“Eat.”
Fifteen minutes later we were sitting at the round table in their kitchen. Rachel had taken a tray of snacks up to the kids—carrots, crackers, and grapes—while I’d examined the offerings in the garage’s chest freezer. Church ladies had dropped off so much food that Rachel wouldn’t need to cook for weeks.
I selected a medium-sized container of chicken soup and a loaf of homemade bread and carried them inside. By the time Rachel came downstairs, the microwave had dinged and I was almost done with the creation of two salads.
“Oh, goodness, Beth, you didn’t need to do all that.”
“I know. And I’m going to be bossy for a while. Sit. No, no protests. Sit.”
We sat, sipping soup, crunching on toast, and adding too many croutons to our salads.
“This single-mom thing,” she said, drenching her salad with French dressing. “How do you do it?”
Easy answer. “Not very well.”
“Oh, come on. Your kids are great, you run that wonderful bookstore, you have a beautiful house; you even have time to be secretary of the PTA. And you make it look so easy.”
My spoon halted halfway to my mouth. “I do?”
“Well, sure.”
The notion was so ludicrous that I couldn’t think of an appropriate reaction. Rachel went on, concentrating on grinding pepper onto her salad. “You have this air of competency. You always seem to know what to say and do. If you want to know the truth, I’ve always been a little jealous of you.”
A snort snuck out of my throat. Rachel looked up in surprise. “No, I mean it. I wish I was more like you. You’re smart and funny and brave and—”
It was the brave comment that did it. I dropped the spoon back into the bowl, threw my head back, and howled with laughter.
Rachel started giggling; then, as I kept going, her giggle turned into an outright laugh.
“I’m the least brave person in the world,” I said, wiping my eyes with a napkin. “At least I hope so.”
Rachel popped a crouton into her mouth. “Last year you saved your kids from Agnes Mephisto’s killer. You’re very courageous.”
She was making me sound like a Boy Scout. “It wasn’t like that. Honest. My children were being threatened. I just reacted. I didn’t have time to stop and think about the danger.” If I had, things might have turned out very differently, and I didn’t want to think about that, so I didn’t. “Any mother would have done the same.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t look convinced.
It suddenly seemed very important to make her understand. “Rachel, on the inside I’m a mess. Almost every minute of the day I’m sure I’m doing the wrong thing.”
“You are?”
“Even today, I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing by coming over here. I couldn’t decide if I was coming over too soon after the funeral, or if I was coming over too late after . . . well, after. Either way, I was bound to be wrong.”
“You really thought that?”
“The only thing I know for certain is that I love my children.” My voice was low and husky. “I would do anything,
Rachel’s gaze met mine. The look that passed between us was one of complete understanding and, in that moment, our relationship moved from acquaintanceship to solid friendship.
“Amen,” she said softly.
I wanted to reach across the table and grip her hand, but I wasn’t sure I could pull it off at all naturally. Then her fingers twitched in my direction. Hand outstretched, I leaned toward her, glad beyond belief that I hadn’t poked around in the front closet. She met me halfway and our shared grip promised support and understanding and love.
We released at the same time and went back to slurping soup. One can maintain strong emotion for only so long.
“The problem,” Rachel said between sips, “is how to do that. How do I keep them whole and happy? Love that phrase, by the way.”
“Thanks.” It had popped into my head out of the blue, but I was sure the thought wasn’t original. A poem? A minister’s sermon? “I don’t know how to do it, either. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but thanks to a lot of luck and the grace of God, they seem to be okay.” The upcoming teen years, however, were lurking around a dark corner with sharp pointed teeth. I sighed.
“Your kids are fine,” Rachel said. “Jenna is bright and pretty, and not only is Oliver the cutest little bug on the planet, but he’s very intuitive.”
I stopped with a forkful of salad halfway to my mouth. “You think so?”
“Didn’t Oliver tell you about the time he helped Mia get the pinecones out of her hair? Robert Laird and his bully friends snuck up on her at recess one day last year.”
No, Oliver hadn’t told me. Intuitive he might be, but communicative? Not so much. I sent up an extra-special thank-you that Robert, once one of Oliver’s special friends, had moved away. Hopefully far, far away.
I didn’t want to say that I couldn’t begin to guess at the virtues of her children, so I cheated. “I think Jenna has a crush on Blake.”
She smiled. “He says girls are gross, but I overheard him talking with his dad and—” She stopped, tucked her lips between her teeth, and concentrated on stirring her soup.
I let the wave of grief break over her and pass through. Then I said, “Isn’t it funny how we have them paired off already?”
She swallowed and nodded. “And how we picked careers for them when they were still in diapers. Sam . . .” Her voice caught and she started again. “One of Sam’s hopes when he started his company was to pass it on to one of the kids. I kept telling him that they might want nothing to do with a mobile shredding business, but he’d laugh and say it didn’t matter, that the only thing that mattered was teaching them how to juggle.”
“How to . . . ?”
“Juggle.” She smiled again. “It was how we met. Long story.” Her smile faded. “Now here I am with his children and not the foggiest idea what to do. What do you think?”
“Um . . .” If she was asking my advice, clearly I hadn’t impressed upon her the depths of my incompetence. I should have told her about the steak knife incident. Or better yet, the story of Beth and the Blender. If neither of those convinced her, surely the state of my closet floor would do the job. No one with so many unmatched shoes could possibly be considered a rational human being. Why I had a dozen solo shoes was one question; another was why I didn’t get rid of them.
She put her elbows on the table and laid her arms flat. It was the first time she’d looked truly engaged in our conversation, and my mouth got a little dry around the edges in anticipation of what was coming next. On the way over I hadn’t prepared for anything more than comforting the bereaved. I hoped she hadn’t been serious about wanting my opinion on the path her life should take. My own path was more a series of deer trails wandering through the woods, circling back on themselves every so often, coming to dead ends even more often, and never going anywhere.
“For the last few months,” she said, “ever since their secretary went part-time, I’ve been doing the bookkeeping for Sam and his partner.”
I hadn’t known Sam had a partner. I wondered who it was, but Rachel was still talking and I didn’t want to interrupt.
“At first I wasn’t sure I could do the work, but the guys were really patient with me, and it wasn’t as hard as I thought.” She studied her left hand, wiggling her fourth finger, watching the sparkle of the diamond in her engagement ring. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “Do you think I can do it?”
Do what? I wanted to ask.
“Last night I hardly slept at all,” she said. “I went from being sure I could do it to being sure I’d have to sell the house and we’d have to move in with my parents and the children would turn against me and hate me forever.”
That was a sleep pattern I knew intimately. It wasn’t the kids who tired me out so much as the worry that constantly plagued me. My ex-husband had never understood, but every mother to whom I’d confessed did.
