Frances slides a photo of Brady into a two-inch-square punch and gives the lever a firm squeeze. There’s a crunch as a perfectly cropped photo pops out of the punch window and lands in her palm. Frances grins and adds the photo square to her growing pile, then reaches for a picture of Noah and does the same.
Frances is making a favorite-things album for each of the boys. Favorite foods, favorite toys, favorites places, favorite sayings, favorite clothes. She’s going to laminate the pages of the albums for the younger boys, hopes it stands up to years of handling. She wants it to be something they’ll keep for a long time, maybe even long enough to share with their own children.
She has a few other albums planned: family vacations, birthday parties, and Christmas to start. They have some family albums, of course, where she stuck in photos whenever she had time, but Frances always has to narrate each one, explain what’s happening or recount a funny story. With her new scrapbooks, she won’t have to. She’ll journal on each page and include ticket stubs and birthday cards and airplane boarding passes. The story will be right there on the page for anyone to see.
She’s addicted, she’ll admit it. The day after the scrapbooking meeting, Frances went to the library and checked out every book she could find on scrapbooking and memory keeping. She pored over every page, made lists of supplies and equipment, went shopping. She subscribed to several scrapbooking magazines, went to eBay to bid on huge lots of scrapbooking supplies by people who were giving it up. Those were her favorites—the boxes filled with a jumble of paper and embellishments, stickers, rub-ons, punches, and scissors. It was fun to sort through everything and delight in the randomness of it. Some people included more than what was listed, deciding in the end that it was better to get rid of it all, so Frances always had a surprise or two—a mini craft iron in one, a set of gel pens in another. It was almost too much, but Frances figures she can always use them for projects with the boys, too.
Frances knows that as fun as this is, she needs it, too. She needs to keep busy, she needs to find ways to occupy her time and mind so that what’s happened (or rather, didn’t happen) doesn’t consume her. She knows scrapbooking isn’t going to fill the hole that’s left from Mei Ling, but it’s made her realize how much she has, how much she’s grateful for. And that’s worth something, isn’t it?
Reed passes by the kitchen table on the way to the fridge. She can tell by the way his brows furrow that he has something on his mind, but he doesn’t want to talk about it.
“Guess what?” Frances says, hoping to distract him. “We won’t ever have to buy a greeting card again. I’ll be able to make whatever we need. Birthday, holiday, sympathy cards, anything!”
“That’s great,” Reed says, distracted. He rummages through the fridge but comes up empty-handed. He heads over to the pantry. He opens the door and flicks on the light. Frances hears bags of chips and pretzels being moved around, boxes of cereal being shaken. After a moment, the light flicks off and Reed is standing there, still empty-handed, and looking irritated.
Frances frowns. Reed looking for food is not a good sign. He only eats when he’s stressed, and even then only in the worst situations. The last time Frances saw him like this was when her father died a few years ago. They’d been close, the perfect father and son-in-law pairing, and his passing had devastated him. He gained almost fifteen pounds during that time.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asks. She sorts through a stack of journal cards, choosing one for each photo. They’re made of simple card stock with colorful borders and lines to write a sentence or two. She almost hates to use them, they’re so pretty.
“No,” Reed says. “I just feel like a snack or something.”
Frances glances at the clock. It’s past nine at night. The boys are in bed. Reed never eats past seven.
“We have yogurt,” she begins, when Reed snaps, “I don’t want yogurt, Frances.” Both irritation and disgust are in his voice.
“Oh,” she says, a little stung. “Okay.” Reed doesn’t have much of a temper, so Frances isn’t sure what to do. She ducks her head and pretends to be absorbed in organizing the pictures on the page. She wrinkles her nose when she feels tears prickling her eyes.
Reed runs a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry,” he finally says. He pulls out the chair next to her and drops into it. He reaches for Frances’s hand and she flinches at his touch. “Fran, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She shuffles some pictures around, not even sure what she’s looking at.
Reed leans back in the chair and stares up at the ceiling. “We need to get rid of Mei Ling’s stuff. It’s just sitting in my office—I can barely move in there. And there are things in the garage, too. I’d feel better if we could clean it all up and get it out of here.”
