“It wouldn’t help,” Ethan assured her, “because you’re not a lamp.”
“Mom thought the new pills made me all better. But they make me feel funny. Like I’m not me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like I’m somebody watching me.”
Ethan didn’t know what to say. Taylor had gone through a brief period when she’d refused to medicate Maddie. She’d adjusted her daughter’s diet, trying a hard-line no-carb approach that seemed to help some children, then she’d switched to vitamins and nutritional supplements. She had instructed Maddie in yoga and meditation, and taken her to chiropractors and naturopaths.
Reluctantly Taylor had finally admitted that her daughter’s seizures were milder and fewer when she was on drugs, even as imperfect as they were. That was when she’d discovered Dr. Grant Hilliard, who had restored Taylor’s faith in traditional medicine.
“Do you think you can do a little homework?” Ethan held up Maddie’s social studies textbook. “I brought my laptop. After you read the chapter, you can use it to find more information on the internet.”
“In a little while.” Her speech was slower, and she still seemed a little dazed. He knew better than to push to get her started. Maddie wanted to do well in school, but while she was a smart child and determined to learn, she was also handicapped by the medication, which sometimes made her drowsy, by evenings, like this one, when it was unlikely her assignments would get finished, even by “absence” seizures during class, when she was deaf to all instructions and information.
Then there was the teasing and ostracism by her classmates, which dogged children who were “different” in any way.
Ethan cuddled her closer. Although television had never triggered one of Maddie’s seizures, Taylor had a firm rule that the set not be turned on right after one. “Why don’t I read to you? We can start a new book. We never finished The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Before Maddie could respond the telephone rang. Ethan reached around her to grab the receiver. He made a guess that Taylor’s class was doing warm-ups and she was quickly checking in.
Instead, the voice on the other end was male. Ethan recognized it at once.
“Hello, Jeremy.” He felt Maddie stir against him and push away.
“Is it Daddy?” she asked.
Ethan nodded. “I’m babysitting,” he said into the phone. “Taylor teaches on Thursdays now.”
The twang of country music was a pleasant background to Jeremy Larsen’s drawling baritone. Ethan guessed he was taking time from a rehearsal of his band.
“Sounds like she’s got a full plate.”
Ethan never knew what to say to Maddie’s father. Jeremy and Taylor maintained a cordial relationship so they could be better parents to their daughter, but the road wasn’t easy. Their history was troubled. Maddie had been conceived when Taylor was only sixteen and Jeremy just a year older. Their high school romance had been stormy and brief, the baby a postscript. They had few if any happy memories to build on.
Ethan was never sure where Jeremy’s questions or even casual remarks were leading. Was he merely making conversation? Was he implying Taylor was too busy to be a proper mother? Was he hoping to throw a wrench into the finely tuned machinery of their custody arrangement?
“Taylor manages everything like a pro,” he said pleasantly.
“Maddie still up?”
“It would be a rare evening if she was asleep this early,” Ethan said. “I’m putting her on.”
Maddie was sitting taller, and she flipped her disheveled ponytail over one shoulder. “Daddy!”
Ethan went into the kitchen to give his granddaughter privacy. While technically Jeremy and Taylor shared custody, Taylor had Maddie with her most of the time. Jeremy spent time in Asheville with his daughter whenever he could, but Maddie had never visited him at his home in Nashville. Ethan wasn’t sure if Taylor had convinced him their daughter was better off in familiar surroundings, or if Jeremy didn’t want to learn what he needed to know to care for her. Whatever the truth, Maddie adored and missed her father.
Taylor hadn’t been able to get to the dishes, and now, as Ethan stacked the apartment-size dishwasher he’d given her for Christmas, he hoped his daughter had gotten to the studio in time. She taught eight classes a week at Moon and Stars, and the owner was understanding. He just hoped Taylor hadn’t tested the woman’s patience tonight.
By the time Ethan had finished cleaning the kitchen, Maddie was still chatting with her father. He stood at the sink and stared out at the yard beyond. He was a shadowy reflection in the double-hung window—long face, pointed chin, high forehead—a man still attractive to women, judging by the offers of dinner and more he received from women at least a full decade younger than himself.
Beyond his reflection the faint outline of a crescent moon hung low in the still-bright sky, just visible beyond the neighbor’s tree line. A wisteria-scented breeze through the screen door ruffled his silvering hair. He was just fifty-six. Charlotte had been twenty-five when she had given birth to Taylor, and Taylor had just turned seventeen when Maddie was born. But this evening Ethan felt older than the mountains.
Spring was a time of renewal, of flowers bursting into bloom, of birds mating and building nests. He was twice divorced, but now his first wife, Taylor’s mother, was on his mind, and so was the spring right before they met.
He had only been twenty-five, an intern at a local architectural firm and still a stranger to the city that was now his permanent home. With few contacts and no real friends, he had begun jogging after he returned home in the evenings from the office. He had often parked in unexplored neighborhoods and jogged along residential or downtown streets to learn more about the Blue Ridge community where he’d landed.
Now he remembered one such evening, twilight just beginning to thicken around him and the same haunting fragrance in the air. He had chosen Montford for his jog, a historic neighborhood with a satisfying mixture of architectural designs, some shabby and in need of renovation, but many that were still prime specimens of another generation’s craftsmanship. He’d begun on Montford Avenue, then veered off on a side street to avoid traffic.
He had been lost in thought about the blueprints for an office building he’d been asked to comment on, just aware enough of his surroundings that he didn’t stray into traffic or run behind a car backing out of a driveway. He’d dodged a woman walking two identical yapping poodles, stumbled over a loose chunk of concrete.
Funny the details he still remembered.
He had just been ready to turn the corner and circle the block on his way back to his car when a woman on the next block caught his eye. Back then, as now, Asheville had been filled with young women. He had been as appreciative as any twenty-something heterosexual man of the opportunities, but having just moved away from a failed love affair, he had also been wary.
This woman, seen at a distance, was more vision than flesh. A ruffled skirt floated just above her ankles, a scoop-necked blouse bared a long, graceful neck. Her hair curled over her shoulders, shining and hinting that it might be red, although in the dying light, he couldn’t tell for sure.
Something about the way she hurried tugged at him. She was willowy, bending into the breeze like a sapling at the edge of a mountain stream. He liked the way she held herself. He liked the curve of her hair, of her jaw, of her breasts. He liked the graceful yet determined way she moved up the sidewalk, as if she had all the time in the world and none of it to spare.
He’d wondered then whether the vision-made flesh would be less than this fleeting glimpse. Would he be disappointed, sorry the dream was eclipsed and replaced with reality? He remembered that he had been torn between speeding up or slowing down, and before he could decide, the vision