The night Sam was killed, I lay staring at the bedroom ceiling far more than I slept. Every time I started to drift away, I’d jerk awake with unwelcome images. Sam’s scarf. The SUV, forever lonely. A wife, bereft of her lifelong helpmeet. Crying children.
When the alarm clock beeped, fatigue hung on me like a heavy overcoat. Then I made the mistake of working out how much sleep I’d had. “Four hours,” I said out loud, thumping downstairs in the only clean clothes I could find: a pair of khaki pants coated with black cat and brown dog hair, and a bright green sweater given to me by my mother.
Until now I’d worn it only when St. Patrick’s Day fell on a day I didn’t have to leave the house. My mother’s choice of clothing gifts always made me look sallow and slightly jaundiced. My personal rule for unsuitable clothing gifts was to wear the article a minimum of six times before giving it away, but Mom’s gifts were an exception. Three times, tops.
“Passing on the right!”
Jenna clattered down the stairs ahead of me, her long hair bouncing against her back. The sight normally would have made me smile, but today . . .
“Jenna! Did you comb your hair?”
My daughter stopped at the bottom of the stairs, one hand on the newel post. Without looking back, she said, “Sure. What’s for breakfast?”
“Did you comb out your hair this morning?”
“You mean like
“What other kind is there? Back upstairs, young lady, and bring that comb to the kitchen. I want to see it slide through your hair from roots to ends without stopping.”
I didn’t want to scold her. I wanted to be compassionate and thoughtful; I wanted to be the mother we all dreamed of having. But my dreams last night had been bad and today’s mothering was headed the same way.
Jenna’s bright face soured. She stomped back up the stairs, each footfall making the house shudder.
I wanted to call her back, to say I didn’t mean to be this way, that I hadn’t slept well, that I was sad about Sam, that I was confused and scared and needed a hug to make my scary thoughts go away.
Instead, I went into the kitchen and hauled out bowls and boxes of cereal.
Oliver skipped into the room and slid into his chair. “What’s Jenna so mad about?”
Her pathetic excuse for a mother. “That’s Jenna’s business,” I said, “not yours.”
His eyes went wide and, for the second time in five minutes, I wanted to take back what I’d said. This was not shaping up to be a good day. Don’t make that a self-fulfilling prophecy, I told myself. Dream your day and live into it.
As long as the dreams weren’t like last night’s.
“Jenna,” I told Oliver, “is angry with me.”
“For how long?”
I put bowl and spoon in front of him. “Not very, I hope.”
“Like only until after breakfast?” His face was a mixture of curiosity, hope, anticipation, and wariness.
Jenna clumped into the room, brandishing a comb. “Is this good enough?” She inserted the comb into her hair, then dragged it all the way through with a flourish that would have done Liberace proud.
Oliver gave me a look. This one was much easier to interpret. It said, “You’ve made Jenna mad so I’m going to be mad at you, too.” The entire situation was all my fault, which made three of us who were angry at me.
But I was the grown-up in the room, so I had to make at least a pretense of knowing what I was doing. I didn’t, of course—never had and probably never would—but it wouldn’t do to let my children know that. Not now, anyway. Maybe when they were older. Like when they turned thirty.
“Jenna,” I said, “I’m sorry for snapping at you about your hair.”
She halted, comb halfway through her second demonstration, and looked at me sideways.
Another breath. “I didn’t sleep well last night and I’m still very tired. Sometimes when you’re tired it’s easy to get mad and scold lovely daughters when they don’t deserve it.”
Jenna dropped into her chair and crossed her arms, tapping the comb against her upper arm. “Well . . . okay.” She flashed me a bright smile.
“You should have a glass of warm milk tonight,” Oliver said seriously. “That’s supposed to help people sleep.”
The thought of drinking warm milk was about as appealing as the thought of eating pea soup. Ick. I smiled at my son. “What a nice idea. Thank you.”
Jenna poured a stream of cornflakes into her bowl. “Why couldn’t you sleep?”
I pushed the pitcher of milk her way. Jenna asking about my personal welfare? This was a first. She was a kind and sunny child, but she’d never been inclined to put herself into someone else’s shoes. Could part of her growing up and growing away include a growing empathy with others?
“Thank you for asking, sweetie. That’s very thoughtful.”
She shrugged and poured about half a gallon of milk on her cereal.
Last night they’d both been on the verge of sleep when I’d picked them up from Marina’s, and I hadn’t said anything about Sam’s death. I’d told two people: Marina, via shocked whispers in the kitchen; and Evan, via a phone call after the kids were in bed.
I considered what to tell them, couldn’t think of anything very good, then just started talking. If I kept at it long enough, maybe I’d eventually figure out the right thing to say. Last year at the breakfast table I’d told them about the murder of their principal. A year and change later, here I was doing it again. This was turning into a macabre tradition and it needed to stop immediately. “Do either of you know Blake or Mia Helmstetter?”
“The Blake who plays the piano?” Jenna asked. Once upon a time she’d taken piano lessons, but soccer and now hockey had left no time for lessons, let alone practice.
“The Mia with the yellow hair?” Oliver asked. His sister and I both stared at him. Never once had Oliver commented on a girl’s appearance.
Jenna opened her mouth, but I cut her off. “Yes, that Mia and that Blake. They probably won’t be in school today.”
“Are they sick?” Jenna asked.
Sick at heart, I wanted to say. “No, their father died last night.”
My two children looked at each other, communicating a silent message that I couldn’t intercept. Jenna plunged her spoon into the cereal. “Mr. Helmstetter’s dead?” She shoved the flakes into her mouth, and, chewing, asked the question I’d been dreading. “Dead like Mr. Stoltz, or dead like Mrs. Mephisto?”
Though the murder of Agnes Mephisto had made an impact in their short lives, so had the death of Norman Stoltz, an elderly neighbor who’d had a killing heart attack. I took one of her hands and one of Oliver’s in my own, stroking their knuckles gently with my thumbs, trying to rub my love into them. “Like Mrs. Mephisto.”
“Killed dead?” Oliver’s eyelids opened wide enough to show white all around his blue irises.
I let go of his hand and reached out to put my arm around his bony shoulders. “Chief Eiseley told me himself. The police will find out who killed Mr. Helmstetter. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“So there’s a new bad guy.” Jenna pulled her hand out from under mine and went back to eating breakfast.
“I’m afraid so.”
Oliver looked up at me, his long eyelashes curling in perfect arcs. “How many bad guys are there?”
How was I supposed to answer that? Option one: Tell him evil lurked everywhere and it would be best to lock the doors and never venture outside. Option two: Tell him that there were only a couple of bad guys out there, that one was already in jail, that the other one would be soon, and that after that he wouldn’t have to worry about bad guys ever again.
I rubbed Oliver’s back and waited for an option three to come along.
“Are there lots of them?” His voice quavered and he edged up onto my lap. Eight years old was still young enough to want to be on Mommy’s lap when monsters threatened.
Option three, where are you?
“No, there aren’t,” I said firmly. “Most people are very nice. It’s kind of like”—Bingo!—“like dogs. There are big dogs and little dogs. Yellow and brown and white and short-haired and long-haired dogs.”
