of the hours of rehearsal they put in here. Listen to the documentary. Hear the laughter. The love these people have grown to share. That’s what living is all about. No matter what,” she continued softly, slowly, “life isn’t over until it’s over.”
Okay. He supposed that was true.
So how come all he’d seen was dying people writhing on the floor?
“You can’t just watch something like this with your analytical mind, Keith. You have to see it, feel it, with your heart.”
A young bald man was making motions, as though he was grooming himself, but kept getting interrupted by an imaginary sore on his hand that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
“It’s horrible,” Keith said, wishing he had the guts to get up and leave.
“Look at the expression on his face.” Martha’s voice was soothing. A balm amidst the tragedy seeming to engulf the small room they used for viewing.
Keith looked.
“He’s alive. That sore or whatever it is isn’t stopping him. He’s still doing what he set out to do. Still accomplishing things.”
“Still living,” Keith said slowly, relaxing slightly as his focus changed, seeing, instead of the tragedy, the determination in the performer’s eyes.
And the deep-seated satisfaction as he completed his task.
“Victory,” Martha said.
Her eyes were filled with tears.
Keith had the most bizarre urge to hug her.
HUGGING HERSELF, Bonnie stared at the water at her feet, remembering Mike Diamond’s letter. Still, the flood seeping into her tennis shoes could easily pass for nothing more than bad luck. Toilets broke. Seals gave way. Curious children conducted flushability experiments with assorted toys and other nonbiodegradable items. The insurance form was already mentally half-written.
“I can help you.” She heard Shane’s thick, deep voice behind her. She hadn’t noticed the slushing of his tennis shoes in the inch-deep water pouring out into the hallway.
He was carrying a mop in one hand, pulling a wringer and bucket with the other.
“The toilet exploded.”
He nodded, started to mop. And then to wring.
Bonnie glanced back at the tile floor in the private teachers’ bathroom. With the wallpaper and area rug, the matching curtains and towels, wastebasket and soap dispenser on the sink, the wood cabinet in which the sink sat—the one she’d saved two months to buy—the place looked like home. Or it had. That cabinet wasn’t going to escape unscathed. She could already see the wood at the bottom starting to warp.
Another insurance form to fill out.
“I turned the water off,” she told Shane. And that was all she’d done. Except feel relieved that her husband had picked up their daughter a couple of hours before. She hadn’t even called Keith yet to tell him about this latest disaster, let alone phoned a plumber. Six o’clock on Friday night wasn’t a good time to get someone in, and it wasn’t as if this was a real emergency.
With one easy flick of the wrist, Shane pulled the lever to bring the rollers down over the mop and release the dirty water into the bucket beneath.
“Can you pick up that rug?” he asked, speaking slowly.
Bonnie hurried to do as he’d asked. The little rug was heavy with water. She dropped it into the sink and then got out of Shane’s way.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, touched that in spite of his limited capabilities, he was such a good friend. “Accidents happen.”
“But you just had a fire.”
“Yeah, maybe someone’s trying to tell me something,” she said wearily, trying to smile.
“Tell you what?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head and moved aside as he worked. “It’s just an expression, but much more of this, and parents are going to wonder if it’s safe to bring their kids here.”
“And your business would be in trouble.”
So why didn’t that thought strike terror in her heart?
He mopped and wrung, bending down to wipe a bit of debris off the baseboard behind the toilet with a paper towel he’d pulled from his back pocket.
“I’m really sorry about this.”
“It’s okay, it’s my job.”
The simple statement brought tears to her eyes.
Bonnie didn’t know what was wrong with her. She didn’t seem upset about what was happening to her day care—her life’s dream. And Shane Bellows’s mopping made her cry.
“I’ll go call a plumber,” she said, and escaped to her office before she could do something else she didn’t understand.
Like ask Shane to have dinner with her so she could figure out a way to help this shell of a man with whom she’d once been so in love.
Or use the flooded bathroom as an excuse to call her husband and tell him she couldn’t come home.
KEITH WAS LYING on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, three-year-old Katie astride his upper back. She was leaning forward with her chin near his ear as her green eyes intently followed along in the big book of children’s stories her father was reading to her.
If one could refer to Keith’s dramatic rendition of each scene as simply reading.
Closing the door from the garage into the kitchen, Bonnie stood and watched the two of them, filled with so much love she ached. Keith’s voice rose and fell, his head turning or nodding, his shoulders rising and falling, with Katie riding right along with him, her body responding to each change of cadence. Her little hands clutched her daddy’s sweater and patted his shoulders in excitement. Her eyes grew large. She laughed. Her dark curls seemed to dance. Then, as the story grew more serious, she listened quietly again.
Keith looked up as he played the part of a frog turned into a prince and caught Bonnie standing there. The grin on his face froze; his voice died. Katie looked up then, too, her wriggling body stilling immediately as she saw her mother. And the questioning look in the little girl’s big green eyes shocked Bonnie. It was as though, like her father, Katie was assessing the situation.
“Hi!” Bonnie dropped her purse and briefcase on the table. “Don’t stop,” she told Keith. “You were just getting to the good part.”
His face softened as she joined them in the family room. “How was your day?”
She thought of the flood. Of Shane.
“Fine.” She didn’t want to spoil the fun Katie and Keith were having.
Keith
