Читать книгу Tidal Flats - Cynthia Newberry Martin - Страница 19

9

Monday mornings, Cass made a special point of checking on each Fate in her own room. Atta was the only one who’d brought a dressing table, and there she sat, braiding her hair. Across the room, on the corkboard over her desk, was a picture of two old women with wrinkly faces. Underneath it said: “We were young and beautiful. Now we are just beautiful.” Next to the photos was a white index card with the word skylark written on it.

“Is skylark your word for today?”

Atta nodded. “Do you know what it means?”

“Isn’t it a bird?”

“It is—known for singing while flying. But it’s also a verb. It means to frolic or engage in horseplay. Wouldn’t hurt you to skylark a bit more.”

“I’ve probably never skylarked in my life.”

“Exactly.”

Atta was also the only Fate who’d opted for weekly maid service instead of daily, and her bed was already made. No clothes in sight. No piles anywhere. All of her neatly tucked away.

“It always smells so good in here,” Cass said.

“Essential oils—lavender and eucalyptus. And I’m not stingy.”

“How was your weekend?”

“Six thousand steps each day.” She put a rubber band around the end of the braid and added a large silver bangle to each ear. “You can’t stop moving. If you do, that’s the end.”

Atta was leaning into her mirror and applying red lipstick like wings. “The big things always seem to take care of themselves. It’s the little things you need to pay attention to—the words, the steps, the lipstick.”

After shutting Howell’s front door at the end of the day, Cass called Vee. They saw each other less when Ethan was home, and Cass missed her. But no answer. She dropped the phone into her bag and relaxed her shoulders, leaving the Fates behind.

An hour later, she was sitting on the rug in front of the fireplace with her computer and the mission of setting up a GoFundMe account, when Ethan busted in the front door, dropped his stuff on the wheelbarrow, and lunged facedown onto the sofa. “Apparently I volunteered to be a clown for the Atlanta Children’s Diabetes Spring Circus,” he said. “Last year. Wheeler’s doing, of course, because of his daughter.”

Wheeler was a journalist and a photographer. He and Ethan had been in the same class at Georgia State, graduating four years ahead of Cass, and they’d both gone to CNN where Wheeler still worked.

“It’s Sunday, the morning after I get back from Boston,” he said, rolling onto his back. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Oh, you’ll have fun,” she said, lifting herself onto the brick ledge in front of the fireplace.

“Sorry. Did I interrupt you?”

“No,” she said. “You’re saving me from myself. I can’t come up with a name for the Howell House GoFundMe campaign.”

“You want to see my costume?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, scooting back to the floor to stack her notes, shut her computer. A paper bag crinkled, and she looked up. Ethan stood there like a bullfighter but holding a one-piece suit, the left half purple and the right half green. “Wow, you’re divided.”

“There’s more,” he said, turning back to the bag.

In the calm and hopeful evening light, Cass leaned against the rough brick fireplace and stretched her legs on the rug, on its soft blue swirls that reminded her of a storm. As she watched, her serious husband—in his jeans and worn white shirt, his sleeves rolled up, his blue eyes no longer tired—placed a triangular-shaped purple and green hat with a red pom-pom on his head and snapped a red plastic ball onto his nose.

Toward the end of the week, she opened their front door to round and spongy Wheeler holding a case of beer. After he put it in the fridge, he gave her a giant hug.

“Ethan’s on the phone,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll be long. How about a beer?”

“I don’t mind if I do,” he said, opening the fridge again and twisting the top off one of the ones he’d brought, which he offered to her first.

She shook her head. “How long were you and Gloria married?”

“If I don’t mind you asking.”

“You love it that I asked,” she said.

He raised his beer to her. “Four years. She loved me for a while.” He shrugged. “We’ve made a good life, though, from the pieces.” He took a swallow of beer. “But you’re a stand-by-your-man kind of girl, aren’t you?”

“Way too early to tell.”

“Hey, now,” Ethan said, coming into the kitchen and shaking hands with Wheeler. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“Ethan, old boy,” Wheeler said, “I brought you a case of beer as an early ‘thank you’ for working the clown patrol.”

“Well, I’m always happy to drink your beer.” Ethan opened the fridge and grabbed one, then leaned against the counter and put his arm around her. “For sure, I’m a stand-by-my-woman kind of guy,” he said.

There was a knock at the door. Katie, their neighbor, who was so short and pregnant it looked as if the baby were taking over her entire body.

“I need to print something for work,” she said. “And I’m out of paper. I need about twenty sheets?”

“Sure,” Cass said, swinging the door open. “I’ll be right back.”

As she passed the kitchen, she heard Wheeler say, “Another kidnapping. A journalist.” At her desk, Cass grabbed the open ream of paper that appeared to have about fifty sheets in it. As she passed the kitchen, she slowed but their voices had turned to whispers.