She went to the bed, touched his pale, pale cheek.
He was cold.
Mom made a sobbing sound and rubbed his shoulder and arms harder. “I have some bread saved for you. Wake up.”
Meredith had never heard her mother sound so desperate. In truth, she’d never heard anyone sound like that, but she understood: it was the sound you made when the floor dropped out from beneath you, and you were falling.
The last thing Meredith wanted to think about was what she should have said to her father, but there it was, a shadowy reminder of last night, standing beside her, whispering poison. Had she told him she loved him?
She felt the sting of tears, but knew she couldn’t give in now. If she did, she’d be lost. She wished sharply, desperately, that it could be different, just this once, that she could be the child, taken into her mother’s arms, but that wasn’t how this would go. She went to the phone and dialed 911.
“My father has died,” she said softly into the receiver. When she’d given out all the information, she returned to the bed and touched her mother’s shoulder. “He’s gone, Mom.”
Her mother looked up at her, wild-eyed.
“He’s so cold,” Mom said, sounding plaintive and afraid, almost childlike. “They always die cold. . . .”
“Mom?”
Her mother drew back, staring uncomprehendingly at her husband. “We’ll need the sled.”
Meredith helped her mother to her feet. “I’ll make you some tea, Mom. We can have it while they . . . take him.”
“You found someone to take him away? What will it cost us?”
“Don’t worry about that, Mom. Come on. Let’s go downstairs.” She took her mother by the arm, feeling like the stronger of the two for the first time ever.
“He is my home,” her mother said, shaking her head. “How will I live without him?”
“We’ll all still be here, Mom,” Meredith said, wiping away her own tears. It was a hollow reassurance that did nothing to ease this pain in her chest. Her mother was right. He was home, the very heart of them. How would they stand life without him?
Nina had been out in the orchard since before dawn, trying to lose herself in photography. For a short time, it had worked. She’d been mesmerized by the skeletal fruit trees, turned into crystalline works of art by the icicles that hung from the limbs. Against a tangerine and pink dawn sky, they were stunning. Her dad would love these portraits of his beloved trees.
She would do today what she should have done decades ago—she’d enlarge and frame a series of apple tree shots. Each tree was a representative of her father’s life’s work, and he’d love the reminders of how much he’d accomplished. Maybe she could even go through the family photos (not that there were many) and find old pictures of the orchard.
Recapping her lens, she turned slightly, and there was Belye Nochi, its peaked roof on copper fire in the new light. It was too early yet to take her dad some coffee, and God knew her mother wouldn’t want to sit at the kitchen table with her youngest daughter, so Nina packed up her gear and walked the long way up to her sister’s house. She’d started from a spot deep in the back of the orchard; by the time she reached the road, she was actually breathing hard.
Really, she couldn’t believe that her sister did this run every day.
When she reached the old farmhouse, she couldn’t help smiling. Every inch of the place was decorated for Christmas. Poor Jeff must spend months putting up lights.
It wasn’t a surprise. Meredith had always loved the holidays.
Nina knocked on the front door and opened it.
The dogs appeared immediately, greeting her with enthusiasm.
“Aunt Nina!” Maddy ran toward her, throwing her arms around Nina and giving her a big hug. Last night’s meeting had been too reserved for both of them.
“Hey, Mad,” Nina said, smiling. “I hardly recognize you, kiddo. You’re gorgeous.”
“And I was what, a total bow-wow before?” Maddy teased.
“Total.” Nina grinned. Maddy took her by the hand and led her into the kitchen, where Jeff was at the table reading The New York Times and Jillian was making pancakes.
Nina actually paused. Last night had been so artificial—with the dark room and the fairy tale and all that unspoken grief—that Nina hadn’t had time to really see her nieces. Now she did. Maddy looked young, still gangly and coltish, with her long, wild brown hair and thick eyebrows and oversized mouth, but Jillian was a woman, serious and composed. It was already easy to picture Jillian as a doctor. There was an invisible line, straight and true, from the pudgy blond girl who’d caught bugs all summer and studied them in jars, to the tall young lady at the stove. And Maddy was still the spitting image of Meredith at that age, but more buoyant than Meredith had ever allowed herself to be.
Strangely enough, Nina felt the passing of her own years when she looked at her nieces’ adult faces. It occurred to her for the first time that she was edging toward the middle of her life. She wasn’t a kid anymore. Of course, she should have had this thought before, but when you lived alone and did what you wanted, when you wanted, time seemed somehow not to pass.
“Hey, Aunt Neens,” Jillian said, removing the last pancake from the griddle.
Nina hugged Jillian, took a cup of coffee from her, and went to stand by Jeff. “Where’s Meredith?” she asked, squeezing his shoulder lightly.
He put the paper on the table. “She went down to see your dad. Twenty minutes ago, maybe.”
