you gone running?” her mother asked. “That’s always helped you before.”
“I have. It’s beautiful here.” Ella glanced out the window, her one arm wrapped around her midsection as she looked past the copse of trees dividing her yard from the neighbors’. Beyond that the land flowed away to the solid line of granite mountains still capped with snow. “The neighbor, Mr. Walsh, his son and grandchildren live in the house. Apparently he has a house in town. Did you know that?”
Her mother’s moment of hesitant silence answered that question.
“Boyce assured me you would have your privacy,” her mother finally said.
“I hope so. I can’t afford any distractions.”
“Do you want me to contact Blanche DuMonde in Montreal? Ask for an extension? Explain your situation?”
Situation. Is that what this deep guilt and pain is called?
“No. I don’t want to give them a reason to refuse me. I really want that opportunity. To be able to teach art and paint...it’s a dream come true.”
A year ago Ella’s mother had sent in some of Ella’s work to L’école des Arts Créatifs based in the heart of Montreal. The owners of the gallery connected to the school saw her work, were impressed and contacted Ella’s mother about a teaching/artist-in-residence position they were opening up. They wanted Ella to apply. But she needed to create a body of new work in order to get the job.
And that was where things had fallen apart.
“I need you to know I have been praying for you,” her mother said, her voice quiet as if hesitant to even say as much as she did.
“Thanks, Mom.” Nice to know that while she’d struggled to pray to a God she had thought let her down, her mother still could intervene on her behalf.
Ella steered the conversation to inconsequential things. People they knew. Sales her mother had attended. Upcoming artists she was featuring. Then they said goodbye with the promise to stay in touch, and Ella set her phone beside her computer screen, glancing at the website on it.
Cedar Ridge Community Church. Services at 10:00.
No doubt the Walsh family would be attending, as well. Though she’d seen children at the other churches she attended, she’d managed to avoid them and the reminders they gave her.
Her mind skipped back to yesterday and her heart contracted thinking of Ollie.
That moment she had held his arm as she steadied him had cut her like a cleaver. His soft skin. The sweetness of him.
She stifled a groan, frustrated that seeing him could bring up the old pain so easily. Though she knew it would hover like a shadow over her life, she thought she had pushed it further back.
She wasn’t sure she wanted to see him again.
Pablo whined and she shut the lid of her laptop with a decisive snap.
“Okay, okay. I guess we’ll go for a run instead,” she said to her dog.
The first two years of Pablo’s life had caused extra stress for Ella as she tried to work his exercise in between painting and helping her mother and Darren at the gallery.
However the past couple of years the two of them had clocked hundreds of miles as Ella ran every day, seeking peace and absolution in the steady movement of her feet on pavement.
At one time she could lose herself in her painting but that had eluded her since she lost her baby son. Two months later Darren’s death had sent her world into a tailspin.
Running centered and grounded her. Gave her a purpose.
Then, as she stepped outside, Suzy’s and Paul’s voices carried through the grove of trees between the houses. It sounded like they were arguing.
It’s none of your business, she told herself, tightening her grip on Pablo’s leash as he strained toward the noise of the children. Boyce or Cord should take care of that. Not you.
But the fight was escalating. Then she heard a hollow thump followed by a heartrending wail from Suzy. And it sounded much closer than the main ranch yard.
She waited to see if someone would come but no one did.
So she tied Pablo up and followed the sound of Suzy’s cries. To her surprise they led her to the back of her cabin. She turned a corner and there they were.
Suzy sat on the ground by a tall, metal swing, sobbing and clutching her head. She was wearing a frilly pink dress. Paul had on a pair of blue pants and a white shirt. They looked dressed up. Probably ready for church.
“What happened?” Ella asked, hurrying to Suzy’s side and kneeling down beside her.
“Paul...pushed...he pushed me off the swing...on purpose,” Suzy wailed, leaning into Ella.
The movement caught her off guard. Once again she was holding on to a little child and once again her heart contracted.
“I didn’t hurt her,” Paul protested. “She wanted me to give her a push.”
“You didn’t need to push so hard,” Suzy shouted back at him. She returned to Ella, wrapping her arms around her, sobbing.
In spite of her own reaction, Ella’s arms automatically slipped around the little girl’s narrow shoulders and held her close. To her surprise, it felt good to be wanted. To be needed. Even if it was by a slightly dramatic six-year-old.
Suzy seemed to be milking this for all it was worth. Ella could hear that her cries had turned from sincere to forced and she suppressed a smile.
Paul squatted in front of Suzy and touched her shoulder. “I’m supposed to say I’m sorry, right?”
“You’re supposed to be sadder,” Suzy said, her head buried against Ella.
Ella almost laughed aloud.
Then she heard Pablo bark and the kids sat up, looking past Ella, and scrambled to their feet.
“What are you kids doing here?”
Ella looked back to see Cord standing a few feet away, hands planted on his hips. He could have been intimidating with his broad shoulders and piercing eyes and stubble shading his lean jaw.
But the buttons of his blue-and-white shirt didn’t line up with the buttonholes and one of the tails of his shirt hung out of his wrinkled jeans. He looked like he had dressed in a hurry.
“Sorry, Daddy. We asked if we could come here when you were in the shower.”
“Did I say yes?”
Paul dropped his head, his one toe digging in the dirt around the swing set as he slowly shook his head.
“I thought you said yes,” Suzy said, her expression guileless, her hands folded demurely in front of her. Ella was impressed with how easily she shifted from brokenhearted to beguiling.
“I
