CHAPTER 4
It took two weeks for Luke to get up the courage to actually let the college girl, Jessie, come to his house.
He had been happy enough letting Clayton snuggle in bed with him after a half day of work and letting the older kids live off frozen pizzas and fruit snacks. It wasn’t what Natalie wanted, but why shouldn’t he be allowed to mourn in his own way, even if that meant eating processed food and fake fruit?
Then, the printed letter came. It was printed on a stiff piece of copy paper, which felt so unfamiliar in his hands. Instead of comfort, it brought panic. Is this when they would end? Would his entryway be empty tomorrow morning? He ran his fingers over the printed words where they’d been smudged by a drop of water. Maybe a tear.
DAY 34
Dear Luke,
This letter is out of order. I don’t have energy to write by hand anymore. I know the truth now. I won’t be around much longer. You don’t want to believe it, which I find a little funny since you don’t believe in miracles.
I can feel it. So now it’s time for me to do some things that will make your life easier after I’m gone. I can’t talk about them all today—too much work. But there is someone I need to tell you more about—Jessie Fraga. By now I hope you’re at least familiar with her name and my wishes where she is concerned. You can’t know what it’s like to feel like you are unwillingly abandoning your children. The only comfort I’ve found is knowing that there are people willing to fill in the gaps you leave behind. Jessie is one of those people.
I met her almost a year ago when I went back to school. She’s an undergrad elementary education student. We used to study on the same cluster of couches. I never saw her without headphones and some kind of Broadway T-shirt. I thought she was a theater major until one day I noticed her Math Methods textbook and asked if she was studying education too. That’s all it took. We became friends right away.
Jessie is a “normal” twenty-one-year-old in a lot of ways, but she’s been through a lot in her life. She’s a fighter. It’s not cancer, thank God, but she knows what it’s like for your body to sabotage itself. For Jessie it’s her kidneys. She’s been living her life with chronic kidney disease ever since she was a very small child. I think she’d be a wonderful example to our children of perseverance despite all odds.
I have more to tell you about Jessie, but for now know she’s very important to me. She’ll help with homework and dinner. Please, if you listen to only one thing I ask you, hire Jessie. She’s special.
I love you. I’m so sorry we had to end like this. It’s not fair.
Love,
Natalie
Today the infamous Jessie was coming over, any minute actually. If the “interview” went well, then Clayton would stay with Annie until three in the afternoon, and Jessie would take up the evening hours before he got home from work.
The doorbell rang. Three o’clock already. It was a positive sign that the girl was on time, but Luke wouldn’t have minded another ten minutes to make the house presentable. Never mind that he’d had two hours to do it before she arrived, but Natalie’s letters had gobbled up all his time, making the hours feel like an instant. He allowed himself to fall into this trap frequently.
Leaping out of bed, Luke carefully added Natalie’s printed letter to the growing pile on his nightstand and straightened his crumpled dress shirt. He tiptoed past Clayton’s room, hoping the doorbell didn’t wake him from a rare afternoon nap. When he stepped off the bottom stair, his foot landed on Clayton’s Spiderman pj’s, still lying in a sloppy pile on the floor. Luke cursed under his breath, grabbed the pajamas, threw them down the basement stairs, and slammed the door, putting laundry on his list of things to get done.
Going back to work and dealing with the kids was not as easy as Natalie’s letters had led him to believe. Maybe Nat was better at it, or maybe she’d tricked herself into believing it wasn’t going to be this hard living without her.
Don’t ring the bell again, Luke begged silently. Turning the doorknob, he whisked the door open, slightly out of breath. A petite young woman stood on the front porch. Petite was the wrong word. Small. Under five foot, and no way she weighed much more than May. Her long dark hair swept up into a high ponytail looked so grown up on her small frame. Bright-blue eyes sparkled out from under a heavy swath of bangs.
“Hi. Are you Mr. Richardson? We spoke on the phone.” Her words ran together as she held out one of Natalie’s envelopes in her hand, robin’s egg blue. “I knew your wife.” Her smile was almost as oversize as her ponytail, but once Luke caught sight of the envelope, he stopped taking account of his new sitter and watched the envelope like a cat with a canary. She tapped it against her palm.
