The words kept echoing through her mind six hours later when she’d gazed numbly down at the face that was so utterly expressionless as to be almost unrecognizable.
Caroline wasn’t quite sure when the anger had begun to creep up on her.
Not at the funeral, where she’d sat with her arms holding her children close. Maybe at the burial, where she’d stood clutching their hands in the fading afternoon light as if they, too, might disappear into the grave that had swallowed up her husband.
That was when she’d first realized that Brad must have known he’d be alone in total darkness by the time he finished his run around the lake. And both of them knew how dangerous the park was after dark. Why had he gone? Why had he risked it? But she knew the answer to those questions, too. Even if he’d thought about it, he’d have finished his run. That was one of the things she loved about him, that he always finished whatever he started.
Books he didn’t like, but finished anyway.
Rocks that looked easy to climb, but turned out to be almost impossible to scale. Almost, but not quite.
“Well, why couldn’t you have quit just once?” she’d whispered as she peered out into the darkness of that evening four days after he’d died. “Why couldn’t you just once have said, ‘This is really stupid,’ and turned around and come home?” But he hadn’t, and she knew that even if the thought had occurred to him, he still would have finished what he set out to do. That was when anger had first begun to temper her grief, and though the anger brought guilt along with it, she also knew that it was the anger rather than the grief that had let her keep functioning during those first terrible weeks after her life had been torn apart. Now, more than half a year later, the anger was finally beginning to give way to something else, something she couldn’t yet quite identify. The first shock of Brad’s death was over. The turmoil of emotions — the first numbness brought on by the shock of his death, followed by the grief, then the anger — was finally starting to settle down. As each day had crept inexorably by, she had slowly begun to deal with the new reality of her life. She was by herself now, with two children to raise, and no matter how much she might sometimes wish she could just disappear into the same grave in which Brad now lay, she also knew she loved her children every bit as much as she had loved their father.
No matter how she felt, their lives would go on, and so would hers. So she’d gone back to work at the antique shop, and done her best to help her children begin healing from wounds the loss of their father had caused. There had been just enough money in their savings account to keep them afloat for a few months, but last week she had withdrawn the last of it, and next week the rent was due. Her financial resources had sunk even lower than those of her emotions.
“Mom?” she heard Laurie calling from the kitchen. “Is there any more maple syrup?”
Sitting up and untangling herself from the sheets — and the turmoil of her own emotions as well — Caroline shooed her son out of the room. “Go tell your sister to look on the second shelf in the pantry. There should be one more bottle. And you’re not going to be late for baseball practice. I promise.”
As Ryan skittered out of the room, already yelling to his sister, Caroline got out of bed, opened the blinds, and looked out at the day. As the smell of Laurie’s waffles filled her nostrils and the brilliant light of a spring Saturday flooded the room, Caroline shook off the vestiges of the previous night’s dream.
“We’re going to be all right,” she told herself.
She only wished she felt as certain as the words sounded.
Caroline could feel the tension as soon as she walked into the kitchen. Ryan was at the kitchen table, a deep scowl furrowing his brow as he glowered at his sister. Laurie, still three months shy of her thirteenth birthday, hadn’t yet outgrown her delight in stirring up her younger brother, and this morning she was employing a tactic that never failed: she was simply acting as if she didn’t know he was mad at her. Now she offered her mother a transparently bright smile that Caroline knew was intended to win her alliance in whatever quarrel had developed during the ten minutes since Ryan had left her bedroom. Shaking her head at the syrup-drenched waffle Laurie put at her place, she poured a cup of coffee, sat down, glanced at Ryan, then fixed her gaze on Laurie. “Okay, what did you do to him?” she asked.
Laurie’s smile weakened slightly, but she did her best not to let it fail altogether. “Nothing!” she insisted, shrugging with exaggerated innocence. “
Ryan’s scowl deepened. “She says we’re going to the zoo. But you said I could play baseball this morning. Dad and I always played baseball on Saturday, and this afternoon I’m supposed to meet some of the guys from school for soccer—”
“Why do you have to play baseball
“I don’t have to!” Ryan flared. “If Dad were—”
This time it was Caroline who interrupted the boy. “But he’s not here.” Though her voice caught, she managed to control the tears that suddenly blurred her eyes. Saturdays — especially perfect Saturdays like this one — had always been their favorite day. Before the children were born, when they’d still lived in the little apartment up near Columbia University, she and Brad had wandered endlessly, exploring the city, searching for the perfect neighborhood in which to raise their children. Just before Laurie was born, they’d found the apartment where she and the kids still lived, just a block from the park, on a street that, though not as quiet as some of those on the other side of the park, wasn’t nearly as noisy as some of the West Side blocks. After Ryan was born, their Saturdays had begun focusing on the park, where they’d quickly met other young couples raising families in the city. Since Brad had died, Caroline had done her best to keep up the family activities, but everything, of course, had changed. Though last fall Brad had begun letting Ryan go to the park by himself to play baseball or soccer after school, Caroline could no longer bear the thought of either of her children being alone there. Ryan hadn’t liked the new restriction, but he’d gone along with it, as long as she took him on Saturdays. But Laurie, having forgotten that up until last summer she’d enjoyed baseball as much as her brother, was now at the age where she wanted as little to do with her brother as possible. So Saturdays had become a tug-o’-war between her two children, with Caroline put in the position of being unable to satisfy either of them. Still, she had to try. “How about if we compromise?” she suggested. “We’ll watch Ryan play ball this morning, and walk over to the zoo this afternoon. And after we see the zoo, maybe Ryan can still get to soccer with his friends.”
The last of Laurie’s smile faded away. “The zoo in the park? I hate that place. The cages are awful, and all the animals look like they’d be better off dead!” Too late, Laurie heard her own words and saw the flash of pain in her mother’s eyes. “I–I’m sorry—” she began, but Caroline quickly shook her head.
“It’s okay,” she said. “You’re not even wrong. But for us all to go up to the Bronx…” Her voice trailed off as she silently calculated how much it would cost: including the subway, nearly thirty dollars, even if they spent nothing on snacks or even just Cokes.
Thirty dollars that a year ago would have been nothing.
Thirty dollars that now she simply didn’t have.
Not with the rent unpaid, and all the credit cards maxed out.
Laurie read her mother’s expression perfectly. “I have some money,” she said. “I’ve got more than a hundred dollars in my baby-sitting account. Why can’t I take us?”
“Because you’re going to need that money for college,” Caroline replied. “And just because things are a little tight for me right now, we’re not going to raid your baby-sitting account.”
“I’ve got some money in my piggy bank,” Ryan offered, his scowl giving way to a worried frown. “We could use that.”
The phone rescued Caroline from having to figure out a way to reject Ryan’s offer without hurting his feelings, but as soon as she heard Claire Robinson’s voice, she suspected that whatever plans she and the kids might have had for the day were about to be ruined. Her employer was using the extra cheerful tone that Caroline and the two other people who worked at Antiques By Claire had learned to recognize as the precursor to words that were going to be nowhere near as pleasant as the voice that uttered them.
“Caroline, darling?” she trilled, and Caroline could picture her sitting behind her Louis XIV desk, a cigarette between the first two fingers of her right hand as she cradled the phone on her left shoulder, flipping through the
