Senseless Acts of Beauty (14 page)

S
adie woke up in the middle of the night. She lay blinking on the bed, listening to the cicadas singing, crickets chirping, and, from the deep woods, the sound of an owl hooting. But the sound that woke her up hadn’t come through her open window—it came from the creaking floorboards in the hallway outside her room.

Sadie swung her legs over the side of the bed. Nana used to putter around the house in the middle of the night, and Mrs. Clancy had proved no different. Once Sadie had caught Mrs. Clancy rattling the locked handle of the lodge’s sliding back doors. Since then Sadie had been alert to late-night noises. Sadie knew well that all it would take was one little distraction, one little mistake, for there to be a real disaster. After all, had Sadie not been in such a dumb hurry to get to school one morning, she wouldn’t be here in Pine Lake right now, doing crazy-ass things like begging a stranger to take her in.

She poked her head outside her door but the hall was empty except for the spill of moonlight pouring in from the far window. Sadie stepped out and padded barefoot down the stairs and into the dim main lodge. She caught sight of Mrs. Clancy standing by the front window. The moonlight flooded through her nightgown, setting it aglow.

Sadie made loud footsteps as she crossed the room so she wouldn’t startle the older woman. “Hey, Mrs. Clancy,” she said, “is there a party going on out there?”

Mrs. Clancy turned and put a finger to her lips. She summoned Sadie closer and pointed out the window.

“Look,” Mrs. Clancy whispered, “the bears are dancing.”

Sadie squinted into the darkness but saw nothing but starlight glinting off the roof of Riley’s car. Everything beyond the tree line was a blur.

Mrs. Clancy pressed her palms together and drew her shoulders up in excitement. “Remember how Mr. Cross used to tell us that this would happen someday? How the bears would come alive by the light of the moon and dance together under the stars?”

Sadie looked at Mrs. Clancy, sleep ruffled, giddy. Nana’s hair was that same pure white, wispy and thin, like cotton candy. No matter how many times Sadie had combed it, she couldn’t keep it neat. Sometimes she caught Nana pulling at it in agitation, gathering puffy piles in her lap.

It was going to be hard on Mrs. Clancy, Sadie thought, when Riley lost this place for good.

“You’re not looking.” Mrs. Clancy curled strong, bony fingers around Sadie’s wrist. “Can you see them?”

“Not really. But—”

“Here, look through these.” Mrs. Clancy grasped for something against her chest and then struggled to pull a pair of binoculars over her head. “You’ll see the bears as plain as day down in that little clearing.”

Sadie obliged, if only to get Riley’s precious binoculars out of Mrs. Clancy’s hands. Tossing the strap over her head, Sadie lifted the binoculars to her face and nudged the dial to put them in focus—

—and, oddly enough, there was something out there, a pile of shapes by the mini-golf area. She rotated the dial until she saw the collection of figures—yes, they were bears—some with their arms raised toward the sky.

“How Bud loved to collect those bears.” Mrs. Clancy rubbed her hands together, a dry rusk of a sound. “Bud always denied it, you know. He used to say that
they
found
him.
He’d tell me how he’d come upon one on a trip farther upstate, and it would remind him of another one that he’d owned. He just had to buy it, never mind Mary shaking her head. They were like lost family, he said. He was just bringing them back together.”

Sadie’s finger paused over the focus dial as she saw something else in the moonlight—two human figures moving among the bears. They were too far away, and the light was too dim, to make out faces. But Sadie could guess that they were Riley and Tess.

She lowered the binoculars. She told herself Riley and Tess could be out there talking about ex-husbands or money troubles. Maybe Tess had just lost her car keys around the construction site and that’s why she had crouched down. Maybe Sadie was just full of herself, thinking that they might be talking about her.

Then Sadie remembered the flare of alarm in Riley’s eyes when Sadie had uttered the words
legal custody
.

Mrs. Clancy leaned in close. “Do you see them, Sarah?”

“Yes,” Sadie said, jerking the binoculars back to her face. “They’re the bears from the barn.”

“Why, yes, of course they are.”

“I guess that woman Tess must be using them to make the new mini-golf.”

“Well, that woman best catch them quick before those bears disappear into the woods.”

Sadie watched Riley and Tess pacing and stopping, crouching and standing, while a sick feeling settled in her chest. No way were they out there just talking about the weather. Sadie didn’t have to be a psychic to know that right now they were making plans to hand her over to the authorities.

“Poor Riley,” Mrs. Clancy mused, pressing so close to the window that her words made a circle of fog on the glass. “Bud’s not going to like that she left the barn door unlocked and set the bears free.”

