When Time Is a River Read online

  “Tell me how Mom felt about me, especially right after the accident?”

  “Christ, Brandy. Not again. How many times are you going to ask me about her?” He’d taken off his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his pale blue shirt. The hair on his forearms was abundant and curled. Curled as tightly as his memories of her mother. “What exactly do you want?”

  “I’ll tell you three things I want. To know everything about my mom. To be an actress. And to be beautiful.” She paused. “Without the benefit of any more surgery.”

  “Beautiful things are dangerous,” he said.

  “My mother was beautiful, wasn’t she?”

  He lowered his gaze as if remembering. “Yes,” he finally said. “She was indeed.” There was a hint of wistfulness in his voice.

  She looked out the window. And without realizing how it happened, she found something she needed for the play. Longing. Her character longed for a baby. Isabella’s yearning was a living thing, something that haunted her every day. Something Brandy understood. “Sometimes I have trouble believing Mom ever existed. Just tell me how she felt about being my mother.”

  “Honey, I don’t know what it feels like to be a mother. You should talk to Christine.”

  “Yeah right,” Brandy said. “Christine is four years older than me. She has so much experience—the spoiled little homecoming queen mutated into a wife and mother.” Through the fabric of her carpenter pants, Brandy traced the edges of the silver frame. “Besides, my step mommy is no expert on mothering.”

  He clamped his hands tighter around the steering wheel and his knuckles whitened. “Okay, so she’s young, but Christine is learning. Her youth doesn’t preclude her talking with you.”

  Brandy shook her head. “I need to know about my mom.”

  “I’ve told you what I can remember.”

  “She’s half of who I am. Doesn’t that give me the right to know everything?”

  “Everything?” He gave her a hangdog look, turned the key and started the car. “Believe me, Brandy,” he whispered. “No one can know everything about someone else.”

  She sensed her dad’s frustration, knew how much he wished he could shake her, hoping all the mother-longing would fall out and disappear. But it wouldn’t. It never could.

  He backed out of the parking lot. “Listen to me. I’ve done the best I could for you. She died. I can’t change that.”

  “I know you keep saying you didn’t keep anything of hers. But you must have something—a journal or an old yearbook from high school.”

  He let out another long sigh. Irritation flickered in his eyes. “I kept that photo you carry around in your pocket.”

  The blood rushed to her cheeks.

  They turned onto Main Street. “When someone dies,” he said, a slight quiver in his voice, “you have to let them go and find a way to keep living. How do you think Christine would feel if I kept my first wife’s things?”

  “If you ask me,” Brandy said. “It’s pretty immature to be jealous of a dead woman.”

  “Christine is trying to be a good mother. She didn’t have much of a role model. And she wants to be…” He paused, searched for the right word. “Your friend.”

  As if he’d turned up the heater, her grafted cheek burned. “The only thing Christine wants from me is help with Emily. I’m sure she’s waiting for us to get home so I’ll take Emily to the park.”

  “Why are you always so negative about her?”

  His question hung in the air between them.

  Good actresses were always aware of a character’s motivation. Her father probably thought she was jealous of Christine’s beauty. And she was, a little. But mostly she resented Christine for taking Kathleen away. “I have my reasons.”

  “Maybe it’s time I heard them.”

  She hesitated, remembered his demand that she be nice to her stepmother, and then decided she was in no mood to hide the truth. “Because from the day you introduced us, it’s been all about Christine and what she wants. Kathleen loved you. And she loved me like a real mother. You can bet Christine didn’t give one thought to Kathleen or my feelings when she screwed her freshman English professor and ended up pregnant.”

  His eyes widened. “That’s not fair,” he snapped.

  Heat rushed up the back of her neck. She wanted to lash out, to punish someone. “Neither are all your embarrassing lectures about safe sex. You’re such a hypocrite. How safe or ethical was it for you to have sex with one of your eighteen-year-old students? Why didn’t you wear a condom?”

  He actually jerked back, as if he’d been slapped. He pulled the car into the first available parking place and turned to her. “That’s none of your business,” he said, fists clenched.

