The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [30]
“I’ve never been to Nashville,” Caroline said.
“No? Well, hop aboard, you and your daughter too,” Al said. It was a joke, but within the joke was an offer. An offer not to her, not really, but rather to an unwed mother down on her luck. Still, for a moment Caroline imagined walking out the door with her boxes and her blankets and never looking back.
“Maybe next time,” she said, reaching for the coffee. “I’ve got some things to settle here.”
Al nodded. “Gotcha,” he said. “I know how that goes.”
“But thanks,” she said. “I appreciate the thought.”
“My infinite pleasure,” he said seriously, and then he stood up to go.
Caroline watched from the window as he went to his truck, climbing up the steps into the cab and turning once to wave from the open doorway. She waved back, happy to see his smile, so ready and so easy, surprised by the tug in her heart. She had an impulse to run after him, remembering the narrow bed in the back of the cab where he sometimes slept and the way he’d touched Phoebe’s forehead so gently. Surely a man who lived such a solitary life could keep her secrets, contain her dreams and fears. But his engine caught, and smoke billowed up from the silver pipe on his cab, and then he was pulling carefully out of the parking lot and onto the quiet street and away.
For the next twenty-four hours, Caroline slept and woke on Phoebe’s schedule, staying up just long enough to eat. It was strange; she had always been particular about meals, fearing undisciplined snacking as a sign of eccentricity and self-absorbed solitude, but now she ate at odd hours: cold cereal straight from the box, ice cream spooned from the carton while standing at her kitchen counter. It was as if she had entered some twilight zone of her own, some state halfway between sleep and waking, where she would not have to consider too fully the consequences of her decisions, or the fate of the baby sleeping in her dresser drawer, or her own.
On Monday morning she got up in time to call in sick to work. Ruby Centers, the receptionist, answered the phone.
“Are you all right, honey?” she asked. “You sound awful.”
“It’s the flu, I think,” Caroline said. “I’ll probably be out a few days. Anything happening there?” she asked, trying to make her voice casual. “Dr. Henry’s wife have the baby?”
“Well, I sure don’t know,” Ruby said. Caroline imagined her thoughtful frown, her desk swept clear and ready for the day, a little vase of plastic flowers on the corner. “No one else is in yet, except about a hundred patients. Looks to be everyone else has got your flu, Miss Caroline.”
The minute Caroline hung up there was a knock on the front door. Lucy Martin, no doubt. Caroline was surprised it had taken her this long.
Lucy was wearing a dress with big bright pink flowers on it, an apron with ruffles edged in pink, and fuzzy slippers. When Caroline opened the door she stepped right in, carrying half a loaf of banana bread wrapped in plastic.
Lucy had a heart of gold, everyone said so, but her very presence set Caroline’s teeth on edge. Lucy’s cakes and pies and hot dishes were her tickets into the center of every drama: deaths and accidents, births and weddings and wakes. There was something not quite right about her eagerness, an eerie kind of voyeurism in her need for bad news, and Caroline usually tried to keep a distance.
“I saw your visitor,” Lucy said now, patting Caroline’s arm. “My goodness! Quite a good-looking fellow, wasn’t he? I just couldn’t wait to get the scoop.”
Lucy sat down on the sofa bed, now folded up. Caroline took the armchair. The bedroom door, where Phoebe slept, stood open.
“You’re not sick, dear?” Lucy was saying. “Because, come to think of it, usually you’re long gone by this time in the morning.”
Caroline studied Lucy’s eager face, aware that whatever she said would travel swiftly through town—that in two days, or three, someone would come up to her in the grocery store