looked out the window toward the mountains. I could think of nothing to do but one thing.
* * *
Without a word to Candy, I lifted TJ from the high chair and slipped out of the house, pulling away quickly in Elias’s Jeep. Gravel crackled like popcorn beneath the tires, and I knew she would hear me, but at least I could keep her guessing about where I was going. It was a burst of luck that the Jeep was even there; Cade had been using it to commute to work ever since he wrecked the Saturn, leaving me carless, but he had taken Leela down to Concord in his father’s truck because there were so many crafts to carry. From the backseat came the gentle sounds of TJ playing with the rattles that hung from the bar of his infant car seat. Knowing he was safe with me calmed my nerves, but only very slightly.
The road wound east through the dark summer woods. The farther I drove, the narrower it grew, until my tires seemed barely to straddle the asphalt while skimming the dust on either side. At long last Randy’s house came into view along the side of the road, the stacked stone rising like a fortress above the green hill of the lawn.
Lucia answered the door, flanked by a pair of her younger children. When I explained to her that Eddy was ill, she simply nodded, instructed her nearest teenage daughter to watch the little ones and hitched her purse to her shoulder. I recognized her truck, the green pickup with mud above its tire wells, from when she had dropped off the plate of cookies months before. She stayed close in my rearview mirror the whole way back to Frasier.
Candy stood at the storm door, defiant. Her long, wavy hair expanded across the breadth of her shoulders, thick as a plank. Before Lucia was five steps from her car, Candy shouted across the yard, “You’re not coming in here.”
Lucia said nothing. Over her shoulder was the strap of a blue duffel bag she had retrieved from the backseat of her truck. She trekked steadily across the soft yard to the porch and climbed its four stairs. Then she stopped and looked at Candy.
“Not in here,” Candy repeated. “Turn right around and go back where you came from.”
“One Christian woman to another,” said Lucia, “if you’ll please let me in, Candy.”
“No chance of that.”
The boys had gathered behind her. Matthew craned his neck to peer over the arm she used to block the doorway, while John came closer, nestling his head against the bulk of her hip. Mark watched from the other side of the doorway, wearing his green army helmet with the crack in it. I could hear the faint clatter of the objects on his belt hitting one another.
“I never did you a wrong,” said Lucia.
“Randy did.”
“Well, I’m not Randy. Come on, now. This isn’t about him. This is about your father.”
Candy’s gaze drifted over Lucia’s shoulder. She was watching, I knew, for Dodge. Then she closed the door in Lucia’s face.
Lucia and I looked at each other. “I live here, too,” I said.
“So let me in.”
Almost fearfully, I jammed my key in the door and pushed it open. My gaze darted around—I was half expecting to see Candy standing there with a shotgun. Instead I heard the water running in the kitchen, and the normal sounds of the boys horsing around near their mother. Candy was pretending she had nothing to do with Lucia and her intrusion. Willfully oblivious.
I set TJ against my shoulder, and Lucia followed me up the stairs. A line formed between her eyebrows as soon as she saw Eddy. She set her bag at the end of the bed, like a country doctor, and gave him a quick examination with her eyes and hands. “How long has he been asleep?”
“Since around seven last night.”
She pulled back the covers and felt around on the mattress. “Dry.”
“That’s good, right? That he still has control of his bladder and all.”
Her head gave a slight shake. “No. It’s kidney failure.” She braced her hands beneath his arms and looked to me to grab his ankles. As I did, I saw the fabric of her skirt pull tight across her belly and realized she was pregnant.
“No,” I said. “You can’t carry him.”
“I carry wood every day. Don’t concern yourself about it.”
I hesitated, then looked toward the steep and narrow stairs. For one long, uneasy moment I