CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Ten days later, the spring thaw had finally arrived, and it was all action on the playground. Rhys marveled at the transformation that had taken place since the day of Karina’s surprise appearance at the log bridge. Now, like Chaucer’s pilgrims, a phalanx of suburban mothers filed by in the clear April sunshine, bent on sacrificing a few hours to the whims of their small charges.
Karina actually begged off their weekly meeting, saying she had a doctor’s appointment, so Rhys invited Andie to join him for the outing. He carried Will from the car, with Andie by his side, as they headed for the colorful oasis of slides, swings, and climbing structures. The breeze whipped a tendril of hair across Andie’s cheeks, and she swiped it away, her eyes bright with pleasure at the gorgeous day. She was still fragile after the confrontation with her mother, but she was gradually recovering her spirits, in large part thanks to the time she was spending with Will at Saddle Tree Farm.
Every evening, Rhys was galvanized by the desire to declare himself to her, to let her know he loved her, but a note of caution kept his impulses in check.
Will let out a squeal and took off as Rhys lowered him to the ground, his sneakered feet pounding across the playground mulch.
For a gratifying period of time, Will was just one of the toddlers, operating the levers of the excavation toys in the sandbox, squealing to be pushed by Andie on the swings, flexing his first countercultural muscles by insisting on climbing up the slide rather than going down.
Rhys began to relax and let his guard down, too, sipping his takeaway coffee in the perfect warmth of the weak spring sunshine—not too hot, not too cold. Until trouble developed at the seesaw.
Instead of the traditional lever-and-fulcrum design with one long, flat board to sit on, this seesaw had springs, molded seats, rubber handles, and a four-way design that, on a busy day like this one, meant a sizable crowd of small patrons waiting to claim one of the coveted four spots. Sniffing out potential conflict, Rhys and Andie wandered over.
Will had held the east-facing seat for a good eight minutes, according to Rhys’s calculations. He would have to give up his place soon or face mutiny from the crowd milling around the structure, which sat in a shaded corner of the playground lined with fragrant cedar chips. While the more sanguine parents sat back and sipped their lattes on sun-drenched seats, others stood around to referee and offer assistance.
A red-cheeked boy of about four hovered near Will’s perch, poised to move in as soon as he glimpsed the first sign of hesitation. For all the progress he’d made lately, Will understood as much about turn taking as he did about nuclear physics. He bounced with blithe unconcern, his smile so pure and enraptured that it sent an arrow through Rhys’s heart.
Taken aback perhaps by the deepening scowl of his red-cheeked compatriot, a few moments later Will let the pace of his bouncing slow down. The other boy, sensing weakness—or at least opportunity—reached out a hand to grasp one rubberized handle, his hand coming down right beside Will’s.
Will’s face went from bliss to bewildered rage in a few seconds flat as the other boy edged closer and prevented him from continuing his bouncing.
“Will!” Rhys broke into a jog and closed the remaining distance to the seesaw. “It’s time to get off now and let someone else have a turn.”
The red-cheeked boy now had both hands on the handlebars beside Will’s and was angled across him in such a way that Rhys couldn’t bodily extricate Will from the equipment without jostling him, too. The boy started yelling at the same time Will did.
“It’s not fair! I want a turn!” The boy’s voice rose rapidly to a crescendo. “Mom-eeeee!”
Every female head on the playground not already turned toward the melee now swiveled in their direction. A few people stood up uneasily, looking around for the mom in question. A woman with a neat brown bob turned away from a younger toddler installed in a baby swing and—asking the mom beside her to keep an eye on the child—headed for the seesaw.
“Josh!” she called.
Oh, no! Not again. Rhys cringed. Andie moved in, poised to do damage control.
“It’s my turn!” Josh cried, weeping hot, angry tears as Will’s screams echoed in his ears. “This baby needs to get off.”
Will broke off to inhale a deep breath, readying himself to hit a new octave. But when he gathered himself, an extraordinary thing happened. Instead of the inchoate scream Rhys was expecting, Will’s little mouth worked to produce something quite different. A word: loud, clear, and perfectly formed.
