Heather(74)
The box is delivered on a day when her mom leads her volunteer group at the library—she’s relieved that she sees it come off the back of the UPS truck, recognizes the branding right away, the blue tree against the white background, branches reaching to the sky. She’ll even have time to do the test and ship it back in town before anyone gets home—her father works late in the city on Wednesdays. And after her volunteer session with the senior citizens, her mother drives a few of them home with foil-wrapped single-serve dinners that she and Blair make together the night before. Eggplant parm or macaroni and cheese—simple, dense foods that are easy to reheat. Blair likes to do this alongside her mother—besides it being good for her college applications, she likes to watch her mother’s hands work, the quick, sure motions of her chopping and stirring and cinching foil around the containers, even likes to clean up and compost their scraps. It makes her feel like everything in the world can be put in order, every mess resolved.
* * *
Blair opens the package in the dining room, reads through the test instructions twice to make sure she understands. She spits in the tube, adds the vial of stabilizer fluid, screws the cap on tight, seals it up in a bag that she’ll slip into the return envelope. The biohazard symbol on the plastic bag gives her pause for a moment—it is dangerous-looking, menacing—before she reminds herself that this is only spit.
A thrill runs through her as she walks the package down the street, to the blue mailbox at the corner of Elm Court and Rodham Road. George Bingham found out he was related to some British king. Maybe her mother’s family was exiled royals who had to cut all ties if they wanted to live. Maybe one of them has turned out to be a movie star. Most of all, she pictures her mother’s face when she tells her about the results. How grateful she’ll be, hugging Blair in close.
The brochure promises she’ll get an email with the results in four to six weeks. Blair has the feeling that once she gets these results back, a story will fill itself in behind her mother, behind her, like the scenery of a play slowly lit up.
CALLIE
Christmas Eve. She takes the eight to four patrol shift so she can give one of the guys off. Handful of DUIs, reckless driving. Paperwork. The station is decorated with garlands of pine laced with antique sleigh bells in a weighty cast bronze—Della’s handiwork. On her patrol route some of the seasonal décor struck a grimmer note, one guardrail wrapped in pale-blue tinsel where there had been a fatal crash three years ago. A road sign with a wreath zip-tied to the post, a plywood sign underneath it, RIP MARK WE MISS YOU, scrawled with spray paint. The missing posters that Callie put up all those months ago are gone or tattered beyond recognition, damp with rain and snow. In the ones that remain Jenna’s face is reduced to a featureless white oval.
* * *
On the way home she detours to the Stop and Shop to pick up some food—Adrian is out of town visiting his family and her pantry is empty. She’s restless. The drug trade has quieted down a little bit, the weather forcing everyone out of sight, into their houses or in the back rooms of bars or wherever her shadowy dealer is going to conduct their business. Still, a paramedic she’s gotten to know texts her to say there’s been two OD calls in the last week. Luckily they got to these ones in time.
She’s been working more lately, end of the year budget forecasts, preparing employee reviews, getting ready to tell the guys that bonuses will be light this year. She hasn’t been around to watch Opal or help with errands as much. The last two times she offered to do a grocery run for Damien he told her not to worry about it. She texts Jane:
How are you doing?
Fine, Jane says. An ellipses to indicate she was typing, then nothing more after that.
Tell me, J, she thinks at her phone. But whatever Jane had been about to say, she’s decided to keep to herself. Callie still hasn’t worked out what Fauver might have been doing at their place—or really, if he was even there at all. She thinks back to that conversation she had with Damien and Luke outside after dinner back in the fall. Opal’s started to lie. Maybe the snake man was another one of her stories, something she imagined into the world. It would probably be a relief, as a little kid, to have your own version of the bogeyman who comes and makes your parents fight. Better than the more likely reality: that her parents fight because there’s trouble. Because there’s something broken that might be hard to fix. Maybe her childhood is careening toward the kind of girlhoods Jane and Callie endured: unpredictable, characterized by want and chaos. History repeating itself.
She’ll confront Jane about it next time. That vow they made when they were still teenagers to take care of each other, be there for each other, has another party to it now: Opal. Before she goes to bed at night she sees the heart of Opal’s face, her gray-blue eyes the same as Jane’s, full of wonder and trust.
She’s studying packages of shredded cheese when someone says her name.
It’s Wren, Della’s daughter. She’s older than Callie but Callie remembers seeing Wren around when Callie was in high school and Wren was home from college working as a lifeguard at the lake. Callie always liked her, even though the two couldn’t be more different. Wren’s got a sleeve of tattoos, flowers twisting on their vines, a split-open pomegranate, quotes from poems and novels Callie’s never read. She works for an arts organization in New York, writes for magazines, and publishes short stories—Della keeps a file of everything she’s done at her desk and is always eager to brag about Wren’s latest publication or byline.