  She took a deep breath. “If you didn’t want to hear the truth, you shouldn’t have asked for it.”

  He stared at her for a long moment. “You want to know something about your mother? Some truth I’ve never told you before?” His words came out with the force of whips cracking.

  Brandy remained silent, afraid to say anything that might make him stop.

  “Your mother never wanted children.” He started the car and pulled back onto Main Street.

  “That’s not true,” Brandy said. “She was a great mother. Perfect. I remember her singing to me. And chasing me through a flower garden.” She closed her eyes, saw them again—those blossoms the size of dinner plates.

  They were almost home when she turned to him. “Do you think I’m ever going to look like her?”

  She’d nearly given up on a response when he finally spoke. “You’re nothing like her,” he whispered. “Nothing.”

  Chapter Two

  I sat on a concrete bench exactly twenty yards from the Lithia Park playground and waited for Emily. For thirty-two days, I’d studied her movements, followed her and Brandy, the teenager Emily called Band-Aid, trying to determine exactly how and when to execute my plan.

  As the sun made its low circuit across a crisp and cloudless sky, I felt grateful to be free again. To be in this place where the air smelled like earth and pine bark.

  I opened my leather attaché case and removed my binoculars and The Sibley Guide to Birds. I set the book in a visible spot beside me on the bench, picked up my binoculars, and scanned the clumps of rhododendron bushes where Emily liked to hide. She wasn’t there. Shifting the binoculars to the playground, I searched the line of children at the slides, the sandbox and finally found Emily on the merry-go-round.

  Brandy ran in circles and sang as she pushed the laughing child. “The wheels on the bus go round and round…” Every time I saw her in the park, she was singing. Sometimes she came alone, brought a guitar and sat by the creek.

  Small clouds of dust rose with the beat of her boots on the worn ring of dirt around the merry-go-round. Her long, dark and curly hair was tamed on the top and sides by a hot pink cowboy hat and her skirt flowed behind her like a multi-colored banner as she ran. A half dozen silver bracelets made music when she moved her arm. She looked like a gypsy turned cowgirl.

  I focused on her bandaged cheek, flinched and looked away. More than anything, I hated imperfection.

  When she skidded to a stop and the dust settled, the merry-go-round slowed and my gaze riveted on Emily. As always, she clutched her worn Pooh bear in her lap. I adjusted the lens on my binoculars until Emily appeared close enough to count the grass clippings on the back of her neck. I imagined the toddler turning somersaults on the newly mown lawn—the legs of her red corduroy pants rising up over the plump soft flesh on her calves. I tried to steady my breathing. Alive with secrets and desires, I no longer cared what the dark-suited doctors said. They never understood my needs or my dreams. Why should I swallow their pills to escape them?

  Emily rested her chin on the merry-go-round’s safety bar. With her legs dangling over the side, she looked like an illustration in the storybook, Snow White. A tiny, flawless princess—so brightly lit from the inside that I imagined sunshine, r
ather than blood, filled her perfect veins. When the spinning finally stopped, she stood and jumped.

  “Be careful,” I whispered as I set the binoculars aside.

  Emily’s hair flew up, then fell back over her forehead—sunlight rippling through the red highlights in her dark curls. In midair she flashed a smile, then landed on her feet, giggling over her shoulder as Brandy chased her around the playground.

  A flutter of panic rose in my throat. Brandy was so vigilant. But even careful people make mistakes.

  Emily’s laughter soared through the air and the two of them passed so close to me I could have reached out and touched Emily. Then the toddler turned and ran back toward the merry-go-round. As she passed by the bench where I sat, she paused and waved at me.

  Happiness swelled my chest. The dream of having this particular little girl pulsed through my veins like a mind-altering drug. It aroused every nerve in my body until even my fingertips throbbed with expectation.

  Brandy scooped Emily up in her arms.

  She was so pure and innocent. All I needed to do was gain her trust and the rest would be easy.

  I pulled the necklace from my pants pocket and smiled as I studied the garnet heart set between two diamonds.

  Little girls love pretty things.

