Broken Pieces: A Novel (15 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The next week, Sydney withdrew.

Marguerite and I kept Ella busy every day after school, and Albert put her to work in the garden, but Sydney barely left her room.

I knew the chemotherapy had taken a toll, but my gut told me her grim prognosis had taken much more.

Saturday morning, after Ella had escaped to Marguerite’s and the promise of chocolate-chip pancakes, I sat in the sitting room and stared at the framed photo of my mother.

There had been a time in my life when I’d slept with the picture tucked inside my pillowcase. My grandmother had never said a word, pretending she didn’t know.

I’d realized she’d found the frame the first time she’d stripped and changed my bed.

Sure, the frame had been tucked neatly inside the pillowcase that night when I’d collapsed onto the pillow, but my fingertips hadn’t touched metal when I’d slid my arm inside. And they always touched. Just perfectly.

I hadn’t been able to sleep for weeks after Mom died and my father left, not unless my grandmother sat beside me, rubbing my back until I fell asleep.

Then one night, instead of kissing my mother’s picture good night and setting it back on the nightstand, I’d tucked it inside my pillow. That had been enough. It had to be.

Now I couldn’t remember when I’d moved the picture back downstairs.

Perhaps it had been once I reached middle school and the age of sleepovers, the age when I started having to explain why I found so much comfort in a framed photograph of my dead mother.

My grandmother had died three days after my twentieth birthday. After her death, I’d placed my high school graduation picture beside my mother’s photograph. In it, my grandmother’s love and pride shone brightly. She’d even smiled, the moment captured for eternity.

I liked that two of the most important women in my life stood together once more, where I could see and remember them every day.

I took a backward step and sighed. What I wouldn’t give to talk to them now. To ask them what I should do. To find out all about Sydney and why neither of them had ever told me the truth. To ask them if they believed I had what it took to raise a child.

I felt my father’s presence behind me before he spoke.

“That picture was taken four years before you were born,” he said.

His words startled me, and I willed my heart rate to steady as I turned to face him, struggling to comprehend his statement. “What did you say?”

He looked around me, past me, to the photographs.

Instead of slowing, my pulse quickened. I saw the words in his eyes before he spoke them.

“The baby in that picture.” He shook his head. “She wasn’t holding you.”

My heart pounded in my ears. Thump. Thump. Thump.

“What the hell are you talking about?” I sounded hysterical, even to myself.

His features fell. “She wanted to hold the baby. Even though she’d made her decision, she wanted to hold her.”

Moisture swam in his eyes. “After she died, you found this photograph in our bedroom, and you thought it was you.” He shook his head, the skin around his eyes crumpling, as if he felt my pain and wanted to help bear the burden of his words.

All I could wonder was how much of his visible emotion was real, if any.

“Now you know.” He shrugged, as if he had done me a favor. “That was my last secret. Now you have your truth. All of it.”

I said nothing for several long moments, fighting against my urge to scream at him, to accuse him of lying.

I lifted the framed photo from the end table and stared at the baby, looking for my eyes, my nose, and finding Sydney’s. Then I studied my mother’s expression—the expression of pure love I’d clung to all my life as being meant for me.

“You son of a bitch.” I clutched the frame to my chest and crossed to where he stood. “You cared more when you were up on those stages in front of hundreds of people you never even knew than you’ve ever cared about me. You stand there and dump this on me like you’re doing me a favor?

“Where are your emotions now?” I waved my hand at the carefully positioned set of his features. “What is this? Part of the act you’ve perfected?”

He kept his expression calm, his jaw stiff, yet in his eyes I saw that I’d hit home with my final words.

The truth was, Albert Jones hadn’t forgotten how to act. He’d forgotten how to live.

“What is wrong with you?” I asked.

I pushed the frame into his hands, shoving a bit harder than necessary before I headed for the front door.

I hit the sidewalk in a full sprint, wanting to be as far away as possible before I broke.

I made it as far as Bridge Street before I realized I wasn’t the one who should be running. So I gathered myself, focused my anger on thinking through all the things I wanted to say to Albert, and headed back toward the house.

When I stepped through the still-open front door, however, it was Sydney, not Albert, who knelt in the middle of the sitting room.

“Where is he?” I asked, but then I realized she cradled the frame in her lap and sobs racked her shoulders.

