Annie gently touched her daughter’s cheek. “I just found out, honey.”
Natalie grinned. “I ask for a sister for sixteen years, and you get pregnant just before I leave for college. Thanks a lot.”
“This definitely falls into the ‘accident’ category. Believe me, I always wanted to fill this house with children—but not just before I cashed my first Social Security check.”
“You’re not that old. I read about a sixty-year-old woman who had a kid.”
“How comforting. You understand, of course, that the rules have changed now. You aren’t allowed to have a child until your sister or brother graduates from high school. And you will have to introduce me as your stepmother.”
Natalie laughed. “I’ve been lying about you for years, Mom. Ever since you sobbed at my dance recital and had to be escorted from the building.”
“That was an allergy attack.”
“Yeah, right.” She laughed. “Hey, guess what, Mom. Dad let me drive the Ferrari home.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It’s a good thing you weren’t there. You’d have made me wear a crash helmet and drive on the side of the road— preferably with my emergency blinkers flashing.”
Annie laughed, and she couldn’t escape how right this all felt—the teasing, the joking, the familiarity. How natural.
They were a family. A family.
Blake bent closer to Annie. He whispered in a voice so soft that only she could hear, “People change, Annalise.”
It scared her, that deceptively simple sentence that seemed to promise the sun and the moon and the stars.
That’s when she knew she was at risk. This man she’d loved for so long knew what to say, always, what to do. He could push her onto the edge again. If she wasn’t careful, she’d slide without a ripple into the gently flowing stream of her old life, pulled back under the current without a whimper of protest. Another housewife lost in the flow.
Chapter 25
The shattered pieces of their family fell back together with a surprising ease. Like a glass vase that had been broken and carefully mended, the tiny fissures could be seen only on close examination, when Blake and Annie were alone. They were soldiers, the two of them, warily circling each other, negotiating an awkward and unfelt peace.
But Annie had spent twenty years wearing a groove into her life, and she now slipped smoothly back into it. She awakened early, dressed in an expensive silk robe with a pretty bow tied at her expanding waist. She carefully accentuated her features with makeup, layering putty color beneath her eyes to erase the dark circles that came from restless nights.
On Mondays, she made out the weekly grocery lists and sent Natalie to the gourmet shop on the corner. On Tuesdays, she paid the household bills. On Wednesdays, she conferred with the housekeeper and gardener, and on Thursdays she sent Natalie on errands, using her daughter to collect all the various and sundry pieces of their lives. Once again, the house was a well-run unit.
She helped Blake choose his suits and ties, and reminded him when to pick up his dry cleaning. Every morning, she kissed him good-bye—a chaste, dry little kiss planted on his cheek—and every night she welcomed him home from work with a smile. He sat on her bed and talked stiltedly about his day.
In truth, she was glad to spend her days in bed, hidden away from the reality of the marriage. Most days, while Blake was at work, she and Natalie spent long hours talking and laughing and sharing memories.
Annie learned that Blake hadn’t called Natalie in London. She heard the hurt and disappointment in her daughter’s voice when she spoke, but there wasn’t a damn thing Annie could do to fix it. “I’m sorry” was all she could say. Again and again.
Increasingly, Annie noticed changes in Natalie, a maturity that hadn’t been there before. Every now and then, she zinged Annie with an unexpected observation. Like yesterday.
All you think about is making us happy. What makes you happy, Mom?
Or: This spring . . . you sounded so di ferent. So happy.
And the most surprising of all: Do you love Dad?
Annie had meant to respond reflexively, to say, Yes, of course I love your dad. But then she’d looked in Natalie’s eyes and seen a grown-up understanding. And so, Annie had spoken to the woman her daughter had become.
I’ve loved your dad since I was a teenager. We’re just going through a hard time, that’s all.
He loves you, Natalie had said. Just like he loves me, but . . . his love . . . it isn’t very warm . . . I mean . . . it’s not like being loved by you, Mom.
It had brought tears to Annie’s eyes, that quiet observation. She was saddened to realize that Natalie would never really understand what a father’s love could be. It would be a loss in Natalie’s life forever. . . .
Unlike Izzy.
She closed her eyes and leaned back in bed, remembering Nick and Izzy when they’d played Candy Land, Nick hunched over the board . . . or when the two of them had played Barbies on the living room floor, Nick saying in a falsetto voice, Have you seen my blue dancing shoes?
Yesterday, when she and Natalie had gone into the doctor’s, Annie had been unable to stave off the memories. It was simply too painful. There had been no husband there to hold her hand and laugh at how badly she had to pee. No husband to watch the fuzzy black screen and marvel at the miracle.
No Nick.
How long would it be this way? she wondered. Would she spend the rest of her life feeling that she’d left an essential part of herself in another place and time?
The first letter, when it arrived, was small and crinkled. A blue, faded postmark read Mystic, WA.
