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In spite of a late night, Kelly woke early the next day. Maggie had said she wouldn’t need her today. Catering for the fire crew had been finalized, and she’d be working with a couple from Kalispell that had a contract with the forest service.
Alex had headed to Oregon to pick up some special wood.
Everyone had their jobs, their places to be. In Promise Cove, everyone seemed to have a purpose, except her. Firetrucks still roared down the main road before turning up the mountain to the edges of the burn. The fire was still only 25 percent contained, but at least it was burning away from Promise Cove. Hopefully, Ryan’s house had survived.
Her finger had hovered over his number a dozen times, but she’d always stuck her phone back in her pocket. He didn’t need to hear from her right now.
Wandering into the kitchen, she went through the motions of making coffee. John’s phone was sitting on the table, the FedEx envelope next to it. Two inanimate objects, their silent voices screaming her inadequacy.
She tossed the FedEx envelope on top of the washer in the mudroom and threw John’s phone in the junk drawer. Out of sight, out of mind.
Leaving the coffee to drip, she walked to the great room and plopped in one of the chairs by the fireplace. The day was gloomy, but it wasn’t rainclouds causing the haze. If she stepped outside, all she would be able to breathe was smoke. It would be best to stay inside.
She could start to pack up things she wanted to keep. Some of her teacher friends had part- time jobs as real estate agents, so she knew uncluttered spaces moved faster.
You could play me the piano mocked.
She went back into the kitchen, poured the coffee, then trudged upstairs, an area absent of any ticking time bombs.
Settling in the rocking chair, she picked up a novel she’d brought with her, a best-seller that couldn’t seem to hold her interest. Her gaze lifted to the view from the window, the placid lake stretched out below her, the air hazy. A large bird, long legs floating behind it, swooped past her window and onto the water’s edge.
The beauty of nature worked to calm her, but she knew better now. It was a beauty with an edge. Danger lurked beneath the waters and in the air she breathed. It was not the place for her.
If only it didn’t work so hard to lure her to stay. The bait was tempting. A new life. One where John’s secrets wouldn’t haunt her every day. She wouldn’t be able to stay in the house when she went back to California. It was their house, and his mark was everywhere.
Here, there was a possibility not only of a new life but a new love. Truthfully, it had never really died, but as she’d gone through high school, all the authorities—her mother, magazine writers, her friends—had convinced her what she’d felt for Ryan had only been a crush, a normal occurrence of life, one to be moved past.
She’d believed them.
Maybe they were right. Maybe people needed to be adults in order to have anything real blossom between them.
But what if they had been wrong? Could she and Ryan have grown together, making each other the best version of themselves they could be?
Without making an actual decision, she rose and returned downstairs. Pawing through the aging yellow sheet music books, she pulled out Chopin, sat at the piano and began to play. She didn’t care about the wrong notes she hit, she only felt the emotion of sound as it traveled from her fingertips through her body, the sorrow that Chopin had infused into so many of his pieces. This was a man who’d known many highs and lows, including his love affair with the novelist Aurore Dudevant, leading to the happiest and saddest moments of his life.
As Kelly played, the notes grew into a movie score behind images of her life: meeting John, their wedding—as perfect a society affair as her mother could make it—Lisa’s birth, Peter’s constant crying, a second honeymoon with her husband. But then the little things intruded: a forgotten anniversary, sudden trips, a gift she’d discovered that wasn’t for her.
The signs had been there all along.
She flung Chopin aside and found Beethoven.
Her mistakes with the extravagant flourishes and range changes of the symphony pieces were more frequent. No more lilting melodies. Here, she could throw her whole body into playing, her arms and shoulders relishing the remembered exercise. Up and down the keyboard, wrong notes and all, letting the music tear her heart’s pain from her body, the deaf man’s anguish wrung from her fingers.
A half hour later, pain radiated through her muscles and joints. Sweat, not the delicate perspiration of a Boston Brahmin, but the honest sweat of hard work, poured from her skin. She dragged her limp body from the piano and flung it on the bed, falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The shifting angle of the sun finally woke her. Disoriented for a few moments, she glanced at the old-fashioned clock on the wall, a delicate craft of workmanship that must have come from Alex’s hands. It was late afternoon.