“Why?” she said softly. “Why?”

I hesitated, thinking momentarily that I should leave. I should let her have this moment to work through everything she must be feeling.

Of course she’d overheard Albert and me arguing. How could she not? Her bedroom was directly overhead.

But instead of leaving I stepped toward her, gently calling her name, not wanting to startle her any more than she’d already been startled.

“Sydney?”

She dragged a hand across her face quickly, her complexion blotchy and pale.

“I should never have come back here.” Her words were awash with loss and shock and grief. “I’ve stolen this from you.”

I moved quickly to her side, sinking to the floor beside her, enveloping her in my embrace.

“No. He stole this from me. He stole this by never telling me the truth.”

But Sydney remained staring at the captured image of my mother’s face in the moments after her birth.

“Look how much she loved you,” I said. “So much.” I choked on my words and tears flooded my vision.

“I had a great life,” Sydney said softly. “Somehow, seeing this helps as much as it hurts.”

“She kept it in her room, tucked in the drawer of her nightstand. That’s where I found it after she died. I slept with this inside my pillowcase, thinking I was keeping her near.” A path of moisture trailed down one cheek. “Who knew I was keeping you near, too?”

Then Sydney turned to hug me, and we clung to each other for several long moments, both of us at an apparent loss for words.

As betrayed as I felt by my father’s latest truth, I kept my thoughts in this moment, with Sydney.

“Would you change things?” I asked her a few minutes later, after we’d dried our tears and set our mother’s picture back in its place.

Her answer appeared to come easily. Perhaps she’d given the topic plenty of thought during the weeks since she’d arrived in Paris.

She shook her head. “I loved my parents.”

“Is that why you waited until you were sick to look for us?”

Her gaze went dark, sad. “I’m not going to beat this.”

“And you wanted a family for Ella?”

She took my hands and held on tight. “That, and I didn’t want to die without knowing you.”

Jessica called me not long after Sydney went upstairs to rest to tell me Albert had been sitting at the counter, drinking coffee, and talking to other customers.

“You might want to get down here,” she said. “Otherwise I don’t think he’s ever going to leave.”

“Keep him,” I said. Then I filled her in on the picture and our argument.

“I’m so sorry. Wow.”

“Yeah, wow.”

The reality of the photograph had started to sink in, and I’d begun to realize what I thought had been a treasured moment was simply a moment lost.

My mother had kept the photo, hidden the photo, undoubtedly cherished the photo. A piece of her life I’d known nothing about. Her life with Albert. Before me.

Marguerite’s words ran through my mind.
Your mother had dreams, and heartaches, and mistakes, and decisions bigger than any young girl should have to make.

The truth was that once upon a time, she and my father had loved me more than any little girl could ever hope to be loved. The fact they’d lived before me and kept Sydney’s picture hidden in the nightstand did nothing to lessen what the three of us had shared as a family.

“Well.” Jessica’s tone lifted sharply. “That explains this, then.”

“Explains what?” My all-too-familiar internal alarm bells began clanging. “What has he done?”

Jessica laughed. “I can’t complain, but he’s buying coffee and a doughnut for anyone who’ll sit down and tell him one thing about you.”

I said nothing for a moment, letting her words sink in. While I wanted to be amused or touched or feel some sense of forgiveness toward my father, I couldn’t quite trust that his intentions were pure.

I could only think he was doing this for show.

“Maybe you should come talk to him,” Jessica said. “Second chances, remember?”

I pushed through the door of Jessica’s café less than fifteen minutes later.

I spotted my father immediately, cozied up to the counter sharing coffee with Millie Carmichael. Her eyes widened as I approached.

“Destiny,” she called out. “I was just telling your father what a genius you are when it comes to carpentry.”

“Thank you, Millie. You’re too kind.”

I glared at my father, and Millie took note, gathering up her purse and plopping the last piece of her doughnut into her mouth. “Lovely to chat with you, Albert. See you soon, Destiny.”

Then she was gone, leaving me alone with my father.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “Haven’t you wreaked enough havoc in my life for one day?”

But my father, instead of becoming defensive or argumentative, simply signaled to Jessica, who poured a fresh cup of coffee and placed it in front of me.

“Your turn,” he said. “Tell me one thing about you I should know.”

