college, free and single, working on her Masters of Fine Arts, all she’d had to worry about was the soft blur of colors and trying to control, cajole really, the wet medium to fit the impressions in her head. Too much wet and mold grew on the paper. Too little, not enough blur. She spent hours, chasing the elusive values of light that plagued her even in her sleep, especially as she tried to infuse some spark of life into a painting already long dead, flat and mottled from her vain attempts at repair. There was a time, just before a depressed and pregnant Carrie arrived, when Beth Ann had had the promise of a lucrative career in art.
But not today.
The offers had waned because first she couldn’t deliver her paintings on time and later because there was nothing new even to deliver. Between Bernie and Iris, she just couldn’t maintain the momentum she needed to paint, to finish what she had already started.
Beth Ann had gone from painting six hours a day to six hours a week to six hours a month. And then she’d stopped painting altogether when Bernie came down with the croup and was in the hospital for five days. Beth Ann had frantically tried to call Carrie, but she was nowhere to be found. The hospital bills wiped out both her and Iris’s savings and Beth Ann had been forced to take out a mortgage on Iris’s long-paid-for house to pay the balance of the bill and to get herself and Bernie insurance. At least, Iris had Medicare. Between Iris’s social security and university pension, the residuals still dribbling in from Beth Ann’s sporadic sales and the drawing and painting classes she taught for the city’s parks and recreation program, they were doing okay. Not great, but okay. Okay enough that Beth Ann could stay home most of the time.
Bernie wriggled impatiently on her lap. Beth Ann stared at the man sitting across from her and took another sip of coffee. Finally, she said, “What do you mean by Carrie’s other life?”
When Bernie squirmed more and slid to the ground, Beth Ann used the opportunity to put some distance between herself and the piercing gray stare. She went to the ancient dryer tucked in the corner of the kitchen and rifled through the clean laundry, looking for clothes for Bernie. Half a kitchen away, she could now safely ask, “Why do you want to know about Carrie’s other life? Don’t you think that it’s a little late now?”
The second question slipped out before she could stop it.
She was surprised at how bitter she sounded and she suppressed a feeling of guilt, ashamed she’d allowed her anger to show. She pulled out a small T-shirt and frowned at the hole under the sleeve and the brown splotch she couldn’t get out. She looked for something newer and matching and swallowed hard when she realized she had neither. Bernie’s clothes were mostly hand-me-downs supplied by Elena Marquez, the dairy farmer’s wife. With a quiet sigh, she quickly assembled a small outfit for Bernie, a faded green monster-truck T-shirt and a pair of loose blue toddler sweats, pants that Bernie could easily pull on and off. She returned to the kitchen table, avoiding the gaze of the almost oppressively silent man sitting there. She focused her attention on the little girl, well aware that his silver eyes were fixed on Bernie’s faded blue striped socks and palm-size tennis shoes.
“Nana?” Bernie asked as Beth Ann stripped off the toddler’s pajamas, tugging the top over her head. She pulled on Bernie’s little T-shirt, glancing up and flushing when she met Christian’s pale eyes, withdrawn and shuttered close. She felt a chill run down her spine. How could Carrie have ever married a man whose humorless expression bored into a person, as if he was dissecting every part of her?
“Nana’s napping now,” Beth Ann replied making her voice as even as she could. “Give me your arms.” Bernie’s arms came up immediately.
She finally addressed Christian. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“She looks like a boy,” Christian said suddenly.
Beth Ann’s back stiffened.
“Dressed like that, I mean,” he added.
“My friend has three boys and the clothes were perfectly good,” Beth Ann replied, not able to control the defensiveness in her voice.
Christian stayed quiet, but his eyes followed her every move.
Beth Ann caught Bernie between her legs. “Give me a foot,” she instructed and Bernie put her foot into the pant leg. “Other foot.”
“I pull up!” Bernie insisted.
“Yes, you pull up your pants, just like you do after you go poop,” Beth Ann agreed and watched Bernie’s chubby hands fight for coordination as she grasped the elastic and tugged with such toddler might that the waist ended up at her armpits. Beth Ann fixed them, pulling out Bernie’s self-inflicted wedgie, paying more attention to the smaller details of Bernie’s attire than she normally would. With a small pat on Bernie’s behind, Beth Ann opened up the baby gate and sent her off to get her hairbrush.
Christian forced himself to relax, mentally surveying the layout of the small bungalow. The house went back a lot further than he thought, the hall cutting the house in half lengthwise. Bernie’s room was near the back—he could hear the direction of her footsteps. The grandmother was directly across the hall from the kitchen. So by elimination, that made Beth Ann’s room the one up front across from the living room. Which had been Caroline’s room?
After he and Caroline had gotten married, he’d wanted to find a place of their own, but Caroline had quickly fallen in love with Bella Grande along with the well-trained staff. Declaring he was absolutely crazy to want to live anywhere else, she’d halfheartedly toured the homes he’d arranged for her to see, then convinced him that his parents’ estate was the best place for them to settle. Perhaps an early sign that their marriage was disintegrating.
Now, he caught a small glimpse of the reason behind Caroline’s driving need to reside at Bella Grande. She denied her ordinary beginnings and used him to reinvent herself to the point of obliterating her family, her sister, her grandmother. First it was the mansion, then it was the cruises. When two-week holidays had turned into three-month or five-month journeys, he’d known Caroline had stumbled upon a life-style.
When she’d return home, she’d always declare she wasn’t going to travel again, that she was sick of the crowd, of the food. But after about three weeks, he saw the brochures, found the tickets on her dresser, felt her restlessness. He’d responded by working harder, ridding himself of the fanciful notions of children gleefully screaming on the vast lawns of his parents’ estate, adjusting to the fact that when Caroline was in town, her cruising friends would slobber over him because of his family’s name.
It had been almost a relief when Caroline would call to say she was extending the cruise of the hour for another few weeks. In the seven years they were married, Caroline had traveled for probably five of them, if all the months were strung together. It had happened so subtly that even if Christian had wanted to, there was no way to protest. When he finally did, she’d spoken so bitterly he’d had to force himself to walk away.
Their arguments weren’t about money.
He had enough money for God knew how many trips. Even with all her excesses, Caroline had never made a dent in his personal fortune, much less the vaster family one. No, she’d sharply pointed to several of his flaws—his failure to engage in verbal combat, his grueling, self-imposed work schedule, his lack of affection, his inability to fill the bottomless pool of adoration Christian perceived she needed in order to maintain her self-esteem.
His jaw tightened and he pushed away the thoughts that caused his stomach to churn. He didn’t want these feelings. He hadn’t wanted to come here. But Mrs. Murphy, his battle-ax of