Annie stared down at the pink envelope. Very gently, she eased the back open and pulled out the paper. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of Mount Olympus. Inside was a letter from Izzy.
Dear Annie:
How are you? I am fin.
The flwrs are pritty. Today I learnd to ride a bike.
It was fun.
I miss you. When are you cuming home?
Love, Izzy.
P.s. My Dadde helped me rite this lettr.
Annie clutched the note in her hand. Everything about it, every misspelled word, tugged at her heartstrings. She sat stiffly in bed, staring out at the blue, blue sky beyond her room, wishing it would rain. She knew she would write back to Izzy, but what would she say? A few hopeless words that held no promises? Or a string of pointless banalities that pretended they’d all be friends. Nothing but friends, and sometimes friends moved on. . . .
There were only a few words that mattered, and they were the truest of them all. “I miss you, too, Izzy. . . .”
She opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out Izzy’s hair ribbon, stroking the satin strip. She knew that tomorrow she would answer the letter, and she would fill a sheet of paper with words and more words, but it wouldn’t say what mattered. It wouldn’t say what Izzy wanted to hear.
She picked up the cordless phone from the table and listened to the dial tone for a long time, then slowly she hung up. It was unfair to call Nick and Izzy, unfair to let the sound of their voices soothe her loneliness. Don’t do that to me, Annie, Nick had said, don’t throw me hope like it was a bone to be buried in my backyard. . . .
“Mom?” Natalie poked her head into the bedroom. “Are you all right?”
Annie sniffled and turned away.
Natalie hurried over to the bed and crawled up beside Annie. “Mom? Are you okay?”
No, she wanted to say, no, I’m not okay. I miss the man I love and his daughter, and I miss a place where rainfall is measured in feet and your hair is never dry and where grown-ups play Chutes and Ladders in the middle of the afternoon with a six-year-old girl. . . .
But none of that was the sort of thing you said to your teenage daughter, no matter how grown up she looked. “I’m fine, honey. Just fine.”
No matter how hard she tried to be her old self, Annie couldn’t quite manage it. No matter how many of the old routines she pushed herself through, she felt herself slipping away. With each day, she saw the future approaching in a low-rolling fog of lost chances and missed opportunities.
Summer blasted through Southern California on a tide of unseasonable heat. The Malibu hills dried up and turned brown. Leaves began, one by one, to curl up and die, dropping like bits of charred paper on artificially green lawns.
Blake stood on the deck outside his room, sipping a scotch and soda. The wood was warm beneath his bare feet, the last reminder of a surprisingly hot day.
He hadn’t slept well last night. Hadn’t, in fact, slept well in weeks. Not since he’d apologized to Annie and discovered that she didn’t care.
She was trying to make their marriage work. He could see the effort, in the way she put on makeup every morning and wore the colors she knew he liked. She even touched him occasionally—brief, flitting gestures that were designed to make him feel better, but that had the opposite effect. Every time she touched him, he felt a tiny, niggling ache in his chest, and he remembered the way it used to be, the way she used to touch him all the time and smile at his jokes and brush the hair away from his face, and when he remembered he hurt.
She wasn’t herself anymore, that was obvious. She lay in their big bed like a silent, pregnant ghost, and when she smiled, it was a brittle, fleeting thing, and not Annie at all.
She was . . . disappearing, for lack of a better word.
She used to talk and laugh all the time. She used to find joy in the craziness of life, but nothing intrigued her anymore. Her moods were a flat line, even and smooth. So smooth, there was no hint of Annie inside the quiet woman who sat with him in the evening, watching television.
Last week, when it rained, she had sat up in bed, staring through the silver-streaked window. When he called out to her, she’d turned, and he hadn’t missed the tears in her eyes. She’d been holding some ragged scrap of a hair ribbon as if it were the Holy Grail.
He couldn’t stand this much longer. He wasn’t the kind of man who liked to work this hard for what he wanted. Enough was enough.
He set down his drink on the table and strode back into the house. He knocked on Annie’s door—quickly, before he lost his nerve.
“Come in,” she called out.
He opened the door and went inside. The room was as comforting as ever, with its sea-blue walls and carpet and white bedding.
Annie was in bed, reading a book called How to Run Your Own Small Business. Beside her, there was a pile of similarly titled self-help books.
Jesus, was she thinking of getting a job?
It would humiliate him if she sought employment; she knew how he felt about his wife working. Especially with her lack of skills. What would she do—pour lattes and pick croissants from a glass case?
He had no idea who this woman was who sat in bed and read how-to books. He felt unconnected to Annie; he had to do something to get them back together.
She looked up, and he noticed the dark circles under her eyes and gray cast to her skin. In the past month, she’d gained a lot of weight, but somehow her face looked thinner. Her hair had grown out some, and the tips were beginning to curl wildly. Again, she looked like a woman he didn’t know. “Hi, Blake,” she said softly, closing the book. “Is it time for the movie to start? I thought—”