Frances bites her lip. She’s thought about it, too, but she can’t bring herself to part with anything yet. It’s only been three weeks since they turned down the referral, and she wants to let it sink in. Plus she doesn’t know what to do with everything—it somehow doesn’t feel right to sell it or give it away. “I wish we could send it all to her. We got it for her, after all.”
“You know we can’t do that,” Reed says. “If you want, I’ll take care of it. I want it all out of here. It’s too much of a reminder …” His voice trails off and he shakes his head.
“I know.” Frances finally stops pretending to work and looks at her husband, at the unhappiness in his face. She knows that he’s right—as soon as it still might be, they need to move on. “I’ll start going through everything this weekend. I could … sell some things, I guess. Donate the rest. It’ll feel good to give them away to some children who could use them. Maybe a hospital, or …”
Reed is looking at her pile of photographs. He picks one up of Nick at two, clutching a raggedy-looking stuffed dog with a missing eye. He used to take it with him everywhere. “God, I forgot about that thing. What did he call it?”
They both pause, remembering, and then speak at the same time. “Struffy,” they say in unison, and smile.
Reed picks up another photo, this one of Brady taken last year. He’s banging away on a tinny-sounding toy piano that Frances had found at a thrift store for a dollar. Noah “accidentally” broke it by sitting on it. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I actually miss that piano.” Reed used to throw pained looks Frances’s way whenever Brady would play it, but now a small smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Frances laces her fingers together and rests her chin on top of them, her elbows on the table. She points to one of Noah potty training. He’s wearing a cowboy hat and nothing else. “He loved that hat. I didn’t have any other pictures of him wearing it, which is weird if you think about it. He was always wearing it.”
Reed laughs, and the sound of his laughter seems to break through something that’s been lingering between them, tight and unyielding. Frances feels her shoulders drop and realizes she’s been holding her breath all this time, taking small bits of air only when she needs it. She lets herself exhale, and smiles.
“I want to save that for the slideshow at his wedding,” Reed says. He fans out the rest of the photos. “Wow, you have a lot of good ones here, Fran.” He lifts one of the photos. “This is one of my favorites—the one of Nick at the Fourth of July display when we were visiting my parents. I think he was three at the time?”
“Yep. And he kept his hands over his ears for the rest of the week,” Frances says. “He was worried the fireworks might start up again any moment. We had to feed him because he wouldn’t put his hands down to hold a fork.”
They both chuckle. Frances thinks about something Bettie said at the last meeting, about scrapbooking being a form of therapy. Maybe it’s not for the people making the scrapbooks, but for those looking at them, too.
“I wish …” Reed begins, but then his voice catches in his throat and he shakes his head.
“What, Reed?”
But her husband won’t speak, just wordlessly thumbs through the photos, his face a mask of pain.
Frances looks down at the piles of pictures, confused. These are all happy pictures, with smiles and people laughing, nothing unpleasant or difficult here. Maybe it’s the occasional glance of his father, still a picture of health as he stands next to the older boys holding matching fishing rods. But somehow Frances doesn’t think that’s it.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.
Reed shakes his head. “Not really.” He taps another photo. “That was a great trip—our first family vacation after Brady was born. Yosemite.” There’s that small smile again, and Frances feels relief.
“We were ambitious,” she remembers. “That was a very long car ride.” With enough crying, yelling, and complaints along the way. Never again, they’d both vowed, but of course as soon as they were home they started planning the next family vacation.
Maybe that’s what they need. “Hey,” Frances says suddenly. “What do you think about taking a family vacation? We haven’t taken one for the past couple of years because of … well, anyway, it could be a short getaway, a break from our day-to-day. What do you think?”
Reed looks appalled. “No,” he says, surprising her. “I mean, not right now. It’s been such a roller-coaster ride, I just want things to settle back down.”
“Okay.” Frances feels a pinch inside at the memory of the past couple of months, the best and worst months of her life. She forces a smile. “Well, I guess the first order of business will be to find a new home for Mei Ling’s things. We’ll feel better then, because we did the best we could, Reed. You know if there were any other way, we would have considered it. But there was none. Right?”
There’s a long pause, but then Reed looks at his wife and Frances finally sees it—a determination, an absoluteness. He takes her hand and gives it a firm squeeze. “Right.”
