Cora pinned her hat to her head and looked at herself in the mirror. Color blazed from the drawings hung on the walls around her. She reached out and let her fingers brush one. It was done with red and yellow crayons. Nick had been learning how to mix colors to get the exact shade he wanted. They had been sitting out back on the terrace drinking lemonade. It was late spring and her father had been buried only days before. She remembered just sitting there with Nick watching him create that picture and realizing it was the first time she really felt completely relaxed and comfortable. Her father created such tension in the house she always felt the urge to hide somewhere and disappear when he was around. Nick didn’t understand that his grandfather was dead but she did. She took a deep breath of the cool spring air and was sure that she could smell hints of his rotting body they’d put in that hole in the cemetery through the woods. She knew it was probably her imagination but it made her smile.
What she felt that afternoon was the first taste of freedom for a woman who’d been imprisoned her entire life. Nick finished his picture that day and handed it to her. She held onto it with both hands afraid the wind would blow it away. That was the first one she’d taped to the wall. She wanted it where she could see it. The others followed that, one by one. It eased her mind to see them when she went to bed. She could even see them in the dark when the moon was right. Some nights she would sit up and just stare at the detail. She could tell you anything you wanted to know about any of them, how old he was when he drew it, what he was wearing, the expression on his face, where in the house it was done. She was so afraid of losing him she didn’t know how else to hold on.
But her father had been right about one thing, Cora knew, the less she bothered with the outside world, the better. Bradford had never understood that. He insisted that Nick go to school that fall rather than have him educated at home as Cora had been. He wanted him to go to a preparatory school with a good reputation and name to match. Chestnut Hill Academy.
Cora had stood her ground as Bradford pummeled her with words. He said she was sick and that he wouldn’t have his son raised in isolation as she had been. He didn’t know that deep inside her head she knew he was right. Emotionally she just couldn’t let go. She had no idea how. After days of arguing she finally gave in.
The tentative agreement was that Nick would go to Chestnut Hill Academy. He would be dropped off every morning in front of the school and picked up every afternoon. He wasn’t allowed to participate in any after school activities or socialize unnecessarily. It was bad enough that she was sending her heart out into the world to be picked apart, ridiculed, teased or tormented. That she would have to be vigilant for those who aimed to harm him in any way, and be primed and ready to strike back. She wasn’t going to open Nick or herself to those possibilities any more than necessary.
Her heart ached every day as she watched that black car take her son down the long driveway to the front gate. Sometimes when he was gone she would have trouble breathing. She felt a constant gnawing anxiety until she saw the gate open and car coming back up the driveway.
Cora clutched her chest when it struck her for the hundredth time that hour that Nick was never coming home. She could wait all day for the rest of her life. The black car was never going to bring her son back through that gate again.
Slowly she drew the white gloves onto her hands and prepared to take her car for the biweekly drive.