Sadie didn’t bother to correct her. Why would she bother? Mrs. Clancy lived in a nice place, where people took care of her and wooden bears really did dance to life in the moonlight.

“It’s late, Mrs. Clancy.” Sadie took Mrs. Clancy’s hand in her own. “Let’s let the bears dance in peace.”

“I’m so glad I finally got to see that.” Mrs. Clancy let Sadie turn her toward the stairs. “I feel like I’ve waited all my life to see that.”

Sadie walked her through the main lodge, past Bob the Bear, whose balding tummy bore the burden of so many wishes, past the moose antlers that, during Christmas, were covered with tinsel, or so she was told. She walked Mrs. Clancy through the room that had held wild parties, where Riley’s great-grandparents had served moonshine in little white teacups and the place had been raided four times by the police.

Such pretty stories, Sadie thought, as something dark and ugly curled inside her. Maybe Riley would feel less torn apart about losing Camp Kwenback if she just took a good hard look at the truth. These were really some
other
family’s stories. Riley’s real family story was a big mystery, and Riley had gotten so close to it that she’d run right back to her adoptive family.

But Sadie was different. She knew that the family she’d grown up in wasn’t really hers. Her mom and dad had loved her, but they were dead and gone now. Her aunt and uncle had rejected her. Just like her biological mother had rejected her.

Just like Riley had rejected her.

When she turned eighteen it wouldn’t matter who her birth mother was. At eighteen she could forget
both
families, and she’d forget Riley and Camp Kwenback, too, and she’d run away far enough from everyone and everything she’d ever known. She’d fly away someplace new, so she could make up her own stories.

Sadie let go of Mrs. Clancy’s hand just outside the door of the older woman’s room. “Good night, Mrs. Clancy.”

“Good night, my dear.” She patted Sadie’s arm. “I’m so glad you’re here to take care of me.”

Mrs. Clancy closed the door behind her. Sadie stood in the hallway, her heart a stone suspended in her chest.

She had to make a new plan. There was no way around it. Nobody was ever going to take care of
her
.

T
ell her, Tess.”

Riley gripped her arms so hard she knew she would have bruises later. Something angry was curling up within her, something harsh and unforgiving for the woman standing defiant before her, unwilling to acknowledge the most fundamental of human responsibilities and confess the truth to the child she brought into the world—and then gave away.

Riley watched Tess pace a few steps and then crouch down. The muscles in Tess’s shoulders flexed, and from this vantage point, Riley recognized Sadie’s own narrow-boned frame, the same curve of neck and shoulder. The fact that Riley hadn’t noticed this earlier only made her angrier.

“My grandparents didn’t know, did they?” Riley said, already knowing the answer to the question.

Tess shook her head once.

“If they’d known,” Riley said, “they would have let you stay. They would have moved mountains to help you keep—”

“I didn’t know I was pregnant when I was staying here.”

Riley paused and did a mental calculation. Tess was probably in her third month by the time she left Pine Lake. “How could you not know?”

“I had other things on my mind.”

“I’d like to know what was more important than a pregnancy—”

“Would you?” Tess shot to her feet. “It must be hard to imagine life in Cannery Row from the vantage point of your backyard swing set.”

Riley went mute.

“By the time I realized the truth,” Tess continued, “I was far away from here, living on the street, and it was too damn late to do anything about it.”

The anger curled a little tighter inside Riley. She did another mental calculation. Since Tess hadn’t been able to terminate this pregnancy, Tess had to have been past four months when she supposedly found out, at a point where the baby would have been moving inside her.

The gaps in her story were growing deep and wide.

“I found out by accident, when I went into the hospital for a cut on my hand.” Tess stared at her open palms. “It was deep and wouldn’t stop bleeding, otherwise I’d have ignored it. In the hospital the nurse gave me a look-over and asked how far along I was. Far along for what? I asked. Then I called her a bitch for thinking I was knocked up just because I was homeless.” Tess rubbed those palms together, like she was trying to grind pine tar off her skin. “Is this what you want me to tell Sadie?”

“I want you to tell her the truth.”

“The truth is ugly.”

Riley dug her nails into her biceps as she began to tremble with something more than anger. She understood that there were times when a woman couldn’t keep her baby, especially a young woman with no one to lean on in the world. She understood that the adoption system was set up to take care of the innocent child. She also understood that the separation that resulted from adoption wasn’t clean, wasn’t joyous, wasn’t without repercussions, that both birth mother and adopted child bore lifelong scars that pulsed, itched, ached.

“The truth,” Riley said, “is that Sadie’s a miracle. Women have choices. So my existence, and Sadie’s, too, they’re both miracles.”