  * * *

  The following afternoon, Brandy sat on the edge of her bed, stewing. Her dad had lied to her again. What kind of father tells his daughter her mother hadn’t wanted children? She should run away and never come back. Her father would be forced to pay attention then. Maybe he’d even feel guilty or sad.

  But where would she go? She could go to Kathleen’s house, but she’d just call Brandy’s father to let him know she was safe and probably insist she go home and work things out. If she left Ashland, she’d let her drama coach and the other actors down. She’d promised Coach Pritchard she’d write a song for the final scene.

  She stared at her guitar, the coveted Gibson Classic—a guilt gift from her dad on the day he’d married Christine. The room still smelled of paint from Brandy’s redecorating efforts. She opened the window and glanced around the flower garden room.

  On the wallpaper, bright purple geraniums and dahlias the size of silver dollars tangled around the picket fence posts. Flowers that brought back a vivid memory of her mother. The only memory she’d ever have, if her father had anything to do with it.

  Oscar, the overweight black cat with four white boots they’d adopted nine years ago, curled on Brandy’s pillows, as if waiting for her to sing. She petted him, comforted by both his loyalty and the silky softness of his fur. Brandy had auditioned dozens of country western and folk songs in front of Oscar.

  Picking up her guitar, she ran her hands over the vintage woods—Sitka spruce, Indian rosewood, the curly maple neck. She glanced up at the photo of Bette Midler she’d taped on her mirror for inspiration. Like Brandy, Midler had been born with a voice. But it was also the acting that got her an Academy Award nomination for The Rose.

  Barbara Streisand’s nose hadn’t kept her from directing and playing the romantic lead in Prince of Tides. And when she was younger, she’d acted alongside Robert Redford, the big hottie of the seventies, in The Way We Were.

  Both Midler’s and Streisand’s recognition had come from hard work, not perfect faces.

  Hope returned. She didn’t have to let the scars define her—she’d show all of them. Brandy would nail her part in A Slender Slice of Time. She’d been practicing in front of her mirror for weeks and would continue to practice until she became Isabella, baby Isaac’s mother. Brandy would be an actress and a damn good one. After strumming a few chords, she looked up at the photo of Bette Midler again and improvised a chorus of, You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings.

  Brandy wondered if that song could work for the play’s final scene—if Coach Pritchard would let her off the hook in case she couldn’t write a new song.

  Emily danced into the bedroom, dragging Pooh bear by his foot and revving her lips like an airplane.

  “Not now, Em. I’m practicing.”

  “No you not,” Emily said. “You play guitar.”

  “Technically that’s true, but I’m preparing to practice. So, leave me alone.”

  “Pease,” Emily chimed, her blue eyes wide. She couldn’t pronounce the letter L and Brandy thought it was too cute to correct. “One ride, Band-Aid.” Emily held up her index finger. Band-Aid had been Emily’s first word. They didn’t know if it was a mispronunciation of Brandy’s name or a reference to the bandages that had so often covered her cheek.

  She forced herself to be stern. “I told you I’m busy. Now get out of my room.”

  Emily dropped her bear, put her hands on her hips and grinned, exposing small white teeth as straight and even as a string of pearls.

  Brandy set down her guitar and guided Emily out the door. “Now leave me alone.” She closed the door and returned to her perch on the bed.

  “No, Band-Aid. Yet me in,” Emily yelled at the top of her voice, then started wailing about her precious Pooh bear.

  She grabbed the bear, thrust open the door, and threw him into the hallway.

  Emily picked him up and snuggled him against her chest. Her bottom lip stuck out. “My Pooh bear,” she said. “Mine.”

  Maybe if Brandy gave Emily one ride, she’d quit pestering.

  Christine called out from the kitchen. “Damn it, Brandy. Stop torturing your sister.”

  Brandy closed her door and locked it.

  A few moments later, a tiny hand peeked from under the crack at the door’s bottom. Emily was lying on her stomach in the hallway. Oscar jumped off the bed, ran over to the door, and started batting Emily’s fingers with his paw.

  Emily giggled, a soft musical sound, like a wooden wind chime.

