wanting to fan this spark of interest in her son. He should have mentioned the sunburn. He should have told her. “Nail polish, bead necklaces, things like that.”
“Seriously?” he says.
“They’re not for you, obviously,” Melissa says, irritated. “Do we have any milk?”
Eve shakes her head. “Someone left it out.” The second time this week, and this time the milk had turned.
“Thanks a lot, Tyler,” Melissa snipes.
Tyler looks up. “It wasn’t me.”
“Sure,” Melissa says.
Her dreamer, always staring into space. What are you thinking about? she’d ask him, and he’d say something like, Did you know that two people who live together for a really long time can make their hearts beat at the same time? “Well,” Eve says, patting his hand. “Whoever it was, please don’t do it again.”
He frowns at his plate.
“Mom?” Melissa says. “Everyone’s getting together later at Sherry’s. So can I go?”
Eve’s heard things from the other mothers about Sherry. She’s fast. She drinks. It’s hard to reconcile these rumors with the sweet blond kindergartner Eve remembers from Melissa’s Brownie troop. “Who’s everyone?” she asks, stalling. Melissa’s circle of friends has grown so small these past few years. Eve hates to say no.
“Brittany, Adrian.” Melissa shrugs. “People you don’t know.”
“Will Sherry’s parents be home?”
“I guess.”
Which means no. “I’ll give them a call.”
“No one else’s parents are calling.”
As if this is the least bit persuasive. “I promise not to say anything to embarrass you.”
“Just forget it.” Melissa shoves back her chair. “Brittany’s here.”
Melissa’s departures are always so swift. Eve misses the days when she was allowed to be part of the process, entreated to find shoes, select barrettes. Now Melissa leaves in a surly whirlwind, out the door in seconds. Eve follows her daughter into the garage and punches the button on the wall. The garage door rumbles up to reveal a little blue car waiting on the driveway with its headlights off, pulsing with hip-hop music. Brittany sits behind the wheel, round-faced, with dark eyes and a careless smile. She’s had her license for four months, which makes her the most popular girl among her friends. Melissa’s counting the days until she takes her driver’s test, crossing off the squares on the kitchen calendar one by one. She’s already campaigning hard to use David’s car when he’s out of town.
Eve waves to Brittany, who waves back and turns down the radio. “Hi, Mrs. Lattimore.”
“Hi, honey. You know the rules, right?”
“No texting. No speeding. No one but Melissa in the car.” She says it in a chant.
Melissa’s finished putting on her boots. She climbs in the passenger seat, frowning. She doesn’t like it when Eve quizzes her friends. Don’t you trust me, Mom?
Eve does trust Melissa. It’s the world she doesn’t trust.
Brittany backs the VW down the driveway, and Eve reaches up to press the button. The garage door lowers, sealing the space in darkness. When she hears it bump the ground, she opens the kitchen door and goes back inside.
Tyler’s up in his bedroom, sitting in front of his monitors with his back to her. The minty smell of toothpaste lingers in the air. He has never once tried to fool her into thinking he’s brushed his teeth when he really hasn’t, unlike Melissa, who’d been quite the con artist when she was little.
“Who’s online?” Eve asks. He’s got his hand on the computer mouse, and if she were to take a step to the right, she’d see his forearm and then the tender crook of his elbow. She can’t. She can’t look at it, knowing. Tyler must sense it, the way she stands so strangely behind him and out of sight.
“Joaquin. Alan P.”
“Yoshi?” she asks, but he shakes his head. He gnaws his thumbnail as he stares at the screen. He’s worried and trying not to show it. He’s not that innocent and trusting little boy anymore. He understands what even a small sunburn means, or what could be going on when he doesn’t hear from his XP friends. It had taken her ages to get him to agree to talk to the psychologist she’d found. The man had come highly recommended. They’d waited two months to see him, and he’d even agreed to come and meet with Tyler here, in their house. But he’d come downstairs after an hour behind Tyler’s closed bedroom door and shaken his head. Let me know if he changes his mind, he’d said. He was stupid, Tyler told her later. And he smelled like cheese.
But Eve knows the real problem was that he’d asked Tyler questions her son didn’t want to answer. Are you afraid? Are you unhappy? How has this life been for you?
