LIZ
WHEN YOU LIVED in a town like Key Lake (population 6,567, give or take a few), Walmart was a necessary evil. It was the only chain store that would set up shop in such a little haven, never mind that businesses boomed during the summer as vacationers gleefully stocked up on everything from sunscreen to cases of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Always PBR. Because: small-town America.
The truth was, like it or not, Walmart was the only place in all of Key Lake where Liz could buy the essentials. Makeup and the dish soap that didn’t make her rags smell musty and cheap birdseed for her collection of feeders. And, of course, party supplies.
Liz grudgingly made a list because it was better than dwelling on the fact that her granddaughter (sweet Mary and Joseph) was asleep across the lake. She had learned long ago that sometimes getting lost in the details was better than stepping back to look at the whole, ugly picture. So rather than deal with the dull ache in her heart that made it difficult to breathe, Liz took out a pen and paper.
Napkins (the nice thick ones)
Citronella oil
Strands of white LED lights
Vodka (cheap)
Baguette
Mozzarella pearls
Prosciutto
Limes
Walmart would provide. But Liz didn’t have to like it. Thankfully, she also didn’t have to go when she risked being seen by someone she might know.
It was after midnight when Liz pulled into the oversized parking lot. She marveled at the number of cars at such a late hour and the myriad out-of-state plates. Mostly Iowa and South Dakota. But she spotted an SUV from Michigan and a motor home that hailed, impossibly, it seemed to Liz, from Florida. Why? she wanted to ask the driver. You’re surrounded by sea. Key Lake was, in comparison, an embarrassment. A dirty little mud puddle.
Liz slipped her purse strap crisscross over her chest and prepared herself for the worst. Drunk teens. Or—please God, no—drunk adults who should know better. Who would crack jokes and slur their words and flirt badly. There was nothing Liz hated so much as a bad flirt, the kind of man who damned a woman with faint praise or downright insulted her in a weak attempt to be charming. Liz had learned that even at fiftysomething she wasn’t immune to that sort of vague humiliation. But even corny pickup lines were preferable to idle chitchat over the watermelons with Agnes from the church’s Ladies Aid. Or Helen or Mira or Josephine. Liz was a good, God-fearing woman and a regular at the First Reformed Church of Key Lake, but she wasn’t the quintessential parishioner. She was fond of Jesus, not so much his people. And they seemed to love Walmart more than seemed strictly conventional.
For all her idle fears, Liz found the aisles of the store to be almost completely vacant. There was no greeter at the door at such a late (early?) hour and the customer service counter was abandoned. The gardening section echoed with her footsteps, and as she drew close to the darkened corner of the store the motion-sensor lights hummed to life in greeting. Clearly she was the first person who had wandered this far in a while.
There was a feel of apocalypse in the air, as if the Rapture had happened and Liz had been left behind. It felt inevitable, desolate, and she sank onto a gingham patio set display couch and put her head in her hands.
Grief was sudden and inescapable, a wave that engulfed her so thoroughly she felt like she was drowning in it. Where had she gone so wrong? What had she done to alienate her children so thoroughly? Liz had a granddaughter. She couldn’t get her mind around it even as her hands trembled at the thought. The child was her own flesh and blood. The earth should have moved when Lucy was born, Liz should have felt the universe shift. Instead, she had lived all these years never knowing, never even suspecting. What was she supposed to do with that?
Liz took a shuddering breath and reached to tuck her hair behind her ears. She was surprised to find her cheeks were damp with tears, the little wisps of face-framing bangs tangled instead of smooth. What a mess. She was a wreck in every way and that only added to her heartbreak.
Wiping the dampness from her cheeks, Liz straightened her spine and looked at her shopping list. There would be time to deal with the secrets and lies, the little girl who shared Nora’s stone-gray eyes. But weeping in the garden section at Walmart would accomplish nothing. Liz did the only thing she knew how to do: she powered through.
