Pictures Of Us

“I know it’s not much now,” she was saying, sweeping one arm toward the grounds, her dark blond hair swinging. She’d inherited my mother’s thick sleek hair, while I’d gotten my father’s unruly curls. “But they’re turning it into a restaurant and catering facility, and they’re only asking peanuts for anything scheduled before the first of the year.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, struggling to visualize the grounds cleaned up and a fresh coat of paint on the aging shingles. “But will it be done by September?”

“Partly.” She was hedging, walking away to inspect the few lonely tulips blooming near the fence. A nurse for almost twenty years now, she was wearing a denim jacket over light blue scrubs, which meant she had a shift at the hospital later. She looked much younger than her forty-seven years.

Actually, it wasn’t the wedding that meant so much to her. It was Jack. The prospect of sharing the rest of her life with him, after waiting for so long to find someone—that was the important thing.

“He’s the one, Tess,” she’d told me nine months ago over beer at the Trolley one Friday night. Even in the dim light of the bar, cigarette smoke choking the air, her eyes shone. Big and blue, they’d always been a mirror of Nell’s feelings—she couldn’t lie to save her life. And for too many years they’d reflected nothing but disappointment that was rapidly sharpening into bitterness.

“He’s gentle and funny and kind and…” She bit her bottom lip to stifle a grin. “He’s so good in bed. I can’t even tell you.”

“Please don’t.” But I laughed when I said it. My sister was happier than I’d ever seen her, and I could only hope that Jack was the paragon she made him out to be.

The thing was, he’d been close by all along. A high-school art teacher in Springfield, he adored his students and gave private drawing lessons out of the Craftsman cottage he’d restored over the past ten years. He paid his taxes, he volunteered at the juvenile center in Rahway twice a month and he liked cats and dogs.

“Clearly, he’s perfect,” my mother had teased at Thanksgiving, when Nell had chosen to introduce him to the family en masse.

“I like to think so,” Jack said, not missing a beat, and everyone had laughed, including Emma, whom I thought had developed a bit of a crush on him. What was more, he obviously adored Nell.

If he wasn’t arguing about a wedding reception at Willowdale Farm, why should I?

“It’ll be great,” I said, reaching out as she walked past me and grabbing her hand. She looked at me, eyes hopeful and even brighter than usual in the warm sunlight. “I can imagine some gorgeous pictures on that porch and under the willows.”

“I know!” She was beaming again, and she leaned in to give me an impulsive hug. She smelled like citrus and laundry soap, and her lips were cool on my cheek. “It’s going to be beautiful. Shabby-chic maybe, but chic nonetheless.”

I laughed and looped my arm through hers as she led me inside, eager to introduce me to the female half of the couple who’d bought the place and show me the dining room.

“Kara and Peter remind me of you and Michael,” Nell confided as we waited in the drafty front hall. I was admiring the wainscoting and the vintage sconces. “They met when they were in high school, too, and they knew it was love even then. Just like you two.”

There was a wistful note in her voice that I thought was more habit than anything else. As much as Nell loved Michael, part of her had been envious of us for years, of the time we’d already had together, of what she called the “lightning bolt” method of falling in love. How often had she told me, teary and heartsick after yet another breakup, that I should be grateful I’d found my life’s mate before I’d even had to go looking?

“He found you,” she’d said, although this was frequently uttered after a beer or two. “Love found you. How lucky is that?”

Very lucky, and I knew it. I knew it now, at least. Back then, I wasn’t always so sure. I was still in high school, a vague lifetime ahead of me, and there were moments I felt I’d simply traded one comforting certainty for another. Ballet had been my future for as long as I could remember, part vocation, part passion, part habit. After the surgery, even after I met Michael, I would sneak up to my room before bed or on a Sunday afternoon, warming up quickly before donning pointe shoes and testing pliés and relevées. Each time, my knee had shrieked its disapproval, and my body had stalled, unaccustomed to the physical demands after months away from the barre.

Michael had offered another kind of certainty. If ballet had been my first love, Michael was my second—he wasn’t so much the one as another one, although I’d never said that to him, and it wasn’t the case now, or even after a few months together. But even if he wasn’t exactly eloquent about it—and he wasn’t, back then—he’d never been afraid to tell me that I was the one for him, the one and the only.

September 18, 1983

Tess,

I can’t believe how much I miss you already. Feels like months have gone by since I saw you, instead of just a week and a half. I’ve been busy, too, getting adjusted to life here in Straus. It’s a good dorm—Harvard Square is just outside—and I have a single room, which suits me. It’s not huge, but then, I don’t have to share it.

At the same time, since classes haven’t really started in earnest yet, I don’t have a lot to do but read and think about you. So I’ve been thinking about you a lot—what you’re doing, what school is like your senior year, if your new job is all right, everything. I’m pretty happy to be here (I mean, it’s Harvard. Who wouldn’t be?) but in those empty moments that I’m waiting around, wishing for something to do, I’d really rather be there, with you.

