A Measure of Happiness (29 page)

That had felt so much worse than getting yelled at.

“In my limited experience with childbearing,” Katherine said, “when you have a child, you might wonder what they'll choose for a career. You might even dream about it. But hope—you just hope they're happy.”

“I guess,” Zach said.

“Have you and your dad sat down and discussed the whole law school issue?”

“We've sort of talked around it.” Zach drew a circle in the air.

“This circling thing”—Katherine drew her own circle in the air—“has a limited appeal. I strongly suggest you and your dad hash it out.”

“I might just do that.”

“I might hold you to it.”

Katherine stared at him, and he thought she might start crying again. “We should get going.”

Zach got up from the floor and then he offered his hand and helped Katherine to standing. Even though she was wearing boots with a heel, he towered over her. With her hair down, he could easily imagine her as a woman of twenty-two, alone in the world, adrift without a family to ground her. How would he have turned out if he hadn't had the Fitzgeralds? How would he have turned out if he hadn't been ridiculously loved? Why else would they have put up with his childish crap?

“Okay if I give you a hug?” Katherine asked.

“Of course,” Zach said, and he hugged her first. She radiated warmth through her thin blouse. Her embrace felt strangely familiar, as if somehow he remembered being an infant in her arms.

For the third time in two days, that feeling of being adrift in time came over Zach. Only this time, he didn't fantasize about going back in time to change history. He didn't imagine himself as an adult Zach who'd walk into the young Katherine's hospital room and tell her not to make the biggest mistake of her life and give him away.

This time, if Zach could go back in time, he wouldn't change anything at all.

 

By the time the sun rose over the Mass Pike, Katherine had watched Zach inhale four biscotti, three lemon bars, and half a dozen sugar cookies. Then his stomach had growled, as though he were just getting started.

Katherine had polished off the remaining pastry—a plain croissant—and a small black coffee. Her left leg ached heel to hip, the sciatica by-product of standing on her feet for decades. She was seriously contemplating letting Zach drive her Outback the rest of the way to New York. Besides that, she was blushing, painfully, like a woman caught enjoying herself with a man she'd barely known.

“So what did you say his last name was?” Zach asked, referring to his biological father.

“I didn't,” Katherine said. “But he told me it was Bell.”

“Adam Bell,” Zach said, adding his father's first and last names together and seeming to come to some conclusion. “Anything else? Where's he from?”

“I got the feeling he was from somewhere in New England. That he was in the early phases of his journey.”

“Basing this feeling on anything concrete?”

Here Katherine grinned. “I consulted neither the tarot nor a crystal ball.”

Zach chuckled.

“I don't know. It was so long ago.... His accent or lack of a discernible accent? His level of enthusiasm? You know how you're excited at the beginning of a trip, but then as the realities of the road make themselves evident, you lose steam?” Katherine flexed her left foot until the ache receded.

“But you have no clue where Adam was headed.”

“Of that, I have no idea.”

The sun peeked over the horizon, washing out the road. Katherine and Zach flipped down their sun visors.

“If I'd known where he was going, I promise you, I would've contacted him.” Katherine's throat tightened. A question she was sensing from Zach or one she needed to answer for herself? She glanced at Zach, but his expression betrayed little. Side view, he looked nothing like her or Adam. He only looked like himself.

Himself with an eye socket that had gotten in the way of Celeste's fist.

“Not to hold him to any sort of responsibility, mind you,” Katherine added. “Just because he had a right to know about you.”

Zach nodded and drummed on the glove compartment with one fist.

Katherine turned on the radio to static and then turned it off.

“I bet I could find him,” Zach said. “I bet I could track down Adam Bell.”

The back bumper of a sedan came into view before Katherine, and she slowed. “I bet you could, if that's what you need. I bet you'd make a great detective. After all, you found me,” Katherine said, thinking of Zach eating his way across the bakeries of Casco Bay in search of a baker who'd lived there twenty-four years ago. She hoped he'd one day tell the story to his children. She hoped she'd one day
know
his children.

