"I know. I do too."
"Can we have a dog?" Luke wanted to know, and turned her face to his with his hands. "Can we ask Daddy? Can we have a dog like Jessie and Wyatt?"
"We'll talk about it later."
"I want Daddy," Gavin said again, with a rising pitch in his voice.
He knows, Stella thought. He knows something is wrong, something's terribly wrong. I have to do this.
I have to do it now.
"We need to sit down." Carefully, very carefully, she closed the door behind her, carried Luke to the couch. She sat with him in her lap and laid her arm over Gavin's shoulder.
"If I had a dog," Luke told her soberly, "I'd take care of him. When's Daddy coming?"
"He can't come."
" 'Cause of the busy trip?"
"He ..." Help me. God, help me do this. "There was an accident. Daddy was in an accident."
"Like when the cars smash?" Luke asked, and Gavin said nothing, nothing at all as his eyes burned into her face.
"It was a very bad accident. Daddy had to go to heaven."
"But he has to come home after."
"He can't. He can't come home anymore. He has to stay in heaven now."
"I don't want him there." Gavin tried to wrench away, but she held him tightly. "I want him to come home now."
"I don't want him there either, baby. But he can't come back anymore, no matter how much we want it."
Luke's lips trembled. "Is he mad at us?"
"No. No, no, no, baby. No." She pressed her face to his hair as her stomach pitched and what was left
of her heart throbbed like a wound. "He's not mad at us. He loves us. He'll always love us."
"He's dead." There was fury in Gavin's voice, rage on his face. Then it crumpled, and he was just a little boy, weeping in his mother's arms.
She held them until they slept, then carried them to her bed so none of them would wake alone. As she had countless times before, she slipped off their shoes, tucked blankets around them.
She left a light burning while she walked—it felt like floating—through the house, locking doors, checking windows. When she knew everything was safe, she closed herself into the bathroom. She ran a bath so hot the steam rose off the water and misted the room.
Only when she slipped into the tub, submerged herself in the steaming water, did she allow that knot to snap. With her boys sleeping, and her body shivering in the hot water, she wept and wept and wept.
* * *
She got through it. A few friends suggested she might take a tranquilizer, but she didn't want to block the feelings. Nor did she want to have a muzzy head when she had her children to think of.
She kept-it simple. Kevin would have wanted simple. She chose every detail—the music, the flowers, the photographs—of his memorial service. She selected a silver box for his ashes and planned to scatter them on the lake. He'd proposed to her on the lake, in a rented boat on a summer afternoon.
She wore black for the service, a widow of thirty-one, with two young boys and a mortgage, and a heart so broken she wondered if she would feel pieces of it piercing her soul for the rest of her life.
She kept her children close, and made appointments with a grief counselor for all of them.
Details. She could handle the details. As long as there was something to do, something definite, she could hold on. She could be strong.
Friends came, with their sympathy and covered dishes and teary eyes. She was grateful to them more for the distraction than the condolences. There was no condolence for her.
Her father and his wife flew up from Memphis, and them she leaned on. She let Jolene, her father's wife, fuss over her, and soothe and cuddle the children, while her own mother complained about having to be in the same room as that woman.
When the service was over, after the friends drifted away, after she clung to her father and Jolene before their flight home, she made herself take off the black dress.
She shoved it into a bag to send to a shelter. She never wanted to see it again.
Her mother stayed. Stella had asked her to stay a few days. Surely under such circumstances she was entitled to her mother. Whatever friction was, and always had been, between them was nothing
compared with death.
When she went into the kitchen, her mother was brewing coffee. Stella was so grateful not to have to think of such a minor task, she crossed over and kissed Carla's cheek.
"Thanks. I'm so sick of tea."
"Every time I turned around that woman was making more damn tea."
"She was trying to help, and I'm not sure I could've handled coffee until now."
Carla turned. She was a slim woman with short blond hair. Over the years, she'd battled time with regular trips to the surgeon. Nips, tucks, lifts, injections had wiped away some of the years. And left her looking whittled and hard, Stella thought.
She might pass for forty, but she'd never look happy about it.
"You always take up for her."
"I'm not taking up for Jolene, Mom." Wearily, Stella sat. No more details, she realized. No more something that has to be done.
How would she get through the night?
"I don't see why I had to tolerate her."
"I'm sorry you were uncomfortable. But she was very kind. She and Dad have been married for, what, twenty-five years or so now. You ought to be used to it."
"I don't like having her in my face, her and that twangy voice. Trailer trash."
Stella opened her mouth, closed it again. Jolene hadn't come from a trailer park and was certainly not trash. But what good would it do to say so? Or to remind her mother that she'd been the one who'd wanted a divorce, the one to leave the marriage. Just as it wouldn't do any good to point out that Carla had been married twice since.
"Well, she's gone now."
"Good riddance."
Stella took a deep breath. No arguments, she thought, as her stomach clenched and unclenched like a
fist. Too tired to argue.
"The kids are sleeping. They're just worn out. Tomorrow ... we'll just deal with tomorrow. I guess that's the way it's going to be." She let her head fall back, closed her eyes. "I keep thinking this is a horrible dream, and I'll wake up any second. Kevin will be here. I don't... I can't imagine life without him. I can't stand to imagine it."
The tears started again. "Mom, I don't know what I'm going to do."
"Had insurance, didn't he?"
Stella blinked, stared as Carla set a cup of coffee in front of her. "What?"
"Life insurance. He was covered?"
