A Measure of Happiness (16 page)

Blake's expression remained unchanged, hinged and waiting for her to unhinge him. Fifteen years old and he reeked of cigarettes, shame, and fear.

From the time Katherine had been in preschool, her mother had doused her with Jean Naté after bath splash, futile against a house that stank. Yet Katherine had always been taken with scents and aromas. Their ability to conjure emotion. Their ability to cover up or attempt to conceal.

“Here's my proposal,” Katherine said. “You'll work for me until you pay off your debt. Stop by tomorrow after school and we'll figure it all out.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. . . . Well, then,” she said, and gave the tabletop a pat. “I should get going to the hospital. I'll drop you off at your house on the way.”

“Thanks,” Blake said, and he attempted a smile.

“One more thing,” she said, careful to lighten her tone so her words wouldn't weigh too heavily upon him. “I need to talk to your parents. They should know what happened here today, and our arrangement.” Katherine nodded, stood, and took her plate.

Blake gazed up at her and simultaneously sank in his seat. “I'd rather go to jail.”

Katherine sat back down. “Why is that?”

Blake's mouth worked around words unspoken. He shook his head. “You wouldn't understand.”

“Try me.”

Barry would ask open-ended questions, gently drawing out the patient's answer, an extended analysis that could take years. Katherine didn't have that kind of time. She had, by her estimate, about ten minutes before she needed to hightail it to Brunswick Hospital, Celeste, and Zach.

Katherine's chest pounded with the desire to conceal. “Until I was twelve, my family ate dinner together every night,” she said. “Sounds nice, right?”

Blake shrugged. “I guess.”

“It wasn't nice at all. My father made me and my sister tell him our favorite thing that had happened to us that day,” she said, and the muscles in her back clutched, as though she were still trying to defend her irrational happiness.

“So?”

“Then he'd very patiently tell us why we were mistaken. If I got a good grade on a paper, he'd say the teacher was messing with my head, teaching the class wrong. Or, if the teacher was a man, he'd suggest the teacher wanted something inappropriate from me.”

“Sounds weird.”

“Yeah, weird.” Katherine's shoulders rose on a breath. “When I complained about my father's smoking, he dared me to smoke a cigarette with him.” She shook her head. “Sorry. That was a lie.
Dare
isn't the right word. He wouldn't let me leave the house until I'd smoked it to the filter.”

“Then he let you go?”

“Yes and no. I was too sick to get off the bathroom floor.” Katherine had laid her face on the floor, the cold tile numbing her cheek and temple, and focused on a stain clouding the underside of the sink. The more she focused, the more the shape shifted, morphing from a bunny to a bat, a winged angel to a horned devil.

She'd been a year younger than Blake.

“That doesn't make sense,” Blake said. “You didn't like him smoking, so he made you smoke?”

“I don't know. Maybe he wanted to get me hooked, so I'd shut up complaining and join him. Hard to say what's going on in someone else's mind, right?”

“When I first told my father I wanted to get a job to help out, he thought it was a great idea,” Blake said. “For about half a second. Then he told me I was too stupid to get a job. He was all—” Blake went into character. He actually appeared bigger, meaner. His chest puffed out, his teeth bared, and he came out of his seat. He deepened his voice. “‘What a joke! Who in their right mind would hire a loser like you? Who the hell do you think you are?
Who the hell do you think you are?
'”

Blake made a sound, part chuckle, part
oomph
of surprise. He sat back down. He laid a shaking hand on the table, stared down at it as though it weren't connected to him, as though it were an embarrassment he wished he'd left behind.

Katherine placed her hand over Blake's and looked the child in the eye. Her ears clicked with the congestion of wanting to cry. “We'll keep our arrangement just between us then,” she said. “Our little secret.”

C
HAPTER
10

T
he ghost of Katherine's past followed her from the end of Blake's wooded driveway on Route 216 to the gates of Brunswick Hospital.

