Remember this, Kris would tell herself in those moments. Remember this feeling. This love is all that matters.
Jonah loved the quiet times, too, lying on the couch with infant Sadie stretched across his chest. For Jonah, those twenty or thirty minutes of calm were like teasing glimpses of how he had imagined every moment of parenthood should be. In his mind, an inconsolable baby was like a new washing machine that somehow always knocked itself off balance. The baby should “work right” all the time, not intermittently. When Jonah would finally give up and leave the swaddled, wailing child in the Pack-N-Play they had assembled in the living room, Kris would scoop Sadie up and hold her just as closely as she did during more peaceful times when the baby was quiet and sleepy.
No, she corrected herself. Closer.
When your child is upset, you hold them closer.
So why did she feel further away from Sadie than ever before?
Because she’s happy, her shadow whispered with a grin. And you hate her for that.
Kris forced the thought away. She checked her watch. 10:12. Two minutes had gone by since she sat down. She pictured Sadie alone in a strange room with a woman she had just met. Sadie was not a particularly outgoing kid even before Jonah’s death. Kris wondered if she had spoken a single word in the last twelve minutes.
Dr. Baker has a way …
Yes, she did. Kris knew this firsthand. She hadn’t wanted to talk about her mother, but Dr. Baker made her feel comfortable. She made young Kris feel safe. And Kris had opened up. She had told the doctor everything.
Dr. Baker could help them. She could get them back on track.
This summer will be good, she told herself.
This summer was not a mistake.
We are supposed to be here.
As if surfacing from a dream, Kris became aware of squeaking rubber soles inching toward her. She looked up.
Doris, the same waitress who had waited on Kris and Sadie during their first breakfast in town, was heading toward her, grinning over a carafe of steaming coffee clutched in one hand. She smiled, those red clown-like lips pulled back to reveal a smudge of lipstick across her front teeth.
“Freshen that up for ya?” she asked, not waiting for a reply before filling Kris’s mug to the rim. Without turning her head, she glanced at the empty chair opposite Kris.
“Where’s the little one?” she asked.
“It’s just me today,” Kris told her, hoping this non-answer would suffice.
“Ah,” Doris said, nodding as if she knew something Kris didn’t.
For a few seconds too long, Doris stared curiously at that empty seat. Then she shuffled away, passing the young mothers and their babies without as much as a glance, leaving the odor of old coffee and floral perfume in her wake.
The sound of the bell over the front door drew Kris’s attention. A woman had just entered the diner, her back to Kris as she surveyed the many available tables with an inexplicable hesitation. There was something instantly familiar about her. The richness of her skin. The long, straight hair flowing down her back. The worn-in blue jeans and dusty cowboy boots.
Camilla, Kris realized.
She felt her grip tighten on the handle of her coffee mug. She suddenly wanted to be anywhere else in the world. She wanted to escape without being seen, to fade into the wall like a forgotten spirit.
But her gaze was locked on Camilla. She could not look away.
The easy joy that Camilla had exuded when Kris first met her at the Auto Barn was gone. Deep shadows hung below her dark brown eyes. Her shoulders were slumped forward in an attempt to protect herself from everything around her.
Look away, Kris’s mind commanded.
But she couldn’t.
Camilla scanned the room, her eyes finally falling upon Kris in the corner, watching.
There was a moment, brief yet unbearably powerful, like the splitting of an atom, when the women stared straight into each other’s eyes and recognized the icicle that had been driven into each of their hearts. They were joined by the hurt life had inflicted upon them. They were sisters in sadness.
Camilla tried to muster up a smile to pretend like this were any normal run-in on any normal day.
“How’s the tire working out for you?” she called over.
“It’s … it’s good. Still full of air.”
Camilla gave a sharp laugh, the ridiculousness of the comment cutting through the tension. “Well, that’s good since, you know, that’s pretty much its only job.”
“Yeah.” Kris fell silent, unsure of what to say next. She took a sip of her coffee and glanced nervously over at the table where, moments before, the two mothers had attempted to chat while fumbling with their infants. They were gone. The table had been cleared, the silverware reset. It was as if, without Kris’s attention to bind them to this world, they had vanished into thin air.
“I wanted to thank you.” Camilla’s voice was suddenly, startlingly close.
Kris turned to find her standing a few feet away.
“You know, for the other night. I know there was nothing you could do, but … I appreciate you being there. It was …”
Camilla’s voice faded away, trailing off into the dark ether of memory.
Kris reached out and rested her fingertips on Camilla’s surprisingly cold hand. She felt Camilla jerk slightly at the touch; then her body relaxed, the tension in her neck and shoulders seeming to loosen just a bit. Her eyes were instantly brimming with tears begging to be released. But she held them back. She was not ready to let them go. Not yet.
Camilla shook her head sharply to chase away the overwhelming emotions. She spotted the empty chair opposite Kris and realized this was her escape from the subject.
“Where’s Sadie?” she asked, forcing a brightness into her words.
Kris was beginning to resent the empty seat across from her. She fumbled for a response. “Oh, um, she’s …”
With the shrink. Because she can’t talk to her mother, because her mother has failed her.
“Down the street,” she said finally.
Camilla nodded as if that vague detail answered everything. “Well, you want some company? I mean, we’re both here. Seems kinda silly to sit alone pretending the other doesn’t exist.”
“Yeah,” Kris replied without giving the question much thought. “Yeah, absolutely. That would be nice.”
Camilla slipped into the empty seat. She had barely settled into the chair when Doris reappeared without even the squeak of her shoes to announce her.
“Get ya something, Camilla?”
“Just a hot tea. English breakfast,” Camilla said. “Thank you.”
As it had done with the empty chair, Doris’s gaze hung a moment too long on Camilla, her lips frozen in a smile, that smudge of lipstick peeking out like blood on bone.
“Thank you, Doris,” Camilla said forcefully.
Doris’s smile widened, a much too toothy grin that revealed the bottoms of gray gums. Then she was off to fetch the tea.
“Is Jesse working?” Kris asked, trying to start a conversation.
“No. He’s …” Now it was Camilla’s turn to grasp for an explanation. “… on a walk. He likes to get away from the shop sometimes to, you know, clear his head.”
Doris returned long enough to deliver Camilla’s tea, and then the two women fell silent, sipping their drinks.