"Yes, but—"
"You ought to talk to a lawyer about suing the airline. Better start thinking of practicalities." She sat with her own coffee. "It's what you're best at, anyway."
"Mom"—she spoke slowly as if translating a strange foreign language—"Kevin's dead."
"I know that, Stella, and I'm sorry." Reaching over, Carla gave Stella's hand a pat. "I dropped everything to come here and give you a hand, didn't I?"
"Yes." She had to remember that. Appreciate that.
"It's a damn fucked-up world when a man of his age dies for no good reason. Useless waste. I'll never understand it."
"No." Pulling a tissue out of her pocket, Stella rubbed the tears away. "Neither will I."
"I liked him. But the fact is, you're in a fix now. Bills, kids to support. Widowed with two growing boys. Not many men want to take on ready-made families, let me tell you."
"I don't want a man to take us on. God, Mom."
"You will," Carla said with a nod. 'Take my advice and make sure the next one's got money. Don't make my mistakes. You lost your husband, and that's hard. It's really hard. But women lose husbands every day. It's better to lose one this way than to go through a divorce."
The pain in Stella's stomach was too sharp for grief, too cold for rage. "Mom. We had Kevin's memorial service today. I have his ashes in a goddamn box in my bedroom."
"You want my help." She waggled the spoon. "I'm trying to give it to you. You sue the pants off the airline, get yourself a solid nest egg. And don't hook yourself up with some loser like I always do. You don't think divorce is a hard knock, too? Haven't been through one, have you? Well, I have. Twice. And I might as well tell you it's coming up on three. I'm done with that stupid son of a bitch.
You've got no idea what he's put me through. Not only is he an inconsiderate, loudmouthed asshole, but
I think he's been cheating on me."
She pushed away from the table, rummaged around, then cut herself a piece of cake. "He thinks I'm going to tolerate that, he's mistaken. I'd just love to see his face when he gets served with the papers. Today."
"I'm sorry your third marriage isn't working out," Stella said stiffly. "But it's a little hard for me to be sympathetic, since both the third marriage and the third divorce were your choice. Kevin's dead. My husband is dead, and that sure as hell wasn't my choice."
"You think I want to go through this again? You think I want to come here to help you out, then have your father's bimbo shoved in my face?"
"She's his wife, who has never been anything but decent to you and who has always treated me kindly."
'To your face." Carla stuffed a bite of cake into her mouth. "You think you're the only one with problems? With heartache? You won't be so quick to shrug it off when you're pushing fifty and facing
life alone."
"You're pushing fifty from the back end, Mom, and being alone is, again, your choice."
Temper turned Carla's eyes dark and sharp. "I don't appreciate that tone, Stella. I don't have to put up with it."
"No, you don't. You certainly don't. In fact, it would probably be best for both of us if you left. Right now. This was a bad idea. I don't know what I was thinking."
"You want me gone, fine." Carla shoved up from the table. "I'd just as soon get back to my own life.
You never had any gratitude in you, and if you couldn't be on my back about something you weren't happy. Next time you want to cry on somebody's shoulder, call your country bumpkin stepmother."
"Oh, I will," Stella murmured as Carla sailed out of the room. "Believe me."
She rose to carry her cup to the sink, then gave in to the petty urge and smashed it. She wanted to break everything as she'd been broken. She wanted to wreak havoc on the world as it had been on her.
Instead she stood gripping the edge of the sink and praying that her mother would pack and leave quickly. She wanted her out. Why had she ever thought she wanted her to stay? It was always the same between them. Abrasive, combative. No connection, no common ground.
But God, she'd wanted that shoulder. Needed it so much, just for one night. Tomorrow she would do whatever came next. But she'd wanted to be held and stroked and comforted tonight.
With trembling fingers she cleaned the broken shards out of the sink, wept over them a little as she poured them into the trash. Then she walked to the phone and called a cab for her mother.
They didn't speak again, and Stella decided that was for the best. She closed the door, listened to the
cab drive away.
Alone now, she checked on her sons, tucked blankets over them, laid her lips gently on their heads.
They were all she had now. And she was all they had.
She would be a better mother. She swore it. More patient. She would never, never let them down. She would never walk away when they needed her.
And when they needed her shoulder, by God, she would give it. No matter what. No matter when.
"You're first for me," she whispered. "You'll always be first for me."
In her own room, she undressed again, then took Kevin's old flannel robe out of the closet. She wrapped herself in it, in the familiar, heartbreaking smell of him.
Curling up on the bed, she hugged the robe close, shut her eyes, and prayed for morning. For what happened next.
TWO
Harper House
January 2004
She couldn't afford to be intimidated by the house, or by its mistress. They both had reputations.
The house was said to be elegant and old,with gardens that rivaled Eden. She'd just confirmed that for herself.
The woman was said to be interesting, somewhat solitary, and perhaps a bit "difficult." A word, Stella knew, that could mean anything from strong-willed to stone bitch.
Either way, she could handle it, she reminded herself as she fought the need to get up and pace. She'd handled worse.
She needed this job. Not just for the salary—and it was generous—but for the structure, for the challenge, for the doing. Doing more, she knew, than circling the wheel she'd fallen into back home.
She needed a life, something more than clocking time, drawing a paycheck that would be soaked up by bills. She needed, however self-help-book it sounded, something that fulfilled and challenged her.
Rosalind Harper was fulfilled, Stella was sure. A beautiful ancestral home, a thriving business. What was it like, she wondered, to wake up every morning knowing exactly where you belonged and where you were going?
