The Book of Someday Part 29

But Livvi seems completely unaware of Micah. Doesn't appear to even realize she's in the room. To Micah it looks as if Livvi has lost contact with reality. As if she's mentally traveling into some strangely distant world.

A minute clicks by. Then another. And another.

As each moment is pa.s.sing, the sense of dread in Micah is building. Showing her she won't be able to survive the fury that Livvi is preparing to unleash.

Micah is at her breaking point. "Don't you have anything you want to say to me?" she asks.

The lost look in Livvi's eyes is slowly beginning to clear-it's being replaced by an odd combination of injury and elation.

"My mother died?" Livvi says.

"Yes," Micah tells her.

"My mother didn't run away? She died?"

Micah is thunderstruck. "How could you think your mother ran away?"

"It's what I've always been told...she was a party girl who wanted to have a good time."

"It's a lie. Who told you that?" Micah is annoyed-instinctively wanting to defend AnnaLee.

"My father told me..." Livvi says, "...and my stepmother."

"That's ridiculous. Your father was devoted to AnnaLee. The night she was killed, he almost died trying to save her. He came to the funeral with a broken shoulder and his hands in bandages. Your father is one of the sweetest, kindest men I ever met."

And Livvi tells Micah: "Now you're the one being ridiculous. My father was an uncaring monster."

This bizarre statement leaves Micah's head spinning. It makes no sense.

Livvi has gotten up from her chair. And is pacing the room. Rapidly. Erratically. As if she's sorting through a frantic tangle of thoughts and emotions.

Then she stops and turns to look at Micah. "I don't understand. How did my father get to Santa Ynez? When did he leave Long Island?"

Micah tries to remember. "I'm not sure. I guess it was a couple of months after AnnaLee died. At some point the two of you just disappeared. My father tried searching for you, for years. But n.o.body could find you. n.o.body knew where you went."

Livvi is leaning against the wall. Bent forward, her hands clamped against her breastbone-like she's in terrible pain. "All the things you've said...this story you've told me...is it really the truth?"

Micah-hating that there's no comfort she can offer Livvi-simply nods.

Livvi sounds as if she still can't quite believe what she has just heard. "And that's all you know? About my parents? About me?"

"Yes," Micah says. "I was only there for those few weeks, that one summer, but-"

There's a feeling in Micah. Like being caught in a vise. It's crus.h.i.+ng her. Squeezing the life out of her. As she adds: "-but there's something else I need to tell you."

Livvi's tone is quiet, fearful. "What more could there possibly be?"

A chill is building in Micah.

And she's saying: "In payment for your mother's murder, Hayden and Marco, and Marco's friend, went to jail. For a long time. I went to Harvard. Then I went on with my life." Crippling s.h.i.+vers are running through her as she tells Livvi: "Now I need to pay for that. The universe has already handed me the bill, I just don't know how big the payment should be. You need to help me decide."

"What exactly are you asking...?"

Livvi glances from Micah to the little table containing the medications-then she looks up at Jillian.

Jillian appears to have tears in her eyes. She mouths the word cancer.

"My b.r.e.a.s.t.s were removed last week," Micah explains. "Treatment is set to begin the day after tomorrow-a clinical trial. It's a long shot, but I need to know if I have the right to take it."

Livvi is continuing to lean against the wall, for support. As she says: "And you want me to decide?"

"I took your mother's life. You're ent.i.tled to ask for mine in return."

Livvi slowly pushes away from the wall and begins to pace again. Wandering. Distracted. Circling the room.

While Micah is waiting. Waiting-and terrified.

After a while, Livvi comes to a stop in the center of the room. Her gaze moving from the white plastered walls-to the spotless floors-and then to the polished, mostly empty, tables and shelves.

She appears to be searching for something. When she can't seem to find it, she asks Micah: "Are you married?"

Micah gives a negative shake of her head.

"A family? Children?" Livvi asks.

It is as if Livvi is stripping Micah's soul and laying it bare. Micah is aching with regret as she says: "I thought I would have all of that. Someday. But..."

"Are you in love?"

