Journey Of The Heart. Elissa Ambrose
a momentary lapse into the past. Call it a momentary lapse of sanity, if you want. Forget I ever mentioned Jake. I’ll bring in a team from New York to work on the house.”
“Can you?”
Laughter suddenly erupted from the table next to theirs. “Can I what?” Laura asked, studying the man seated there. With his classically handsome profile and short-cropped dark hair, he bore a striking resemblance to Edward.
“Can you forget you ever mentioned him?”
Laura’s gaze left the scene at the next table and fell back on the two doves. They were now less than a foot away, squabbling over a crust of bread.
She didn’t answer.
Laura knew what Cassie had been thinking.
She picked up another carton. She was planning to spend the afternoon going through the boxes in the pantry, keeping the good memories, discarding the rest.
Her thoughts returned to the conversation at lunch. Cassie was wrong. Laura had no intention of jeopardizing her relationship with Edward.
Steady Eddy, Cassie called him.
So what if he liked things just so? So what if he was…fastidious? So was Laura. They were completely compatible. There were no ups and downs, no roller coasters in this relationship.
And no surprises, either. She sat down on the faded linoleum floor, imagining what the meticulous doctor would say about the way she was dressed now. She knew exactly what he would say—in a breezy but disapproving tone—about her old gray sweats and bunny rabbit slippers.
She debated calling him. She wanted to talk to him about keeping the house, certain he’d agree it was a good idea. A home in Connecticut would make a wonderful place for entertaining. A wonderful place to schmooze with the bigwigs who worked at the hospital—as long as he didn’t have to mingle with neighbors.
She decided she would call him later.
She sliced open the top of the box with a knife. Inside was a bundle of envelopes bound together with a stretched-out rubber band. With a start she realized that these were the letters Cynthia had given to her for safekeeping. Letters written to Cynthia by a man whose existence Jake had never suspected. Letters given to me so that Jake wouldn’t find them, Laura recalled with hostility. She’d always felt like an accomplice in her friend’s deception, and had resented Cynthia for involving her.
After the accident, there had been no reason for Laura to keep the letters, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to dispose of them. They were a part of Cynthia, and Laura hadn’t been ready to relinquish any part of her friend, as if preserving a memory, even a shameful one, could somehow bring her back.
No, that wasn’t it at all. She had kept them because she was angry. Angry with Cynthia for deceiving Jake. As long as I held on to my anger, Laura rationalized, I could justify loving my best friend’s husband. I kept them to remind me of her guilt, hoping to dispel my own. I would not have married Jake if Cynthia had lived.
Cynthia had also asked her to keep a few mementos as well, but no matter how curious Laura had been, she had never once considered going through her friend’s things or reading her letters. She carried the small carton into the kitchen, without further examining what was inside.
The garbage trucks would be coming by on Monday. Several of her aunt’s cartons were already lined up next to the door, to be taken out to the curb for removal. Why on earth had Aunt Tess kept all this stuff? Why would anyone hang on to torn curtains and linen? Who would keep old shoes and hats? These cartons were Aunt Tess’s links to the past, Laura realized, thinking about her own memory boxes. Laura hadn’t thrown those out, either, when she’d left home.
She picked up another box. Inside was a child’s tea service, complete with cups and saucers, sugar bowl, creamer and teapot. Had the set belonged to her mother? She tried to picture her aunt and mother as children sitting at their kitchen table in Ridgefield, hosting a tea party for themselves and their dolls. But Tess had been six years older than Laura’s mother. Would she have been interested in a child’s tea party? Maybe what Reverend Barnes had said was true. Maybe Aunt Tess had been a warm and doting sister, Caroline’s true caretaker.
Laura remembered another child sitting at a different kitchen table, passing a cup and saucer to a fair-haired woman. The child, wearing a brightly colored party dress, could not have been more than three years old. I was that child, Laura realized. Fingering the delicate bone china, she tried to bring the memory into focus.
The sound of the doorbell broke into her daydream. She wiped her hands on her sweatpants. Back in New York, she never would have answered the door dressed like this, but this was Middlewood. Pretentious was not a word in the town’s dictionary.
The doorbell was ringing insistently, and Laura hurried through the hallway, calling “I’m coming! I’m coming!” She threw open the front door without asking who was there—something else she would never have done in New York. Under the overhang outside the front door stood a tall, thin boy. Laura hadn’t seen him in five years, but she recognized him immediately. Although he wore a frown, and his cheeks were smudged with dirt, his face was still the mirror image of Cynthia’s, and like Cynthia’s eyes in her final year, his were filled with sadness.
Chapter Four
“I heard you were back and I was wondering if you wanted to be on my paper route.”
Cory’s shoulders were almost level with hers. He’s so tall, Laura thought. Tall like his father. But it was Cynthia’s face she was looking at, her high exotic cheekbones, her gold-flecked hazel eyes, her smooth olive skin. “I think we should talk about this,” Laura said, trying to imitate the serious tone in Cory’s voice. “Come on in.”
He glanced inside. Shrugging, he stepped into the hallway.
She motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen. “Are you hungry? I have peanut butter cookies and cake. Marble cake with vanilla frosting. Why don’t you wash up at the kitchen sink while I fix you a snack?” she suggested, glancing at his muddy hands. “So, tell me. Are you still in Peewee? No, of course not. You’d be in Little League by now.”
“Nah, baseball’s dumb. All they do is swing a stupid bat and run around a field.” He turned on the faucet. Underneath the sink, a pipe rattled. “How come the water’s brown?”
“Give it a few seconds. It’ll run clear.” She filled a plate with cookies and squares of cake from yesterday’s gathering and placed it on the table. “I won’t be needing the paper during the week, but maybe you have a weekend deal?”
“Sure, no problem. Lots of people only get the paper on the weekend. You know, for the comics.” The clanking of the pipes suddenly stopped, and clear water began gushing from the tap. “Tommy’s grandmother saw you at the funeral. I’m sorry about your aunt. She said you looked different, skinnier. I mean, Tommy’s grandmother said it, not your aunt. She’s dead. I don’t mean Tommy’s grandmother. She’s alive. Anyway, I’m sorry. I mean, about your aunt.”
“Thank you, Cory,” she said, suppressing a smile. She searched through her memory. Tommy? Tommy Pritchard? Wasn’t he that short, frail-looking kid who’d been in Cory’s kindergarten glass? “And how is Tommy these days?”
“He’s okay.” Cory turned off the faucet and wiped his hands on a dishcloth, leaving a dirty stain in the floral pattern. Eyeing the cookies hungrily, he sat down.
“Go ahead, take one,” Laura said, pouring him a glass of milk. She sat down across from him. “Take two, if you want.”
“Dad says my teeth will rot.”
“You’ll brush when you get home. Go ahead, eat.”
He reached for a cookie and started munching. “Dad said that you were sick and that’s why you went away. Are you better now?”
Seeing him again, sitting across from him, listening