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“No.”
“Did you and Lucy have a fight?”
“No.”
“Was her mom or dad mean to you?”
“No.”
Something wasn’t right. “Then what?”
She shrugged. “Nothing. I just don’t want to.”
Short of calling his daughter a liar, which wouldn’t get the desired results anyway, Mark was going to have to leave it at that.
He didn’t like it.
“Turn around, sweetie. Let’s fix that ponytail,” he said, tugging gently on the beige-and-blue holder she’d chosen and sliding it down the silky length of her hair. Her mother’s hair.
“I’ll call Lucy’s mom first thing this morning,” he said, compelled at least to try one more time. “If you’re sure that’s what you really want.”
She nodded, helping him create another crooked ponytail.
“HELLO?”
“Hi, Mom. It’s me.” Meredith held the cell phone against her ear with one shoulder while she unwrapped a granola bar, which—with a glass of Diet Coke—would be her breakfast.
“Meri, hi!”
Meredith’s mood sank. Too much exuberance. She’d been right to follow her impulse to call. Something was wrong.
She had to leave in five minutes if she was going to get to class before her kids started to arrive. And with third-graders, that was always a good idea.
“I was feeling a little uneasy about you this morning,” she said, holding her unwrapped breakfast in one hand as she put down her drink long enough to haul her school bag up onto her shoulder. The big green M&M emblazoned on the black patent leather was facing out.
“I went out to go to bridge club last night and my tire was flat,” she said. Evelyn Foster, a retired scientist and executive from Phillip’s Petroleum, lived in a nice condominium in Florida in an active-living adult community.
“Did you call road service?” Drink back in hand, Meredith headed for the door. “You got that extended warranty.”
“I know. I called and they’re coming out first thing this morning.”
Hmm. Then…
“Nope, I still feel uneasy. Come on, Mom, I’m late. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Evelyn chuckled. “You know how hard it is having a kid you can’t keep things from?” she asked.
Meredith’s tension eased, but only slightly. “Your kid’s all grown up, Mom. You don’t need to hide things. Come on, what gives?”
She was in her car—a Mustang convertible, which she never drove with the top down.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” Evelyn said, drawing out the words in a way that told her they were a lie. “I have to go in for a liver biopsy in the morning.”
Her tires squealed and Meredith stopped fifty feet short of the sign at the end of her block. “What?” A quick, automatic glance in the mirror assured her no one was behind her on the dead-end street.
“I had my annual physical last week and the blood work raised a few questions.”
“What’s the worst case scenario?”
“Cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, maybe hepatitis….”
Meredith dropped her granola bar onto the car’s console next to her drink. Stared out the windshield, registering nothing—focusing. Feeling.
Her widowed mother. Alone in Florida—except for the many friends she’d made. Kind. Sixty-one. Active.
Alive. Very alive.
Meredith nodded. She stared again, barely aware of a horn honking behind her, a car speeding around her.
And then, blinking, she picked up her granola bar, stepped on the gas and turned onto the road that would take her to school.
“It’s going to be okay, Mom,” she said.
“It is?”
She found it hard to listen to the fear in her mother’s voice. All her life Evelyn had been Meredith’s strength. Sometimes her only strength. Meredith didn’t want to think about her mother getting older. Failing.
“Yes,” she told her, grinning over her own relief as much as for the relief she felt for her mom.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know,” Meredith told her, eating half the bar in two bites. “But you feel fine to me.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yep.”
“Well, I knew it wasn’t serious,” Evelyn said brusquely. Then she added, “I love you, Meri.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
“Be safe.”
“You, too.”
Meredith clicked the phone shut and took a long swig of soda. She was tired and the day had hardly begun.
“SUSAN INVITED US over to her house for dinner tonight. You want to go?” Mark had been working up to the question most of the morning and now they were almost at school.
His daughter, ponytail centered on her head after a third try, turned away. “No.”
He could barely hear the words aimed at the passenger window, but her slumped posture said enough and his mood slipped a notch.
“How come? She’s going to make chicken alfredo. You loved her alfredo, remember?”
“I just don’t wanna.”
“But Monday night’s our night to have dinner with Susan.”
“It’s your night, not mine,” Kelsey said. “I never said I wanted to.”
This was going from bad to worse.
“Talk to me, Kelse,” Mark said, taking the long way to school. “Why don’t you like Susan? Do you resent the time I spend with her?”
“No.”
“Then what? Is it that she’s not your mom?”
“No!” The derision in the child’s tone put that one to rest.
Mark pulled onto the shoulder of the country road he’d chosen, put the car in Park. “Then what?”
His question garnered no response. Not even a shake of the head. But he had plenty of time to analyze the perfection of the ponytail his daughter was showing him.
“Why don’t you like her?” he asked again. He couldn’t deal with what he didn’t know.
“I do like her.”
Really? “Then why are you so quiet around her?”
The hardness in the eyes that turned to face him shocked Mark. He’d had no idea his daughter was capable of such strong negative emotion. “She treats me like I’m an alien from Mars.”
“No, she doesn’t,” he said, and then wished he’d bitten his tongue instead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to discount your feelings.”
Kelsey showed no reaction other than to stare out the windshield at blacktop, gravel and emptiness.
“Susan’s not very good with kids,” Mark said. “But only because she’s never been around them and not because she doesn’t like them. She never had a chance to be a kid herself. But she likes you, Kelse. She wants to get to know you, to be your friend.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
Don’t argue perspective, his schooling taught him. It was a lose-lose approach. “Why do you think that?”
“I dunno.” Hard not to argue, when the opposing side gave illogical answers.
“You don’t have a problem with Ms. Foster—Meredith,” he said, in response to his daughter’s knowing glare. Meredith had been at their house the previous Thanksgiving for dinner, helping Susan with the meal. She’d granted the child the right to call her by her first name, since Kelsey had graduated from her class months before. As long as she could remember not to do it at school.
“So?” Kelsey said, sliding down in the seat as she crossed her arms over her chest. When had his precocious pal turned into a drama queen?
“She and Susan are best friends.”
“So?”
Well, he didn’t know. That was the point of this conversation. He thought. But obviously Kelsey didn’t think so. Until the past few months, they’d had no problem communicating. What had changed?
Not him. At least he didn’t think so.
“You never talk to Susan.” He tried a different approach, glancing at his watch. In fifteen minutes they were going to be late.
Good thing he was the boss. Because he was willing to miss the whole damn day if that was what it took to reach an understanding with Kelsey again.
“She never talks to me.”
This was getting more frustrating by the second.
“But you don’t wait for Meredith to talk to you.”
The child’s eloquent answer to that was a shrug.
He could make her clean her room. He could make her brush her teeth. He could make her do her homework. But he couldn’t make her share her confidences.
“What do you two talk about?” he asked, without much hope of enlightenment.
Kelsey sighed. “I’m growing up, Daddy. Girls have stuff.”
Stuff. Uh-huh. For the first time since his daughter’s birth, Mark felt completely incapable of caring for her.
“What kind of stuff?”
“You know,” she said, having a stare down with him. “Girl stuff.”
He almost choked. Did girls start that stuff at nine? He’d thought he had more time….
And then he caught the uncertainty in Kelsey’s innocent gaze. The child was out of her league.
At least they still had something in common.
“You don’t want to tell me.”
“Nope.”
“Is everything okay?”
She glanced over at him and then away. “Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”
He had no idea.
“Have you ever tried to talk to Susan about some of this ‘stuff’?”