Thoughts and memories played along with the kaleidoscope of light sparkling on the bedroom wall.
The past couldn’t be undone. She had the rest of her life in front of her to make her mark. When she went back to California, it didn’t have to be the same, did it? She could find a bungalow with enough room to house the piano. She didn’t need much room. Except there would need to be a guest room for the kids and a place to entertain. Maybe not a bungalow.
She hauled herself from the bed, shucked her clothes, and stepped into the shower. The water slid over her, wiping the grime and smoke from her skin. She let it cleanse her for a good long time. The light forest smell of her shampoo scented the room, and moisture dampened the air.
The air outside must still be smoky; the sky was hazy over the water, and the sun had a red cast to it. It wasn’t quite time for dinner, but her stomach rumbled. She grabbed an apple from the bowl on the counter and walked to her grandmother’s office in the barn.
She spent the next few hours going over her grandmother’s retreat notes as well as her own and organizing them into some kind of system. Should she sell the business separately from the property? It made sense, although she had no idea how to go about doing it. But there would be someone who knew, someone at home who could help her. In the meantime, she’d streamline some of the information and store only the binders and notebooks it made sense to keep.
Glancing at the piles of journals and notebooks stacked in the small bookshelf, and thinking of all the supplies in the barn, she leaned back in the chair and wiped the palms of her hands over her face. She wouldn’t be able to take the time that was needed. In fact, she’d have to hire a service or several people in town to get it boxed.
And then what would she do with it?
This was her grandmother’s life work—this and the poems in the house. Kelly couldn’t let it go until she’d given herself a chance to really know the woman, a chance her mother had never given her.
Why had her mother disliked her grandmother so much? When Kelly had posed the question as a teen, her mother had pushed her off, telling her they were staying in Boston for her. Kelly needed to make an impression with the right people to have success in life.
She called her mother.
“Hi, Mom. How are you? Have you seen Peter? How’s he doing?”
“Oh, hello. How unexpected,” her mother replied. “Peter? I suppose okay. The Richards keep him pretty busy when he’s not working at that firm with Rupert. He seemed happy enough when I had lunch with him a few weeks ago.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.” And she was. Peter’s happiness was so well disguised it was difficult to know whether or not it existed. She took a deep breath and launched into the next subject.
“Mom, why didn’t you and Grandma get along?”
“Why do any mothers and daughters not get along? You and I don’t always agree.”
“But we don’t let years go by without talking to each other.”
“I talked to my mother once in a while,” Cynthia protested.
“Not like most people. I need an answer. I deserve an answer. You kept me from knowing her. Why?”
“Your grandmother was difficult. All she wanted to do was sit in those woods and write her little poems.”
“She was poet laureate of Montana one year,” Kelly pointed out.
“An honorary title. No one hears of poets. It’s not like they’re actors or politicians or anything.”
Sometimes her mother’s love of glitter and power got to Kelly. But there was no use calling Cynthia on it—she wouldn’t begin to know what she was saying.
She waited.
“You’re not going to let it go, are you?” Cynthia said.
“Nope.”
“We were different people,” her mother said. “She gave up her lifelong dream to follow your grandfather to that place. She was a wonderful cook. You remember.”
“I do, but it seems she created another dream for herself.”
“She could have been a well-paid chef.”
“Well, she did put on retreats and feed attendees.” In her time in the office, Kelly had found the binder that contained meal plans and recipes. Attendees had been very well fed.
“I never understood how that worked. Get a group of women together and talk. You may as well go to a nice restaurant like Craigie’s and have lunch.”
“Couldn’t you enjoy her as she was?” Kelly asked.
“Maybe, if she hadn’t try to stifle me. She wanted me to stay in that rural place, help her out, never see an art gallery or attend a symphony. I wanted regular manicures; she wanted to plant vegetables in the spring.”
It was as close as Kelly would ever get to an answer. Too bad her mother didn’t realize she’d done the same thing to her own daughter.
