“Are you all right?” Eva asked.
“Oh! Yes. I was just…thinking.”
Eva moved away, looking slightly unconvinced.
June looked again at her guest. Nicky was finishing his last triangle. She stared at him for a long moment as she reacclimated herself to the here and now.
“Now what do we do?” the boy said to her.
“That’s a great question,” June said with a laugh, because it was.Now what do we do?was the perfect question.
Eva shot her a quick look, and then said, “We could make brownies.”
“Do you want to make brownies, Nicky?” June asked.
He shook his head. “Do you have soldiers?”
“Soldiers?”
“To play with. Green ones.”
“I have a chess set.”
“What’s a chest set?”
“Chess. It’s a game on a checkerboard. Moms and dads play it. You could pretend the pieces are soldiers, I think. There are kings and queens and castle rooks. And horses.”
“Okay.”
June, grateful for the distraction, retrieved Frank’s chess set from her closet shelf and took it outside to the patio. It was a beautiful day, high seventies, sunny and cloudless. Nicky followed her. So did Eva. Her back injury nearly healed, June nevertheless carefully lowered herself to a patio chair.
She unclasped the box and opened it on its hinges, revealing the chessboard and the pieces. Nicky picked up a white knight.
“The horse!”
“There are four of them, two white and two black,” June said. “If you want, I can show you how they go on the board.” June set up all the pieces on the patio table, showed Nicky some basic moves, and told him that the white king and queen were always at war with the black king and queen. He began hopscotching the pieces across the squares and making up all of his own moves. Ten minutes later he had abandoned the board, and now all the pieces were in various states of battle on the grass and atop the planters of alyssum and impatiens that bordered the back fence, and even in the rose garden.
June sent Eva back into the house to fetch a blanket and set it on the grass so that the two of them could sit on it while they watched Nicky.
When he began to tire of playing with the pieces that way, June had Eva bring out a dishpan of water and Nicky gave the chess pieces swimming lessons. When he tired of that, Eva hid them likeEaster eggs in the yard while June made sure Nicky kept his eyes closed until he went looking for them. He then wanted to be the one to hide the pieces. And after that, he wanted to be the one to look for them again.
June lost track of time as they occupied themselves in the backyard. It was the best kind of afternoon, almost like summer, when the days are long and carefree. Again she found herself drifting mentally to that Other Place, the one where she’d married Elwood. It was easy to do, watching that little boy play among the rosebushes.
The daydreaming, however, meant June was not thinking about the fact that, being outside in the backyard, she likely wouldn’t hear Melanie when she returned to the house. Might not hear her knock on the front door and then perhaps open it herself when no one answered. Nor was she considering that Melanie might easily see from the kitchen window June, Eva, and Nicky happily playing in the backyard and that Melanie might turn from the window then and head up the stairs to talk to Elwood.
Nor that when Melanie reached his bedroom door, she might tap gently, say Elwood’s name, and, upon hearing no response, force open the door.
18
Driving to Santa Monica to go Christmas shopping was the first completely normal thing Melanie had done in months. When she parked June’s car near Henshey’s Department Store like dozens of other people had already, she nearly cried at the sheer ordinariness of it.
Aside from her hair in a matronly bun, the ugly scarf around her neck, and the too-big sunglasses, she knew she looked ordinary, too: She was just an average woman with a purse on her arm and a list in hand, shopping in Santa Monica.
Melanie was aware that she was still risking being recognized, but honestly, would anyone suspect blacklisted actress Melanie Cole would be perusing the toy aisles at Henshey’s today? And even if a fellow shopper identified her, how bad could it be? They might stare, yes. Frown, yes. Whisper under their breath,Commie!Possibly.
She didn’t care.
It felt too good to be doing something so natural as Christmas shopping.
