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  Grace accepted the glass and sipped. Whatever she might have expected, it wasn't this. It made what she'd been through seem almost paltry.

  "I wrote to stay sane," Mary continued. A part of her lost in the not so long ago past, caught in the painful memories that could still wake her at night. "All the stories were still there in my head, but there was also that horrible morning knocking around up there too. When I wasn't working with Dane, or fixing dinner, or helping the other kids with their homework, or something, anything...that morning and his scream played in my head over and over again. So I wrote, and as long as I wrote to keep myself busy I kept that morning at bay. Whenever it played back in my mind I wrote. After the first year it wasn't as bad." She splayed her hands out in front of her, palms up, "And each year after I could go for longer without it playing in my head, until finally, even when it did, I could live with it. Dane got stronger and recovered beyond anyone's expectations. I could live with the memories of that morning because of that. Because of him. And I continued to write."

  Grace thought about the eight books in the first year. "Therapy. It was your therapy, just like the store was for me."

  Mary nodded. "It filled my time and my mind. As Dane got better and was able to do more we were able to spend more time on what he needed." Mary looked down at his picture. "But it was a long time before he could really spend a day like other little boys, like he did before the accident." She thought of all the highlights, those first steps of her seven-year-old son had been just as monumental as when he had taken them at two. Maybe more so. Holding a fork and getting it to his mouth with the food still on it had been cause for a party with balloons and colorful pointed hats... the works. They had celebrated every accomplishment, every milestone, and in doing so made the journey an adventure.

  Mary sipped the tangy orange juice thoughtfully, "And it was Dane who helped me past the anxiety of sending all that I wrote to a publisher. Watching him struggle and fail, then struggle again knowing he might very well fail again and again made me feel foolish and petty to hold back on sending it in on the possibility, the very likely possibility, I might fail."

  "So you sent it in?"

  "I didn't just send it in," Mary smiled. "I asked my husband to pick which one to send in and well...my Daniel isn't big on decisions. So I ended up sending them all in, all eight."

  "And.." Grace enjoyed the smile that now played across Mary's face, and struggled with the knowledge this woman had children in their twenties.

  "And I was very, very lucky." Mary picked at the crumb cake that still sat between them on the table. "I got a call from an assistant of an assistant who wanted to know if I had an agent." She shrugged. "I didn't and told her so. Within an hour I got a call from the assistant this time who wanted to know if I wanted an agent. They apparently had lots of names etc..." She gave up on battling the temptation and cut herself another slice of cake. "I was working with Dane at that moment and not in the best of moods. He had just started walking again, or attempting to and believe me, cranky for it. So I told them I didn't have time for agents at that moment and could they call me back in an hour."

  Grace couldn't help the laugh that slipped out. "I bet they weren't used to that kind of response."

  "No." Mary smiled. There had been very hard times but even better memories. "Almost an hour later on the dot the phone rang. This time it was Melanie Carey, agent-extraordinaire." She let the memory settle and with it felt a tranquility that had been missing a long time. "I found out later that the editor who had read my manuscripts," she paused remembering, "it was such a thrill because it was the first time anyone had referred to them as such." And she remembered that sudden burst of pride that had hit her simply hearing it. "Anyway the editor had called Melanie who turned out to be a good friend of hers. The editors, were used to dealing with agents, who in turn dealt with the writers. So I got Melanie who is still my agent despite having been told recently and not very pleased by the news that I'm on a sabbatical of sorts."

  Mary thought about her most recent conversation with her long-time agent and friend. It hadn't been an easy one. She shrugged mostly to herself at the memory. She had been thrilled to be published, thrilled to have contributed to the family kettle, but it wasn't and had never been the beginning and end of all things for her. "I never wrote eight books in a year again but kept up steady." She lifted her glass for another sip only to find it empty and set it back down again. She really wanted another cup of coffee but for the moment didn't have the motivation to make it. "There were several events over the last couple of years that got me to thinking I needed a break." She leaned back in the chair, stretched her legs out, glanced at the clock she'd just put up the day before. "Melanie likes to think it's just writer's block." She lifted her hands in an expression of who knows what people think. "And maybe in part that's it. There are still stories running around in my head but none I particularly care to put down on paper. And that's what I told her. Foolish is the person who agrees to a deadline with nothing in mind to put on paper." Mary smiled remembering Melanie's reactions to her words. "She didn't like hearing that. Not one bit."

  And wasn't that the heart of it she thought. "I started writing because I couldn't not write. For whatever the reasons are, I've found recently I need a change. I don't know that I'll write again. I don't know if I'll get the urge and have another book completed six months from now. I just know that for this moment in time I need this," she splayed her hands outward, enveloping the small room and the rooms beyond.

