you feeling?”
She sighed. “Tired.”
“Jamie said your doctor suggested Prozac.” I thought Jamie was wrong to discourage antidepressants.
“That’s none of your business,” Laurel said.
Was she right? Maybe. But I was taking care of her baby and that did make it my business in a way.
“I have a really good friend in Michigan who takes Prozac and it’s made a world of difference for her,” I said.
“I’m not depressed,” Laurel said. “I’m tired. You’d be tired, too, if you had to be up all night with a screaming baby.”
“You’re a nurse,” I said. “You must know depression can be a medical problem. Jamie said you don’t care about anything. Not even Maggie.” I worried I might be going too far. “You were excited about having a baby. I saw that when you announced your pregnancy in the chapel. I think it’s a definite sign of depression that you’re so…disinterested in her.”
Laurel looked at me. “I want you to leave,” she said.
I was blowing it, handling it all wrong. The last thing I wanted to do was make things worse for Jamie, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. “You’re not being fair to Jamie,” I said. “It’s like he’s a single parent. He’s great with Maggie, but she’s not even going to know who you are.”
I turned at the creaking of the screen door. A young guy walked into the living room and it took me a second to remember that Jamie’s brother, Marcus, lived with them. The rebel, Jamie had called him. He looked harmless. Slender, tan and messy-haired, wearing a T-shirt and green bathing suit.
“You must be Marcus.” I stood up. “I’m Sara Weston.”
“The babysitter.” He’d been drinking, and it was not even noon. I could smell it on him.
“Right. I wanted to stop in to see Laurel.”
“She came over to tell me I’m a shitty mother and a shitty wife,” Laurel said.
“Laurel!” I was stunned. “That’s not what I meant. I’m sorry if I—”
“I told her to leave but she won’t,” Laurel said to Marcus.
I felt my cheeks blaze.
“If she wants you to go, you’d better go,” Marcus said.
“All right.” I raised my hands in surrender. “I’m sorry,” I said, walking to the door. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
In the chapel office, Jamie looked up from his small, wooden desk.
“How’d it go?” he whispered so he wouldn’t wake Maggie, asleep in the cradle.
I was embarrassed when I started to cry. “I didn’t handle it well at all.” I sank into the only other chair in the office. “She kicked me out, and I don’t blame her.”
“Why? What happened?”
I told him about the conversation, grappling in my diaper bag—yes, I had come to think of the diaper bag as mine—for a tissue. I pressed it to my eyes.
“Sara.” Jamie’s chair was on wheels and he moved it closer to take both my hands in his. “It’s not your fault, all right? I set you up for failure. You worked such miracles for Maggie and me that I guess I hoped you could work them for Laurel, too.” He smoothed his thumbs over the back of my hands as he spoke. I curled my own hands involuntarily around his, gripping his fingers.
How do you stand it? I wanted to ask him. How do you stand her? I’d wanted to feel sympathy for Laurel because clearly the woman was ill. But my sympathy could reach only so far. Laurel had a live, beautiful child and she was doing nothing to mother her.
“I didn’t realize what you were coping with at home,” I said. “How bad it is.”
“I hope it’ll pass,” he said. “It’s just going to take more time than I thought.”
“Maybe she does need antidepressants,” I said.
“Maybe,” he acknowledged.
“What keeps you going?” I asked.
“Oh, Sara.” He smiled. “Silly question. I have so much to keep me going. The chapel, to begin with. And her.” He nodded toward Maggie in her cradle. “And the fact that I love Laurel.” He looked at me as if reminding me that he and I were only friends, nothing more.
But the way his thumbs stroked the back of my hands told me something completely different.
Chapter Nine
Keith
DAWN PARKED AT THE END OF THE ROAD BY THE LOCKWOODS’ house so that Stump Sound was right smack in front of us. You could drive straight into it if you wanted. No guardrail or anything. I thought about Jordy Matthews’s mother flying off the high-rise bridge. What would it be like to be inside a car with water pouring in through the windows? If you wanted to die, would you panic or could you peacefully let yourself drown?
The Lockwoods’ house was on our left. There were a few other cars parked nearby, and I wondered how many people would be at this thing, whatever it was.
Dawn looked at me. “You all right, sugar?” she asked. “You look a little green.”
“Never better.” This was the last place I wanted to be. Maggie Lockwood’s house. I was doing it for my mother. Otherwise, no way in hell I’d be there.
The past two mornings, the second I woke up, I looked out the window above my bed, hoping to see my mother’s car. Hoping it had miraculously reappeared overnight. When I saw that it hadn’t, I felt this panic building inside me. It was like when I woke up in the hospital with that effing breathing tube down my throat. I’d never wanted to have that feeling again.
“Okay.” Dawn unsnapped her seat belt. “Let’s go.”
We walked up the sidewalk to the house, which was yellow, the only thing it had in common with our trailer. The house was big for Topsail. Grand, my mother called it. I wouldn’t have gone that far, but having the sound in your yard was nothing to sneeze at.
I’d been there plenty of times back before Maggie torched me and my mother and Laurel’d been friends, but not since then. Not since I found out that I was a Lockwood, too.
“I don’t want to see Maggie.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud, but it came out of my mouth anyway. I sounded like a kid. Like I was asking Dawn to protect me or something.
She was a step ahead of me, but she stopped and put an arm around me so we were walking together. Her long red hair brushed my cheek. The smell of her hair reminded me of my mother, like maybe they used the same shampoo or something. I turned my head so I could pull in another whiff of it.
“I’m
