The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [52]
She thanked him, touched Paul’s head and said, You watch out for that little one now. David nodded and moved off, protecting Paul’s head with his free hand as he climbed between the damp stone walls. He was pleased—it was good to be able to help people in need, to offer healing—something he could not seem to do for those he loved the most. Paul patted softly at his chest, grabbing at the envelope he’d stuffed in his pocket: a letter from Caroline Gill, delivered that morning to his office. He had read it only once, swiftly, putting it away as Norah came in, trying to conceal his agitation. We are well, Phoebe and I, it had said. So far, she does not have any problems with her heart.
Now he caught Paul’s small fingers in his own, gently. His son looked up, wide-eyed, curious, and he felt a deep swift rush of love.
“Hey,” David said, smiling. “I love you, little guy. But don’t eat that, okay?”
Paul studied him with wide dark eyes, then turned his head and rested his cheek against David’s chest, radiating warmth. He wore a white hat with yellow ducks that Norah had embroidered in the quiet, watchful days after her accident. With the emergence of each duck, David had breathed a little easier. He had seen her grief, the space it had left in her heart, when he’d developed the spent roll of film in his new camera: room after empty room in their old house, close-ups of window frames, the stark shadows of the stair rail, the floor tiles, skewed and crooked. And Norah’s footprints, those erratic, bloody trails. He’d thrown the photos out, negatives and all, but still they haunted him. He was afraid they always would. He had lied, after all; he had given away their daughter. That terrible consequences would follow seemed both inevitable and just. But days had passed, now nearly three months, and Norah seemed to be herself again. She worked in the garden, or laughed on the telephone with friends, or lifted Paul from his playpen with her lean, graceful arms.
David, watching, told himself she was happy.
Now the ducks bounced cheerfully with every step, catching the light as David emerged from the narrow stairs onto the natural stone bridge spanning the gorge. Norah, wearing denim shorts and a sleeveless white blouse, stood in the center of the bridge, the toes of her white sneakers flush with the rocky edge. Slowly, with a dancer’s grace, Norah opened her arms and arched her back, eyes closed, as if offering herself to the sky.
“Norah!” he called out, appalled. “That’s dangerous!”
Paul pushed his small hands against David’s chest. Doo, he echoed, when he heard David say dangerous, a baby word applied to electrical outlets, stairs, fireplaces, chairs, and now to this sheer drop to the earth so far below his mother.
“It’s spectacular!” Norah called back, letting her arms fall. She turned, causing pebbles to skid beneath her feet and slide over the edge. “Come see!”
Cautiously, he walked out onto the bridge and went to stand beside her at the edge. Tiny figures moved slowly on the path far below, where an ancient river had once rushed. Now hills rolled away into lush spring, a hundred different shades of green against the clear blue sky. He took a deep breath, fighting a wave of vertigo, afraid even to glance at Norah. He had wanted to spare her, to protect her from loss and pain; he had not understood that loss would follow her regardless, as persistent and life-shaping as a stream of water. Nor had he anticipated his own grief, woven with the dark threads of his past. When he imagined the daughter he’d given away, it was his sister’s face he saw, her pale hair, her serious smile.
“Let me get a picture,” he said, taking one slow step back, then another. “Come over to the middle of the bridge. The light’s better.”
“In a minute,” she said, her hands on hips. “It’s just so beautiful.”
“Norah,” he said. “You are really making me nervous.”
“Oh, David,” she said, tossing her head without looking at him. “Why are you so worried all the time? I’m fine.”
He didn’t answer, conscious of