  Grace was quiet, carefully assimilating it all. The words and the emotion. Then leaned forward, her arms crossed on the table in front of her. "I think part of it is you don't want to write a story that doesn't grip you. I think it’s in you to write." She tilted her head studying the woman across the table. "I wasn't tired of writing speeches, I enjoyed what I did...I put myself into every one of them. But I got to the point where I no longer had that driving purpose behind me. It became more and more difficult to write words that meant something to me but were ultimately spoken by someone who rarely believed in what they meant." She paused, took a breath, and said what she thought as one would to a friend. "Maybe being here will help to get that driving purpose behind all the stories in your head again."

  Mary smiled, grateful for the other woman's insight. "Maybe. As they say, right or wrong, time will tell."

  

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Years of motherhood provided on the job training that included sleeping lightly and hearing all that went on around you despite the dark of the night and a house full of children and a husband who didn't sleep lightly. Even as her kids had grown older and one by one left the nest she'd made for them, Mary found she still slept with one ear open. On this night she slept lightly with Grace's words still echoing through her mind. It was only later she realized that was why she heard the phone on the first ring, was answering it on the second with one hand while she switched on the table lamp sitting beside it with the other. She tilted her old fashioned wind-up alarm clock downward to see the time, two-thirty in the dark of the morning. Phone calls at two-thirty in the morning never meant anything good.

  "Hello." She might be half asleep but she sounded completely awake.

  "Mary? Is that you?" The voice on the other side of the line didn't sound desperate...but close.

  Mary pushed herself up against the headboard instantly recognizing the voice on the other end. "Casey?"

  "Yeah." There was a pause. "I think I'm a couple of blocks away but it's been so long I've forgotten exactly how to get there."

  "You're here? In Burlington?"

  "Mary." The voice on the other end of the phone line was close to breaking. "It's a long story, a really long story." Casey leaned her head back against the car's headrest. She needed to get to where she was heading and out of this car. Soon.

  "Okay. Okay. Where are you? Are there any street signs nearby?" Closing her eyes, she listened and mentally positioned herself to wh
ere Casey was and gave her the directions she needed as she drove. Even before she could tell her to make the right onto Cedar Street she could hear the car as it turned the corner and came slowly to a stop in front of the house. She was already at the door holding it open before her cousin was halfway up the walk.

  "You look awful." Mary closed the door behind her, took the small bag her cousin carried from her and led them both in the direction of the kitchen. She understood the quiet awe on Casey's face as she walked through the house despite the obvious exhaustion that was dragging at her.

  "It's the same..." Casey looked around as she walked through the front room through to the kitchen. "But not to the point of being creepy." She walked back to the dining room, looked at the back window where her Grandmother had routinely and calmly kept an eye on them from her daybed. "God, it's like I expect any of them to walk into the room any moment and ask me why I'm late." She sat down at the small dining table. It didn't remind her at all of the huge table that once sat there but she felt drawn back in time nonetheless. "Wow." She looked through the open doorway into the kitchen where Mary was pouring them both a cup of coffee. "You really did it. I knew you wanted to, I just didn't think you ever would."

  "Have you talked to Aunt Charlie lately?"

  "No, not since Christmas." And Casey knew that was a black mark against her.

  "Then you don't know the half of it." She joined her in the room she rarely used and took a longer look at her cousin. In her mind Casey was always the one who had every single hair exactly in place, her makeup was always perfect, her clothes weren't just fashionable they always fit her like they were made with her in mind. None of that applied at the moment.

  "So, what brings you here at this time of night?" She watched her take a sip from the coffee mug with a trembling hand, saw the nerves she struggled to control. "Just guessing but aren't you about a thousand or so miles from home?"

  Casey took a deep breath. She'd been functioning on nerves and nerves alone for hours. When she'd first began driving away from everything she'd known anger had kept her going until it had eased painfully into the despair that had her nerves on end and screaming. She wasn't certain right now which of the two was worse. With the warm cup between her hands she rose and walked to the brick fireplace. "I remember sitting here waiting for Santa to come down the chimney. Your mom would sit with me. She was going to wait with me so she could see him too." She laughed softly at the memory and the quiet peace it brought. "I don't ever remember falling asleep, but there wouldn't have been a better place than your mom's lap. There wasn't anyone like her."

  "No," Mary agreed softly. "There wasn't."

  "I could never really understand why you wanted this place." She shook her head. "You've been like a bull dog about it for as long as I can remember. I thought you were on the verge of some sort of breakdown." She wandered over to the front window. How many times had she stood there eavesdropping on whichever of her aunt or uncles were sitting out there, swinging on the old wooden porch swing. "This place was always everything that was good for me. No matter when we came, whether it was just us or everyone it was special."

  "It was home."

  "Yes. Oh God, yes it was!" She leaned her forehead against the cool glass. "God I miss them all, never as much as now, standing here where they once stood with us." She struggled against the tears that welled and threatened to spill over. "They always stood with us."