Tess didn’t say anything, hiding behind her bangs.

“You’ve been watching her.” Riley stepped closer, the dry pine needles crackling under her feet. “You’ve spent some time with her. You know what a smart, level-headed, even-keeled young woman she is. Your
daughter
, Tess. Your flesh and blood.”

“That had nothing to do with me. She’s made that way because of the family I placed her with.”

“Then let’s talk about that family you placed her with. Their deaths, the way she was bounced around to her aunt and uncle and then her nana’s house, and then having to take care of her grandmother—”

“Take care of her grandmother?”

Riley saw the surprise in her eyes. So Tess didn’t know everything. “Her nana has dementia. Sadie has been taking care of the older woman for years.”

“Dementia?”

“Sadie would still be there, in that house, if her nana hadn’t gone wandering. She wandered straight into the hands of the authorities, and Sadie’s cover was blown.”

Tess bent over and put her hands on her knees. She seemed to be having some trouble breathing. The sight gave Riley hope that she was finally breaking through Tess’s tough-girl shell.

“The family you put Sadie with is dead,” Riley repeated. “Her nana is in a home of some sort. You’re her only family now, the only one—”

“They were vetted.” Tess’s voice was harsh. “I chose them from a dozen families.”

“That’s in the past. Now you can make this right.”

“Nothing can make this right.”

Riley closed her eyes and willed patience. Why else was Tess here, if not to make things right?

The answer came to her like a bolt of lightning. “You think she’ll reject you.”

“She’s smart, so I know she will.”

“You’re
afraid
she’ll reject you.”

Afraid like Riley herself had been afraid, when she wrote the first letter to her own birth mother. Anxious like Riley had been when she picked up a pen to compose the second. Black spots in front of her eyes, terrified, when she picked up that phone to dial her birth mother’s number.

Riley had never considered the possibility that a birth mother, seeking first contact, could be just as fearful as an adopted child.

“You’re such a Girl Scout, Riley.”

Tess’s voice was full of disdain, and Riley felt a prickling of defiance toughen the tendons of her neck.

“My father left me behind when I was twelve years old,” Tess retorted. “He left me alone with an alcoholic to take care of. That alcoholic later sold me out for a cheap bottle of vodka. You think there’s anything a fourteen-year-old can say to hurt me?”

“Yes.”

“Then you don’t know me very well.”

Riley balked at that, but she didn’t deny it. Yes, they hadn’t hung out in high school. Yes, they’d only had a few weeks together in total. Summer weeks, too, outside of the strictures of school. But she’d never believed that their relationship was no more than a camp summer thing, preserved in amber. She’d always thought they’d shared something special—Camp Kwenback, Bud and Mary, a certain sensibility that Riley hadn’t found among any of her other Pine Lake girlfriends. More than once since Tess had returned, Riley had glimpsed the puckish, imaginative girl she’d played with in their youth beneath the attitude and the barbs.

But even as Riley convinced herself she was right, the doubts came rushing in, as they always did. The queen of good judgment Riley was
not
. Maybe she was just fooling herself about the woman who stood before her, like she had fooled herself about so very many things. Maybe the years—and the mileage—had changed Tess so much that the softer creature Riley had once known had grown a shell of its own.

Well, if Tess wasn’t going to take responsibility for Sadie, then Riley was determined that someone else would.

Riley asked, “What about Sadie’s father?”

“Sadie doesn’t have a father.”

More denial. “Everyone has a—”

“If Sadie’s lucky, her father is dead or rotting in prison.”

The words struck Riley hard. She took three steps away from Tess, unnerved by the harshness of her voice.

Riley ventured. “Do I know him?”

“No.”

“Did he…was he abusing you?”

“Seriously?”

“Then why—”

“Why? Why what? Why did I leave Pine Lake?” Tess crossed her arms. “I left because Rodriguez wouldn’t let it go. That damn cop came to Camp Kwenback all the time, bringing all the ugly here, hounding me to get involved in the investigation, when I just wanted to put it all behind me.”

Investigation.

“Sadie doesn’t need to know her father,” Tess said. “Ever.”

Tess turned away again, moving like she was caught in a box of her own making. Walls, walls, walls on all sides, she kept running into them, turning to find another. She planted her fists on her hips but they didn’t stay, they slipped off, and her spine bowed like she couldn’t bear the weight of the words.

Riley’s heart began to pound. “Tess, Sadie is going to ask—”

“She won’t. Because I’m not telling her who I am.” Tess jabbed a finger at Riley. “And after you hear my story, neither will you.”