Misty River, Oregon
Ten days later
In the produce section of Safeway, Luke stared at the
woman sizing up a bundle of bananas three bins away.
Ginny?
Blinking, he focused on his ex-wife. It had been over
eleven years since he'd seen her last. She had the same
profile. Small, straight nose, concave cheeks, dimple in
the one facing him. Hair the color of Belize beach sand,
though the style looked as if those chin-length curls had
frolicked with a breeze.
His heart boxed his ribs. His palms began to sweat. He
took a step forward, her name in his throat.
A blond boy sauntered to her side. "Mama, can we make
hamburgers in the backyard tonight?"
Adrenaline scooted across Luke's skin as she tousled the
kid's hair. "We're having spaghetti with meatballs,
remember?"
"Oh, yeah, right. Hey, Miss Jo." The kid pulled a
miniature thumb from the mouth of the baby sitting in the
cart's basket. "You want rabbit teeth?" Before Miss Jo
could whimper, the boy screwed up his face and started
gnawing on her neck. "Rawrrr-rawrrr-rawrrr."
The little girl giggled, a sound light as a musical
scale. "Ep-say, no." She grabbed his hair and pulled.
"Ow."
"Don't get her started," Ginny warned the boy as she set
the bananas in the cart and moved to the oranges.
Luke backed away. He was an outsider, looking in on her
family — on a life he'd shunned. Bumping into another
shopper, he muttered, "Excuse me," and hurried from the
produce section. Near the electronic doors, he dropped his
basket on a rack.
She had a family. A husband.
What was she doing in Misty River?
They had to be on vacation. It was almost May, after all.
Some families took their vacations early, before school
finished. They were simply stopping for a few groceries.
Probably had a big Winnebago parked around the corner.
Husband was likely reading the paper while she shopped
with the kids.
Why that bothered Luke, he couldn't determine. Virginia
Ellen Keegan hadn't been his wife in damn near a dozen
years.
But she could've been.
The thought zapped in. Quick, sharp, leaving a ragged
tear. He strode to his silver Mustang convertible parked
on a side street. He couldn't get inside the vehicle fast
enough — and when he did, he simply sat staring through
the windshield.
Ginny.
Shutting his eyes, he saw her again, heard her voice. A
stranger, yet...completely familiar.
He'd never forgotten her.
And if he looked closely, he'd recognize the hole in his
heart, where once she had lived and laughed and loved.
At 8:20 Friday morning Ginny pulled in front of Chinook
Elementary and turned off the station wagon's ignition.
"What are you gonna talk to Mrs. Chollas about?" Alexei
asked, worry between his eyes.
"I want to make sure she understands about dysgraphia,
honey. That's all."
"Okay." He stared at three boys chasing a soccer ball.
"I don't want her to think I'm special."
"You are special, Alexei. The most special boy in the
whole world." She leaned over and kissed his hair.
"Mo-om! Don't! People might see."
"Oops." She smiled away the tiny prick of hurt; her boy
was growing up too fast. "I forgot."
"Okay." He opened the door and hopped down. "Bye."
"Have a good day, ba —" The door slammed. "Baby," she
whispered.
"Ep-say." Joselyn squirmed in her car seat behind
Ginny. "Ep-say, go."
"That's right, angel. Alexei's going to school." She
climbed from the car as her son ran toward the boys
chasing the ball. "And we're having a chat with his
teacher."
She found Mrs. Chollas waiting for her in the fifth-grade
classroom. Immediately Ginny liked the woman's kind eyes
and gentle smile.
When they were seated at the teacher's desk — Joselyn on
Ginny's lap with a notepad and a crayon supplied by the
teacher — Mrs. Chollas said, "Alexei is doing quite well
in this first week. He's already made some friends, which
really helps ease the transition. He loves math, and is
very adept at oral communication in class. But as we
discussed on the phone, his writing skills need a great
deal of encouragement."
Ginny understood too well. Offering a smile she didn't
feel, she said, "Have you ever dealt with dysgraphia, Mrs.
Chollas?" Few teachers heard of the word, never mind
grasped the tangled process that went on in a child's
brain. In Ginny's experience, they recognized the problem,
but many passed it on to a colleague specializing in
learning disabilities.
The teacher nodded. "In my twenty years of teaching, I've
seen almost everything, Mrs. Franklin. Alexei's case isn't
entirely unusual. We have a laptop he might want to use —"
"He doesn't want to be labeled," Ginny interrupted. His
past teachers had done exactly that by sending him to
resource rooms or modifying his workload. Ginny had tried
to boost his confidence by saying that holding a pencil
differently, writing in short backward strokes, was
okay. "He prefers to handwrite whenever possible." She
looked straight at the teacher. "If you don't mind
deciphering what he's written."
Mrs. Chollas smiled. "I'll haveAlexei read his material to
me if it's too illegible. And I'll work with him after
school for a few minutes each day showing him tricks that
will make his letters more readable. Would he be willing
to do that?"
"Oh," Ginny said. "He will." She hoped. Joselyn on her
hip, Ginny stood. "Thank you. For putting both Alexei and
me at ease. His other teachers... Well. He hated being
singled out."
Mrs. Chollas rose as well. "I understand. Unless it's a
dire situation, my students stay with me in my classroom.