“No!” Will looked almost startled at the exotic utterance that had just burst from his lips, but he quickly made his peace with it. “Nooooooooo!”
Rhys looked wide-eyed at Andie, who froze, a stunned smile dawning across her features. She let out a laugh, too happy and astonished to produce words of her own.
“My turn!” Josh cried again.
“Noooooooooo!”
Josh’s mom was almost upon them, backed up by a small cluster of friends who weren’t inclined to jump into the fray but—by the same token—were a little bemused by the sight of Rhys and Andie beaming giddily at the rapidly escalating conflict.
“Um, I think it’s probably time for them to switch,” said one of Josh’s mom’s friends snippily.
Rhys, overcome with love and outright jubilation, was hopelessly tickled by the funny side of the scenario. Swiping tears from his eyes, he laughed helplessly and bent down to kiss the top of Will’s head.
“Good for you, Will,” he said, unable to wipe the grin from his face. Andie was overcome, marveling as she leaned in to give Will a hug.
“What is it?” asked Josh’s mom, scowling slightly.
“Will has autism,” Rhys explained. “That ‘no’ is only the second word he’s ever said.”
“Oh my God!” “That’s wonderful.” “Amazing.” “Way to go, Will!” A chorus of cheers and supportive comments erupted from the group. Josh’s mom peeled her son’s hands off the seesaw’s handlebars so Rhys could extricate Will, and he placed him down in the middle of the small crowd as the celebratory mood deepened. Moms with no previous acquaintance shared their happy astonishment at the turn of events. A dad with his curly-haired toddler daughter perched on his shoulders came up to give Rhys a pat on the back and shake Andie’s hand.
One mom offered juice boxes to Will and a couple of her charges. Another dug through a designer diaper bag and handed around individually packaged baggies of baked, organic snacks. “I’m Noreen,” she said with a friendly smile. “My eldest has Asperger’s.”
Rhys marveled as he and Andie slipped easily into conversation with Noreen and her friends, swept along on a tide of goodwill. Andie’s advice about Will, spoken months ago, after another toddler conflagration, echoed through his mind. He will be exactly who he is. And you’ll just have to try to keep up.
She’d spoken those words in the dead of winter, when confusion, grief, and angst had still been the dominant features of his emotional landscape. But she’d been right. His fretting and soul-searching—all those nights sitting by Will’s bedside in a fever of worry, all those days of comparing his son to his typically developing peers and pining for the moment he would catch up—were of no use to Will. All Rhys had to do was love him, and Will would be who he was. Beautiful. Miraculous. All Rhys could ever ask for in a son.
On the way home, Rhys insisted on stopping at the supermarket for a cake. He had a particular design in mind, featuring a very unnatural shade of cerulean and a stenciled image of Thomas the Tank Engine. Andie ushered Will up and down the aisles, retrieving grocery items for therapy as they waited, and then all three bore the cake home, bursting into the house in a flurry of cheers and laughter.
“Mrs. Hodge! Jillian!” Rhys called. “You must celebrate with us.”
Mrs. Hodge brewed a pot of her best Earl Grey, and they all sat around the kitchen island savoring blue cake on bone-china plates, except for Will, who ate his straight from the high-chair tray and managed to get a good portion of the frosting in his hair. Rhys had experienced some pretty exceptional days in his life, but this one was turning out to be one of the greatest.
“You barely touched your cake,” Andie commented to Jillian as they carried the plates over to the sink.
“Oh, but what I did eat was worth it,” Jillian enthused. “All that blue hydrogenated oil and sugar makes me feel like a kid again.”
“You are looking particularly svelte this week.”
“I’ve lost close to sixteen pounds,” Jillian said jubilantly. “Last night I went shopping for my mother-of-the-bride dress, and I almost fit into a size ten. I haven’t been a size ten since I was a teenager.”
Andie let out a little whoop of celebration and gave Jillian a hug.
“I knew you could do it,” she said with a grin.
“I’m thrilled,” Jillian enthused. “And I’m so happy for you, too.”