Nina looked at Jeff. “How is she?”
“I’m not the one you should be asking,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Before Jeff could answer, Maddy was beside her. “You want some pancakes, Aunt Nina?”
“No, thanks, hon. I better get down to the folks’ house. Your mom is going to tear me a new one for not making coffee.”
Maddy’s wide mouth stretched into a smile. “She sure will. We’ll be down in thirty.”
Nina kissed both girls, said good-bye to Jeff, and headed down the road.
Back at the house, she hung her borrowed coat on the entryway hook and called out for her sister. The smell of freshly brewed coffee drew her into the kitchen.
Her sister was standing at the sink with her head bowed, watching the water run.
“Aren’t you going to yell at me for not making coffee?”
“No.”
Something about the way her sister said it made Nina stop. She glanced back at the stairs. “Is he awake?”
Meredith turned slowly. The look in her eyes was all Nina needed; the world tilted off its axis.
“He’s gone,” Meredith said.
Nina drew in a sharp breath. Pain that was unlike anything she’d ever known collected in her chest, in her heart maybe. An absurd memory flashed through her mind. She was eight or nine, a black-haired tomboy following her dad through the orchard, wishing she could be anywhere else. Then she’d fallen—caught her toe and gone flying. Nice trip, Neener Beaner, he’d said. See you in the fall. Laughing, he’d scooped her into his arms and positioned her on his big shoulders and carried her away.
She walked forward, her vision blurred by tears, and stepped into her big sister’s arms. When she closed her eyes, he was beside them, in the room with them. Remember when he taught us to fly kites in Ocean Shores? but like the other, it was a silly memory, not the best by far, but it was here now, making her cry. Had she said everything to him last night? Had she told him how deeply she loved him, explained enough why she was gone so much?
“I don’t remember if I told him I loved him,” Meredith said.
Nina drew back, looked into her strong sister’s ruined face and tear-filled eyes. “You told him. I heard you. And he knew it anyway. He knew.”
Meredith nodded, wiped her eyes. “They’ll be . . . coming for him soon.”
Nina watched her sister regain composure. “And Mom?”
“She’s up with Dad. I couldn’t get her to leave him.”
They exchanged a look that said everything and Nina said, “I’ll go try. And then . . . what?”
“We start making plans. And phone calls.”
The thought of it, of watching his life turn into the details of death, was almost more than Nina could bear. Not that she had a choice. She told her sister she’d be back and left the kitchen. Every step took effort and by the time she reached the second floor, she was crying again. Softly, quietly, steadily.
She knocked on the door and waited. At the silence, she turned the knob and went inside.
Surprisingly, the room was empty except for her father, lying in the bed, with the covers drawn so tightly to his chin that they looked like a layer of new-fallen snow on his body.
She touched his face, pushed a snow-white strand of hair away from his closed eyes, and then leaned down and kissed his forehead. The cold of his skin shocked her and the thought slipped in: He’ll never smile at me again.
She drew in a deep breath and straightened, staring down at him for a long time, memorizing every detail. “Good-bye, Daddy,” she said softly. There were more words, of course, hundreds of them, and she knew when she’d say them later: at night, when she felt lonely and disconnected and far away from home.
Backing away from the bed (she had to, had to make herself move, leave, now before she completely broke), she picked up the phone to call Danny but hung up before she’d even heard a tone. What would she say to him? How could words ease a pain like this? Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blur of movement in the yard; dark blurring across white.
She moved to the window.
Mom was out there, in the snow, trudging toward the greenhouse.
Nina hurried downstairs and slipped back into her borrowed coat and wet boots, then walked across the porch, passing the kitchen window. Inside, she saw Meredith talking on the phone, her face chalky, her lips trembling. Nina didn’t even know if her sister saw her pass by.
She went down the side steps and into the thick snow at the corner of the house. Aftera few feet, she picked up Mom’s trail and stepped in her footsteps.
At the greenhouse, she stopped just long enough to gather courage and then opened the door.
Her mother was in her lawn nightgown and snow boots, kneeling in the dirt, pulling up tiny potatoes and throwing them in a pile.
“Mom?”
Nina said it twice more, and got no answer; finally, sharply, she said, “Anya,” and moved closer.
Mom stopped and looked back. Her long white hair was unbound and fell in tangles around her pale face. “There are potatoes. Food will help him. . . .”
Nina knelt beside her mother in the dirt. It scared her to see her mother this way, but in a strange way, it soothed her, too. For once, they were feeling the same thing. “Hey, Mom,” she said, touching her shoulder.
Mom stared at her, slowly frowning. Confusion clouded those brilliant blue eyes. She shook her head and made a sound, like a hiccup. Fresh tears glazed her eyes and the confusion lifted. “Potatoes won’t help.”
“No,” Nina said quietly.
“He’s gone.Evan is gone.”