“I’m still in the running,” Audra contended. “The owner was willing to set up a videoconference with me later this week.”
There were three other candidates being considered. Audra didn’t have to be told she’d lost her top rank, viewed now as a single mother whose “family emergencies” already interfered with her work. But she wasn’t up for dwelling on that.
“You know, Audra ...” Meredith blindly scraped dirt from the tips of her gloves. “I could be wrong, but maybe it wasn’t the flying part that Jack was anxious about.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m just saying. Moving him cross-country could actually be the core of the problem. A new school, a new city with nobody he knows. He’s already changed homes once this year.”
Yes, and Meredith had made it abundantly clear how she felt about that too.
“After everything he’s been through,” she went on, “I would think some consistency would be good for him. Maybe he’d prefer to stay where he’s grown up, close to where his dad is.”
“His dad?” Audra was astonished by the tactic. She understood why Meredith would want her grandchild nearby, but that didn’t justify using Devon as an excuse. And what about Audra’s needs? Every restaurant, every street here contained a memory dense enough to smother her. How could she possibly be a good mother until she could breathe?
Meredith clarified, “Oh, of course, wherever Jack is, I know Devon’s there, watching over him. I just meant it might be important for Jack, especially as he gets older, to visit Devon’s grave, to feel closer—”
Audra couldn’t take anymore.
“Devon is gone. In every way. Gone.” Her voice trembled, gaining momentum. “He’s not hiding behind a headstone. Not floating around like fairy dust. And he sure isn’t sitting on a cloud somewhere with harps and wings.”
When Audra stopped, silence burned the air. The heat of it crawled up her arms, her neck. In contrast, utter shock blanched Meredith’s face, triggering Audra’s mind to replay her own words.
Though formed in truth, the outburst wasn’t meant for Meredith. It was for the doctor who had given Devon a clean bill of health. It was for herself, for chalking up Devon’s headaches to caffeine withdrawal and his increased forgetfulness to being “a typical guy.” It was for every condolence card that insisted she cling to her faith, because goodness knows that her husband—at barely thirty-four, with a family he loved and a great consultant job from home—wouldn’t die in a blink without reason. It had to be part of a “bigger plan.”
A plan that didn’t exist.
Vision clouded by tears, Audra swiped at her eyes. Meredith’s gaze had fallen to the garden. From the pain in her features, an inescapable truth struck back.
Sure, Audra had lost her husband and Jack had lost his father; but Meredith and Robert had lost their only child. For any parent, was anything more devastating?
“I’m so sorry, Meredith. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean to hurt you....”
Slowly Meredith looked at her. From the start, she and Robert had welcomed Audra without question or condition. They were the picture-perfect Christmas cards, the movie nights and cribbage games. They were everything her own parents weren’t.
I’ve missed you. The declaration gathered on Audra’s tongue. But before it could find a voice, Meredith turned and left.
4
All thoughts of Isaak should have been left at that theater, cast off like an old ticket stub. Yet in the full day since their parting, Vivian could think of nothing else.
“No, no, Miss James,” Mr. Harrington said in his proper English. “I requested the brown peep toes, not the black.” Low on his stool, he handed the pair back, and she confirmed yet another error.
“Good grief, I apologize.”
The owner of the shoe store was typically as gentle as his dove-gray beard, yet his impatience began to show. “Please do hurry.”
“Right away.” She proffered a smile for the seated customer.
The robust woman looked on in disapproval, flushed from straining, by choice, to sample shoes too small. Her sons, young twins in matching jumpers, sparred in the corner with metal shoehorns.
Vivian was halfway to the back room when she heard the woman cluck, “American girls. They are simply not raised to listen.” Then tersely, “Matty. Natty. Stop that horseplay at once.”
During moments like this, protests from Vivian’s mother rushed to mind. The daughter of a U.S. diplomat has no business working at all, let alone to service the feet of strangers.