“Uh, come in. Please.” He swung the door wide and stepped back, making sure to keep enough space between them so she couldn’t see the wrinkles pressed into his shirt from his nap.
“Should I take off my shoes?” Jessie eyed the shoe baskets. Within days of the funeral, Luke had returned the overflowing receptacles to the front hall. They cluttered up the entranceway beautifully.
“We have the kids take off their shoes, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.” Jessie slipped out of her ballet flats, revealing a pair of thin black socks barely covering her feet. Standing there, sock-footed, in her backpack and coat didn’t help make her look more mature. In ten years May would be standing there, full-grown, in the exact spot, but still a child in his mind. Natalie would never see it. He wondered how she could bear to think about all the things she would miss.
Jessie shifted from foot to foot, and Luke realized he was standing silently, staring. If he wasn’t careful, she was going to run away from the creepy man who didn’t know how to talk to humans anymore.
“Uh,” he cleared his throat and turned away, “let’s sit and talk for a few minutes.” Luke was about to point to the kitchen but remembered the dishes overflowing in the sink. They could easily talk in the formal front room two steps from where they were standing. It had nice furniture and the kids were never allowed to play on the tight shag carpet, but Natalie died there. So, it was kitchen and dishes. “Come this way.”
He gestured for Jessie to follow him. She’d see their mess sooner or later, and this way she could make an informed decision.
As they passed through the hall leading to the kitchen, Jessie stopped and scanned the pictures hanging in a pyramid, Luke and Natalie’s wedding picture at the top, the three kids lined up underneath.
“Oh my gosh, Natalie was so pretty!” She pushed her bangs out of her eyes and tipped her head back. “You guys look so young.”
She was right: they did look young. Well, they were young. Nat’s dark hair was up in a twist, her shoulders left uncovered by the white satin of her dress. The picture didn’t show it, but the bodice had been covered in thousands of tiny pearl beads that kept falling off throughout the day. They laughed through their whole first dance. Every time they shifted, a small shower of beads sloughed off, making tiny pings as they hit the parquet dance floor.
In the picture, Luke stood several inches taller than Natalie, his hair bleached blond at the ends by the summer sun. Lines crinkled happily around his eyes. His smile said he had no idea he’d be burying the woman by his side before they had even celebrated their twentieth wedding anniversary.
“How old were you there?” Jessie asked, still scanning the portrait.
“Um, twenty-one.” He sniffed. “We met in junior high, but I moved away before freshman year. Didn’t meet again till college. I transferred to the University of Michigan for my senior year.” He chuckled, almost talking to himself. “First week of class and I saw her; she was sitting on the quad studying and I knew. Right away, I knew.”
“That’s the sweetest story.” Jessie gasped, one hand over her heart. “I can’t believe you found each other when you were so young. I’m twenty-one, and I don’t even have a boyfriend! Ha.” After staring for a moment longer, she shoved her hands in her coat pockets, the envelope peeking out from one side. She turned to face him. He could feel her eyes on his face as he stared at his stocking feet. “I’m sorry, Mr. Richardson. I’m the worst. My dad always says I don’t slow down to think. That was so insensitive talking on and on about Natalie. I’m sure it’s not easy . . .”
He shook his head. “I’m fine.” He couldn’t deal with this girl feeling bad for him. What did she know about losing someone? “Let’s go into the kitchen and chat.”
“Mkay.” Jessie shrugged. She took one last look at the picture of Luke and Natalie before turning away.
Luke rushed ahead, collecting a pile of random mail and May’s school papers to clear a spot on the island. Jessie dropped her bag and climbed up on one of the stools. If she noticed the mess, she was good at hiding it. She put Natalie’s letter on the counter in front of her, “Jessie” scrawled in Natalie’s characteristic script across the front.
“So, tell me about yourself.” Luke wasn’t sure what he was supposed to ask. Natalie had arranged everything. If Jessie was willing to be their sitter, he was supposed to let her. This was more of a “meet and greet” than an interview.
