He knew that. And he knew what she was actually saying: it wasn’t his fault. How many times had he heard that, in the early days? It wasn’t your fault. Everywhere he turned, someone was saying that. They’d said it preemptively, too, like they assumed he was twisted up with guilt. That was what he hated, the presumption. The gall of these people who thought they knew his mind. Who thought they knew God’s mind with their “Everything happens for a reason”s and their “It was his time”s.
It wasn’t your fault. Kerrie had said it, too. Said it so often that he’d started to wonder if she was talking to him or to herself.
“Right. But he got sick on November tenth and died on the thirteenth. If I’d gotten him the first dose right when the shot was available, there might have been time for a second dose.” He had done the macabre math in his head so many times.
“We never got our vaccines in at the hospital I worked at until late October,” she said quietly.
So, what? It probably wasn’t his fault? That didn’t help. It wasn’t even about fault. The fact was, he had been the adult. The parent. He had failed at the most basic of tasks: keeping his kid alive.
The waves were starting. The bad kind. How had he been foolish enough to think they wouldn’t get him in the end? They always did. He stood, took the elastic out of his hair, and dragged his fingers along his scalp. His headache was intensifying. “I should go. Thanks for the drink.” He congratulated himself on his calm delivery. Speech hadn’t deserted him yet, but he could tell by the thickening in his throat that it would soon. Usually he chose not to speak. This, this inability to speak that was part of what happened to him when the waves came, was different. It was a symptom of a kind of helplessness, though helplessness seemed way too benign a word. Paralysis was a better one, maybe.
“No problem,” she said, apparently oblivious to the storm that was winding up inside him. “Thanks for the deck. If you don’t mind seeing yourself out, I’m just going to stay out here on my amazing new deck and try to hear the waves.”
A sliver of something, something like satisfaction, worked its way into his chest, even as the white-noise cacophony of the waves started to overtake him. To think of her here listening to the lake on the deck he’d built, while he surrendered to the waves, brought him a certain kind of unfamiliar gratification.
“The wind’s going to pick up later.” He managed to get the words out. They were quiet but still audible. He gathered his hair back in a loose ponytail as he crossed the deck. “You’ll hear the lake tonight.” He wasn’t sure that last bit had come out loudly enough for her to hear. He was being overtaken. He might not make it all the way home. He might have to stop at Sandcastle Beach, and he hated it when he had to endure the waves in public. He hadn’t had to do that for at least a year. He had gotten good enough at recognizing the signs that usually he could get a head start, make it home so he could sit by the lake and let the actual waves deafen him. Wait for them to drown out the waves inside him.
He had one foot back in the house when she called after him. “I like your hair, Jake Ramsey.”
It was a silly thing to say, a throwaway line meant to echo their first meeting at the salon. But it startled him enough that it paused his descent sufficiently to allow him to say, “I like your hair, too, Doc.”
Chapter Five
Late Tuesday morning, Jake showed up at the clinic. Wynd had put some wind chimes—Wynd chimes?—on the door, and they heralded his arrival. Nora looked up from the computer at the reception desk, which she and Amber and Wynd were huddled around as they worked through a sample patient’s entry with the new charting and scheduling software.
Jake took a step back. Like maybe he hadn’t expected a crowd. And another step back when Parsnip, who a moment ago had been happily playing with a set of wooden blocks, started power-crawling in his direction.
But then, seeming to realize she was trying to make a break for it through the door he was holding open, he stepped all the way in and shut it behind him.
He looked at Nora. “I thought I would drop by and take a look at your painting situation.”
Parsnip, belatedly realizing that Jake had blocked her path to the open road, let out a wail and started pounding his legs. Jake’s eyes darted back and forth like he wasn’t sure what to do.
Nora stifled a laugh. As Wynd got up to peel her daughter off Jake’s lower extremities, she said, “Jake, I suspect you know Amber from the bar, but do you know Wynd Lewisohn?”
He nodded, and Wynd murmured greetings at Jake and soothing words at Parsnip.
“And this”—Nora got up—“is Wynd’s daughter.” Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. “Parsnip.”
Jake laughed. Or coughed. Or did some kind of combination of the two. Wynd didn’t hear it, though, because she was singing “The Calm Song” to Parsnip. As far as Nora could tell from her week of acquaintance with Parsnip, “The Calm Song” did not work on her. Neither did “The Clean Up Song” or “The I’m Sorry Song.”
Parsnip had a mind of her own.
Nora liked Parsnip. She felt like at the ripe old age of one, Parsnip was already not the kind of girl who would grow up to let anyone tell her it was time to clean up if she wasn’t ready to clean up.
“Hey, Jake. Long time no see,” Amber said. She didn’t seem to expect Jake to answer, because she turned immediately to Nora. “Maybe this is a good time to run out for some lunch?”
“Yeah, why don’t you and Parsnip take a break, too, Wynd?”
When everyone was gone, she pointed to the front desk. “This is the painting situation.” Jake crouched and examined the botched paint job. “Which is not your job to fix, by the way. I’m going to take another run at it later this week.”
Ignoring her, he ran a hand over the vertical surface of the front of the desk, which was mottled because the paint had only selectively stuck. Little bits of the fake wood were showing through black blobs of paint. “What kind of primer did you use?”
“The kind the guy at Lakeside Hardware told me to use for wood laminate.”
“Ah. This is vinyl, though. You need a bonding primer.”
“I need what?”
He straightened. “I can do it. But maybe I should come back tonight. The fumes probably won’t be good for…Did you say her name was Parsnip?”
“Yep. And her sister is named Cicada.”
He snorted.
“Seriously, though, Jake, you can’t paint my front desk.” But why? Why couldn’t he? Who else was going to do it? Nora didn’t even know what bonding primer was.
He shrugged. “It’ll hardly take any time at all.”
“Okay, but I’ll help. And I’ll bring dinner. And you have to charge me.”
He didn’t agree to any of her conditions, but he didn’t reject them, either. He just said, “Five thirty?”
By five thirty Nora was on her way back to the clinic with two pies. The first was a mini key lime. She had finally visited Pie with Pearl, owned by Pearl Brunetta, whom she’d met that first day at the salon. Pearl, it turned out, did several of her most popular pies in mini format, which Nora could already tell was going to pose a problem for her. But if the warm-from-the-oven coconut rhubarb Pearl had forced her to sample while standing in the shop was any indication, it was going to be an enjoyable problem.