Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [4]
“No.”
“They say ‘Quack, eh,’” Livy said, and giggled as if it were the funniest joke in the world.
“You need a new joke,” Julie said, smiling.
Then, the cell phone began vibrating in the pocket of her overstretched wool sweater.
“Is it your job?”
“Maybe,” Julie said, trying to ignore the slight downward turn to her daughter’s voice whenever Julie’s work at the hospital came up. In some respects, Livy seemed like an old soul, and could see right through her mother. “Liv, aren’t we having fun?”
“I guess. I just miss you when you’re gone.”
“But you see Daddy.”
Her daughter didn’t answer. The awful and stupid guilt that Julie had worked so hard to overcome— about going back to work in the hospital again after having stayed home with Livy for her first four years— warmed her face.
“But you want to work in a hospital, too, you told me,” Julie said. “When you grow up? And you like all the stories I get to tell you from the ER. Aw, honey, I get five days with you each week. Two days away isn’t so bad.”
“I know,” Livy said, sighing. “It’s okay Mommy. I know they need you.”
When Julie looked at the number on her cell phone, she saw that it was not the hospital at all.
2
Julie dropped Livy off with Laura Reynen, the young mother who ran daycare out of her house and babysat far too often for Livy. Laura was in her mid-twenties, with two young children, and had arranged her life such that she could stay at home and run the business from a small cottage-like house, complete with wisteria creeping up the trellis at the side of the house, and an enormous fenced-in backyard, full of swing-sets and sandboxes and a double slide. Laura could take one of the kids on a moment’s notice, and Livy adored being at her home with the great playground in the backyard. Laura was the mother that Julie knew she never would be—happy with the clutter, happy with kids all over the place, happy in a way that Julie barely understood, since Julie felt like a screw-up of a mom.
At the front door, Laura, with a baby in her arms, said, “So I can expect you back when?” She always had the aura of joy around her, as if young children were somehow meant to be attached to her arms and legs and running in and out the backdoor all the time.
“Two hours, tops,” Julie said. Then, looking down at Livy, “We’ll eat junk food tonight, okay?”
“Mommy, you look sad,” Livy said.
Julie leaned down, and gave her daughter the tightest hug she could, kissing her on the forehead. “You go play, all right?”
“Only if you promise to read to me tonight.”
“Promise,” Julie said. She hoped she wouldn’t have to break that promise.
3
The Rellingford Learning Academy was a small private school for children with certain behavioral issues. The Academy sat on three well-manicured acres at the end of a circle of buildings. Although there was a blacktop and a baseball diamond in the back, there was little else to suggest a school other than the name at the front driveway. The school had on-staff medical personnel as well as a psychologist and a psychiatrist on-call who also conducted therapy sessions among the student body of sixty-four students from grades 6 through 12. Although the school was expensive and at times administratively pig-headed, Julie had convinced Hut that it was the best place for Matt, despite the added expense, at a time when Matt had been getting increasingly violent and uncontrollable at the public school—and at home.
Julie tried to put that episode out of her mind: that moment when Matt had pulled a kitchen knife on his father. Matt’s face full of rage, his eyes wild as if he wasn’t even seeing who stood in front of him, spit flying from his lips as some of the worst language that Julie could imagine came out of that boy’s mouth.
It wasn’t Matt. It was something else. A mental disorder