Ava waits in her car, trying to tune her radio but finally giving up. She’s four cars away from pulling up to the school in the designated drop-off zone where a teacher will escort Max to the car and buckle him in. New rules, they told her. They didn’t want parents clogging the exit during dismissal, anxious to take their children home. Instead the parents are being asked to line up like children themselves, one after another, waiting for a teacher to wave them forward.
The Jeep gives a shudder and Ava prays it won’t overheat. It needs a major tune-up, the radiator flushed, new brake pads. The treads in the tires are wearing thin. A couple more months, the guy told her, which takes her right into winter. The sooner she can get these problems taken care of, the better—but how?
After the scrapbooking meeting, Ava received a large order from Bettie for simple bottle-cap embellishments that members could buy and add to their layouts. Now that she knows more about scrapbooking, Ava knows exactly what she can do. Girl themes and boy themes, vacation themes, birthday themes. She’ll flatten these caps so they’ll add texture without sticking out too much from the page. She’s also thinking about making an album kit with six or seven bottle-cap bookmarks for different pages. She’ll set it all up and give people the supplies they need to put their own pictures in the center of a cap.
Margot at Avalon Gifts ’N More also placed an order for more bottle-cap jewelry, and there’s another gift store in Rockford that wants to do a trial of her collection as well. That’s what she’s calling it now: the Free Hearts Collection. It sounds so legitimate, like she’s a real designer. But while it’s helping with their expenses, it’s far from enough, especially since she now needs to invest in more supplies to fill all these orders.
They can’t keep scraping by like this. She can’t find a good full-time job that’ll give her some flexibility with Max, and all the part-time jobs don’t pay well. It seems like a waste to keep trying to do something new when she already has a marketable skill—her training as a dental assistant. It’s easy work, and Ava was good at it. The plan had been that Bill would eventually open his own solo practice, separate from Randall Strombauer, and Bill and Ava would work together. They would be married, it would be their business, a family business. But when Bill died, that dream evaporated. A lot of dreams did.
For the past four years Ava’s tried to reinvent herself, has tried to start their life from scratch. Maybe if it was just her she could do it, but it’s not just her. She has Max, and he deserves more than what she’s been able to give. When Ava realizes this, she knows what she has to do. She’s going to have to see Dr. Strombauer and ask him for a recommendation.
The last time she saw him she was packing up her things, the Monday after Bill broke the news to Isabel. It was her last day. Dr. Strombauer knew now that they were seeing each other, but that didn’t stop him from cornering her in the break room. He stood so close she could feel his breath on her neck, could smell the alcohol from one too many drinks at lunch.
“Things are looking up for you, aren’t they, Ava girl?” He’d given her an even smile, but she could hear the edginess in his words.
She couldn’t find her voice, afraid if she spoke her fear would give her away. But she forced herself to stand tall and look him in the eye. It was hard, and still he towered over her. In the end she was the first to look away.
A finger trailed down her bare arm, making her shiver. “Bill coming over later? That must be nice. What are you going to do, make him dinner? Or something else? Because I sure am hungry, too.” He leered at her.
Ava was grateful for the box between them, the one that held a handful of personal items. She gripped the edges tightly, didn’t say anything. The receptionist was gone for the day, and Bill was at the lawyer’s. Everyone else was gone. They’d had a full day of patients and Dr. Strombauer hadn’t said more than a few words to her. Until now.
“Obviously the two of you have been planning this for some time. Sneaking around—I have to say, I’m impressed. I didn’t think he had it in him. Though it makes me wonder if Bill has plans to sneak around on me, too, you know?” His stance was threatening now, and suddenly he knocked the box from her hands. It fell to the floor, spilling its contents everywhere.
And then he was pressing against her, crushing her against the wall, his hands wrapped around her wrists, the tips of their noses touching. He was going to kiss her, she was certain of it, and he wouldn’t stop there. Every worst-case scenario flashed through her mind. Ava was terrified, wanted to scream, but who would hear her?
And then she thought of the baby.
That’s all it took. Ava found her strength, her anger. She did the only thing she could think of.
She bit him.