  Brandy carefully placed her guitar back into its case, unlocked the door and opened it.

  Emily scrambled to her feet, her grin wide.

  “Okay,” Brandy said. “You win. But just one ride.” Though she often believed Emily was a nuisance, Brandy secretly liked it that Em preferred her to Christine or their father. And her chest swelled with more pride than jealousy when someone commented on the toddler’s resemblance to Brandy. Emily was flawless, and watching her grow gave Brandy another chance to be beautiful.

  She was about to lift Emily onto her shoulders for a wild piggyback ride through the house when, just above the ribbed neck of the child’s shirt, something shiny caught the slanted light from the open blinds. “Have you been in my jewelry box again?” Brandy pulled out the pendant—a garnet heart, set between two large, and real-looking, diamonds.

  Emily tugged away and stuffed the pendant back inside her T-shirt. “Mine. Don’t tell Mommy.”

  Last week, Emily had broken the tiara Christine had encased in bubble wrap and saved from her crowning in high school. Brandy had never seen her stepmother so pissed. She’d smacked Emily hard on the butt and locked her in her room for over an hour. “Did you take it from Mommy?”

  Emily lifted her arms. “Me ride now.”

  “Not until you answer my questions.”

  “Play Pooh bear.”

  “Did you take it from Mommy and Daddy’s room?”

  “I yike jelly beans.”

  “I know you do. Did Melissa or one of the other kids bring the necklace to preschool for sharing time?”

  Emily tilted her head, but said nothing.

  Grabbing Emily by the shoulders, Brandy said, “This is serious. Tell me where you got that necklace.”

  The toddler struggled out of Brandy’s grasp, then backed away, her eyes filled with tears.

  Brandy lowered her voice. “Who loves you, Em?”

  Giggling, Emily lifted her arms. “Band-Aid yoves me to the stars and back a million times.”

  “So, you don’t have to be scared, do you? I’d never hurt you. Just tell me where you got it.”

  “My big friend shared.”

  A silent alarm went off inside Brandy. “Your teach
er? Did Ms. Frazer give it to you?”

  Emily shook her head.

  “What’s your big friend’s name?”

  Emily hurled herself face down on Brandy’s mattress.

  Brandy sat on the edge of the bed and lifted Emily onto her lap. “You can trust me. We’re sisters, aren’t we?”

  Emily nodded. “Don’t tell Mommy.”

  “I won’t if you answer my questions. Is your big friend a lady or a man?”

  Emily pushed her index finger against Brandy’s lips. “A yady and a man.”

  “Did one of them give you the bird feet you took to show and tell?” Ms. Frazer had pulled Brandy aside when she’d picked up Emily after school yesterday. “When I suggested the children bring in something from nature,” Ms. Frazer said. “This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” The feet had been severed, tied with a bow and slipped into a Ziploc bag. After questioning Emily, Brandy had shown them to Christine. She’d tossed the bag into the garbage can and scrubbed Emily’s hands with disinfectant wash, but hadn’t seemed concerned.

  Now, Emily nodded. “Birdy feet. For good yuck.”

  Brandy thought about Kent, the boy with Down syndrome, who liked to play with Emily in the park. Kent carried a rabbit’s foot in his pocket. He’d probably found the bird feet and given them to Em. “What do you do with your big friends?”

  “Play games with big boy.”

  Brandy’s spine stiffened a little. “What kind of games?”

  “Pooh bear and Tigger.”

  “Do your big friends ever hurt you?” She held her breath.

  Emily wiggled off Brandy’s lap, then stood in front of her and grinned. “No, silly goofy, they yove Emily.”

  Brandy breathed. There’s a logical explanation, she thought—a piece of jewelry one of the nursery school kids brought in for show-and-tell. Maybe Emily traded her peanut butter cookie for it. But just to be sure, Brandy would check with the school on Monday. “Where did you meet your big friends?”

  “By the ducks,” Emily said, alluding to the pond in nearby Lithia Park. “My big friends. You not see them.” She polished the tip of one rainbow-colored sneaker with the back of her purple sock.