“You want a beer?” Miles said to his son as he kissed Grace’s pink cheek.
“I’m not allowed to drink beer,” she said brightly.
“Very funny, young lady. I was asking your daddy.”
“Sure,” Zach said.
Jude grabbed two beers from the fridge and poured herself a white wine; then she followed her men out to the patio.
She sat down in the lounge chair by the barbeque. Miles was to her left, and Zach sat at the outdoor table, slumped in an armchair, with his stockinged feet planted up on the table. Grace walked past them and sat alone at the edge of the grass, where she started to talk to her own wrist.
“She’s still got her invisible friend, I see,” Miles said.
“Ordinary kids have invisible friends,” Zach said. “Grace has an invisible alien friend who is a princess trapped in a jar on her planet. And that’s the least of our problems.” He took a sip of beer and set the bottle aside. “Her teacher says she has trouble making friends. She lies about everything, and she’s … started asking about her mother. She wants to know why she doesn’t live with us and where she is.”
Jude straightened in her chair.
“She needs us more,” Miles said.
“Maybe I should quit med school for a while,” Zach said, and it was obvious from his voice and his body language that he’d been considering this for some time. “Third year is supposed to be wicked hard, and, honestly, I’m jammed as it is. Every second of my life I’m either studying or rushing to be with Grace. When I’m with her, I’m so tired I’m useless. You know what she said to me last night? ‘Daddy, I can take care of myself if you’re too tired to make dinner.’” He ran a hand through his hair. “She’s five years old, for God’s sake. And she’s worried about me.”
“And you’re twenty-four,” Miles said. “You’re doing a hell of a job, Zach. We’re proud of you, aren’t we, Jude? You can’t quit med school now. You’re almost there.”
“Tomorrow I have study group at night. If I don’t go, I’ll blow the final. I know it.”
“I’ll pick her up and feed her dinner,” Jude said. It was expected of her; she knew it. “You study as long as you need to.”
Zach glanced over at her.
He didn’t trust her with Grace; of course he didn’t. He still remembered the early days when Jude had tried to be a grandparent and failed. Her grief had been knife sharp then: it stabbed at the strangest times and left her for dead. Because of it, she used to oversleep and forget to pick Grace up. Once—the worst of times—Miles had come home at night to find Grace lying forgotten in Mia’s bedroom, in a dirty diaper, while Jude lay curled in the fetal position on her own bed, sobbing, holding Mia’s photo.
They all knew that Jude couldn’t look at Grace without feeling an overwhelming grief. Everything Grace did reminded Jude of her loss, and so she kept her distance from her granddaughter. It shamed Jude and embarrassed her, this weakness, but there was no way she could fix it. She’d tried. But in the past two years, she’d gotten better. She picked Grace up regularly from both kindergarten and the day care she went to after school. It was only on the worst of days, when Jude fell into that gray world, that she crawled into bed and forgot everything she had to do and everyone around her. Especially her granddaughter.
“I’m better now,” she said to Zach. “You can trust me.”
“Tomorrow is—”
“I know what tomorrow is,” Jude cut him off before he could say what they all already knew: tomorrow would be a bad day for all of them. “But you can trust me this time.”
*
It should have been raining. The landscape beyond her window should have been ominous and black, like ink spreading, with swollen charcoal skies and cobwebbed black leaves skidding across dirty sidewalks and crows gathered on telephone lines. A scene out of The Stand. Instead, the sixth anniversary of her daughter’s death dawned bright and sunny, with the kind of cornflower-blue sky that turned Seattle into the prettiest city in the world. The Sound sparkled; Mount Rainier came out to play, its vivid white peak resplendent over the city’s shoulder.
Still, Jude felt cold. Freezing. All around her, tourists walked through the Pike Place Market, dressed in shorts and T-shirts, carrying cameras and eating food off sticks or out of greasy white bags. Long-haired musicians staked out the primo street corner locations, hammering away at their accordions or guitars or bongo drums. One even had a piano.