One thing? Disbelief welled up inside me.

How about twenty years’ worth of things?

How about that no matter how much I tried to let him back into my heart, he kept giving me reason to slam the door shut?

I shook my head. “No.
You
tell
me
one thing. Explain today. Explain why you never came clean about that picture.”

“I never told you because I didn’t want to break your heart.”

“And breaking my heart was acceptable today?”

He waved a finger at me. “Risking this was acceptable today. Your anger. I wanted there to be no more secrets between us.”

I started to push away from the counter, not interested in another excuse, but my father reached for my arm to hold me back.

He lowered his voice, and that was when I realized none of this was for show.

“Yes, I came back here because I knew Sydney was sick, and I knew she needed a place to go, a place for Ella, but I want to stay here because I realize how much I screwed up my relationship with you.”

He leaned close, pulling me in. “The thought of raising you alone terrified me, and I took the coward’s way out. But if you’d let me, I’d like to be part of your life now. A permanent part. I can help you raise Ella when the time comes.”

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t stand there and listen to him make empty promises about staying, about raising Ella. I couldn’t stand there and picture the future, a future without Sydney.

“Are you done?”

He nodded, easing his grip on my arm enough that I could slip free.

I leaned close enough to speak directly into his ear.

“You may want to think that your being absent from my life damaged me somehow, but I did just fine without you. As a matter of fact, I thrived without you. I had Grandmother and Marguerite. I had this town. Turns out, I didn’t need you.

“So thanks, but no thanks, on your offer to stay. I got over waiting for that a long time ago.”

He called out to me as I headed for the exit. I became aware that all conversation inside the café had stopped, but I didn’t care.

As lovely as his words might have sounded, the sting of the photo was too fresh, too sharp for me to listen to anything else he had to say.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I found Marguerite and Ella huddled on the patio, painting a second supply of rocks.

Sydney had joined them and sat wrapped in an afghan.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she said as I pulled up the chair beside her. She gestured to the table full of painted rocks. “I found this. Aren’t they beautiful?”

Beside Marguerite sat a collection of rocks painted with intricate circles of dots. Concentric circles spiraled out from the center in alternating colors. A white center dot sat surrounded by dots of red, then orange, then yellow. The circles grew larger as they stretched for the rock’s edge. Lime green, bright green, ivy green, turquoise, cobalt blue, royal blue, then gray and white.

The stones were amazing, and I found myself dumbfounded that such beauty could be created using a rock and simple, painted shapes.

Ella had graduated from hearts and rainbows to people, characters in all shapes and sizes, smiling, frowning, laughing. Each one different. Each one emotive. All spectacular.

“You two should join us,” Marguerite said.

And so we did.

I worked to set aside my tangled thoughts regarding Albert, doing my best to savor every second of this moment, painting smiles.

Inspired by Ella’s changing style, I tried my hand at painting fish. Sydney studied me after I painted my third stone, this one embellished with a bright red fish, complete with metallic stripes and one navy-blue eye.

“I think Ella’s right,” she said, amusement dancing in her tone. “You do have fish issues.”

I studied my row of completed fish—red, yellow, and purple—and grinned. “Either that or I’m just excited to find something I can paint.”

Sydney, on the other hand, added careful brushstrokes to an intricate ladybug. She’d made her first by painting a large rock red, then adding the head, antennae, spots, and black base. She was now working on her second. This one teal.

Where my fish were painted quickly—simple shapes with basic lines—Sydney’s ladybugs were works of art, intricate in their designs, their details sharp and proportioned.

“Why ladybugs?” I asked.

“Hope,” she answered.

She went back to work, the tip of her paintbrush expertly shaping the ladybug’s body.

Hope.

I let her word settle over me as I shifted my gaze from her teal rock to the teal scarf she’d wrapped around her neck.

I couldn’t help but notice that her eyes had dimmed, much as my mother’s eyes had years earlier. While I didn’t remember all the details of my mother’s illness and death, I remembered the fading. I remembered how much it hurt, how much it had frightened me.

I glanced back to Ella, who sat, head down, tongue sticking out between her lips, lost in concentration as she perfected another figure, this one a young girl with dark wavy hair and glasses.

Sydney’s hair had gone even thinner, and yet she hadn’t worn her wig today. Instead she’d embraced what short, wavy strands she had left.