Her cart was stocked with party fare and she was just about to check out when it struck her that she wouldn’t have time for a cut and color before the soiree tomorrow night. No, tonight, she realized. Soon there would be the sound of laughter over the water, lights twinkling in the trees as the sun set, long toothpicks layered with cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and basil from her garden. Determinedly focusing on the things she could control, Liz decided she would wear that cobalt sundress she loved and the strappy sandals with the kitten heels. When she pictured her hair pulled back, her roots showed. How long had it been since she had colored her hair?
Scolding herself roundly for her oversight, Liz steered in the direction of the personal care and cosmetics section. She would never color from a box, but her stylist had once told her that she could refresh the bubbles in her champagne blond with a hair gloss. And yes, Maureen had actually said that: refresh the bubbles in your champagne blond. It had taken all Liz’s self-control not to gape. She was not a mean person, but some people should come with warning labels.
Outrageous claims notwithstanding, a gloss sounded doable.
Liz found the aisle marked Hair Color and was so busy scanning the displays for a box marked gloss that she almost bumped right into the first person, besides a half-asleep cashier, that she had seen on her midnight Walmart excursion.
“Oh!” she cried, surprised, worrying that her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. “I’m sorry! I almost ran you over.”
The girl barely flinched. Nodding slightly, she continued to study the packages of permanent color.
Well, that was rude. Not even a proper hello. They were in Walmart, but it was the Walmart Supercenter in Key Lake, Minnesota, a place where the one-finger wave reigned supreme and everyone was friendly—even out-of-towners. Often, especially out-of-towners. Vacations had a soporific effect on people. Out came the Hawaiian shirts, the laid-back attitude, the expansive friendliness that made them yak for fifteen minutes with a perfect stranger in a shopping store aisle. Apparently, the girl hadn’t read the unofficial handbook.
“You have lovely hair,” Liz told her, trying to see past the curtain of chestnut-colored waves that obscured the stranger’s face. She was determined to eke at least a smile out of her. “I hope the dye isn’t for you.”
She made a noncommittal grunt.
“I’ve always wanted to be a brunette.” Not true. But whatever. Liz was making friends here. Drowning the girl in a little Midwestern nice. Maybe she was the one with the motor home from Florida. Liz had been expecting a couple with gray hair and matching jogging suits. “So, what do you think?” she fished shamelessly. “Could I pull off Dark Golden Mahogany Number 4?”
The girl had no choice but to glance at the box that Liz held in her outstretched hand. Her eyes flicked to Liz’s and she nodded once, a small, curt movement that seemed more like a tic than an expression of her approval. In that moment, Liz realized two things: the girl was older than she had imagined and she was no stranger.
The coltish lines of her body and the length of her thick, dark hair were reminiscent of a teenager, but the woman before Liz was fast approaching thirty. She knew that for a fact.
“Tiffany Barnes,” Liz said slowly. “It has been a very long time, honey.”
Tiffany’s head whipped around and she stared at Liz—for real this time. It was obvious she hadn’t recognized her teenage best friend’s mother. Or, at least, she hadn’t looked closely enough to peg her. And what was that emotion bubbling just below the surface? Fear? Well, that didn’t make sense at all. Liz and Jack Sr. hadn’t exactly embraced the wild child Nora attached herself to like a sister, but she had always been welcome in their home. Even if the welcome was tepid and Tiffany rarely accepted it.
“Well, now, you’re about the last person I expected to bump into tonight,” Liz said. She marched over to where Tiffany stood, cowering, it seemed, and gave her a stiff Sanford hug. The younger woman didn’t return the embrace. Her arms were pinned to her sides, hands still clutching the boxes of permanent hair dye. “How have you been, honey? I don’t think I’ve seen you in . . .” Liz tried to do the math and failed. “Well, it’s been a long time.”
“It has.” Tiffany seemed to have found her voice, finally.
“What have you been up to since high school?”
“Waitressing,” she said without conviction.
