knew better than to answer without checking caller ID. She was available for emergencies, but on her one day off she was firm about not taking calls that could wait another day. She couldn’t see the name and phone number without her reading glasses, so she waited for the answering machine, grabbing the receiver when she heard her sister Gretchen’s voice.
“I know, I know this is your day off,” Gretchen said after Analiese’s hello. “But I’m going to be gone all day and the girls are eating breakfast. This was my only chance to leave you a message. I didn’t expect you to answer.”
“I was up. What’s wrong?”
“You’ve had that kind of week, huh? Jumping to the worst conclusion feels natural to you?”
Analiese carried the phone into the living room and plopped down in a corner armchair. “You have no idea.”
Gretchen didn’t ask for details. “Well, nothing’s wrong in Providence. The girls and I are just wondering what you’re doing for your birthday. Because it’s a big one, and we thought you might like to come here to celebrate.”
And there in living color was the other thing on Analiese’s “what’s bothering me” list.
“It’s just another birthday,” she said casually.
“It’s number forty, glamour girl, and even you have to be feeling that just a little.”
Analiese lifted her feet to the ottoman and closed her eyes. “Why? Because I’m in a stressful job, alone and childless?”
Gretchen ignored that. “Why don’t you visit us and we’ll do the day up right? Maybe Elsbeth can fly in, too. Can you get away?”
“Not in this century.”
“They don’t deserve you, do they?”
Analiese could almost hear her sister checking the clock over the stove in her sleek Country French kitchen. Gretchen’s daughters would be eating, possibly squabbling, just as she and her sisters had done, and in a moment Gretchen would start reminding them to hurry. There was no time to share feelings. The fact that she and Gretchen had connected and were talking at all was surprising.
As nice as this was, now she felt even lonelier.
“I’ll come this summer,” she said. “My vacation’s in June. Maybe we can get to the beach for a day or two. Elsbeth, too.”
“We’re going to France in June, remember?”
Analiese did now. “Sorry, of course. Henry’s job, plus the girls in a language school.”
“You have no idea how competitive college applications are. Fluent French will help.”
Analiese thought of Shiloh and how, despite her obvious intelligence, she would never even be competitive for community college unless somebody intervened quickly.
“I miss you,” she told her sister. “We’ll find a time and a way to see each other.”
Analiese hung up. She had chosen her life path, and she wasn’t sorry. Still, somehow, she was alone and turning forty. And now the man who would best understand how she felt, a man who himself would never marry and have children, was playing peekaboo and refusing to get close enough for a conversation.
Wasn’t that for the best anyway? Since he was the man she most wanted and could never have? Self-pity was closing in fast.
“Time for a long walk.” She got to her feet and went to find the right shoes.
* * *
Shiloh knew her mother was sick, really sick and not just giving-up-sick. But now that Belle was feeling a little better, she was messing around in the kitchen, trying to act like a regular mom. Unfortunately there was nothing regular about the way she wiped crumbs to the floor and then didn’t have the energy to sweep them up. Things were better when Belle just stayed in bed. At least that way Shiloh could clean on her own schedule.
That was why she and Dougie were outside now. She’d had to get away before she said something really mean. After sweeping the floor she’d grabbed him and abandoned the apartment.
“Are all those kids gone yet?” Dougie asked.
From behind a row of shrubs Shiloh had logged the activity at Covenant Academy while Dougie tried to outrace squirrels. When chimes had sounded all the students had filed in, but Shiloh had seen plenty first. These kids didn’t look like the ones at her school in Ohio. She knew the difference between jeans that had faded from constant wear and the designer kind that had been artificially faded by women in India or Bangladesh who got paid, like, three cents an hour and used chemicals that would cause birth defects in their unborn children.
These kids came from homes where they could probably choose a different supersize television to watch every night. These were kids who had to decide between a Porsche or a Jaguar when they passed their driver’s test.
“Yeah, they all went inside.” She hoped she didn’t have to see them again today.
“I’m bored.”
This was Shiloh’s cue. This was garbage day. Early that morning she’d scoured recycling bins in the neighborhood behind the church to find magazines, and now she had two that might interest her brother. Ranger Rick, which had a funny-looking fish on the cover, and a Scooby-Doo! magazine, which was really more like a comic book.
The problem was she wasn’t in the mood to help her brother read. Dougie could read okay, but after almost every sentence she had to fight him to sit still and keep going. If she could just figure out how to help him read while he was running, he might catch up with the other kids in his grade.
If they ever went back to school.
“Let’s take a walk and figure out what kind of trees we see. I have some paper. We can make a list, maybe collect some leaves off the ground.” She vaguely remembered doing something like that in third grade, but earlier in the year when leaves were still in place on branches.
“I don’t know nothing about trees.”
“Anything. You don’t know anything.”
“If you know I don’t know nothing, then why do we have to go?”
She socked him on the shoulder. Hard. “Listen, Dougie. In case you didn’t notice, I’m not having fun here either.” She thought about yesterday and the way she’d felt when her family’s whole story had been laid out for everybody in church by Reverend Ana. Sure, the lady minister had done a good job of making it seem like what had happened to them could happen to anybody, but Shiloh had still felt like a bug pinned to a board. On display whether she liked it or not.
Dougie rubbed his shoulder. “I can hit back!”
“You’d better not. That’s the only way I can get your attention. And now we’re going to take that walk, whether you want to or not. I know the names of a lot of trees, and I’ll tell you.” She hoped that was true.
“Can we get ice cream?”
“Of
