Page 15 of Whatever Will Be

Not possible.

Jules didn’t have time to whisper a prayer or think about her girls. She was on her way home after a late night at the thankless low level job where she worked too hard to provide for her daughters. She was probably tired. She was likely anxious to pick up Mara and Caitlin from the woman who watched them in her home daycare.

Officer Gavin Brand said the girls were safe and staying with their babysitter until a family member could claim them. He was still talking when I abruptly ended the call.

I’d lived inside terrible moments before. None as bad as that one but I’m familiar with the unnatural sense of calm that can carry the mind through when things need to be done.

And there were things to be done.

I called my mother at her home in Rochester. I left a message at the Central New York State Correctional Center so my father could be informed. And I called my brother in Arizona, who was just stumbling home to his apartment after partying all night.

“Are you sure, Gretch? Oh Jesus, it can’t be her!”

The sound of my big brother’s sobs unlocked my own and for a terrible second I became the girl who crawled under her math desk one day and screamed until she was slapped.

I might have gone that route again if not for the girls.

Because of the girls I calmly packed my bags, rented a car and drove straight to Lake Stuart. I’m the one who told them that the beautiful, loving, funny mother they adored would not be coming home. Everything had become too real and too horrible.

I’ve never lived in a world without Jules.

Not once did it occur to me that I would need to.

“At least that part’s over.” Danny sighs with relief and locks the front door.

He looks like hell and he smells like a bar. He has offered no apologies for disappearing after the burial service and leaving me alone to deal with the morbid host chores.

But I will not complain because Danny wasn’t expecting to be pulled aside by the family attorney this morning. He wasn’t expecting to hear that he’s been saddled with the joint guardianship of our two nieces.

“What now?” Danny wants to know and the question feels like a significant one but I act like it’s not.

“Let’s dump all the food trays.” I’m already moving toward the pantry in the hopes of locating some trash bags. “It’s all been sitting out for hours anyway.”

“You don’t need to do that, Gretch. I can do it.”

“Fine.” I find a yellow box of trash bags and toss it at him. “Then do it.”

He catches the box neatly in one hand.

We exchange miserable looks.

Music floats out of the den. Mara and Caitlin’s high, sweet voices join the chorus.

Danny stuffs all the food remnants into two black bags and carries them outside while I listen to the girls sing.

A few weeks before I graduated from high school, Jules told me she was pregnant. I was speechless. After all, Jules didn’t date. Jules hardly ever went out at all. Since our parents were basically out of the picture, she had devoted herself to getting me and Danny through high school. With Danny playing college ball in Michigan, she’d be free to do as she pleased now that I was also going off to college. Jules had put her own life on hold for us and I assumed once I graduated she’d leave Lake Stuart, hopefully embarking on the big plans she had before her future was derailed. There was no reason for her to stay.

Until there was.

Jules, though only twenty-one, was thrilled with the idea of becoming a mother. She announced she would remain in Lake Stuart, where she had the house and the familiarity of the only place she’d ever known. She’d keep her job at the physical therapy clinic and she would raise her child right here. She insisted she was happy. Lake Stuart and the baby were what she wanted. She refused to allow me to alter my college plans in any way.

So I left.

And Jules stayed.

Danny finishes dumping the trash and returns through the kitchen door. He brings the cold air with him and looks around like this is a place he’s never seen before and wishes he didn’t have to visit now. He catches me looking at him and nods in my direction.

“What did the ax wound have to say before she stormed out of here?”

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