Jessie ran her fingers through her bangs nervously, a silver medical alert bracelet peeking out from under her sleeve. “Well, not much to tell. I’m an elementary ed student at Eastern. I started my student teaching at Wellbrooke Elementary. First grade. I love it.” She shrugged, her small shoulders shifting up and down in her poofy electric-green winter coat.
“Natalie said you guys were close.” Luke rested his elbows on the granite, the coolness of the stone leaking through his thin dress shirt. It would probably be rude to bring up the whole medical issue thing. Better to play dumb.
“Yeah, I don’t know why, but we really clicked, even with the age difference.” Jessie ripped off her coat, hanging it on the back of the stool. She looked even younger without the oversize jacket. She wore a black shirt, which hung off her small frame, with a simple outline of a woman on the front. Underneath, the name “Bette” in white lettering.
“Is that Bette Midler on your shirt?” Luke asked, proud of himself for placing the reference. Foster mom number three had been obsessed with Beaches. He had to change the channel any time “Wind Beneath My Wings” came on.
“Yes!” Jessie’s eyes lit up and she leaned forward. “Are you a fan?”
His interest in musical theater was almost as great as his interest in abstract art in the twentieth century. “No, sorry. But I’m thinking you are.”
“God, yes.” She flapped her hand at Luke with so much expression he had to hide his amusement. “I’m, quite literally, her biggest fan. I go to any concert within five hundred miles. That’s honestly the radius my dad set for me. Once I get a job, I’m upping it to a thousand.”
“Aren’t you a little young to be a Bette Midler fan?”
“Bette is ageless. Honestly, have you looked at her lately?” Jessie raised her eyebrows and looked at Luke like he didn’t own eyeballs. “But really, it’s not just Bette. I love the theater, musicals to be precise. My mom was a beautiful singer. She used to sing all the great show tunes to me when I was sick.” She said “sick” like it was a cold. Luke knew better. “Got me hooked, I guess.”
“Used to”—Luke knew what that meant. He’d been struggling switching all of his memories of Natalie into that particular verb tense. He didn’t want to push her, not knowing how recent her mother’s death might have been.
“Are you an actress yourself?” With her overabundance of expression, she’d definitely do well on stage.
“No.” Jessie shook her head, some of the brightness from her eyes draining for a moment and then reigniting almost immediately. “Believe me, if I had even a third of the talent Ms. Midler has in her little finger, I’d be on stage day and night. You know, I tried to convert Natalie. She was going to go with me to Into the Woods in April. We were going to wait at the stage door for autographs.” She shrugged and spun the letter around in a circle on the counter. “I guess I’ll just take my dad.”
Sounded like Natalie. She made friends so easily. Luke had a hard time making those connections—always had. “Anyway, sorry, back to Nat. It was her passion for teaching that kept me going through finals last year. She loved kids, even the naughty ones. Anytime there was a case study for psych class in which kids were mistreated or had terrible experiences, I swear she’d nearly cry.”
“Yeah.” Luke bounced his head up and down, knowing exactly what Jessie was referring to. “Nat was almost too empathetic at times. She did this research paper once about a missing girl—uh, what was her name? That Witling girl? By the time she turned it in, she was a bit of a mess. She wouldn’t let May go anywhere alone for six months, even out in our backyard.”
“I don’t know that one,” Jessie replied, “but my mom must have. She was kinda paranoid when I was a kid, and she’d trot out news stories of missing children whenever I wanted to do something even halfway daring.”
“Ha, that’s funny.” Luke chuckled. Talking to Jessie was actually easier than he’d imagined, like talking to a long-lost friend he’d never met before. “Are you an only child? I mean, the more kids you have, the harder it is to be neurotic.” Luke stopped himself. Sending letters to your husband after you’re dead is still pretty neurotic.
“I was a sickly kid, so she was a bit overprotective. I guess I can’t really blame her . . .” Jessie trailed off, absentmindedly fiddling with her alert bracelet. Luke knew she was right. There were a lot of things worse than being an overprotective parent.
