a moment I turned the key in the ignition and radio music filled the car: Alison Krauss, “Two Highways.” Beneath the notes of it I could almost hear Elias’s harmony, but I knew it was just a trick of my memory, filling in what we all had lost.
* * *
I dropped Leela off back at the house, then Scooter at the Vogels’, but from there I turned the Jeep east and kept on driving. A year ago, when Elias was struggling, I had considered calling Dave to ask his advice, but I shied away from doing so because I didn’t want to confess to an outsider that there was a problem in my family. Now it shamed me, the pride that had stopped me from seeking help. How many times had I heard my mother speak of the importance of humbling oneself and admitting when a situation had spiraled beyond one’s control? I owed it to her, and to Elias, not to make the same mistake twice.
I needed no map to find Randy’s place. As soon as I had read their address on the card Lucia had slipped in with the cookies, I knew it would be a place on the main highway just across the border in Maine. I’d guessed the house would be large, and I was right: it was a sprawling Cape Cod–style place, with a sloping second story on top of a ground floor sided in rough-hewn stone, attractive and not very old. From the porch a large American flag flapped in the April wind, and a sturdy wooden swing set in the front yard was crowded with shouting children. When I shut off the Jeep and opened my door, the children all turned to stare at me. Lucia leaned out of a window of the second story above the garage; after a moment she waved to me, then noisily clanged a bell attached to the siding. The children rushed back inside through the open garage door.
I unclipped TJ from his car seat and slammed the door, drawing a shaky breath. As I approached the house I could hear a woman’s voice calling to someone inside. In a moment the front door opened, and there stood Lucia in a blouse and long skirt, her hair arranged in a heavy braid that fell to the small of her back. “Jill Olmstead,” she said.
“Yes.”
“I can tell that’s Cade’s baby.”
She gestured me inside, and I stepped into the entryway. In the living room a woodstove blazed, and its gleaming light seemed to gild the camel-colored furniture and red rugs. It was a lovely house, tidy and clean and welcoming. A fresh scent of burning wood brightened the air. Photographs of the children hung from every wall. “Scooter told me it would be okay to talk to you,” I began.
“Of course it’s fine.”
“I was hoping I could speak to Randy. I want to talk to him about Cade.”
She led me into a large and open kitchen, where a tall man was rising from the table. His hair was dark, but his face was not unlike Cade’s: angular and handsome, though roughened by age and years of working in the sun. I said, “I came to see you because I have a concern about the family.”
“Do you, now.”
“I wouldn’t come to you if I had an idea of where else to go. Since Elias died things have been in sort of a downward spiral.” I forced myself to focus on the task at hand, not to allow my emotions to well. Randy Olmstead didn’t look like the sort of man who would appreciate a strange woman sniveling in his kitchen. “I thought they’d get better, but some people in the family aren’t dealing with their grief very well.”
“Scooter’s told us about that.”
I nodded. “Cade took it particularly hard. He’s angry. He was having a rough year even before it happened, so it’s that much worse after. And he takes Dodge so much more seriously these days, and you know Dodge. He’s—his ideas are—”
“He doesn’t always look at things from every angle.”
“That’s one way to put it.” TJ was squirming in my arms. Lucia scooped him up and carried him to another room, leaving me alone with Randy. I gnawed my lip, worrying over how much I should reveal. “Listen, Elias trusted you. I think Cade would, too, but he’s so angry—he needs somebody to talk him down, desperately. He seems confused to me, like he doesn’t know how to honor his