The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [31]
“That was my cousin you saw last night,” Caroline said easily, amazed all over again at this sudden facility she’d developed, the fluidity and ease of her lies. They came to her whole; they didn’t even make her blink.
“Oh, I wondered,” Lucy said, looking a little disappointed.
“I know,” Caroline answered. And then, in a preemptive strike that amazed her when she thought about it later, she went on. “Poor Al. His wife is in the hospital.” She leaned a little closer, lowered her voice. “It’s so sad, Lucy. She’s only twenty-five, but they think she might have brain cancer. She’s been falling down a lot, so Al brought her in from Somerset to see the specialist. And they have this little baby. I told him, Look, go and be with her, stay in the hospital day and night if you have to. Leave the baby with me. And I think because I’m a nurse they felt comfortable with that. I hope you haven’t been bothered with her crying.”
For a few instants Lucy was stunned to silence, and Caroline understood the pleasure—the power—that comes from delivering a bolt from the blue.
“Poor, poor things, your cousin and his wife! How old is the baby?”
“Just three weeks,” Caroline said, and then, inspired, she stood up. “Wait here.”
She went into the bedroom and lifted Phoebe from the dresser drawer, keeping the blankets wrapped close around her.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” she asked, sitting down next to Lucy.
“Oh, she is. She’s lovely!” Lucy said, touching one of Phoebe’s tiny hands.
Caroline smiled, feeling an unexpected surge of pride and pleasure. The features she had noted in the delivery room—the sloping eyes, the slightly flattened face—had become so familiar that she hardly noticed them. Lucy, with her untrained eye, didn’t see them at all. Phoebe was like any baby, delicate, adorable, fierce in her demands.
“I love looking at her,” Caroline confessed.
“Oh, that poor little mother,” Lucy whispered. “Do they expect she’ll live?”
“No one knows,” Caroline said. “Time will tell.”
“They must be devastated,” Lucy said.
“Yes. Yes, they are. They’ve completely lost their appetites,” Caroline confided, thereby heading off the arrival of one of Lucy’s famous hot dishes.
For the next two days, Caroline did not go out. The world came to her in the form of newspapers, grocery deliveries, milkmen, the sounds of traffic. The weather changed and the snow was gone as suddenly as it had come, cascading down the sides of buildings and disappearing into drains. For Caroline, the broken days blurred together into a stream of random images and impressions: the sight of her Ford Fairlane, its battery recharged, being driven into the lot; the sunlight streaming through cloudy windows; the dark scent of wet earth; a robin at the feeder. She had her spells of worry, but often, sitting with Phoebe, she was surprised to find herself completely at peace. What she had told Lucy Martin was true: she loved looking at this baby. She loved sitting in the sunlight and holding her. She warned herself not to fall in love with Phoebe; she was just a temporary stop. Caroline had watched David Henry often enough at the clinic to believe in his compassion. When he had raised his head from the desk that night and met her eyes, she had seen in them an infinite capacity for kindness. She had no doubt that he would do the right thing, once he got over the shock.
Every time the phone rang she started. But three days passed with no word from him.
On Thursday morning there was a knock on the door. Caroline hurried to answer it, adjusting the belt of her dress, touching her hair. But it was only a deliveryman, holding a vase full of flowers: dark red and pale pink in a cloud of baby’s breath. These were from Al. My thanks for the hospitality, he’d written on the card. Maybe I’ll see you on my next run.
Caroline took them inside and arranged them on the coffee table. Agitated, she picked up The Leader, which she hadn’t read in days, slipped off the rubber band, and skimmed through the articles,