All that time spent baking and running away from thoughts of Ginger’s anniversary did absolutely no good. I really didn’t expect it to. I just hoped to take the edge off of it, or maybe dull the blade a little. As a final resort, I brought home coconut. I decided to call it out—face it down as part of my new outlook. But the ghosts that materialized with the scent of coconut disoriented me and drove me to my bed.
Standing at Ginger’s grave on the anniversary of her death, I felt the loss anew. The day was gray and the clouds swirled overhead, threatening. The wind whipped my hair, and I dropped to my knees in my skirt on the damp ground to replace the spent daffodils in the vase with bearded irises, hoping they wouldn’t blow away. Through my tears I noticed that the weeds had grown back, thick and green, obscuring her sweet name on the simple square of flat granite, and I yanked at them until Dad took me by the elbow and said there was a better time for that.
He held me, shivering. There were no words left to say.
The first heavy raindrops fell, and we made our way back toward the car. I noticed the other plots. So many flowers and teddy bears and balloons, you could trip over them if you weren’t careful. All signs of love and remembrance. Her grave was so bare by comparison. Watching through the car window as we pulled away, I knew what was missing. Ginger would have had a father’s bouquet, if only my bitterness toward him hadn’t gotten in the way.
I took to my bed when we got home, unable to deal with anyone else’s needs. Rain drove against the windows in sheets, and I pulled my comforter up to my neck. I would give over that day to grieving and then move on. Deja’s birthday was only a week away, and I had to pull myself together to make it special for her.
Just on the edge of sleep, I recalled seeing Julian Barrett at the back of the church that morning, standing with his hands in his pockets, looking grim.
The next morning I woke up feeling like I had a hangover, but I went in to work anyway. Life went on, ready or not.
Easter had blossomed at Shop’n Save. When I walked in, Robert stood at the foot of a ladder helping one of the new baggers suspend a giant inflated rabbit from the ceiling over the candy aisle. Jo stood beside him complaining that the potted lilies had to be moved to the opposite end of the store or her sinuses would burst. On my lunch hour, I picked up candy for the girls and an extra Easter basket for Andie.
Life got back to normal. Well, normal for our family. Deja and Winnie fought, and Andie pulled back into her shell. Something was up with Andie, and I hadn’t yet seen any evidence that she’d told Deja about finding her chain. Perhaps she was trying to think of a way to apologize. I felt for her. After the way Deja had treated her, it wouldn’t be easy.
The farmers market added two more growers and an antique dealer. When I helped Dad set up his paintings, I asked him to set aside the one of Winnie and Andie in the meadow, and not to sell it just yet.
At the rate Cyclops was shedding his winter coat, he’d soon be naked. I vacuumed huge clumps as soon as I spotted them, but either Andie needed a change in dosage or she wasn’t taking her meds properly, because she ended up with another sinus infection. Or I suppose it could have been just a run-of-the-mill virus.
I made another appointment for her at the clinic. To my surprise, after the doctor checked Andie out and wrote the prescription, he asked her to have a seat in the waiting room and stepped out into the hall to ask a nurse to bring my chart. He motioned for me to hop up on the table.
“How are things at your house?” he asked, stretching out the blood pressure cuff and wrapping it around my upper arm.
“It’s been kind of hectic. Just … a lot of things going on.”
He pumped the cuff on my arm to the strangling point. I was quiet while he listened. Then he loosened the valve and stripped off the cuff, looking thoughtful.
“What kind of things? Anything out of the ordinary?”
Where should I start, I wondered. I gave him a very brief rundown of our life at home, skimming the fact of Ginger’s anniversary. He “hmmed” and pursed his lips together.
There was a brief knock, and someone reached in to hand him my file. He opened it, flipped through the pages, and made a notation. “It sounds like you have your hands full. We don’t have you on any medications, do we?”
“No.”
“Your blood pressure is a little high. One fifty-four over ninety. We like that bottom number to be lower.” He pulled an instrument from his pocket and checked my eyes with his light, one at a time. “Any high blood pressure or strokes in your family?”
“Not to my knowledge. My dad’s pretty healthy. But he hasn’t had a checkup in a long time.”