“That sounds nice.” It didn’t. Not at all, but then Liz couldn’t exactly cast stones. Nora was a barista, after all. And, apparently, a single mom who thought little of abandoning her child in the care of her somewhat-estranged sister. (A stranger?) Good God in heaven, how long did these girls plan to drag out their adolescence? To make bad choices and force other people to deal with them? By their age Liz had been a married mother of three. And if she hadn’t been mixing bottles of formula and potty training toddlers she would have been an administrative assistant in some respectable office. She had a two-year degree and a long list of excellent referrals to recommend her. Of course, she had never needed them. Mothering and housekeeping and husband-keeping had kept her more than busy. Liz barely had time for her garden and her fabrics and her designs.
“Do you keep in touch with Nora at all?” Liz asked, wondering if maybe there was some private pact these days between women of a certain age to underachieve.
Tiffany just shrugged. “I really should go,” she muttered, shoving the boxes back onto the shelf all helter-skelter. One fell to the ground and she didn’t bother to pick it up.
Liz’s skin prickled with annoyance and she almost told Tiffany to fix her mess. But then she remembered. It came in a rush and she felt herself thaw with shame. “Oh, Tiffany! You’re in town for the funeral, aren’t you?”
Lorelei’s funeral had to be soon. Or had it already happened? Was it only yesterday that Macy was telling her about that poor woman’s passing? Whatever the case, Liz was convicted by her own insensitivity. She was being stingy and small. Here she was judging Tiffany when the clearly grief-stricken girl had just lost her aunt, the closest thing to a mother she had ever known. What was the story again? Lorelei’s sister was Tiffany’s mother, but she had skipped town when the child was barely out of diapers. Something like that. Sad, sad, sad. Liz’s heart melted for the young woman in front of her. She reached out and hugged her again, and this time, she put some feeling into it.
“I am so sorry.”
“Thank you,” Tiffany whispered.
“Do you need a place to stay? Is there anything I can do?”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? I don’t know if you heard, but Jack Sr. is gone and I have that whole big house to myself . . .” Liz trailed off when she caught sight of her own grocery cart and the bottles of booze and festive packages of tiny paper umbrellas. How mortifying. How inappropriate.
But Tiffany was shaking her head, excusing herself feebly as she backed out of the aisle. “Thank you, Mrs. Sanford. I really have to go.”
Liz struggled for something to say, anything that might offer a little comfort or at least communicate that Elizabeth Sanford wasn’t the thoughtless, bumbling idiot that she had just appeared to be. She settled on: “You’re in my prayers.”
Which wasn’t true. But it would be now. And as Tiffany walked away Liz made good on her declaration and whispered: “God bless that poor, sweet soul.”
Then she decided to order flowers for the funeral. A huge bouquet with lots of roses.
Liz was no-nonsense. A fixer and doer and stiff-upper-lipper. She believed in pulling herself up by her bootstraps and would swear until her dying day that the glass was always, and always would be, half full. But she was also a mother. A grandmother?
If she thought of it, which she tried not to, Liz might consider that secret part of her soul a sort of robin’s egg. Fragile, mysterious, lovely. Delicate and prone to brokenness, but containing all that was vital and life-giving. Holy. Sometimes, at moments like this, when she was raw and aching in a sudden, unexpected way, Liz wondered at the many fissures that had splintered across her heart. The fault lines matched the wrinkles around her eyes, the telltale creases that had set deep in her forehead and around her pretty mouth. She had lived. She had loved. But she was lonely. She was alone. It kind of made her want to sit down in the middle of Walmart and cry.
But then she spotted it out of the corner of her eye. Shine gloss. The package proclaimed: Crystal Clear Shine System. For all types of hair.
Perfect.
Liz Sanford snagged that box off the shelf and set her shoulders. She would go home. Pull off the party of the year. Figure out why Nora kept Lucy a secret and reunite her family.
Fix everything.