“Well”—he squinted at the envelope on the counter, sure a detailed dossier for each child was inside—“did Natalie tell you about the kids?”
Before Jessie could answer, Clayton’s squeal cut through the ceiling. Naptime was apparently over.
“Now it gets real.” Luke put his palms flat on the counter, wiggling his eyebrows. “You want to meet Clayton?”
“Of course. Should I come with?” she asked, tightening her ponytail.
Luke could think of nothing more awkward than leading the college girl up his stairs and into the clutter of his son’s bedroom. He shook his head. “No, he’s pretty grumpy when he wakes up. I’ll be right back.”
Clayton was born a poor sleeper, but with Natalie gone, he was horrible. He’d go to sleep all right, but he’d always wake up crying out for Mommy. Sometimes it would take hours to calm him down. The key was to get him as soon as the crying started. Jessie settled back on her stool, and Luke flew up the stairs, crying out, “I’m coming, buddy.”
When the door swung open, Clayton was lying facedown on the floor, sobbing, face buried in his arms. He slept in a little toddler bed in the corner. It was easy to get in and out of, and the three-year-old knew how to open the door, as Luke learned from all the times he decided to visit him in the bathroom. But lately Clayton never left his room without someone coming to get him.
“Buddy, I have a new friend for you to meet.” Clayton’s sobs slowed to sniffles.
“Is it Pete the Pirate?” He looked up, his sweaty blond hair curling at the ends.
“No.” Luke sighed. No one can beat an expectation of Pete the Pirate. He sat down beside the sniffling child on the floor. “She is a friend of Mommy’s. Mommy asked her to come help me take care of you guys after she . . . went away.”
Clayton scratched at the trail of mucus running down his top lip. “She knows my mommy?”
Luke hated the present tense, like she was going to walk in the room any minute now and scoop him up in her arms.
“She knew Mommy. She’s very nice. We can be nice to Mommy’s friend, right?”
Clayton got up on his knees and used his sleeve to dry his face. “I know—I’ll show her my toy.” He ran to his tiny bed, rummaged through the ruffled covers, and pulled out a little pirate action figure with a red bandana painted on his head. Clayton’s eyes sparkled in a way they rarely did anymore. How long had he been walking around as a little shell of a boy without Luke noticing?
“Yep, buddy, sounds like a great idea.” He turned around, still on his knees. “Here, jump on my back; I’ll give you a ride down.”
Clayton’s arms barely met around Luke’s neck. When they clasped together under his chin, Luke looped his arms around Clayton’s legs and hefted him on his back. Clayton’s warm breath was hot against his cheek and a little sour.
Working hard to get a giggle, Luke jogged down the stairs, making sure to bump Clayton up and down with each step. He laughed and clutched his hands tighter, pinching the skin on Luke’s neck, which stung, a lot. But hearing his little boy laugh again made the pain easy to bear.
When they reached the kitchen, Luke was out of breath from the run, and Clayton from laughing. He flipped his son on the ground, making sure to help him land on his feet. As soon as Clayton noticed Jessie in the room, he put two fingers in his mouth, all laughter gone from his face. Jessie looked up from her iPhone and smiled. Her eyes seemed to take over half of her face when she smiled.
“This must be Clayton,” she chirped and knelt to his level. She held out her hand. “My name is Jessie. It’s nice to meet you.”
Clayton took his slobbery fingers out of his mouth and wrapped them around Jessie’s outstretched hand. Luke cringed, but surprisingly Jessie didn’t.
“I brought you a present.” She swiveled around on her knees and rummaged through an olive-green L.L.Bean backpack that was stuffed to the brim. When she found what she’d been looking for, Jessie kept her hand inside the backpack, turning on her knees to face Clayton. Up this close Luke could count the light sprinkle of freckles on her nose and cheeks.
“Your mom told me you love watching Pete the Pirate. Is that right?” She raised one eyebrow with the question like this was a serious interrogation.
“Uh-huh,” Clayton mumbled through the fingers in his mouth. “He’s da best.”
