She smiled. “They’re fine. Merry Christmas. Oh, your husband’s here. Aren’t you lucky.”
I took a breath. Released it. “Yes. Merry Christmas.”
John waded into the stream heading for the exit. “To be fair, your dad didn’t know anything was wrong.”
I grabbed DJ’s hand. “That’s no excuse.”
John looked back at me over his shoulder, Daisy in his arms. I flushed.
“Give the staff some credit for handling the problem, Meg,” my husband said quietly. “They’re trying to take care of her.”
“Then they should do a better job,” I said, frustrated by my own helplessness. I was supposed to be the good daughter. What good was I if I couldn’t protect my own mother? “What if the fall damaged her spine?”
“Then we’ll deal with it,” John said.
I was irrationally encouraged by that “we.”“We’ll deal with it.”Like we were a team. Like the early days.
I looked at him, seeing the tired lines in his face, the oxlike set of his shoulders. He’d been bringing work home this week, staying up late in his office, making up for the time he’d taken off so I could be with my mother.
How could I ask him to do any more?
“Thank you, honey.”
CHAPTER 7
Jo
When I moved to New York, I started running again. I memorized landmarks, learning my way around my new neighborhood: the brown spire of the Episcopal church, the plywood construction barriers, the Greek produce stall, the Korean dry cleaner on the corner. I ran in the early morning, before or after the sun came up, when the air was cool and full of promise, after the garbage trucks came through. Alone, except for Dan the Homeless Guy on his cardboard patch in front of the bodega, and a few people walking to the subway or waiting for the bus. The thump of my running shoes measured my progress, claiming my territory.
In those early days, I was in love with the city, like Joan Didion, drunk with adulthood and freedom. Five years later, my affair with New York was what I imagined marriage might be—inconvenient, sometimes disappointing or exhausting. But I was committed now. I kept running after I lost my job at the paper, staying a few steps ahead of panic.
It was cheaper than paying for a gym membership. Or a shrink.
After I was hired at Gusto, it got harder to force myself to stumble out of bed in the mornings. But on Friday, I laced up my shoes and ran through the Meatpacking District to the High Line, the old elevated freight rail turned public park beside the Hudson River. The path was clear of tourists and of snow. The cold quiet was an antidote to the noise and smoke of the kitchen, the stress of orders rattling in, the bodies bumping in tight space. The grease that coated everything like the miasma of failure. The fear that I wasn’t measuring up. That I was letting people down. That I wasn’t, in my father’s words,“fulfilling my God-given potential.”
Between the blocks of buildings, the pale sun sparkled on the distant water. The pressure to succeed, to perform, built in my chest, knifing my lungs like cold. I ran, chasing... something. A dream.
As far back as I could remember, I’d wanted to write. Stories scribbled on notebook paper, stitched with yarn or stapled along the edges to resemble the real books I borrowed from the library. Plays on the parsonage porch performed with my sisters.
The first Christmas our father was in Iraq, I’d written him a letter. More of a journal, really, day-to-day stories about our family and the farm, complete with pictures. Like a blog, only there were barely any blogs back then. I worked on it for ages, adding and polishing, taking pages to Mrs. Ferguson, my AP English teacher, for feedback.
And then... Nothing. All my effort, wasted. All my work, gone.
All my fault.
It was one of those warm North Carolina days that happen sometimes in winter. The trees stood like sentinels along the bank. Our footsteps rustled as Trey and I picked our way to the dock, the slope to the water littered with decaying leaves and fallen pines. The brown river reflected the blue sky, like a child’s landscape decorated with puffy white clouds.
Our family had two boats, an old johnboat we used for fishing and swimming on summer days, and my father’s canoe that he’d made himself at summer camp in Maine. Very Hiawatha.
Trey rowed the flat-bottomed johnboat out to the middle, away from the weeds and mud and encroaching trees. Away from everything. A blue heron hunted motionless in the shallows. The wind wrinkled the glassy water. I tilted my face to the sun, breathing deep, trailing a hand over the bow. Beneath the sunny surface, the water was winter cold.
“Jo! Jo!” Amy cried from the dock. I turned my head away. “Jo, I’m sorry!”
Trey lifted the oars, raising an eyebrow in question. “Go back?”
I glared, annoyed he’d even suggest it. My grievance burned inside me. I was somadat Amy.
Howdareshe delete my letter to Dad?