That brought Katherine to Celeste and the reason Katherine had thus far delayed stopping for gas and giving her one-armed, squinty-eyed friend Zach the wheel. Even if they drove into Underhill, New York, on engine fumes, even though they couldn't be certain when Celeste had left or if they had a chance in hell of getting to the campus of Culinary America ahead of her, they had to try. They had to keep going.

Two hours ago, by mutual consent, they'd both agreed not to freak out about Celeste until they neared the campus. So far, they'd been mostly successful.

“I bet,” Zach said, his tone playful, “I could locate your parents for you, if you're interested. Where did you say you grew up?”

“Stoughton,” she said, the word sounding hushed, like a guilty confession. Like something you hid behind a closed door and a locked safe. Like something you hid away so you wouldn't frighten yourself. There was nothing wrong with the town. Anywhere she'd lived with her father would've been hell.

“Yeah, Stoughton. Have you gotten in touch with your mother since you left?”

“No, I have not.”

Zach drummed again on her glove box. His way, Katherine surmised, of organizing his thoughts. “Then how do you know they don't still live there?”

“Oh. Hmm.” Again Katherine blushed, reduced to a small, helpless child. Or an unloved teenager.

On the day she'd left the cottage her family rented, it was raining. The good, pounding kind of rain that worked wonders to calm her father. The good, pounding kind of rain that softened the dirt beneath the tires of his pickup. The good, pounding kind of rain that covered up a multitude of sins.

Katherine's pulse echoed in her stomach, the backbeat of guilt. She'd already told Zach so much—about her angry father, about the mother she'd tried to protect. Was a lie by omission still a big, fat lie if you altered the details to protect someone they might hurt, even if that someone was you?

As if keeping the truth to herself had ever done her any good.

Zach touched his hand to her shoulder. “Sorry, if you don't want to talk about it.”

Just like that day, her life pounded in her ears, loud and echoing, as she'd torn through the house and discovered her parents' bed stripped and the kitchen cupboards bare. The driveway empty, save for mud ruts and tire tracks.

“She left me,” Katherine said.

“What was that?” Zach had been drumming again. He hadn't even heard.

Katherine laughed. Sometimes she felt as though the universe was working against her and she was a cosmic, ironic punch line. Other times, like now for instance, she felt like the universe was simply urging her to speak up. Or maybe it was merely the road trip, the experience of once again finding herself speeding down a highway, unhinged from everything she called home.

“My mother and my father,” Katherine said. “They left me. They left my home before I did. I was nineteen years old, and I woke up one day and they were gone. After years of trying to get my mother to leave my father. After making myself stay to watch over her, she made her decision. She chose my father over me. She chose him.” Katherine shrugged, and her seat belt dug into her shoulder, a sensation she welcomed. She pressed down on the accelerator and eased into the passing lane. The image of Francesca Lamontagne made her want to aim the front end of her Subaru at the nearest November-bare tree. The thought of her mother made her grateful for the seat belt holding her together.

Her father's words played in her head:
You're going to be sorry.

And people called Katherine the fortune-teller.

“And that, Zachary Frank, is one of two secrets I've kept close to my heart for decades.”

Zach dug into the pocket of his sweatshirt. He gave her a sad smile and passed her a napkin. “I think it's, like, mostly clean.”

Katherine laughed. “Keep it. I think I, like, mostly don't need it.” She swiped at a renegade tear. “Mostly.”

Zach patted her arm and left the napkin on her leg.

Katherine checked her rearview, made out the bleached forms that were cars, and eased into the middle lane.

Zach took a sip of coffee and drummed on the glove box. “How do you know it wasn't your mother's idea to take off on you?”

Katherine glanced at Zach. He was peering into the empty bakery bag, guileless, as if he might find a sugar cookie or lemon bar he'd previously overlooked. “That's not very nice,” Katherine said.