"I was. Once. A long time ago." The sense of loss is almost intolerable. "I loved a man that I left, and thought I was coming back for."

"Miss Lesser is a legend," Jillian tells Livvi. "Why don't you ask her about her career?"

"I don't want to talk about my career," Micah snaps.

Then she looks at Livvi. Micah is riddled with guilt as she tells her: "I bought my career by stealing pieces of other people's lives-starting with that picture I took of your mother."

Micah's body is wet with a sticky, sour sweat. "Your mother died because of me. I want to know if, in order to make that up to you, you need me to die too."

When Livvi doesn't respond, Micah tells her: "It isn't fair that I get away without paying for what happened."

The expression on Livvi's face is tender, full of sadness. "I don't think you did get away without paying for it."

Livvi is looking around the room again as if she's taking note of the things that aren't there. The personal touches. The tokens of love. "I have the feeling you've paid, one way or another, all the way along the line."

There is a quality in Livvi's voice that seems to suggest that finally, all of this is beginning to make sense. "Miss Lesser...Micah...I can't tell you whether you deserve to live or you deserve to die for what you did wrong in the past. But I can tell you that what you did today was a blessing. You gave me somebody I've been yearning for all my life. You gave me my mother."

Livvi has crossed the room and is standing beside Micah now, telling her softly: "You gave me a priceless gift-you let me know I was loved."

Livvi's touch on Micah's shoulder is bringing Micah a sensation of being lifted up into the light. And being cleansed. It is the feeling of absolution: the miracle of forgiveness.

Micah is gazing at Livvi-seeing Bella. Bella with her luminous brown eyes and cap of golden curls.

After a long, quiet moment, Micah tells her: "You make me believe in angels."

A little while later, when Livvi is leaving, she's pausing in the doorway of Micah's room-with a hopeful, hesitant smile-asking: "What was my mother like?"

"She was like you," Micah says. "She was exactly like you."

Livvi.

Kennedy Airport, New York ~ 2012.

Livvi is in the pa.s.senger seat of David's Volvo. Grace is in the back-eagerly undoing her seat belt and chatting to Granger, who's in a travel crate on the floor of the car.

David is opening the trunk, unloading Livvi's large, black suitcase and Grace's small, pink one. The air outside is cold. Shrill with the whistles of traffic officers. Pungent with the smell of jet fuel and car exhaust.

Livvi's hand is poised over her phone. The conversation she had yesterday in Boston, with Micah Lesser, has given her so much important information. Yet it left so many issues unresolved-a catalogue of loose ends that's making Livvi wonder, When, and why, did my father disappear from Glen Cove and from everyone who'd been in his life? And why was the person Micah described...the person she called sweet and kind...why was he so different from the cold, distant man who raised me in Santa Ynez? And the woman I saw in my nightmares...the woman with the dark hair and the fiery-red lips...was she the person in the portrait, or was she my mother? And if it was my mother, how did that image of her find its way into my consciousness?

Livvi is entering Micah's number into the phone. But then she's changing her mind and dropping the phone into her lap. Frustrated. Realizing the call is pointless. Micah would have no way of knowing any of these things.

And Grace is asking: "Are we going on a big plane or on our own plane, like Grandpa does?"

"On a big plane," Livvi tells her.

"Grandpa says when people travel around, the time changes. Will it be today or yesterday when we get there? And if it's yesterday, can we do everything we did today all over again?"

"Wherever you go, sweetheart, it's today. It's the day you're in," Livvi says. "Yesterday's always over and gone."

In having this conversation with Grace, Livvi is being reminded that the past and the unknowable answers to its questions are out of her reach. She's being shown that, as maddening as the prospect is, the healthiest thing to do with the burden of those questions is what she did with the suffocating weight of her father. Release them. Let them go. And give herself to the future.

"Are you ready?" David is asking.

He has opened the driver's door and is leaning into the car. Looking at Livvi with love, and hope.

A draft from outside is sending what appears to be a tiny golden bird fluttering from under the driver's seat and into the air.