Why don't we start next Monday, say for fifteen minutes or
so after school? Does he catch the bus?"
"I drive him."
"Good. Pick him up at three." She shook Ginny's hand.
"I promise you my best, Mrs. Franklin."
Relief washed through Ginny. "Thank you." She offered a
small smile. "By the way, would you know of a trustworthy
babysitter?"
"Sure. Hallie Tucker. She's wonderful with little ones.
Loves babies." The teacher tickled Joselyn under her chin.
"Hallie Tucker?" Ginny watched her baby smile at the older
woman.
"She's the police chief's niece. Goes to Misty River High.
Want me to write down her number?"
Calling the home of her former brother-in-law and speaking
to the child who'd once been her niece had Ginny's belly
tailspinning. But she needed a reliable babysitter and
Hallie had come with a lofty recommendation.
The delight in the girl's voice at hearing who was calling
chased off Ginny's apprehension. Most of all, Hallie met
her explanation about Boone's death and the children's
needs with adult grace and understanding. Most
importantly, Ginny couldn't ignore the love-at-first-sight
gazes from her children when the young woman stood on
their doorstep a half hour after school. "Be good," Ginny
told Alexei, then kissed Joselyn. Rushing to her green
boat of a car — the only vehicle she could find that had
cost less than eight hundred dollars — she added, "I
should be home by four-thirty, five at the absolute
latest."
Her main stop was the grocery store. Everything else could
wait until the weekend. Alexei, her all-day grazer, could
not.
Forty-five minutes later, the groceries stored in back of
her car, she drove down Main Street checking stores she
might want to visit in the near future. A small, old-
fashioned facade with Waltzin' Paper in quaint, lopsided
lettering over the little display window caught her eye.
Why not? she thought, pulling to the curb. Her kitchen
cried for wallpaper; she'd give the shop a five-minute
boo, then head home.
Boone's chuckle followed her into the store. He'd never
been a fan of papering walls. For him nothing compared to
the ease and immediacy of paint.
Boone. Today was his birthday. He would have been sixty-
three. The more than two decades between them had never
been an issue. She'd fallen in love with his kindness. A
big gentle man — jogger, kayaker, skier, daddy — who loved
children and whose eyes misted when her eleven-day-old
baby lost the battle against his tiny underdeveloped lungs.
The baby she'd conceived with her first husband, Luke
Tucker.
The baby he'd never known existed.
The night Robby had been conceived, she and Luke were in
the throes of divorce proceedings. He'd come to the
apartment to plead with her, and she'd cried for all their
lost hopes. Because Luke had been afraid of failing. In
work, in life and, irony of ironies, in his marriage.
And that night, as icing to an already imploding cake,
he'd become a father.
Ginny hadn't known of her pregnancy until she'd moved
across the country to West Virginia — as far as possible
from Luke and the memories they'd made together. For seven
months she'd debated telling him about their baby. In the
end, eight years of marriage hadn't tempered his ambitions
or his fears, and while she understood and absolved all
his regrets and excuses, Ginny could not bear hearing them
again. Nor could she imagine the guilt her child would
shoulder, hearing the reasons for absenteeism or
requirement for perfection from a career-driven father.
So she kept her secret — and birthed her son alone. For
almost two agonizing, worrisome weeks, Robby's doctor had
been Boone Franklin, the hospital's head pediatrician.
Her solace. Her saving grace.
Today, on Boone's birthday, she would've woken him with a
kiss and maybe, if the hour was early enough, un-hurried
lovemaking. She inhaled long and slow. Sex hadn't happened
in a long, long while. Not that she was looking, but
someday...when the kids were older, when she had an
established income, when there was money in the bank,
perhaps then intimacy would be a part of her life again.
The store owner approached. "Anything of interest?"
"These I like." She pointed out bold, yellow
sunflowers. "I have more catalogs in back," the woman
offered. "The patterns are last year's, but they include
classic sunflower designs that never go out of style."
"Thank you, maybe I'll have a peek." She followed the
clerk into a back room which held shelving, a couch and a
coffee table.
Fifteen minutes later, she made her purchase. An
archetypal country-kitchen border of sunflowers, which
she'd hang below the crown molding above her refrigerator,
stove and eating area. The walls beneath she'd paint in
spring-green.
She wanted her kitchen welcoming and wholesome. The way it
had been in West Virginia with Boone. He had loved green.
A healing color, he'd said. Although it hadn't healed him.
Outside on the sidewalk, she blinked against the late-
afternoon sun and hefted the roll of wallpaper under her
arm.
At the big, sprawling homestead house, a mile and a half
from where Ginny stood, Hallie would be tossing a garden
salad for her and smearing grape jelly over bread for
Alexei and Joselyn. Time to get in her clunker station
wagon across the street, go home where her children
waited — and where her loneliness for Boone wafted from
the corners.
From between two pickups, she dashed across the street. A
sound like raptors escaping Jurassic Park screeched in her
ears. She glimpsed a sleek silver nose.
Not raptors. A car!
The wallpaper roll lurched from her arms as if alive. Her
body flung of its own volition through the air, banging
onto the pavement. Pain clawed up her spine, shot through
her skull.
The last thing she saw was the snarling tread of a tire.