Nearly twenty-four years ago, she'd awoken at three-fifteen, same as every workday, and waddled to the bathroom. Stepped carefully over the tub and into the bliss of warm water. Then the first pain had stabbed, and she'd bled. Orange droplets splashed the white ceramic, making the labor, the delivery, and her plan suddenly, horribly real.

Hazel May had offered to meet her at the hospital when it was “time.” She'd volunteered to sit by her side and hold her hand. Even more amazing, Katherine's mentor had suggested she close the bakery for the day and take a hit on her livelihood. They'd discussed this day months ago. They'd made a plan. They'd both agreed. But when that first contraction had gripped, Katherine had chosen to go it alone.

When you knowingly, willingly planned to do the worst thing you'd ever done to someone you loved, did you really want a witness?

Cotton pad between her legs, she'd tossed an overnight bag in the backseat of her car and hit the road running. She'd sped all the way to Brunswick with the white of her headlights burning through the dark winter morning, contractions cresting ten minutes apart, as if by exceeding the speed limit, she could outrun her pain.

Now Katherine parked in the visitors' lot and ran through the gray streetlight shadows to the ER entrance. She'd sent Celeste and Zach ahead of her, so certain that taking the time to “deal with” Blake had been not only the right choice but the only choice.

Her own twisted logic tied her stomach in knots. In trying to do the right thing, had she given both Celeste and Zach the short end of her decision?

She could've waited to supervise the bakery cleanup. The whole Blake conversation, as enlightening to the boy's family situation as it had been, could've taken place at a later date. Hadn't she warned Zach that Celeste wasn't as tough as she seemed? Hadn't she worried about Zach? And yet Katherine had sent both of them away, as if she didn't even know her own mind.

Katherine pushed through the revolving door and blinked against the brightness, the switch from night road to parking lot to artificial daylight. Equally artificial warmth replaced the crisp chill of fall. And the air's equally crisp smell gave way to pine cleaner and stale cafeteria odors.

Three floors above, Katherine had given birth, her mind flooded with thoughts of her body's betrayal. Why was her labor progressing so quickly, the contractions coming one on top of the other, no time to catch her breath or reconsider her decision? Three pushes, and Zach had emerged, sweet and smiling, with barely a whimper.

He'd barely whimpered when he'd broken his wrist. Yet that must've hurt like hell.

In the ER waiting room, an old woman slept with her mouth open and her head on a middle-aged man's shoulder. A young couple huddled with preschool children—a boy for her and a girl for him—on their knees. Celeste sat between two empty seats, twisting her kerchief in her lap. Her hair spilled before her eyes.

“How many times do I need to tell you to keep your hair off your face?” Katherine asked.

Celeste looked up. “Everyone's a comedian.”

“I've been accused of worse,” Katherine said. “Where's the patient?”

“X-ray.” Celeste folded the kerchief, fit it over her hair, and held out the ends for tying. “Could you?”

“Of course.” Katherine sat sideways on the plastic seat beside Celeste.

“My mom used to do my hair, when I was little,” Celeste said.

“Mine too,” Katherine said, conjuring an image of her mother's slender fingers, the tickle of her breath on Katherine's cheek, the warmth of her love. “I used to ask for two braids. They always came out uneven and crooked, but I never complained.” Katherine took the twisted ends of the cloth and quelled the urge to kiss the top of Celeste's head, the way her mother had kissed hers. Celeste's fingers trembled. From worry or malnutrition?

Katherine fit the cloth ends beneath Celeste's hair, making sure none of the baby hairs caught in the fabric. She fastened the ends and straightened the kerchief. “I'm really hungry,” Katherine said, although her stomach was pleasantly full with pie. “I'm going to go search for a snack. Can I get you something to eat?”

Celeste's figure wasn't overly slender; she didn't have that body type. But with her hair held back, her eyes looked huge, too big for her face, like those poor starving children you saw in ads for humanitarian aid. Her gaze slipped to the arm of the chair between them and then came back to Katherine. “Can't. I'm too hungry,” she whispered.

