The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [108]
He opened the box and took out a new brass key.
“What’s this, the key to your heart?”
She laughed. “No. It’s a key to this house.”
“Why? Did you change the locks?”
“No.” Caroline pushed at the swing. “Doro gave it to me, Al. Isn’t that amazing? I have the deed inside. She said she wanted a completely fresh start.”
One heartbeat. Two, three, and the creak of the swing, back and forth.
“That’s pretty extreme,” Al said. “What if she wants to come back?”
“I asked her that same thing. She said Leo had left a lot of money. Patents, savings, I don’t know what-all. And Doro was thrifty her whole life, so she doesn’t need the money. If they come back, she and Trace will get a condo or something.”
“Generous,” Al said.
“Yes.”
Al was silent. Caroline listened to the porch swing creaking, the wind, the cars.
“We could sell it,” he mused. “Take off ourselves. Go anywhere.”
“It’s not worth much,” Caroline said slowly. The idea of selling this house had never crossed her mind. “Anyway, where would we go?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Caroline. You know me. I’ve spent life wandering. I’m just speculating here. Taking in the news.”
The comfort of the darkness, the steady swing, gave way to a deeper unease. Who was this man next to her, Caroline wondered, this man who arrived every weekend and slipped so familiarly into her bed, who tipped his head at a particular angle every morning to slap Old Spice on his neck and chin? What did she really know about his dreams, his secret heart? Next to nothing, it suddenly seemed, or he of hers.
“So you’d rather not have a house?” she pressed.
“It’s not that. This was good of Doro.”
“But it ties you down.”
“I like coming home to you, Caroline. I like coming down that last stretch of highway and knowing you and Phoebe are here, in the kitchen cooking, or planting flowers, or whatever. But sure, it’s appealing, what they’re doing. Packing up. Taking off. Wandering the world. It would be nice, I think. That freedom.”
“I don’t have those urges anymore,” Caroline said, looking out into the dark garden, the scattering of city lights and the dark red letters of the Foodland sign, mosaic pieces amid the dense summer foliage. “I’m happy right where I am. You’ll get bored with me.”
“Naw. That just makes us compatible, honey,” Al said.
They sat in silence for a time, listening to the wind, the rush of cars.
“Phoebe doesn’t like change,” Caroline said. “She doesn’t handle it well.”
“Well, there’s that too,” Al said.
He waited a moment, and then he turned to her.
“You know, Caroline. Phoebe’s starting to grow up. She’s starting not to be a little girl anymore.”
“She’s barely thirteen,” Caroline said, thinking of Phoebe with the kitten, how easily she slipped back into the carefree joys of childhood.
“That’s right. She’s thirteen, Caroline. She’s—well, you know—starting to develop. I feel uncomfortable picking her up like I did tonight.”
“So don’t,” Caroline said sharply, but she was remembering Phoebe in the pool earlier in the week, swimming away and then returning, grabbing hold of her underwater, the soft rising buds of her breasts pressed against her arm.
“You don’t have to get mad, Caroline. It’s just that we’ve never once talked about it, have we? What’s going to become of her. What it’ll be like for us when we retire, like Doro and Trace.” He paused, and she had the sense that he was choosing his words carefully. “I’d like to think we might consider traveling. It makes me a little claustrophobic, that’s all, to imagine staying in this house forever. And what about Phoebe? Will she live with us forever?”
“I don’t know,” Caroline said, weariness around her, dense as night. She had fought so many fights already to make a life for Phoebe in this indifferent world. For the time being she had all the problems solved, and for the last year or so she’d been able to relax. But where Phoebe would work and how she might live when she grew up—all this remained unknown. “Oh Al,