Family Tree

Years after the divorce, Caroline still had no idea how to act around her ex-husband. Since he had left on that glorious pink-and-blue spring day, she’d only seen him a few times. Ethan had attended Kyle’s wedding to Beth, a small and intimate celebration at the Grange Hall in Switchback. It had been awful, because Ethan had brought Imelda with him.

Caroline had actively hated him in that moment, and then she’d hated herself for letting her ex steal her joy on their son’s wedding day. She did better at Annie’s wedding, several years later. By then, she’d learned to put up an impermeable wall between herself and Ethan. She pretended her ex-husband was just someone she used to know, like the guy who came to root out the septic system once a year.

“I didn’t realize you had a favorite,” she said now, stepping back to make sure the paintings were level.

“There’s a lot you didn’t know about me,” he said.

She swung around to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The right corner needs to come up a tad,” he said, indicating toward one of the pictures.

“No, it’s perfect.” She took another step back, and saw that he was right. She reached forward and nudged the corner up.

She wondered why he’d said this particular painting was one of his favorites. It was a landscape of Rush Mountain, the view looking westward at sunset in early autumn. The sky had a special radiance at that time of year, touching the meadows and treetops with fire and lengthening the shadows in the valley leading downward to the town of Switchback. She had caught the light just so, managing to convey its fleeting nature.

Ethan had never liked the place, even though it had been their home for eighteen years. After they married and she got pregnant so quickly with Kyle, Ethan had stayed out of obligation. He’d left as soon as their son was old enough to take over the farm.

“Why is it your favorite?” she asked without looking at him.

“Because your heart’s in it,” he said, simply and unexpectedly. “And because Annie always loved the view from your studio.”

Caroline couldn’t argue with that. She had done a similar canvas for Annie as a wedding gift.

Their daughter had been breathtaking on her wedding day. All brides were. But Annie was the kind of beautiful that cut like a knife, imparting a sweet pain that made Caroline clasp her hands together in a stranglehold. She hadn’t bothered to hold back her tears as Annie appeared on the secluded, rock-bound California beach at sunset. The setting was so different from Vermont, like another country. Another planet. Yet Annie’s expression, so full of hope, had been the same expression she’d worn every Christmas morning when she was little.

Why did joy bring the same tears as sadness? Why did the throat and chest ache with fire, regardless? Was it because, deep down, everyone knew it was fragile and ephemeral? Did the tears come from the knowledge that everything could turn in the blink of an eye?

Caroline knew that happiness could be destroyed in the time it took a tractor to overturn in a ditch. The time it took for a husband to say, “I’m leaving.”

The time it took for a piece of equipment to drop on a young woman’s head.

She looked over at the bed. Ethan sat quietly beside Annie, gazing into her unmoving face the way Caroline had done for so many hours. As if he felt Caroline watching him, he turned on the rolling stool. “What time will the doctor come?”

“They never give you a specific time,” she said. The silence between them felt awkward, so she switched on the music, a playlist she’d made of songs she thought Annie would like. “How Do You Talk to an Angel” came through the speaker—an unfortunate selection, because it triggered a memory of Ethan, lip-synching the song as he acted it out with exaggerated gestures to make his little daughter laugh.

Did Ethan remember those moments? Did certain songs give rise to indelible memories within him? Did he ever think about the lost sweetness of their family life? Or did he only recall the stale discontent, the yearning for something different?

“Where are you staying?” she asked him, deciding it was best to stick with neutral topics. She didn’t want to know anything personal about him. She didn’t want him to know anything about her life. Yet when he looked at her even now, he seemed to know everything about her.

“Hotel across the way—it’s a Best Western, I think. Next week, I’ll move to my folks’ place up in Milton.”

“Kyle said your dad has finally decided to retire,” she said.

“That’s right. He’s looking for a buyer for the business.”

Ethan’s father was an independent grocery distributor. That was how Caroline had met him, when he was driving a truck for his father’s outfit and came to Rush Mountain for a shipment of maple syrup. The logo on the side of the truck—Lickenfelt Fine Foods—had made her smile, because it was such a funny name.

She pushed aside the memory. “Oh. I hope he finds someone to take over. Kyle brought him and Wilma to see Annie a couple of times.”

They ran out of things to say. How odd that this man was a stranger to her. There had been a time when she knew everything about him—the smell of his skin and the taste of his breath. What his laughter sounded like, what his anger looked like. The shape of his hands. The things he dreamed about. His passion and his frustration.

They’d made two beautiful children. They had grandchildren together. Yet these days, she had no idea what he was thinking. She didn’t know who he was, or how he’d gotten that whitish scar on the back of his hand, or if he needed reading glasses now that he was in his fifties.

The old songs kept coming. Most were from Annie’s growing-up years. She gazed helplessly at the figure on the bed, that colorless face like a marble icon, smooth and unmoving.

“Sleeping beauty,” Ethan said.

Caroline nodded. “I’ve been so scared. I hope the doctors are right about her coming around.”

He pressed his forefinger and thumb against his closed eyes in a gesture she recognized—his way of containing his tears. “I hope so, too,” he whispered.

“Ethan, they did warn me not to expect her to be exactly the way she was before the accident. There could be …” She didn’t want to say it. “Some impairment. Deficiencies, I think someone called them. And no one will know the extent of it until she’s fully awake. Even if there’s no permanent deficit, she’ll need intensive rehab.”

“We’ll do whatever it takes,” he said.

“It’s likely to go on for weeks. Or months.”

“Whatever it takes,” he repeated.

Oh. Well, that was something. In previous years, Ethan had come to Vermont only twice a year to see Annie and Kyle—two weeks during the holidays and another two in the summer, spending his short stay at his parents’ place in Milton.

When he said “whatever it takes,” did that mean he planned to stay? She bit her lip to keep from asking.

“Brand New Day” was playing now. The part of the song about turning the clock back hit Caroline hard. “I wish I could,” she said softly, gazing at her daughter.

“Could what? Turn back the clock?”

She nodded. “Did I push her into that life, or is it what she really wanted?”

“What, producing a hit TV show? It seemed like exactly what she always dreamed of.”

All Caroline could remember were the arguments. “Maybe I should have been more supportive of her and Fletcher,” she said now. “You never met him, did you?”

“No. Annie told me about him. Hometown sweethearts.” He shot Caroline a look. “It happens.”

“But they were so young. How could I have known?”

“Cut it out, Caro.” Ethan was the only one who ever called her Caro. “You don’t get to take responsibility for your grown daughter’s decisions.”

“One of us had to take responsibility for everything,” she fired back, falling into their old pattern as if no time at all had passed.

“Right,” he said, his voice taut with anger. “And how’s that working out for you?”

Annie heard voices, quietly arguing in the way people fought when they didn’t want anyone to know they were fighting. They ought to realize that the technique never worked. Just because a quarrel was quiet didn’t mask the fact that it was a quarrel. Even if the words were inaudible, the fight infested the air like a fog.

There was a haunting familiarity in the tense, sibilant whispers hovering over Annie’s eyelids. She was ten years old, lying in the dark long after bedtime, straining to hear what her parents were saying to one another. She couldn’t hear their words, but some part of her already knew they were on the brink of stripping away the safe cocoon of her family. She had caught Mom crying and hugging Gran, and she’d seen her grandfather’s icy glare when he looked at Dad. The bad feeling sloshed through her head.

Open your eyes. Remembering the command, she tried very hard, but couldn’t quite manage. She thought about speaking up, but didn’t know what to say. She’d never been able to stop the arguments.