“For me?”
“Yes, for all of your success with Will. And because of how things seem to be going between you and Rhys.” Jillian’s eyes sparkled. “I’ve worked in this house for a long time, and I have to say it’s never been like this. It’s just so wonderful to see Rhys happy and Will doing so well.”
“Well . . . thanks,” Andie responded, not really sure what else to say. It would be disingenuous to deny that there was something between her and Rhys, but she wasn’t yet ready to define for anyone else what that something was. Still, she had to admit she was starting to feel stronger and happier than she’d ever been. Her despondency over her confrontation with her mother was fading as new, positive developments crowded in, and at every turn Rhys was her biggest supporter.
“How’s the post-Susan rating scale today?” he would ask each morning.
“The needle is hovering between acceptance and abject self-pity,” she’d joked over breakfast that day.
Sometimes he would just offer a word or two to remind her he was in her corner, and on other occasions he’d listen at length as she analyzed and cried and picked over the rubble of her relationship with her mother. Most of all, he encouraged her to take on new challenges, to dream and plan for a future that she wanted, not one that she was just prepared to settle for.
That morning, before the momentous trip to the playground with Will and Rhys, she’d done another of her many volunteer stints at Saddle Tree Farm. She was still on a high from working with the horses and the kids—today, a four-year-old girl with cerebral palsy and a teenage boy with Down syndrome—and from Maisie’s enthusiasm about her plan to earn a hippotherapy certification, and to formalize an arrangement with Saddle Tree Farm that would enable her to build a practice mixing traditional occupational therapy with equine-assisted therapy.
Rhys, too, was hatching ideas that were footholds to the future. He shared with her his progress in setting up a foundation to help autistic children. He wanted her to be on the board and to advise on the areas where needy families were most likely to fall through the cracks of the medical system.
Zephyrus Energy was being honored with a corporate philanthropy award at a black-tie autism fundraising gala the following week, and Rhys couldn’t wait to show up with Andie on his arm and introduce her to his friends—not to mention his contacts in the business community. She hesitated a little at the idea of taking on that kind of role. It felt so public, so mature. But, with Rhys by her side, she was prepared to give it a try.
And to have Will add a new word to his repertoire was a wonder beyond reckoning. She still chuckled in delight when she recalled the look on his face as he’d uttered the significant syllable. It seemed that the whole world had come alive with possibility.
Rhys knew her, really saw her in a way nobody else ever had before. He saw her pain, her guilt, and her fears. He saw her imperfections, her failings, and her triumphs. He’d looked into the deepest core of her and accepted what lay there. He’d seen the sordid reality of her family life growing up—with its mortifying callousness and casual violence. He’d actually trodden the earth of the farm, walked among its ghosts, and his only response was to embrace her with a fervor that made her tremble with the wonder of it.
And his passion, the way they melded together each night, was a shining grace note that made everything subtly different, even how it felt to inhabit her own body. She had never known that the slide of skin against skin, the intimate mapping of the topography of another’s form, and the laying bare of her wants and needs could be a miracle in which she could not just lose herself but find herself.
I’m falling for him. She’d practice the declaration sometimes as she moved about the house. If she said it enough, she might desensitize herself to the panic that the realization brought on. Deep breaths. But, in her heart of hearts, she knew that “falling” didn’t quite capture it. If there’s a fall to be taken, I’ve already crash-landed. She loved him. She loved who he was to the marrow: a heart-melting combination of warmth, decency, awkwardness, kindness, and riveting intensity, all wrapped up in one breathtaking package.
A few days later, in the spirit of optimism that seemed to have taken over lately, Andie was actually motivated to pull on her running shoes while Will was at preschool. Rhys had left for a whirlwind business trip to Silicon Valley the day before to finalize a licensing agreement with a small tech company whose software was an ideal fit with Zephyrus’s wind turbines. In the absence of her habitual Rhys-induced high, she was prepared to take the bull by the horns and chase the ever-elusive runner’s high.
