Retreat (10 page)

    
She picked up the phone, punched in her
credit card number and then dialed Jon’s condo. When she got a recording
telling her the number was no longer active, she tried again, thinking she must
have dialed it wrong. But she got the same recording. She briefly considered
leaving a message for him at the office, but she knew his assistant normally
fielded his calls and his messages and she didn’t feel like having her name
snickered about in the hallways of her former company. They’d already garnered
enough gossip at her expense.

    
She didn’t know Jon’s cell phone number, so
she returned the phone to its cradle and lay back on the soft bed. She’d search
for Marcy’s number when she got to the bungalow and have her give Jon a
message. She owed her a call anyway.

    
Clara closed her eyes and settled down to
sleep, too tired to think about anything but the soft white case on the pillow.

    
When she finally pulled into the bungalow’s
dirt driveway the next evening, Clara’s legs were cramped from too many hours
on the road and her eyes felt like sandpaper from the diuretic cocktail of sour
coffee and ultra-chilled air conditioning she’d used to keep herself awake for
the past two hours. She thumbed through the keys on her ring and found the
square one that slipped into the deadbolt.

    
The old house was hidden in a patch of tall
pine and maple trees just far enough from the lake to stay dry when the winter
thaw caused the water to rise. The exterior was protected by light green
shingles that made the structure blend into the trees. It was a far cry from
the four-bedroom colonial she’d just vacated.

    
Inside, the bungalow had six rooms,
including a bathroom that jutted off the master bedroom and a mudroom at the
back door. The front door opened into a modest living room that held a dark
green loveseat and chair, a dark wood coffee table and a matching end table.
Both the loveseat and chair were draped with multi-colored afghans that Grammy
crocheted long before Clara was born.

    
The light wood paneling on the living room
walls gave way to blue-and-white flowered wallpaper in the kitchen. Now that
Grammy was gone Clara slept in the master bedroom, which was positioned just to
the right of the living room and was barely big enough for the full-size bed,
dresser and rocking chair it held. A smaller guest bedroom was tucked in the
back of the house beyond the kitchen.

    
As she stepped inside the cool living room,
Clara was comforted by the familiar scent of lavender, which had seeped into
the walls from all the years Grammy had burned candles on the oval kitchen
table. She closed her eyes for a moment to soak in the unassuming nature of the
place, then clicked on the three-way lamp that sat on a tall, thin table near
the front door.

    
She was pleased when soft light bathed the
room. She hadn’t been entirely sure that the utilities would still be on. She
didn’t warn anyone she was coming, so there would have been no reason to make
sure the place was prepared. Clara was grateful for the small stroke of luck.

    
She trudged back out to her Acura and
retrieved her purse, her blue-flowered overnight bag and the Wal-Mart sack,
which now held her shoes and outfit from the day before and a nightshirt she’d
slept in at the hotel. She also grabbed a twelve-pack of beer she’d picked up
at a convenience store just before she crossed the state line into Pennsylvania. She set
everything on the tweed loveseat and headed toward the bathroom.

    
After she showered, Clara dug through the
small closet in the bedroom searching for something to wear. She’d stored some
of her things there after college, but sorting through them now she wondered
why she’d kept them at all. Her tastes in clothing had changed a lot since
then. Fashion had, too.

    
At the bottom of one box she found a pair
of navy blue sweatpants with her college logo on them and a white t-shirt with
a big Nittany Lion on it. She was relieved to see they still fit her. She might
not have been able to handle that kind of set back with everything else that
was going on.

    
She walked back to the living room and
plopped down, picking up the phone to call her parents to let them know she was
back. She was disappointed to find there was no dial tone. It made sense. There
was a good reason to leave the power and water on so the house would be lightly
heated during the harsh winter months, but the phone had no value. Getting a
new cell phone would have to be a top priority.

    
Clara spent the rest of the evening
exploring the house again, going through her old things and finding memories
everywhere she searched.

    
In one box she found a neatly framed photo of
her grandmother, which she placed on the coffee table. The shot was snapped out
on the front porch on the day Clara graduated from high school. Grammy was
wearing a blue dress that hung loosely on her small frame. She was leaning
against the porch railing, smiling down at Clara in the yard. It had been a
good day, Clara recalled, with everyone around her.

    
When she was done rooting around, she
plugged in the refrigerator, popped the beer and an extra water bottle inside
and closed the door to let in cool down. Tomorrow she’d have to stop at the
grocery store to stock up on food and paper products.

    
She was amazed at how easily she felt at
home, when only two days before her life had been on a completely different
trajectory. The familiar comfort of the bungalow helped, although deep down she
knew that eventually she’d have to surface and when she did, Brighton
would once again be the confining place she’d worked so hard to get away from.
But tonight, she relished the comfort and safety of her grandmother’s memory.

    
It was nearly
ten o’clock
when Clara opened her eyes the next morning.
She’d slept with the windows open, the fresh air lulling her into a deep sleep.
She may have kept snoozing if it wasn’t for the thunder of motorboats kicking
up on the lake. It was Saturday, so the activity would hit full-throttle by
noon
.

    
She slipped back into the sweats she’d
found, brushed her teeth and tied her hair back in a high ponytail. She dug
around in her college box and found an old walkman with a radio tuner and a
rechargeable battery. She set it to charge while she finished off the water
bottle and a packet of trail mix left over from the drive. When the battery was
nearly charged she headed out toward the park on the eastern side of the lake.

