“I’m not mad,” I said, dropping a marshmallow in my cup and dunking it with my finger. “You’re right. He did help. And he did try to tell me, right before Harry called about the library.”
We sat in silence for a moment, Hercules watching both of us but keeping his own counsel; then Roma said softly, “He’s a good person.”
I wasn’t sure if she meant Marcus or Eddie.
We sat and talked for a while about everything but Eddie’s proposal. There wasn’t really anything else to say about that.
Roma yawned and covered her mouth with one hand. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not the company.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “The spare room bed is made up. I’ll find you a pair of pajamas.”
Hercules went ahead of us up the stairs and turned in to the bathroom. He stopped under the wooden cupboard on the wall, looked up and meowed.
“Good idea,” I said. Roma was used to me talking to the boys, but she raised her eyebrows at me this time.
“I have some of Rebecca and Maggie’s bath infusions,” I said. “Would you like one for the tub?”
Rebecca’s mother had used a lot of herbal remedies and had acted as an informal nurse in the town when Rebecca was young. Rebecca in turn had learned a lot of her mother’s herbal secrets and had been teaching them to Maggie. They’d made poultices and wraps several times for me, and their tub infusions seemed to help everything from sore muscles to an overloaded mind.
I fished in the cupboard and held out two wraps of cheesecloth tied with string. “What do you think?” I said to Hercules.
His nose twitched as he sniffed at one and then the other.
“Meow!” he said, pawing the air in the direction of the one in my left hand.
“This one gets the paw of approval,” I said. I put two fluffy towels on the wicker stool underneath the cupboard and set the sachet of herbs and flowers on top.
“Thank you, Hercules,” Roma said.
I got her a pair of soft flannel pajamas from my bedroom. They were hot pink, decorated with little gray-and-white images of Bigfoot.
“A present from Ethan,” I said.
“Why did your brother buy you a pair of pajamas with Bigfoot on them?” she asked.
“Because he used to razz me about dating Bigfoot since I was living in the wilderness, according to him.”
Roma smiled.
“I just remind him that I used to change his diapers,” I said. “That always shuts him up.”
“You and Ethan and Sara are still close,” she said, taking the pajamas from me. “Even with you here and them in Boston.”
“I miss them,” I said, “but even if I were still in Boston I probably wouldn’t see them any more than I do now. Ethan’s band has been on the road most of the last six months and Sara has worked on two films.”
“I wanted siblings when I was younger,” Roma said. “Then I’d spend a month with my cousins in the summertime and being an only child didn’t seem so bad.”
“When I found out I was going to have a baby brother and sister, all I felt was mortified. My parents were divorced and there was the undeniable proof that they’d been having sex.” I smiled at the memory of my melodramatic teenage self, deciding that I could never be seen in public again with my mother and father. “And then they brought Ethan and Sara home from the hospital and my mother let me hold them for the first time,” I said.
“And you bonded with them,” Roma said, holding the Bigfoot pajamas to her chest and folding her arms over them.
“Not even close,” I said. “Ethan spit up all over the front of my favorite shirt and at the exact same time Sara did the same on the back of it.” I grinned and raised my eyebrows. “They’ve always been competitive.”
It was good to see Roma laugh. “So what changed?” she asked.
“I’d get up in the middle of the night and sneak in to look at them. I was convinced they’d ruined my life, but I couldn’t stay away from them, either. One night Ethan was awake and I just started talking to him. Then Sara woke up, too. As long as I was talking they didn’t cry. About a week later Mom got up to check on them and found the three of us downstairs watching one of those really bad Japanese Godzilla movies with subtitles on TV.”
I smiled at her. “And I’m going to stop talking,” I said. “Toothbrush and toothpaste in the cupboard on the second shelf. If you need anything else, just yell.”
She nodded. “I will.”
I cleaned up the kitchen while Roma was in the bathtub; then I had a bath myself, sinking down in the water until it was up to my chin. I wondered how Eddie was. I wondered if there was any way Roma would change her mind.
I was sitting on the edge of the bed brushing my hair when my cell phone buzzed. It was Marcus.
“Hi,” he said. “You weren’t sleeping, were you?”
“No,” I said.
“How’s Roma?” he asked.
“Sad, mostly,” I said, standing up and walking over to set the brush on my dresser. “I convinced her to stay here for tonight.”
“I thought you might.”
“How’s Eddie?”
Marcus exhaled softly. “Pretty much the same as Roma. He’s already on his way back to St. Paul. He left about an hour ago.”
I yawned. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s been a long day.”
“Go to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning.” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Good night.”
“Good night,” I said.
I woke up at five minutes after two, unsure of why I was awake. I padded out into the hallway in bare feet. The door to the spare bedroom was open. Roma wasn’t in bed.
I was halfway down the stairs when I heard voices. Then I realized it was just one voice, Roma’s. I crept silently to the bottom of the steps and moved across the living room floor until I could see into the kitchen. Roma was at the table, her back to the doorway, one foot up on her chair with her chin resting on her bent knee and her arms wrapped around her leg. Hercules was sitting at her feet.
She was talking to him. And he was listening, his head tilted a bit to one side. It occurred to me that maybe Roma had found exactly the right “person” to talk to who would listen without judgment. I took several steps backward and then I went silently back upstairs.
I drove Roma home after breakfast, moving Marcus’s SUV out onto the street so I could back the truck out of my driveway. When I got back it was gone and there was a brown paper bag propped on the doorknob of the back door. There was a smiley face drawn on the front with a black marker and one of Eric’s cinnamon rolls inside.
Rebecca called a few minutes after nine o’clock. “I have some information for you,” she said. “Do you have a few minutes?”
“I do,” I said. “Would you like to come over and tell me in person? I have coffee, tea and”—I leaned sideways to look at the counter, realizing as I did that Roma and I had eaten the last of the blueberry scones and I’d demolished Marcus’s cinnamon roll—“sardine cat crackers.”
Rebecca laughed. “As . . . tempting as that sounds, I’m not home. I’m actually downtown in Everett’s pied-à-terre.”
“Ahh, romantic,” I teased.
“Yes, it was,” she said a saucy lilt to her voice.
I could imagine her smile and the twinkle in her eyes. Rebecca and Everett could make the most cynical person out there believe in love and happily ever after.
“So what did you find out?” I asked, pulling my feet up so I was sitting cross-legged on the chair.
“The Holmeses are not the happy family they seemed to be on the outside,” she said.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” I said.
“Exactly,” Rebecca said. “I think Tolstoy had that right, although I think the unhappy families are that way for the same few reasons.”