I glanced again at her scarf and wondered if she tired of wearing teal. I’d thought about asking her on several occasions but had always kept my mouth shut, just like I was doing now.

I cleaned off my brush and reached for another rock, this one larger, its surface smooth and round. I tapped the plate on which she’d squeezed out a generous dollop of teal paint.

“Mind if I share?”

She smiled, the move restoring a measure of light to her eyes.

Yet her smile faded as she refocused on her work, and the recent, seemingly permanent touch of sadness returned to her face.

I wondered if she was thinking about the photograph of my mother, or perhaps about Ella and their future.

I watched her for several moments, wishing with every fiber of my being that teal was simply a color she loved instead of a representation of the beast she fought, even now, as she sat beside us painting rocks.

A few hours later we set out on a family excursion to place Ella’s second batch of rocks—Ella, Sydney, Albert, and I.

Ella had insisted that Grandpa Albert join us, and he’d agreed. I’d kept my mouth shut, not about to quiet Ella’s excitement simply because I’d been hurt earlier.

We walked first toward town square; then we headed for the river and the wide expanse of green lawn. The foliage had turned, and the skyline was rimmed in golds and ambers, oranges and vibrant reds.

Albert carried the pillowcase full of smiles, his steps sure, his mood upbeat. Our conversation from the café looped through my mind.

Had I been unfair? Perhaps he’d been sincere about staying, sincere about becoming a permanent part of my life.

He slowed as we neared the path toward Lookout Rock, setting down the pillowcase and reaching for Ella’s hand. They veered off on their mini-adventure, and Sydney and I continued several yards until we reached the next bench.

Her steps faltered a time or two, but I pretended not to notice, even though worry wound its way through my brain.

Was she more off-balance than she’d been the day before? Had we made a mistake in walking so far?

We sat in silence, hands clasped, as Albert hoisted Ella up onto Lookout Rock, then sat beside her. The autumn days were growing shorter and the afternoon sun had begun to drop, silhouetting their figures where they perched along the river.

In their images I saw the past I’d so fervently missed and the future stretching out before me, whether I believed myself ready or not.

Theirs was the shadow of what I’d lost and what I’d wanted, my family intact, my father’s great love. While I’d never have that family again, I could have this one, if I let myself believe in the possibility.

As I watched them I felt a shift inside me, and the wall I’d so carefully guarded cracked.

I remained by Sydney’s side while my father and Ella hid smiles. They raced each other, chased each other, scrutinized locations, and worked until the pillowcase hung limp, empty.

They waved to us, gesturing for us to join them at the base of the hill, on the flat expanse of lawn that ran the length of the park.

My father and I stood watching as Sydney took both of Ella’s hands in hers. They spun together in a tight, slow circle, lost in the moment.

My heart caught, and for a split second, I saw my own mother, and me, and Albert, spinning. Always spinning.

I could hear my father’s laugh, smell my mother’s perfume.

And then I realized . . . I owed this to Albert. Sydney’s presence. Her friendship. My growing love for Ella. Without him, none of this might have happened.

Watching Sydney and Ella together was like capturing a memory. They spun with abandon, their laughter rising on the crisp autumn air. Ella smiled, a grin so wide I couldn’t help but smile myself. I couldn’t help but laugh.

They spun and spun, Sydney not caring about her new bald patches—side effects of her latest chemotherapy infusions—or her occasional misstep.

They looked for all the world like a mother and daughter full of life, untouched by illness.

Then they slowed long enough to break their circle and reach for me and Albert, their hands outstretched.

“Auntie D, Grandpa Albert,” Ella yelled. “Dance with us.”

I studied the distant look on his face and wondered if he’d been thinking the same thoughts, remembering the same joyful moments.

Sydney and Ella continued to move, circling, hands outstretched, faces hopeful.

“Destiny?” My father reached for my hand, offering me an olive branch I desperately wanted to grab.

I thought about turning away and retreating, afraid of the heartbreak that waited months or years down the road.

But instead I stepped forward, reaching for his hand. And then we ran, awkwardly, toward Sydney and Ella, and the four of us spun together, hands clasped, laughing, in a sloppy, lopsided circle.

We danced beneath the perfect September sky as I let old memories slide aside to make room for the new.