The Good Wife(114)
“How old were you when you and Lisa opened the restaurant?”
“Twenty-two or twenty-three. Blake was four.” She frowned, trying to remember. “I’m sure Blake was four. It’s all kind of a blur now. So much has happened since then. It was so much work, getting started, but my mom and grandma helped so much. They were always around the first year or two, making sure things were okay. I don’t think either of them thought Lisa and I would pull it off. We weren’t great cooks back then, but we were young and stubborn.”
“I bet you and Lisa have stories.”
“So many stories,” she agreed.
“She loves you a lot, doesn’t she?”
“She’s a great sister and still my best friend.” Lauren stared out the car window at her old house, remembering the years there and the neighbors on this street. It was a close-knit community, but it’d been too close for her after Blake died. She couldn’t handle the sympathy and pity, or even the cautious, kind smiles as people popped into the bakery to pick up a dozen dinner rolls, a loaf of warm cinnamon bread, or to order a special-occasion cake. Grief was a hard thing. It was also something she needed to do alone, away from her family and the community that had always rallied around her.
“Do you want to go inside?” she asked abruptly.
Lauren hadn’t been in the house since she moved. Mom went over once a week. Cleaned. Dusted. Watered the plants. Collected the mail. Lisa had told her that just recently. Lauren had been shocked, but it’d also made sense. Mom went to the cemetery to take care of Blake. Mom came to the house to take care of Lauren. It was her way of nurturing. Her way to stay connected.
“I’d love to,” he said.
He parked, and they walked up the brick path. Lauren’s stomach hurt as she unlocked the front door. He followed her in and she turned on lights. The front of the house still looked like a business. Big, open areas, empty areas where tables used to be. A counter. A bakery display cabinet. An old cash register.
Her stomach knotted again. “Not very fancy,” she said apologetically.
“Homey,” he said.
She nodded and led the way through the kitchen and into the back, where she and Blake had lived. Lauren rattled off the names of the rooms as she went. “Our tiny kitchen. Cozy family room. Then just the two bedrooms and our bath. Small, isn’t it?”
“It’s your home.”
She nodded, opening her bedroom door, gesturing to the old-fashioned bedroom set. “My bedroom.” She looked up into his face. “It was Grandma’s furniture. But I kept it. I like it.”
“Sweet.”
She spotted the framed oval photograph of her holding baby Blake on the dresser. It was taken on her first Mother’s Day. She looked like a kid. But then, she had been just a kid.
Lauren backed out of the room, Chris followed, and she moved down the hall to Blake’s room. Carefully she pushed the door open. Moonlight fell through the small window onto the twin bed, the covers smooth, pillows plump, his pitcher’s glove nestled against the lower pillow.
Gone. Still gone.
It’d been a year now. He wasn’t coming back.
She flicked the light switch, swallowed hard as the overhead light revealed the framed jerseys on the wall, and the baseball pennants and the poster Blake had gotten signed at a game his Aunt Lisa had taken him to when he was thirteen.
“He liked the A’s,” Chris said quietly.
She battled to breathe. “Loved them.”
Chris spotted the glove on the bed. “He played?”
She nodded. “A pitcher.”
Chris looked at her then, his blue gaze resting intently on her face. “You don’t have to do this.”
Lauren realized then she’d been holding her breath and she exhaled in a rush, dizzy and terrified, but also relieved. She hadn’t lost it yet. Hadn’t screamed or fainted or died. No. She was still here, standing calmly. “I don’t come to the house. Don’t open this door. Maybe I should, though. It makes it more . . . real.”
“He was real.”
“And then gone. That’s the part I can’t wrap my head around.”
“He liked Catfish Hunter,” Chris said, pointing to a poster at the wall.
Lauren smiled crookedly. “Blake’s favorite player.”
“Good man.” Chris craned his head from the doorway, trying to see everything.
“You can go in,” Lauren said. “It’s okay.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She watched him enter and walk slowly around the perimeter, examining the sports memorabilia, both of professional teams and Blake’s own trophies and team photos. She saw him linger before a picture of Blake on the mound. It’d been taken by a professional photographer a year ago last April, two months before the accident, and had run in a San Francisco Chronicle article about the area’s most promising athletes.