Unfortunately, she was thirty minutes out from the house before she was reminded of just how passionately she loathed running. With a stitch in her side, an elusive pebble migrating around inside one of her shoes, and her hair falling in her face, she turned around and began to hobble back up a hill that seemed to have magically increased its gradient since she’d jogged down it blithely just minutes before.
With music blaring from her earbuds as she swilled the last mouthful of water from a big, clunky bottle, she cut across Rhys’s acreage from the road rather than go all the way to the long driveway. She put in a final burst of effort just in case Mrs. Hodge or Jillian was watching her approach the house, jogging up to the garage doors even as she wilted on her feet.
Just as she entered the four-digit code on the garage door keypad, an insidious finger of scent drifted around her, jabbing at her olfactory system with a sharp bouquet of bergamot and jasmine. No, don’t turn around. You’re imagining it, the same as always. The garage door began to rumble open.
She froze, convinced now that she actually felt the exhalation of a breath against the back of her neck. Taking out her earbuds with a show of methodical calm, Andie turned, bracing herself for what she would see.
“Agh!” She couldn’t repress a cry as she came face-to-face with Karina, who had crowded up so close that Andie would have been hard-pressed to fit a hand’s width between them. Based on her appearance, it was hard to believe the woman had slept a single night since Andie had last set eyes on her on the wintry playground a few weeks ago.
Andie stepped back, only to find that Karina looked no better from a slightly more socially acceptable distance. Her skin was thin and dull, a trace of fine blue veins visible at her temples. The dark circles under her eyes had deepened. She also appeared to have lost weight, something that on Karina—already as fashionably thin as a whippet—was not auspicious.
Concern rippled through Andie. Karina’s reason for not meeting with Rhys and Will on the day of Will’s “No” breakthrough had been a doctor’s visit. Is she terribly ill?
At least she’s under the care of a doctor. She smiled weakly, trying not to show her shock. She racked her brain to remember whether Rhys had mentioned anything important in the wake of his other visits with Karina since the log bridge incident. Karina had started pushing for one-on-one time with Will, Rhys said, but she’d backed down when he insisted she needed more time to acclimatize first.
Andie also recalled one throwaway comment from Rhys that Karina, at least, seemed to have ditched the silk outfits for more practical playground attire. Perhaps she was having trouble keeping up with the dry cleaning while camping out on a friend’s couch, he’d speculated. Now Andie worried that she was having trouble keeping up with a lot more than that.
Karina stepped forward threateningly.
“You’re a liar,” she spat. “A black-hearted, scheming, traitorous liar.”
“What? No . . . I—”
“You tried to hide the fact that you and Rhys are together, but I know what you’ve been up to.”
Her eyes shifted, as if her view of Andie was drifting in and out of focus. Andie had no idea what to say. She’d never made any claims to Karina about the status of her relationship with Rhys. Karina had simply assumed. But it was a detail she sensed it would be foolish to argue. Karina was way beyond that.
Despite the temperate weather, she was swathed in her black wool coat, which was marked with a couple of visible stains. She picked at a sleeve, pulling at a loose thread and winding it around one finger, only to unwrap and rewrap it a moment later in a frenetic motion that left Andie deeply unsettled. A reddish-purple line was scored in the flesh of Karina’s finger where she’d drawn the thread tight over and over again.
“I told you I intended to get our family back together,” she said. “But you don’t care about that, do you? You and Rhys have been plotting behind my back. Laughing at me.”
“No, Karina. That’s not true. Please. Let’s sit down and talk about this.”
She had the presence of mind to jab at the keypad again so the door rolled back down. The last thing anyone needed was Karina barging into the house in this state. Andie gestured to a neat patch of lawn that overlooked the front of the property, a pleasant, calming place to sit.
“Oh, sure. Now you deny me access to my own home?” Karina scoffed. “Any minute now you’ll be trying to stop me from seeing my son.”
At that moment, Andie reflected, she would do practically anything to prevent Karina from seeing Will. A familiar flicker of guilt danced in her belly. Of course, if she were not in the picture, Karina might never have been pushed to this strange impasse.