“Too hungry to eat?” Katherine asked, her voice a hush.

Celeste nodded, quick as a blink. “I'm queasy. If I eat something, I could, you know . . .” She swallowed and arched her hand from her belly to her mouth.

When Katherine had been pregnant, she was hungry all the time—ferociously and legitimately. She'd been, after all, eating for two. But sometimes, like Celeste, she'd work long hours, thinking she'd eat on her break, a nonspecific time that followed the needs of the bakery rather than her body. Then she'd end up in trouble. On her knees, porcelain trouble.

“I know what you need.” Katherine stood and brushed off her jeans—from what, she'd no idea. “Sit tight. I'll be right back.”

Katherine followed the signs partway to the cafeteria and ducked into an enclave of vending machines. She scanned the selections. Plain Lay's potato chips and cans of Canada Dry ginger ale.
Yes, perfect.
She fed the machines and hurried back to the waiting room, sneakers slapping the floor.

Katherine held the chips and soda before Celeste. “Starch, sugar, and salt. Plus bubbles. What do you think? Did I do good or what?”

Celeste eyed the food but made no move to take the items from Katherine's hands.

Katherine sat down and peeled open the chips. She popped one in her mouth and then angled the open bag toward Celeste. “Yum, yum.”

Celeste took an audible breath, and her hand went to her mouth. “So much fat and sugar,” she said. Her voice was lower than a whisper, more like an escaped thought.

“Which you need to live. Am I right?” Katherine dropped the bag on Celeste's lap.

Celeste placed a chip on her tongue. She sucked on it before chewing and swallowing. She took another chip, repeated the process. “I think the salt helps.”

Katherine popped the soda's tab, sparking a fizzle. Mini ginger bubbles danced in the air. “Here you go.”

Celeste took a small sip, licked her bottom lip, nodded. “I'm okay,” she told Katherine. “I'm not sick. I just waited too long to eat.”

Exactly the kind of stunt Celeste had pulled years ago, with the same excuse. Until she'd decided she wanted help.

“You made yourself sick,” Katherine said, “because you waited too long to give your body what it needed.”

“Isn't that what I said?”

For the second time that day, Katherine raised her gaze to the ceiling.

The door beside the registration desk opened. A plump chestnut-haired nurse, who looked as if she was a few years older than Katherine, brought Zach into the waiting room. Zach's arm was in a cast and a sling—a real sling made of navy medical-looking fabric, rather than a bleached white tea cloth. His flannel shirt was gone, likely cut from his body. Instead, he wore only the gray T-shirt she'd spotted beneath the flannel earlier. The nurse caught Katherine's gaze, broke into a grin, and waved a handful of papers in greeting, as though she recognized her.

Celeste shot out of her seat ahead of Katherine.

“What a nice family you have,” the nurse told Zach.

“We're friends,” Celeste said, to Katherine's relief.

“Oh, I thought—” Again the nurse caught Katherine's gaze. At close range, Katherine schooled her features into a neutral mask. This time, the nurse frowned. “Never mind.”

“How's Blake doing?” Zach asked. “Did he clean up his mess? You sure he wasn't hurt?”

“Blake and the bakery are fine,” Katherine said, feeling a swell of irrational pride. She'd created Zach, but his sense of compassion and empathy was not of her doing. “How are you?”

“Good as new.” Zach nodded at the cast. “Like you said, I will be, eventually. Right, Lois?” he asked the nurse.

“Zach has a distal radius fracture,” Nurse Lois said. “Clean break, luckily, no fragments. But because of the angle, the doctor had to perform a nonsurgical reduction.”

“You boiled him?” Celeste asked, referring to the culinary meaning of
reduction.

Katherine grinned.

“Reduction is when the two pieces of a broken bone are realigned so they can grow back together.” Nurse Lois brought her hands together to demonstrate proximity fusing the broken parts. “All the doctor had to do was move them back into place.”

“Yeah, that wasn't my favorite part,” Zach said. “Ow.”