She breaks a rule with herself. “I heard from that doctor at Johns Hopkins, the one who’s working on a cream. Remember?” She doesn’t like to tell him about possible cures. She doesn’t like raising his hopes only to watc
h him suffer when they’re not realized. “He says he’s made a small breakthrough.” There are so few people with XP that doctors haven’t searched for a cure. But sometimes a potential cure arises from other research. She’s begged the scientists to forgo human trial and just give Tyler the new medicine. She’s told them she’ll sign any legal papers, argued that he doesn’t have the time to go through the normal process. Over and over, her pleas have fallen on deaf ears.
“Great.” He doesn’t look up with that eager, wide-eyed grin. He doesn’t even glance up with skepticism. He’s seeing beyond the edges of her assurances, just as she’s growing more emphatic in making them.
“What’s wrong, honey?” she says, and he spins his chair around to face her. He glowers at her, his lower lip pushed out. He looks just like the small boy she remembers. “I told you,” he says. “It wasn’t me.”
She’s confused. So he’s not thinking about his sunburn. “Are we talking about the milk?”
“She lies right to your face.”
“Melissa? Come on, Ty.”
“You always believe her. She doesn’t even have to say a word.”
Where is this coming from? Maybe Melissa had been the one to leave the milk out this time. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to pay more attention.”
“You don’t even know,” he mutters.
“Know what?”
He stares at the floor, still pouting, then pushes back his chair. “It’s time.”
She glances at the clock and sees that he’s right. Every morning, the sun rises two minutes later. Every morning, she gains this tiny fraction of time with him. Until the vernal equinox, when it all snaps back.
“Have a good day.” She hates to leave. “I’ll see you at eight-ten.”
She stands in the hallway, as Tyler closes the door and turns the latch. That small, hard click. It’s the most ruthless sound in the world.
Dr. Brien calls at 8:32. “Eve,” he says, “it’s okay. Put aloe on it and watch for any changes.”
“Okay,” she says. “Thank you.” Another dodged bullet. She picks up her cell phone to text Tyler the news.
DAVID
The Metro station’s crowded, even for a Friday. Men and women in suits carry briefcases, their faces set in impassive, don’t-talk-to-me ways. Laborers, tourists, kids in private school uniforms, the cords of their iPods dangling from their ears. They speak to one another in code, bursts of words that send them smirking or laughing. He pictures Melissa among them. She’d like the Metro. It’s clean, fast.
The lights along the track blink, and the crowd shuffles forward. Down the dark tunnel, glowing headlights appear. The ground trembles and the train emerges, whooshing to a stop. He lines up and, as the doors slide open, pushes his way inside. There’s a pregnant woman behind him, and he moves aside to let her take the last remaining seat. She smiles at him in gratitude.
The escalator carries him up to the busy sidewalk. Tall buildings line the street. Traffic’s bumper-to-bumper. The sun has come up while he was underground. The pale blue sky is flat and hard with heat. His phone pings, and he checks the display. Eve’s called twice, he sees. He’ll listen to her messages when he gets to his office.
He signs in at the lobby, slides his pass through the reader, nods to the security guard, and heads for the elevator. At the sixteenth floor, he gets out into that familiar canned air smell. Beige hallways stretch away in two directions. Gold letters hang on the facing wall, spelling out the firm’s name. In three months, no more than six, his name will be added to the list of partners.
The musical ping of the elevator and Renée steps out, balancing a cardboard tray of paper cups, her lips pursed in concentration. She’s wearing her navy suit, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Surprise.” She pulls a cup free and extends it. “Double shot, one sugar.”
“You’re a mind-reader.” The brand the office uses barely qualifies as coffee, and the little coffee shop in his apartment building has been closed for months. He takes a welcome sip.
“No, I just know your office light was still on when I left last night.” She falls into step beside him. “Did Tyler have a nice party?”
“I assume so.” No big deal, Tyler had mumbled on Skype last night. He’d seemed to mean it. David couldn’t recall his own fourteenth birthday. He probably hadn’t even had a party, and if he had, he wouldn’t have cared whether or not his father had attended. Sometimes David feels as though he’s looking down a long tunnel at his son and catching only glimpses.
“It must be hard, living so far away from your family. I don’t know how you do it.”
At first, there had been an exhilaration to his homecomings, every weekend like a honeymoon. Covering Eve’s mouth so the kids couldn’t hear her moan, her hands gripping his shoulders so hard, she left marks. They’d promised each other they’d make it work, but now he sees all the ways in which they’ve failed. She calls and leaves terse voice messages, and he takes his time getting around to listening to them. “How’s your ankle?” Usually, they run together after work, but last night she’d had to go alone.