I began writing a short story about this, but I’m not going to share it yet. If ever. It’s still pretty rough, and in some places it keeps turning into a Penthouse letter. Not that I ever read them, you know. Really. Okay, forget I said that. Really, I’m reading poetry. All the time.

When I’m not thinking about you, that is. Have I said how much I miss you? I think I have, but it bears repeating. It’s so infuriating that we met only to be forced apart three months later. I guess it could have been worse (not meeting at all), but when you find something so awesome, you want to keep it next to you. You want to be able to touch it and look at it. Now I’m making you sound like an object, which is not the point at all. (Maybe I’m not cut out to be a writer. Crap.) It’s just, I love you, Tess. You’re the biggest part of my life, even way up here in Cambridge.

Write soon. I love you. And also? I love you.

Michael

CHAPTER FOUR

LATER THE SAME DAY NELL AND I toured Willowdale Farm, I was trimming fresh green beans in the kitchen when Michael came home. He pushed open the screen door and leaned down to pet Walter, who greeted him with his usual drool-and-pant doggy grin.

“How’s my girl?” he said, setting his briefcase down and tossing his jacket on the back of a chair.

I could sense him hovering behind me. He usually kissed the back of my neck when he found me this way, whispering kisses that made me smile and wriggle away before the meat burned or the vegetables dissolved into mush.

But we hadn’t talked all day. He’d left two messages, and I’d called back at his office, only to be told he was in an art meeting. The impromptu errand with Nell had helped distract me this morning, but I’d returned to a silent house and work that refused to take my mind off the issue of Drew Keating. By three, I’d given up and settled on the sofa with a bag of chips, flipping the channels through bad made-for-TV movies and home-design shows until I was drowsy and more than a little numb.

“Just waiting to hear about your conversation with Drew.” I didn’t turn around, and instead thwacked the ends off a dozen more green beans a bit more violently than necessary.

Michael lifted the lid of the saucepan on the stovetop, where chicken breasts were simmering in wine and garlic. The kitchen smelled delicious. I was paying for the junk food, and probably my attitude, with a decent meal.

“We talked,” he said finally, and I heard the scrape of chair legs against the floor as he sat down. “Can I talk to you now? Face-to-face?”

I set down the knife and took a deep breath before turning, and what I saw in his eyes evaporated the bitterness and resentment I’d been working into a team all afternoon. He was exhausted, and worried, and at the moment I was pretty sure he was more worried about me than about his brand-new son.

“I’m sorry.” I dropped to my knees in front of him, taking his hands in mine. “I’m being awful. Tell me what happened.”

He pulled me onto his lap, his thighs lean and bony beneath my legs, and I laid my head on his shoulder, breathing in his scent and his warmth as he talked. Eyes closed, Michael’s arms around me, I let the comfort of his closeness soothe the rough edges of my mood. Walter joined us, pressing his firm little body against my leg and nosing Michael’s hand for petting.

“He sounds like a good kid. Kid. I guess he’s more than a kid now, but it’s hard to get my head around it. And he was nervous, too, which was even weirder, because he…Well, he sounds a little like me when I’m rambling.”

I swallowed hard, holding Michael tighter, not daring to look into his eyes.

“And he wants to meet me. Well, us. All of us.” It was Michael’s turn to swallow, choking back sudden emotion. “He was kind of emphatic about that part, and he kept apologizing for whatever waves this was causing.”

“But did he say why?” I asked, finally getting up to walk back to the stove. The lid on the chicken pan was rattling, and I needed to turn down the heat. “I mean, why he’s getting in touch now?”

“He said there was a reason.” Michael loosened his tie and then slid it free of his collar. “He’d rather tell me—us—in person, though.”

I was moving the chicken breasts around in the pan to keep them from sticking, but my mind had already jumped ahead to the moment I would look this young man in the eye. The idea was overwhelming, and a host of other thoughts accompanied it. What if Sophia joined him? How was Emma going to react? How could we be sure that Drew was in fact Michael’s son?

“Tess?”

I must have frozen—I looked down to find the wooden spoon motionless and the pan lid in my other hand, suspended over the counter, dripping condensation.

“I’m sorry.” I finished with the chicken and wiped my hands on a kitchen towel. “It just struck me that…well, how do we know Drew is your son, biologically?”

Michael’s frown deepened, a worried slash above eyes gone still. “We don’t, not officially. But I don’t doubt it, Tess. And I can’t ask him to prove it, at least not until I’ve met him.”

Outside, a squirrel bounded through the yard, and Walter, parked at the screen door, barked his disapproval. I hushed him and turned back to the green beans, still piled on the cutting board.

“You’re right. It’s just that it’s so unbelievable,” I said, running water in another pot. “But too believable at the same time. Do you know what I mean?”