“Jud.” His grandfather opened the car door. “Get in.”
He slid into the soft leather seat and placed his feet on the pedals. His little brother crawled into the passenger side, chattering, cranking the window up and down and punching the door locks, while Jud just held the steering wheel in both hands and stared out the low chrome-edged windshield, trying to feel something familiar: a sense of his dad, whatever was left behind—if anything was ever left behind after someone died. A strange kind of hunger came over him, sharp and intense: this car belonged to him. He wanted this car more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life.
Beside him, Cale was up on his knees, bouncing and gripping the seat back. “Someday I’m gonna have this car. I’m gonna be just like my dad and drive it everywhere.”
Jud shot a quick look at his brother, then up at the old man, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. Jud turned back around. No, little brother. No. This car’s going to be mine.
Kathryn paid the driver and got out of an orange cab that smelled like dirty ashtrays. Laurel ran up the front steps of Julia Peyton’s home, an English Tudor gabled house with leaded glass windows, stone chimneys, and lush gardens flanking a downward sweep of sheared lawn.
“You’re late, Kathryn.” Julia stood at the front door dressed in heels and pearls. “I expected you before lunch.”
“The movers took longer than I’d thought.” Kathryn snapped her purse closed, annoyed at herself for automatically making excuses.
“Grandmama! Grandmama!” Laurel jumped up and down. “We’re coming to live with you!”
“Yes, you are. Come give me a hug.” Julia opened her arms and Laurel ran into them.
Kathryn turned to look back down the hill at the tail end of the cab as it disappeared around the iron gates. In the distance, a metallic sheet of water spread out to the cloudless blue horizon, broken only by a green hump of land called Bainbridge Island and the snow-dusted Olympic Mountains. Puget Sound. This is the place where eagles drift by. A line from one of Jimmy’s songs. Too many lines came to her now, not just as song lyrics—but the words gave a timelessness to his thoughts and proof he had once lived.
With a loud hiss of air brakes, a green-and-yellow Mayflower moving van turned up into the driveway. It was done, she thought.
“Come along now, Kathryn. There’s so much to do.” Julia disappeared inside with Laurel still chattering excitedly.
Unmoving, Kathryn clung to her handbag with both hands and stared up at the imposing house where her husband grew up, and where now her daughter would do the same. In the useless days since Jimmy’s death, nothing had changed the feeling that she was trapped between him and their child. Trapped. She felt it now. She had no home anymore. She had no husband. Laurel was here. Julia was here. Some part of her must still be here? That’s what she told herself.
Kathryn put one foot in front of the other and said, “I can do this.”
Within two weeks, the tension between the women in Jimmy Peyton’s life could be cut with a knife, and Kathryn, who didn’t handle conflict well to begin with, was quickly losing her will to fight Julia.
The first incident happened when Kathryn unpacked Jimmy’s framed records. Just looking at them tore her apart, so she put them in a box and sent them up to the attic, only to come home a day later to find them displayed in the front entry hall, where everyone could see them the moment they stepped through the door. Crying, she hid them under her bed. At dinner that evening—meals that nightly consisted of Jimmy’s favorites—Julia confronted her.
“You took down Jimmy’s records.”
“Yes.”
Her mother-in-law angrily chain-smoked through dinner, until the silence was thick as cigarette smoke and sitting there became unbearable. Kathryn stood. “It’s time for your bath, Laurel.”
“Let the child have dessert.” Julia dropped her linen napkin on her plate and slid a bowl of ice cream in front of her granddaughter.
Kathryn sat down again and stared at the heavy gold draperies on the windows. Underneath them were pale sheers covering the glass panes. She felt as invisible as those sheers.
“Johnny Ace’s family gave his records to a museum,” Julia said.
“The records should go to Laurel someday.”
“Laurel will know they’re important if they’re hanging in the entry.” Julia’s voice was clipped. “I took down a Picasso and the Matisse.”
Later that night, Kathryn rehung the records, then walked to her bedroom, closed the door, and lay there staring at nothing and feeling everything. From then on, she came in the house through a side door or the kitchen.
Between the time she had agreed to let their downtown apartment go and their actual move, Julia had redone Jimmy’s bedroom for Laurel, but the adjoining playroom remained untouched from Jimmy’s childhood. A few nights later, Kathryn walked in on Julia with Laurel in her lap while they looked at old slides through a viewfinder.
“Come sit with us, Kathryn. I don’t believe you’ve ever seen these photos.”
“Come, Mama. Come here. Daddy had a red tricycle just like mine.”
Already Laurel sounded like Julia. Come here. Come with me. Come there. Come. Come. Come.
So Kathryn looked at photo after photo, each one drawing a little more of the life from her. She didn’t tell Evie when they talked on the phone that night, because she didn’t want any more stress. These days she folded so easily under pressure. But she slipped the rental section of the Sunday morning paper under her arm and in the quiet of her bedroom began to circle the ads.
On the sly the next week, she looked at a small house in Magnolia with a backyard and a view of the sound, and she came home later than she’d planned and rushed right to the kitchen to make Laurel lunch. On her way to find her daughter, Julia stopped her. Kathryn tried to escape. “I’m taking Laurel a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
“It’s one o’clock. She’s already eaten. I gave her a ham salad sandwich.”
“Laurel doesn’t like ham.”
“Of course she does. It was Jimmy’s favorite.” Julia took the plate from Kathryn and set it on a nearby table. “Come. I have something to show you.” She led her out through the back of the house, past the new swing set and jungle gym, to a break of cedars that bordered the back lawn. Julia stopped. “Look, Kathryn.”
Between those trees was a small building, a miniature of the big house. Julia handed her a key. “Go inside.”
What Kathryn had assumed was a playhouse for Laurel was a large open room with shelves along the walls and a deep work sink and tiled counter under a wide front window.
Julia leaned against the counter, her hands resting on the rim. “You can see Laurel’s play area from here. And from that long window. I thought we could put your wheel there. The kiln is around the corner so this room won’t get too hot. And that refrigerator is for the clay.”
“I don’t know what to say.” And Kathryn didn’t. “This is wonderful.”
“Good.” Julia cupped a hand around a match, held it to the cigarette hanging from her lips, then tossed back her head and exhaled smoke. “I know coming here wasn’t easy for you. I wanted you to know I’m glad you’re here.” For a raw instant, Julia stared at her with the expression of an animal caught high in a tree, staring down at the hunter and his gun. “Enjoy it.” Julia turned and left.