  Mary understood. And waited.

  "Have you been following the news?" Casey asked tentatively, sounding weak and hated herself for it.

  "Not really."

  "Figures." Looking around she noticed now what she didn't notice before. No TV. No computer. But wasn't that why she came. She knew her cousin. Knew her mind. "There's another scandal."

  "There's always another scandal in the world you live in." Mary pointed out dryly.

  "Well, this one was a little worse than your average scandal because it bled over into the family." She fought back the desolation that battered at her. "On my way here I heard a report on the radio that the wife attempted suicide." She couldn't stop the sob, made every effort she had in her to force back the torrent of tears that she desperately feared would follow. "One of her kids found her in time. Hell of a thing for a kid to find. To deal with."

  Now Mary rose, whatever this was hadn't been minor, wasn't a whim. "Casey," she gently took her arm, led her back to the table, this time in the kitchen. "Sit." Then sat down and shuffled her chair closer to hers. "Whose wife and what scandal?"

  "Another Senator got caught with a woman who wasn't his wife." Casey waved away the importance of the details. They were always the same. "The other woman was unfortunately the very good friend of the Senator's college age son which every news media outlet has spent a generous amount of time speculating about," including her own, she reminded herself grimly. "By the time they were done gossip and speculation ran rampant. Oh, no one said or reported anything specific, just lots of innuendo and who knows, but by the time they were done the entire family was made out to sound like a bunch of orgy loving folks." Nothing in her life ate at her soul as this did. "The son took off, no one has seen or heard from him in days. The oldest daughter who's married to a State Senator had a miscarriage after continuing speculation and conjecture drifted in her husband's direction to fill otherwise empty air space. And now their mother has apparently tried and Thank God failed to kill herself." She dropped her face tiredly into her hands and rubbed it wearily. "God only knows how they'll spin that."

  Mary reached over and pulled one of the rigid hands away from her face and simply held on to it. And waited.

  "I sat in my office this morning," Casey glanced wearily at the clock. "Yesterday morning," she corrected, "and discussed it along with the others on the staff, very calmly, and about as dispassionately as anyone can. I speculated along with them as to how much coverage to give the miscarriage, whether or not we wanted to go after, and that's exactly how it was put, 'go after' the state senator's background...should we question if he was busy on the side too, like there wasn't enough to cover already. And when everyone walked out, all in agreement of how to go forward, I was stacking my papers together, ready to go on air and I suddenly heard myself. Really listened to myself." She looked up at her cousin, not certain what to expect, not surprised that she saw quiet understanding, more than she would have afforded anyone else in her position. She shook her head, "It was like the shattering of glass when a rock hits it. I honestly don't know how but somehow I didn't. I felt like I was going to."

  "Shatter?"

  "Yes. But I didn't." Casey took a cookie out of the jar that Mary had retrieved from the counter behind her and placed between them on the table. "I walked out, just set my papers down, grabbed my purse, and walked out. No one said anything. I don't think anyone noticed. I don't even know who filled my spot." She pulled out the cell phone from her pocket that had been turned off since shortly after crossing into Pennsylvania. "This thing rang nonstop until I finally turned it off." She set it on the table, quietly as if it were a fragile bomb. "And I came here." She set the cookie back down. Her movements steady, almost too steady.

  Mary sat quietly, waiting, and thinking. When it appeared Casey had said all she was capable of she stood, took her cousin's hand and led her toward the back bedroom.

  Casey choked on one of the many sobs that were backed up in her throat.

  Understanding, Mary automatically wrapped her arms around her cousin. "We spent a lot of nights in here."

  "Yeh." Casey choked out. "I must really be tired, it still smells the same."

  "It does," Mary agreed quietly knowing it had nothing to do with anyone being tired. She pulled down the covers of the bed she had only recently bought for the room with the thought of out of town guests. She just hadn't anticipated how quickly it would be needed. "Sleep. We'll talk more tomorrow."

  "Mary." Casey let herself collapse onto the bed, pulled the covers up without much thought other th
an the eyes she'd kept open by will alone for hours now refused to stay open another minute.

  Mary stopped in the doorway and turned.

  "Thanks."

  

  Mary closed the door quietly behind her. She knew from long past experience and the last several weeks that the walls and doors were thick and kept most noise out. Regardless, the way Casey looked she doubted a bomb exploding in the attic above her would wake her once she fell asleep.

  She also knew that sleep was lost to her this night. With that in mind she picked up the phone Casey had left behind on the kitchen table. If she was bothered by the intrusion into her cousin's privacy it was outweighed by her concern for any family member the news network Casey worked for may have called in a desperate effort to contact her. Having one of their top anchors walk out without a word wasn't likely to go unnoticed.