“The best? Well, maybe I should keep this for myself.” She flicked a red bandana out from behind her back, a perfect match to the one on the plastic pirate peeking out of Clayton’s front pocket. “Do you think it would look good on me?” She went to place it on her head and Clayton gasped.
“Oh!” He bounced up and down like he had springs in his heels. “Is that for me?” The fingers were out of his mouth, and Clayton was smiling right at Jessie. Even though Clayton had a wet face, disheveled hair, and a less-than-welcoming attitude, Jessie wanted to be friends with Luke’s boy. She must’ve really loved Natalie.
“Now that you mention it, I do think this would look better on you.” She held out the bandana in front of her, and Clayton snatched it out of her hand. He forced the folded fabric on his head and pushed it down until the folded edge touched his eyebrows. He took a step back as though she might change her mind at any minute.
“I need my ship, Dad. Can I get it?” Clayton squinted up at him, barely able to see through the layer of red material.
“Okay, dude! Go for it.” Luke laughed. Clayton started to run off to his room, but Luke called him back. “Wait! What do you say to Jessie?”
“Thank you, Jessie . . .” Clayton shouted as he ran up the stairs. Luke raised his eyebrows, sincerely impressed.
“That went really well,” he said, offering his hand to help Jessie off the floor.
“He’s adorable.” Jessie took his hand briefly, her touch like a feather. She stood with a hop, ponytail bouncing. “I think we’re going to be great friends.”
“He’s a fun kid.” Tears burned in his eyes. Luke blinked them away quickly and focused on the random pattern of stone in the polished granite. He ran his hand across it, cringing at the thin film of crumbs and grime that stuck to his skin. “He doesn’t really understand what’s going on,” Luke continued, trying to wipe his hand off on his pant leg discreetly. “I’m afraid the poor kid’s going to turn orange from all the goldfish crackers he’s been eating.”
“Well,” she laughed, looking up at the ceiling where the thumps of toys being tossed on the floor echoed above them, “you’re clearly doing something right.”
It didn’t feel that way. In fact, he was pretty sure he was doing almost everything wrong. The only time he felt good about something he did in his post-Natalie life was when it was an “assignment” from one of her letters. Annie still thought it was 100 percent unhealthy, but it was the only way he could keep all the balls in the air and hold himself together at the same time. His father had used alcohol to escape from the pressures of real life; Luke indulged in those ratty notebook pages.
“Anyway . . .” He needed to steer the conversation in a different direction. “Is there anything you want to know?” he asked, trying to remember how interviews are supposed to work.
“Mr. Richardson.” Jessie put the letter in her back pocket and slapped her hands on the counter, fingers spread wide. “I want to work here. I want to help Natalie’s family and her children.” She bit her lip again before continuing, “What you don’t know is that I lost my mom when I was twelve. I know how hard it can be for a kid. I promised Natalie I’d be there for them.” Real tears sparkled in Jessie’s eyes when she looked up at him, almost pleading, “If you’ll let me.”
Luke blinked twice. “What can I say to that?” He put out his hand. “You’re hired.”
Jessie took it and shook briefly. Luke yanked a half-sheet paper towel from a dwindling roll and passed it to the girl. She wiped her face and caught most of the running mascara under her eyes. She crumpled it into a ball and searched the room, probably for a garbage can.
“Under the sink.” Luke put his hand out. “Here, I’ll take it.”
“Ew, Mr. Richardson, I wiped my nose with that. I can do it, really.” She crossed the room to the sink, unlatched the child safety lock, and tossed the tissue inside. Natalie’s letter peeked out of her back pocket.
The front door opened and closed with a slam. May’s voice called out, “Dad, I’m home. You upstairs?”
“No, hon, we’re in here!” he shouted, interrupting May before she could say anything else embarrassing about his lack of parenting skills. “Come meet Jessie.”
May ran into the kitchen, her long, curly, dark hair unbrushed, sprawling across her face. She dropped her backpack by the kitchen table, where they always did homework with Natalie after school and where he’d been making a sad attempt at keeping up with assignments. Now they could do it with Jessie. Now they wouldn’t be consigned to a life of forgotten school projects and goldfish crumbs in bed. Once again, Natalie got it right.