    
She decided to go for a run, something
she’d sworn off after leaving Fort
Worth. It seemed so silly now to turn her back on her
own health because of some potentially painful associations. As she set out
down the heavily mulched trail she no longer cared if running brought back
memories of competing with Jon or watching the muscles in his broad back flex
when he stretched his long legs to warm up. He’d run cross-country in high
school and college, allowing him to easily cream her when it came to distance,
but she was faster on the sprints.

    
David, on the other hand, limited his
exercise to swinging a golf club and climbing back into the cart with his
regular foursome. She sneered at the memory of David in his golf shorts as she
stepped onto the loosely paved track that encircled the park.

    
It didn’t take very long for Clara to
realize that a year off was like a death sentence to a runner. The music from
the walkman thundered in her ears but it wasn’t enough to overcome her rigid
muscles. She pushed harder, making each stride longer, each footfall solid.

    
The sky had grown overcast and threatened
to open up at any moment, to drench her in warm spring rain. She kept going,
blocking out the picnic pavilion, the tall trees swaying, the heavyset woman in
the blue jogging suit walking her Labrador on
the other side of the trail.

    
Harder.

    
She was vaguely aware that her legs were
growing numb, her breath screaming in her chest as if the air was filled with
jagged ice picks. One more lap, a quarter mile more …

    
Clara fell into a walk, her chest on fire.
Her legs threatening to buckle beneath her. She yanked her headphones off and
let them hang, bouncing against her heaving chest.

    
Shit.

    
The run had done little to make her feel
better. In between gasping for breath and growling at the pain in her legs
she’d managed to replay the past three days in her mind in a continuous loop.
Twelve hundred miles had done nothing to comfort or help her forget. It was
still there. All of it. The picture of Sally and the kids. The truth about David.
Jon’s unexpected kiss. And now, the sour realization that she couldn’t even run
a mile without collapsing.

    
Son of a bitch.

    
She kept walking, new waves of sweat
dripping from her hair into her eyes. She’d forgotten to grab a towel from the
cabinet above Grammy’s toilet, and she was wearing old sneakers and bad socks
that rubbed her ankles.

    
Stupid, she thought. How could she be so
freaking stupid. She couldn’t even get a run right. A natural born instinct and
she screwed it up.

    
Clara rounded the curve and kept walking,
slowly, trying to ease her heart back into her chest. She swiped at the sweat
with the back of her hand, but it kept coming.

    
Finally her breathing slowed. She finished
her lap and walked toward the park’s concrete bathrooms in search of a water
fountain. She caught a glimpse of herself in the metal fountain as she bent
down to lap up the water. Her face was red with exertion, her brown hair wet in
the lose bun she’d created with her ponytail to keep her hair off her neck. The
remnants of the eyeliner she thought she’d removed last night before bed
stained the tops of her cheeks.

    
Lovely, she thought.

    
“Clara?”

    
Good God, not now.

    
“Clara, is that you?”

    
She wiped her fingers under her eyes to try
to erase the rest of the eyeliner. “Hi Meg,” she said, turning to greet her old
friend.

    
“What are you doing here?” Meg asked. Clara
saw her slender face fall when she looked at her. “Are you okay?”

    
“Yes, I’m fine. I just decided to go for a
run for the first time in a while.”

    
“Oh,” Meg said.

    
Clara smiled at the little light-haired
girl clinging to the side of her friend’s faded jeans. “I just got back,” she
said. “Last night. I’m staying at Grammy’s old bungalow down by the lake.”

    
“I thought you were …” Meg started.

    
“Getting married. It didn’t work out.”

    
“What happened?” Meg asked, her blue eyes
growing wide beneath her long brown bangs. “I thought you two were so much in
love.”

    
Clara’s tired heart clenched in her chest.
She’d worked really hard to make sure everyone in Brighton
knew that she and David were happy. She realized now she was trying to prove it
to herself as much as she was trying to prove it to them. “It just didn’t work
out.”

    
“I’m sorry,” Meg said sincerely.

    
“It’s okay,” Clara said, forcing a smile.
“Is this Jenna?”

    
Meg smiled. “Yes, it is.”

    
Clara knelt down to the little girl’s
level. “Aren’t you getting big?” Clara said to her, tousling her hair.

    
“She’s three … four in September,” Meg said
proudly.

    
“Already?” Clara asked, straightening up.
“I can’t believe it.”

    
“It’s gone quickly,” Meg said. “There’s
nothing like a baby to make you realize how fast time moves. I can’t believe
you’ve been gone that long. How long until you have to go back to work?”

    
“I took some time off.”

    
“But your job in Tulsa …”

    
“It’s done,” Clara said. She had no
intention of telling Meg she was only a volunteer. That was something Meg would
never understand. Why work that hard and not get paid for it?

    
It was pretty stupid now that Clara started
to think about it. She brushed the thought away.

    
“Are you coming back to work for your dad?”
Meg asked hopefully.

    
“I’m not sure yet. I need to talk to him,”
Clara said.

    
“You should think about it. We could use
you. The company’s growing and you’re the only one your dad ever really trusted
with the bigger customers.”