Livvi is leaning forward and catching it. It's j.a.panese: Origami. A square of gold foil that has been intricately folded into the shape of a crane.

"I was wondering where that went," David says.

"Did you do this?" Livvi is marveling at how beautiful it is.

"I asked a friend to do it for me," he tells her. "I needed a pattern." David has slipped into the driver's seat and closed the car door.

An airport security officer is tapping on the Volvo's hood, indicating that the car can't stay parked at the curb much longer.

David quickly tells Livvi: "There's a j.a.panese legend that says the making of a thousand cranes will bring you your heart's desire."

"What a lovely myth," Livvi says.

David seems both confident and heartbroken. "It's how I'm going to spend my time-while I'm waiting for you to find a way to come back to me."

Livvi is thinking how fragile the little bird is. "How many have you made so far?"

"Three. I started my first one that night-the night we got back from New Jersey."

That night. For an instant, Livvi has returned to it. And to the memory of the patch of frozen ground separating her father's house from the sidewalk. His house, and its coldness, were behind her while she was running toward the warmth of David's arms. Then, later, in David's beach cottage, she was being held with such devotion. Such honesty. When he said, "I love you. Do you think you could ever love me?" and she told him, "Yes. Yes, I do."

And now, as she's sitting beside David, recalling his question and the joy that was in her answer, there are tears in Livvi's eyes. I'll never forget that night, she's thinking. It was when I closed the door on my past. And when I opened my heart to David.

It was when everything changed. That night was both the beginning, and the end.

Jack.

Pa.s.saic, New Jersey ~ 2012.

It's beginning. The end.

In almost imperceptible increments, Jack's body is becoming lighter. And there's another sensation too. Like the tug and sway of a train pulling away from the platform.

It's dark where Jack is. Not midnight dark. Closer to end-of-twilight dark. There's just enough illumination for Jack to see AnnaLee. She is walking away from him. He's trying to tell her, "Bella came. She came all the way to New Jersey-to see me," but he has no voice. So of course AnnaLee doesn't hear, doesn't turn around. And Jack is relieved. How could he face her if she did? She would look into his eyes and know that he had, again, been a coward. That he hadn't had the courage to speak to Bella. He'd only had the cringing need to know she was there and standing at his side, one last time.

Jack had been unable to open his eyes, engage his child. Frightened that, if he did, he would draw her closer to him. And if she came too close, she would smell his awful scent-the rot that had begun in him on the night AnnaLee died.

His fear of exposing that lingering odor held Jack prisoner for most of Bella's life. And made him afraid to give himself to her. Afraid that if she caught even a waft of it, she would understand its source and know the truth about him.

His need for self-protection-for distance-is the reason that, in all the years of her growing up, Jack never once called his daughter by the pet name her mother gave her on the day she was born. He never called her Bella. He always called her Olivia.

The decay that began in Jack with AnnaLee's death, and the stain it left on his soul, were the reasons that less than two months after AnnaLee's funeral he ran to Santa Ynez and locked himself away. And locked Bella away. He did it so no one could come near him and his motherless child, and somehow recognize what he had done.

The swaying, trainlike motion is picking up speed now. The end of twilight is becoming the beginning of darkness for Jack. At the edge of the darkness he's in the house in Santa Ynez. Sitting on the top step of the porch. The sun is warm on his skin (which at the moment of AnnaLee's death went cold, and stayed that way). Bella is three years old. She's in a little blue dress. The sun is making the curls in her hair glitter like gold. She's playing with a pair of dolls, one large and one small-and she's asking, "Where did my mommy go?" Jack is saying the first thing that's coming into his head-because it's a sliver of the truth-and a sliver is as much as he can risk. He's telling Bella, "Your mother was all dressed up and she went to a wonderful party." And when Bella asks, "Is she coming back?" the scent of decay in Jack is so strong it sends him scuttling to the bottom of the porch steps. While he's saying, "No, she's never coming back."

And now Jack is remembering how he had continued to hide himself from Bella-for the rest of their days together. Relentlessly keeping her at arm's length. With the exception of that one awful morning-when he had lifted her up by her hair.