Lois patted Zach's good arm. “I've made him a follow-up appointment with the doc to make sure he's healing nicely.”

“Can't wait,” Zach said.

“Does he need anything for the pain?” Katherine asked.

“I'm fine, Katherine,” Zach said. His exaggerated patience reminded her of the way a son might speak to his mother. His tone spoke of a long-term relationship and familiarity. All wishful thinking. In reality, Zach was one of those types who acted as though he knew you slightly better than he did.

Or was Katherine, once again, assuming Zach was like Adam—a ghost from her past she'd barely known?

“Acetaminophen and ibuprofen.” Nurse Lois slipped her stack of papers into Zach's left hand. “Care instructions and appointment card.”

“I've heard using your nondominant hand makes you smarter,” Zach said. “Forces your brain to grow new neural connections.”

Lois set a hand on her hip and shook her head. She gave Zach a grin and looked as though she wanted to muss his hair. “I have a feeling your friends will want to spoil you. See you at your follow-up, hon,” she said, and ducked back through the door to the examining rooms.

Back in the years-ago maternity ward, a pediatric nurse had made a fuss over Zach, too. The nurse had lifted him from his bassinet and kissed the top of his head before laying him in Katherine's outstretched arms. Immediately he'd turned his head to Katherine, rooting for what he needed. Her chest had swelled, a tidal wave of milk and love bursting for release. “This one takes the cake,” the nurse had said, as if she were proud of him, too. “He most certainly does,” Katherine had answered.

An hour later, she'd signed the adoption papers, legally breaking her own heart.

“Let's get you home,” Katherine told Zach. “You got an apartment at Ledgewood, right?”

“Not exactly,” Zach said.

“What exactly, then?”

“I'm staying across from Celeste's at Chez Matilda.”

“Who?” Katherine asked, and Zach stepped into the automatic revolving door.

“He's been sleeping in his car,” Celeste said, and followed behind him.

How had Katherine missed this factoid? What else had skirted her arguably limited vision? Was she that hyper-focused on keeping her little secret about Zach that she'd risked his well-being?

Katherine stared at the revolving door, her actions spinning and churning through her mind. Hindsight wasn't twenty-twenty. Hindsight was seeing your reflection in glass, ugly and distorted. Hindsight was wondering how you could move forward when you couldn't go back.

She'd been here before, this exact spot, after she'd left the maternity ward, willing herself to walk through the hospital's revolving door. She'd faced her reflection while patients brushed by her. An elderly man and his nurse. Two middle-aged women, navigating their way on crutches. A fair-haired woman she recognized from the maternity ward, followed by her whistling husband, carrying their newborn in his blue car seat. The revolving door had spun; the winter cold had blown through her wool coat. Before her eyes, the sun had set—the parking lot dimming and darkening and lightening beneath streetlights. Only then had she mustered the nerve to walk through the revolving door and into a soul-sucking emptiness.

To the right of the cylinder that was spinning with memories, an ordinary door caught Katherine's eye. Had it been there years ago? She pushed through the door and race-walked through the lights and shadows, scanning the lot for Celeste's car. The night chill sneaked like a cold hand beneath the cotton of her sweater. The smoky autumn air hinted at the sharp, white scent of snow, as if her mind couldn't tell the difference between the present and the past. Late October or early January? The last glimpse of a newborn baby boy in a bassinet wheeling from her hospital bed and the door closing behind him or an adult Zach climbing into Celeste's yellow Cabriolet.

“Zach!” Katherine said, in a hurry to get the words out now that she'd decided. “You can stay with me,” she said, her voice high and giddy. In the space of a breath, she imagined helping Zach care for his injury by slipping a sofa pillow beneath his arm at night, leaving towels for his morning shower in her bathroom, resetting the coffeemaker so Zach could enjoy a fresh cup after she'd left for the day.

“Thanks for the offer,” he said. “But Celeste beat you to it.”

Celeste raised her chin a notch, no doubt remembering their last conversation about Zach, and Katherine's dire warnings.