He checked my ankles and asked if I had any problems with my digestion. Did I smoke, or drink more than a glass of alcohol a day? No, no, no. When he asked if I had trouble sleeping, I said no, but that I often felt tired, even so.
He poked and prodded a little more, and then he pulled out a form and completed it in doctor scrawl. “Get this blood panel done. I want to see you back here in two weeks. With everything you’re dealing with right now, I’m thinking you might benefit from an antidepressant. I need that blood panel before I prescribe anything.”
I trudged out to the front desk to set up another appointment, suddenly feeling old. High blood pressure, swollen ankles, bad digestion—those were old-lady illnesses he was talking about. The fact that he even asked suggested that they were already possibilities. Next I’d be looking at bifocals. But the fact that he thought I showed signs of depression depressed me.
I found Andie fighting sleep in a chair in the waiting room, and I told her I’d drop her off at the house before I went to pick up her prescription. On the way home, she glanced at my authorization for blood work, and then studied me sidelong.
Finally she asked, “Is that for me?”
“No. It’s mine, don’t worry. No more blood tests for you.”
She relaxed for only a moment. “Are you sick?”
I shrugged. “Don’t think so. I don’t feel sick.”
She studied me solemnly for a minute, looking like she had something on her mind, but curled up toward the passenger window without saying anything.
Maybe she just felt lousy, or maybe she was worried about me. I indulged myself to believe the latter.
I found the perfect card for Deja’s birthday. It had a teenager on the front dressed in black with piercings and tattoos, but on the inside the same girl was smiling and dressed like a princess, but with her crown on at a jaunty angle. I bought it and wrote inside, “You’re still my princess.”
It gave me an idea for her cake, and I hoped it wasn’t more than I could handle. On the afternoon before Deja’s birthday, Summer took her to the mall to let her pick out a gift, giving me lots of time. It took effort to get myself motivated to start such a big project, but once in, my creative juices began to flow. I spread out a picture of Sleeping Beauty’s castle and considered the possibilities. It could work, I decided. At least, it would suggest that it was the same castle. Winnie and Andie came through once or twice during the afternoon, admiring my creative genius. I only hoped Deja would feel the same way.
Deja chose an expensive restaurant for her birthday, which we had to veto, darkening her mood. Everything with her was a test of our love; it couldn’t simply be a matter of finances. Everyone else got to go where they wanted for their birthdays. She didn’t actually finish the thought that we must love everyone else more, but it was implied. And so it went until we negotiated a cheaper place.
Winnie wanted to bring her new best friend, Rae, but I nixed that before Deja even started. It was enough that we brought Andie along, according to Deja, who said she was just a “barnacle on the family” and not a real member. I almost cancelled all our plans at that point. I would have if Andie had been around to hear it.
After dinner at the Spaghetti House, we came back home to open presents. Deja was truly impressed with the cake. We gave her a new portable CD player with some edited CDs, and Winnie got her a subscription to a magazine that she wanted. I made a mental note to peruse each issue when it arrived in the mail, in case I needed to pull out anything offensive.
Andie placed a package wrapped in the Sunday funnies on the table and pushed it over to Deja. To our surprise, Andie had gotten her a bottle of her favorite cologne. So that was what she’d been so secretive about.
The two briefly exchanged awkward looks, not really smiling, but with their countenances brightening slightly. They hadn’t exactly taken a step toward each other. But they had at least stopped moving away and were looking back over their shoulders in each other’s direction.
As the week went by, I realized that the doctor was right about my blood pressure. At times, my pulse pounded in my ears. I had plenty of opportunities to notice.
Apparently, someone left Cyclops in one night, and when Andie let him out in the morning, he never returned. So of course to Deja she was the prime suspect, having been the last one to see him alive. She also had a nasty jagged scratch on her arm, which she said was “nothing.”
When Ms. Wren showed up at the house again, I noticed Andie pulled her sleeves down over her scratch and kept her arm behind her back. Initially, I took heart. She gave up a perfect opportunity to make us look bad to the caseworker. But the way she tried to cover for Cyclops made me suspicious. Maybe she had more to do with his disappearance than she let on.