“What if it was very nice? What if it was the nicest thing your mother ever did for you?” Zach asked, his voice garbled. The corner of a sugar cookie peeked out from his fist.

She was certain he'd eaten all six.

“Would you have hung around?” Zach asked. “Would you have stayed as long as you did, without your mother?”

“Of course not. The plan, if you could call it a plan, was to stay until I could convince my mother to leave him. I couldn't leave her with a monster. I couldn't leave . . .” Katherine was the only thing keeping the full force of her father's tirades from her mother, a barrier island preventing storms from eroding the shoreline. Katherine wasn't blushing. There was nothing to be embarrassed about, nothing to raise shame-faced heat to her cheeks. But her underarms itched with perspiration, the sheer fabric of her blouse sticking to her body. And her chest didn't feel right, her pulse picking up speed for no good reason.

Zach waved a lemon bar in the air. He'd eaten all three. At least she'd thought he'd eaten all three. Had she seen him with the same lemon bar three times? “I bet your mother knew you wouldn't leave without her.”

“That could be true.”

“I bet she felt like she couldn't leave your father.”

“Sure . . .”

Zach gulped his coffee. He cleared his throat. “Don't you see? Your mother didn't just leave with your father, your mother got your father away from you.” Zach smacked his hand against his chest, and crumbs rained onto his lap, like a confetti celebration.

“Maybe . . .” Katherine said. What if her mother had convinced her father to leave behind the house and the bills, the overdue rent and Katherine? What if, after years of Katherine holding her mother's hand and telling her she shouldn't put up with Katherine's father's drinking and yelling, his anger looking for a reason, her mother had found her voice and spoken up, not for her benefit but for Katherine's? What if her mother had loved Katherine so much that she'd sacrificed their relationship and instead given Katherine her only chance for happiness? After all, that's what Katherine had done for Zach.

For twenty-seven years, Katherine had been focused on her father's words, the supposed harbinger of doom.
You're going to be sorry.
What if for the past twenty-seven years, she'd focused on the wrong thing?

“Something's in the road up ahead,” Zach said.

The sun spiked off something metallic and black. “I see it.” Katherine checked the rearview. A van was coming up fast on her left, a sedan close behind. On her right, another SUV paced her.

“Hold on.” Katherine dug her nails into the steering wheel, held to her lane, and kept her foot steady on the accelerator.

Sometimes there was no getting around the one thing you were trying to avoid.

 

Celeste made a point of avoiding the elevator.

She'd spent the last six hours in Old Yeller. Six hours to drive through the night and across five states and then watch the sun wink between the last mottled-brown leaves clinging to the maple trees that dotted the campus of Culinary America. In the last six hours she'd made up her mind, and un–made up her mind, at least half a dozen times. Now was the time to get off her numb ass and get moving.

She gave Old Yeller a final love pat, rebraided her hair to keep it out of the way, tucked her decision in the deep pocket of her sweatshirt, and pressed the metal shape into her belly. Then she closed the glove compartment and headed through the damp air to the back entrance of Cunningham Hall. Matt's dorm. A student had wedged a cinder block between the heavy door and the frame. One less door for Celeste to deal with. One less crime for her to commit. She slipped into the building and took the first step.

The stairwell stank of industrial cleaner, with a secondary note of low-pile carpeting. She breathed through her mouth and thought instead of the tall grass that had tickled her bare legs on early morning outings with her big brother Lincoln. They'd slipped behind their mother's lilac bushes and followed the path through dense hardwoods, until it spilled out at their family's shooting range.

By the second floor, her ass was regaining feeling, the movement bringing her body back to life, exactly as she'd intended. Too early for the sounds of student life. No footsteps tapped across the carpeted hallways, no water shushing through pipes or pummeling the shower floors. Just the sound of her pulse and the weight of her decision.