Renée makes a face. She’s not traditionally pretty. Her teeth are a little too big, and her chin a shade too narrow. But David’s noticed how all the guys in the office can’t take their eyes off her. “I iced it when I got home,” she says. “Getting old sucks.”
She’s thirty-three, which hardly qualifies as old. But he knows what she means. He’s forty-two and can remember when he used to run six miles and barely break a sweat. They’ve reached his office and he hands her his coffee so he can fish out his key. “What’s your weekend look like?” he asks.
“Filled with the usual wedding craziness. Dress shopping with Jeffery’s mom, reception hall hunting. It’s ridiculous how far in advance you have to book these places.” She rolls her eyes. She’s from North Dakota, where there are no waiting lines for anything.
He opens the door and she leans against the doorjamb. “What kind of wedding did you have?” she asks. “No, wait. Let me guess.” She gazes around the room, at the framed photographs, the fake fern on the credenza that his secretary insisted livened up the place, the rows of books slotted into the bookcase. “Something very simple and grand. Eve wore satin and carried gardenias. Am I right?”
Miles and miles of lace, pink lilies and yellow daisies clasped in front of Eve as she walked toward him, her eyes steady on his, his heart bumping against his ribs. He’d looked around, grinning at his good fortune, only to see Eve’s father glowering from the pew. The old man had hated David from the get-go. “Something like that,” he says.
“I knew it.” She hands him back his coffee. “Well, I guess I’d better get cracking on the Compton file.”
“Let me know if you need any help.”
“You wouldn’t have a magic wand, would you? I’d love to make it disappear.”
A magic wand would be something. Eve’s been searching for one for years.
The request comes through around nine. Preston, the fellow just down the hall, has called out sick. Can David get the spreadsheets ready for Tuesday’s meeting with the client?
“Sure,” he says, his mind scrambling over his work plan for the day. He’ll skip lunch, that’s a given, and if he leaves by five-thirty, he should still be able to make it to National in time to catch his flight.
Preston’s secretary emails him the files and he clicks them open. Pages filled with numbers, tidy columns that show the ebb and flow of their client’s accounts.
Renée stops by. She’s removed her jacket and opened the collar of her white blouse. A necklace glints gold against her throat. “Don’t tell me you’re working through lunch again.”
He glances at the clock and is surprised to see it’s almost noon. Clocks are everywhere at home, mounted beside each door, above the charts Eve prints out of each month’s sunrise and sunset schedule. Everywhere he turns, it seems, he encounters the motion of a minute hand. “Preston’s sick.”
“More likely h
is wife didn’t show up to take their kid for the day.” She tilts her head. “Why don’t I bring you back something? Which do you want, turkey or roast beef?”
These are his usual orders. She’ll even know to tell them to hold the mayo, add an extra dill pickle. “Surprise me.”
“Sure.”
He returns his attention to the spreadsheet opened before him. He checks Preston’s algorithms for the third time, and they seem tight. So it’s something else, something that he’s not seeing.
It’s the deposits that don’t match. He flips back a few screens, studies the numbers there, then carries them forward. There it is. The decimal’s in the wrong place. A small error, and he can understand Preston having made it.
He moves the decimal, but now the numbers go off-kilter in a different way. He has a sense of foreboding. Page by page, he begins to study the second and fifth columns.
“Here you go,” Renée says. She’s standing there, hip cocked, holding a Styrofoam container. “I got you chips, too.” The smile on her face dims. “What?” She comes around the desk to study the laptop screen. He points to the column of numbers. “Seven thousand dollars. Gone.”
“But how?”
“Preston stole it.”
“No.” Her breath stirs the hairs at the back of his neck. “No way.”
“I know, but there it is.” He’s always liked Preston. The man shows a rare sense of humor in those interminable monthly budget meetings. They’ve gone out for the occasional beer and talked about the Skins’ chances. “It goes back eight months.”
“What!” She straightens. “Fifty-six thousand dollars?”
“Somehow he thought he could get away with it.”
“This is awful.” She leans back against the desk and looks at him, her arms crossed. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Maybe you should talk to him, give him a chance to come clean.”
“That won’t change anything. The client’s coming in Tuesday. He’s going to expect a report.”