“I already do.” Outside, the fresh fall wind swept over her. It occurred to her she’d have been in the middle of her honeymoon in Paris if not for a canceled appointment.
“If you need advice,” Matt told her, “a wailing wall, a drinking buddy, just call.” He put the box in the car for her, turned. “I’m going to hug you.”
“I’m going to hug you back.”
He gave her a long, hard squeeze. “I shouldn’t say this, but I’m going to. He won’t last here. He’s talented, and he’s savvy, but he’s shown himself to be dishonest, petty, and damn it, vindictive. He won’t last with us.”
“I want to say it doesn’t matter to me, but I can’t.”
“Go shine.” He stepped back. “And I know you will. If you ever want to come back here and shine, the door’s open.”
“The first time I walked in the door, as an intern my senior year in college, you were wearing a polka-dot bow tie.”
“Ah yes, my bow tie period. I may have to revive that.”
“And you told me if I didn’t know the answer to ask the question. I always knew I could go to you and ask the question.”
“You still can.”
She kissed his cheek before she got in the car, and she cried a little as she drove away.
Instead of going home, she drove away from downtown and to her mother’s neat two-story house with its postage-stamp yard. She’d grown up there, in that leafy neighborhood. She’d played in that yard and, when old enough, mowed the grass.
Her father had taught her to ride a two-wheeler down the sidewalk—she remembered that so well.
I’ve got you, Sonya. Keep peddling, baby! I won’t let go.
And he hadn’t, running along beside her, until she’d shouted:
Let go, Daddy! I can do it. Let go!
He must have watched, she thought now. Had he felt twinges of pride, fear, maybe some poignant regret as she’d wobbled her way along on that little pink bike with the white plastic basket?
She could see him now, so clearly, jogging down to where she’d stopped—flushed and thrilled with herself—at the end of the sidewalk.
The sweet spring breeze fluttering through his hair—a deep, rich blond that never had the chance to gray. A tall, loose-limbed man, in his prime, long arms and long legs, narrow hands, like hers. Artist’s hands, like hers.
A man who’d die three short years later.
An accident, a tragedy. He’d started painting a mural on a building downtown. The scaffolding failed, and made her mother a widow.
She pulled into the narrow drive behind her mother’s car wondering why all that flooded back now. Must be the mood, she decided. Quitting a job hardly ranked with death, but it was a sharp change.
The red maple in front of the colonial blue Cape Cod was on fire with fall. Some of the flame-colored leaves had fallen, and before long October would shake them all from the branches.
Mounds of canary-yellow mums brought sunshine to the front corners of the house. And because Winter MacTavish didn’t know a holiday she didn’t love, fat orange pumpkins flanked the white front door.
Her mother would carve them into jack-o’-lanterns closer to Halloween, haul out the old skeleton, the cackling, broomstick-riding witch, don a costume, and hand out full-sized Hershey’s bars to trick-or-treaters.
Sonya didn’t knock—she’d never knocked on this door.
Inside, the living room smelled of the fall flowers in a vase, the woodsmoke from the fire simmering in the hearth.
One of her father’s paintings hung over the fireplace, as it always had—at least in Sonya’s memory.
A misty forest, deep green shadows with dappled light turning a path to shades of gold. And to the right of the path, a stream where water seemed to rush and tumble over rocks in quick falls that went from white to silver.
She’d wanted to know where the path went, and when she’d asked, he told her: Wherever you want.
“Maybe I’m on the path now, and I’ll find out.”
Knowing her mother, she started back toward the kitchen, calling out.
“Sonya? What a nice surprise.”
She’d changed out of her work clothes into cozy sweats and sneakers, and greeted her daughter with a quick hug. “I was just thinking about what’s for dinner. Have you eaten?”
“No. I came straight from work.”
“Now I have an excuse to get the too-much-soup I made last weekend out of the freezer. Chicken veg, how about it?”
“Sounds great.”