about avoiding a piece of land as opposed to seeking it out. I want to stay far away from the construction site on Birchwood Lane where Eddie died. I do my best these days to steer clear of that part of town.
KELLY IS sitting at her computer in the living room when I get home.
“Have a good day at the office?” I ask after kissing her cheek. This is my usual question, which I use to gauge her mood.
“Decent,” she says. “No major crises. Sarah and Giles actually did some work, miracle of miracles. It was a nice change to have a little help.”
“Great,” I say over my shoulder as I head into the kitchen for a beer. “Have you heard from your mother, or Lila?”
Kelly looks up from the screen. “No. Why?”
“Your mother had a small car accident in front of the Municipal Building. She’s fine, though. I happened to be there, so I drove her to the hospital.”
I have apparently decided not to tell my wife about the possibility of the stroke. I will give Catharine the benefit of the doubt this time. If she thinks she can fix this on her own, I will give her the space to try.
“Dear God.” Kelly turns sideways in her chair, a sudden movement that focuses all her attention on me. “When did this happen?”
“Around two o’clock, I guess.”
“And no one called me? Louis, why didn’t you call me? You’re sure she’s fine? What did the doctors say? My God, I should have been there.”
“I knew you were busy, and everything happened pretty fast. Lila was working at Valley, so we spent a few minutes with her. There didn’t seem to be any reason to disrupt anyone else’s workday.”
“Louis.” Kelly shakes her head, and her frosted hair shakes, too. “She’s my mother. You have no right to make those kinds of decisions.”
“For God’s sake, Kelly, doesn’t thirty years of marriage make me . . .” I trail off, knowing I’ve made a mistake. I shouldn’t have pointed out our marriage. We never mention our marriage anymore.
Kelly sits perfectly still. “You barely have time to speak to me anymore. I don’t know where you are half the time. How are you in any position to be sanctimonious?”
She is right. Kelly is a woman I have to work to love well. She is constantly changing, a fact that has kept me on my toes for over three decades. I have always liked that about her, and about us, even at the moments when I’ve failed to chart her changes properly. I enjoy the challenge. But I don’t deserve her right now. I am unable to step up to the plate and do the work. I wish it were late at night so I could close myself in the den and turn on the television, sound low.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and shrug.
“I don’t like what is happening here,” Kelly says, and for a moment she looks like Lila as a little girl, about to have one of her temper tantrums. “You’re not trying! You’re not even making an effort.”
She throws this at me as if it is the greatest of crimes, and I know that to her it is. But there is something inside me that keeps me from reaching out, keeps my wheels from turning in the direction they should. That something is rock solid and unmovable, and it sits on my chest. It makes me sink down on the couch, sink down in the grass beside Eddie’s still body, sink down under the heaviness of the air in this room.
“Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” There is a note of disgust in Kelly’s voice.
I don’t have anything to say. I wish I did.
“Fine.” She stands up, her thin body a collection of sharp angles. “I need to call my mother, then, and Lila, to find out what’s really going on.”
GRACIE
I know I have to tell Joel. I have to. (A) He’s the father, and (B) even if I broke up with him right now, he lives in Ramsey. He’s a local volunteer firefighter. He would find out two minutes after I started showing. There is no town gossip that gets past firemen. You’d be surprised to hear those big burly men talk dirt. And Weber, Joel’s best friend on the force, who swears he’s psychic, has been giving me weird looks lately. I’ve actually started keeping the fat slob’s favorite brand of beer in our refrigerator so that when he