She looked down at the phone, debating placing a second call and this time not hanging up. If you do this, she coached herself, everything could change. But everything was going to change anyway. She pulled up her recent calls and hit the number again. She cleared her throat as the phone rang, readying herself to leave a message. There was that voice, strangely familiar even though it had been years since she’d heard it last. She smiled at the sound of it, then began to speak after the beep.
“Hi,” she said. “This is Bryte Lewis. We met several years ago at the ATXS show, at the cocktail party. I’m not sure you’ll remember, but you mentioned I should call if I was ever looking for a job, and I am. So, if you can, I’d love to talk to you about it. I know tomorrow is the Fourth, so you’re probably not even working this week, but if you can give me a call, my number is—” The beep sounded, and she was cut off.
A voice inside her said, This isn’t just about a job. But she ignored the voice, pushing it into that place deep within her where the truth resided. She watched as the phone’s screen returned to a photo of the three of them at Easter, all dressed up. She’d put Christopher and Everett in adorable matching pastel bow ties. She exhaled loudly and considered calling back to leave her number. No, the number would show up in his list of incoming calls. If he wanted to respond, he’d figure it out.
JULY 2014
JENCEY
The impact of a little body landing on the mattress jolted her awake in her old bedroom, never changed since her departure, a pastel wonderland with its boy-band posters and various other accoutrements of the teenage female. Her girls were fascinated with the time capsule that was her old bedroom, holding long-since dried-out bottles of nail polish up to her with a kind of wonder. “Mom,” Pilar had asked, astonished, “you wore glitter nail polish?”
She supposed it was astonishing to a child who’d only seen her mother with French manicures, which was what all the women had back in her old neighborhood. She’d taken the bottle of nail polish from Pilar’s hand and studied it for a moment, seeing in her mind’s eye sitting with Bryte on her bed, doing one another’s nails. Bryte was always so careful, so serious about the polish being just so. She’d been fastidious then, and—from what Jencey could tell—was still that way. She was just as serious and careful in her devotion to her home, her cooking, her son, and Everett. Jencey tried not to think about those few moments alone she’d had with Everett after dinner. There were things she’d wanted to say to him, but didn’t dare, the unsaid words still rolling around like marbles in her mind.
“Get up, Mom!” Zara hollered, shaking the mattress as violently as her small body could manage, her shrill voice too loud and piercing on the cusp of a sound sleep. Jencey had been dreaming she was in the woods by the lake, but there was someone else there, too, someone she didn’t know, but who knew her—the presence disturbing, threatening, and all too real. She tried to shake off the dream even as she pulled back the sheets so Zara could snuggle under with her. She hugged her daughter tighter and kissed her head several times, the action warding off any lingering bad mojo from her dreams. Zara giggled and wrenched away. “Mom, we have to get ready for the parade!” she scolded.
Jencey moaned aloud and pulled the covers over her head. “Can’t your grandmother take you?” she said from under the sheets. She’d known today was the Fourth and had vaguely thought of the neighborhood to-do over the big day, but hadn’t actually expected to take part in any of it. Pilar and Zara had spent the day yesterday helping her mother make the traditional dishes to put out at the neighborhood potluck. Things just wouldn’t be the same in Sycamore Glen if her mother’s potato salad wasn’t among the dishes. Jencey wasn’t in the mood to participate in a large celebration that most likely would involve people she hadn’t seen in over a decade, fielding questions about her husband and why she was there, which she’d so far, for the most part, been able to avoid. But the girls were invested now, which meant she was as well.
Zara’s head appeared underneath the covers, her grin so wide her dimples showed. She scooched down to get into Jencey’s line of sight. She was her mirror child, her baby, her sweetest girl. “No, Mom, you have to come. You promised.”
It was true; she’d agreed at dinner last night, acquiescing to the girls’ pleas without much of a fight. That would teach her to drink wine at dinner. She tossed the covers back with a world-weary sigh, her eyes falling on a poster of Marky Mark before he’d become the more respectable Mark Wahlberg. “You’re right. I said I would go, so let’s go watch this amazing, elaborate display of patriotism!” she said, her voice containing so much false enthusiasm she expected Zara to see right through it.
But she didn’t. “Pilar!” Zara hollered as she hopped up from the bed. “I told you she’d come!” She scampered from the room, her little feet thundering down the hall in search of her sister. If her parents weren’t awake, they would be now. Serves them right, she thought. She was tempted to pull the covers back over her head and fall headlong back into dreamland, but she wasn’t sure her dreamland was a safe place to go.
She took her spot on the sidewalk with the other neighbors, waiting for the parade to start. Her mother had prepared a thermos of coffee for her, and a friendly man she didn’t recognize handed her a donut to go with it. She accepted the fried ring of dough and sugar just because it was the Fourth of July and the donut had red, white, and blue sprinkles. It felt unpatriotic to turn it down. She watched the parade, such as it was, begin its long trek from the entrance of the neighborhood to the clubhouse. As tradition dictated, the local fire department had sent an engine to lead the way, and she waved back at a fireman who hung off the side, pointing at her as he passed, waving enthusiastically when he was sure he had her attention.
“I think he likes you.” Bryte sidled up, pushing Christopher in his stroller. After all their days at the pool together, Jencey had come to recognize that stroller as well as she recognized other people’s vehicles.
Jencey grinned at her and said hello even though her mouth was still full of donut. She broke off a bite of the donut and handed it to Christopher without asking Bryte first. Christopher looked up at her with utter gratitude on his face, stuffing the donut in his mouth before his mother could think better of it and take it away.
Bryte laughed. “Donuts are his love language.”
“Smart boy,” Jencey said. She looked around for Everett and was glad when she saw that he wasn’t with her.
Reading her mind, Bryte explained. “We came to see Daddy ride his bike, didn’t we, Christopher?” She raised her eyebrows and gestured to the pack of paraders still waiting for their turn. A big red tractor decorated with an abundance of streamers putted by. The man driving it spit a big brown stream of tobacco juice onto the pavement. Only in the South, she thought.
Beside her, Bryte shuddered at the sight of the spit, then continued talking. “Everett got roped into riding his bike with some of the other neighborhood guys.” She looked down at Christopher, his mouth stuffed with donut. “Christopher helped decorate it last night,” she added.
“I’m sure it’s lovely.”
Bryte laughed. “It’s um, colorful,” she said with a smile. She looked around. “Your girls in the parade?”