He had hollered and reeled back, his hands cupping his nose. Ava had been too busy grabbing her purse to know what had really happened, and then she was pushing open the door of the emergency exit, the alarm shrieking. She ran to her car, her hands shaking so bad that she could barely get the keys into the ignition, but she did.
She didn’t tell Bill what had happened. She meant to, but she didn’t know what he would do, didn’t trust him not to confront Dr. Strombauer and possibly hurt him, destroying his chances for his own business. She only said that they’d had a disagreement, that she ended up leaving her box at the office. Bill brought it home the next day and Ava noticed a few things were broken or missing, but none of that mattered. She was just glad she’d never have to go back to that office, relieved she’d never see him again.
Now, however, things are different. Bill is dead. She has Max. Randall Strombauer owns Bill’s share of the practice. If anything he owes her this one simple thing.
A long honk from an annoyed parent in the car behind her shakes her from her reverie. Ava manages a wave and edges up a car length, sighing as she puts the car back in park. She can see Max standing in line by the door, lunchbox in hand, waiting for his turn, too. She tries to smile, but she suddenly feels sad. The memory of that long ago time, or maybe it’s this moment, where she and her son have to wait for someone to tell them when they can be together.
Connie sits on a bale of hay in Serena’s pen, watching the goat doze in the shade of her dog house. Connie doodles in her journal, finally drafting the sign that she’d promised Madeline she would make.
“Goat Found,” she writes. “Female. Friendly. Playful. Masterful escape artist. Please inquire at Madeline’s Tea Salon.”
Connie adds a few colorful flowers around the border, draws teacups nestled inside of roses. She sketches Serena’s face peeking out from behind the Lassiters’ hydrangea bush. She’ll make it nicer on the computer later, and include an actual photo of Serena as well, but at least now she can tell Madeline that she’s working on it and that might buy her a few more days.
Her new scrapbook album sits on the desk in her room, still void of pictures. Connie doesn’t know where to begin, doesn’t know what to put inside. She took the photographs from her suitcase and started to lay them out on the page, and then got nervous about gluing them in, making it permanent. She’s not sure what the album is about anymore. Is her past more important than her future?
Her thoughts drift to her parents, to her mother especially. Connie already finds that she’s forgetting things, that she can’t quite picture her mother as clearly as before. Maybe because no photo albums exist, those memories are now lost forever.
What does Connie remember? Her mother being impetuous, the way her spur-of-the-moment ideas would become infectious, the way she could cajole Connie and her father into agreeing to just about anything. “A road trip!” she’d suggest, even though Connie’s father had to work the next day. Or the time they’d chased down an ice cream truck for three blocks to get a Cherry Bomb they could share.
After Connie’s father died, Mary Beth Colls seemed to sink into herself. If they were out, Mary Beth put her best face forward and like magic, it seemed to work. They’d laugh, they’d have a good time, and Connie would think that maybe her mother would be okay after all. But then they’d come home and she would deflate, shrinking into herself, becoming silent and morose. Connie watched her take the pills that helped her sleep.
“Oh, Connie,” she murmured one night as they lay on the couch together, watching TV. “You’re so much like your father. You’re both so strong. Fearless. You can do anything.” There was a shakiness in her voice.
“You too, Mom.” Connie was thirteen.
Mary Beth had shaken her head, pulled Connie closer to her. Her lips brushed the top of her daughter’s head. “No, Constance. I’m not.” Then she’d pushed Connie away and told her it was time for bed.
In the morning Mary Beth was still asleep when Connie went to school. Connie had tiptoed out quietly, leaving a plate of toast and scrambled eggs warming in the oven for her mother when she woke up.
But she never did.
Connie feels Serena bump up against her. She puts her nose up to Serena’s, who is looking at her unabashedly. “You love me, don’t you Serena?” Connie asks.
Serena lets out a happy bleat, then nudges Connie toward the gate. She was planning on putting pictures of Serena in the album, too, but now that she has to look for Serena’s original owner, Connie’s not so sure that’s a good idea. An album full of loss. Talk about depressing.
Another bump. Connie leans forward and buries her face in Serena’s neck. “Stay with me,” she whispers. “Okay?”
Serena gives her a nuzzle, a sure yes if Connie ever knew one. Encouraged, Connie puts down her journal and reaches for Serena’s leash. “All right, let’s go for that walk.”