“Karina, please. I’m not out to stop you from continuing your visits with Will.” Provided you’re emotionally stable, Andie amended silently.
“How big of you,” the woman snapped, backing away. “You won’t win, you know. You won’t take my son from me. I’ll make sure of that.”
“Wait—”
But Karina spun around and stalked off to the car she’d parked just to the side of the garage-bay entrance—a yellow Mini Cooper with black racing stripes and checkerboard side mirrors. The vehicle looked altogether too cute to contain the human maelstrom that whirled toward it.
Andie watched the cheery little car as it shot down the driveway. When she was certain Karina had departed the premises, she turned back and reentered her access code, trembling slightly as she ascended the basement stairs. She had to call Rhys. But, first, she needed some more water. The troubling encounter with Karina had parched her, leaving her throat tight with tension.
As she headed into the kitchen, the sinister scent of jasmine and bergamot seemed to grow stronger. Did she get in somehow? Am I losing my mind?
Over in the highest-traffic area of the room, between the kitchen island and the sink, Jillian wielded a mop and hummed to herself. Andie was so relieved to see a well-balanced human being that she sagged with relief.
“Jillian,” she said, wrinkling her nose, “do you smell that?”
“You mean the floor cleaner?”
“No, it’s more like a perfume.”
“Oh.” Jillian brightened. “Do you like it? It’s my new eau de toilette. A friend of mine gave me a bottle because I admired it on her.”
She moved closer, holding out her wrist to give Andie a sniff. Andie recoiled as a blast of the scent hit her limbic system. She supposed there was nothing wrong with the perfume in its own right. It would just always fill her with a primitive aversion.
“I love it,” Jillian enthused. “My friend is acting as my weight-loss trainer, and it’s been driving me crazy how much I’ve wanted the fragrance. I think I’ll wear it to my daughter’s wedding.”
A horrible suspicion dawned, but Andie was uncertain how to voice it.
“Um, Jillian?” she began. “This might be a strange question, but is your friend and weight-loss coach by any chance Rhys’s ex-wife?”
Jillian looked confused. “Yes, why? She was the person I reported to when I first worked here. She got back in touch because she wanted to talk to me about her postpartum depression. I went through it, too, years ago, with my daughter. She was just so nice, so apologetic about how she’d behaved to me when I worked for her . . .”
She trailed off, halted by the look on Andie’s face. “Is something wrong?”
“I’m afraid so.” Andie described the run-in she’d just had with Karina outside.
“Oh, goodness.” Jillian’s face fell. “She never said anything to me that seemed off. She seemed so humbled by what she’d gone through, and so happy about Will starting to do better.”
“Have you mentioned anything to her about what has been going on in the house? She showed up at the playground once when she should have had no way of knowing where we were. And somehow she found out that Rhys and I are . . . together.”
“Oh, dear.” Jillian wrung her hands. “I believe that must have been me.” She looked at Andie beseechingly. “I didn’t mean any harm by it. She acted like you were all friendly with each other. She seemed to know enough about your plans that I was convinced. Oh, Andie,” she cried, gulping down her upset, “I’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t I?”
“You didn’t know,” Andie said. “But Rhys is going to want to talk to you about what Karina has told you since she’s been back.” She wondered how Rhys would take it.
“Oh, dear.” Jillian looked stricken. “I suppose I might lose this job.”
“Well, I hope not, but I guess it’s up to Rhys.” Andie squeezed her hand.
Another thought struck her. “You’re not the friend Karina has been staying with all this time, are you?”
“No.” Jillian shook her head. “Karina would hate it at my place. I have two yappy little dogs and—”
“Well, that’s one good thing, at least.” Although it crossed Andie’s mind that if Karina were staying with Jillian, she’d be easier to track down.
Jillian looked relieved that she hadn’t compounded her offense by harboring the troublesome Karina, on top of everything else.
“I’m going to call Rhys now,” Andie said. “I’ll talk to him first, but then I’ll need you to get on the phone. Let’s get this sorted out.”
She led the way into the den, Jillian trailing behind her, sending out insinuating wafts of jasmine and bergamot with every step.