The In-Between Hour

Parenthood started with such optimism: your child would achieve his baby milestones, collect gold stars, maintain a good grade point average, hang out with the crowd that didn’t drink and drive. And then, when you weren’t paying attention, it all stripped down to one horrifying truth: you just wanted your son to find the will to live.

Behind her, a hundred acres of tangled forest waited to reach out and protect her, to pull her back into its bosom. Sunrise over Saponi Mountain with the blended light of day and night always lifted her spirits, but the clocks wouldn’t change for another month. In the meantime, she and the dogs were trapped in dark mornings. Once dawn came, however, they would hike up to the Occaneechi Path, the historic Native American trading route on the crest of the hill. A well-marked trail, nothing grew there. Soft-soled moccasins had packed the soil tightly day after day, month after month, decade after decade, treading memories into the land. Sealing them in forever. And after the leaves were down, the track would remain hidden until spring.

Jink, the newest member of the household, wheezed her asthmatic cough and wound around Hannah’s ankles. Hannah reached down and combed her fingers through satin fur. If only everything in life were as simple as adopting a stray cat.

“Go scavenge,” Hannah said. “Catch a vole for breakfast.”

The voles had inflicted more damage than the drought. Two months earlier the loss of her scarlet ruellias—a gift from an aging client who couldn’t afford her vet bill—would have caused genuine pain. But now she had real context for the themes of life and death.

Hannah’s right foot nudged a pile of broken acorn shells—a squirrel’s last supper—and she stared down at the decking. Boards long overdue for pressure washing and weatherproofing, she and the ex had nailed them together fifteen years before with dreams of withstanding hurricanes and ice storms and poundings from little boys and big dogs. Dreams came, dreams left, and she would do what she always did: adapt.

In the distance, a car spluttered and clonked as it began the torturous journey down her driveway. A predawn pet emergency, no doubt. Containing work between the hours of eight in the morning and ten at night was a pipe dream. Clients knew she was available 24/7, and how could she not be? A holistic vet specializing in peaceful euthanasia could hardly keep office hours. Not that she had an office, other than her duct-taped Ford truck.

The dogs rose one by one to close around her in a circle. Mush for brains, all five of her rescue babies. Introduce people to their world, and they could flee. An eternity ago she had juggled the demands of work, laundry, motherhood and cooking as if she would never surface for air. These days she was responsible only for herself and a pack of strays. Turn around, and everything changed.

Rosie, her blind German shepherd, whimpered.

“It’s okay, baby.” Hannah kneaded Rosie’s head, and the dog trembled against her leg.

Hannah didn’t mean to have favorites, but she and Rosie were conjoined at the heart. Some woman had found Rosie four years earlier, scavenging for food in the Occoneechee Mountain parking lot and bleeding from a gash on her paw. The woman flew in with kinetic desperation, wanting to adopt Rosie now, wanting Hannah to fix Rosie now. But Rosie had needed stitches and a quiet, warm place to sleep. Hannah insisted on keeping the dog overnight; the woman begrudgingly agreed. Older, but still beautiful, she had a gray pallor and yellow patches around her eyelids that suggested heart disease. Hannah had planned to inquire gently about her health the next day. But the woman hadn’t returned as arranged, and for that, Hannah was grateful. Her mother had encouraged her to believe in fate. And Hannah and Rosie-girl? They were meant to be.

The car lurched around a bend and stopped, the beam of its lights illuminating a lumbering opossum. Only one person she knew braked for opossum. And thank goodness, because she couldn’t face anyone else’s high-voltage chatter.

There would be comfort food in the back of that turquoise Honda Civic, too. High in carbs, sickly sweet and much appreciated. Dropping a jean size had been the only welcome side effect of her son’s breakdown; dropping two jean sizes had been a warning.

Poppy’s car spluttered through a mechanical imitation of Jink’s asthmatic cough. Time to remind her friend, yet again, about the importance of oil changes. Guided by instincts—some good, most not—Poppy’s monkey mind never settled on the mundane, unless it involved sugar or sex, horses or art.

The Honda chugged around the final curve. Hannah’s ex had insisted on this ridiculous gravel drive despite the acres of pasture that lay between the house and the road. He’d pronounced it authentic and likely to deter bikers from joyriding up to their house after spilling out of the redneck bar opposite. Of course, that could have been Inigo’s secret wish all along, since he’d upped and left six years earlier for a gay ménage à trois in rural Chatham County. A midlife crisis with not one younger lover but two. Both guys.

Hannah searched the top of her head for her reading glasses and had a flashback to stuffing them into the seat pocket of the airplane. Oh well, another pair lost.

Poppy parked and flung open the door decorated with a prancing mare. She painted horses on every surface except paper. Take the norm, turn it inside out and flip it backward—that was Poppy’s thought process.

“Hey, girl.” Poppy emerged, bottom-first. “Thought you might need a sugar fix.”

“At seven in the morning?” Hannah and the dogs walked down the steps.

Poppy jiggled a Whole Foods bag, and her silver horse earrings danced a rhumba. Then she took out her gum and dumped it in the car’s trash can. “Never too early for chocolate.”

“Come here. You’ve earned a hug.” Silly move caused, no doubt, by sleep deprivation. Even drunk, Poppy wasn’t a hugger.

Poppy stiffened, and Hannah tried to cover her mistake with a pat on the shoulder blade.

“Thank you. For looking after the animals, the house and—” Hannah pulled back and chewed the corner of her lip. She hadn’t cried in two and a half weeks. Why now? She sniffed. “But you should not be shopping at Whole Foods, not on your budget.”

“I know, I know, but I figured you needed first-rate treats. Chocolate croissants, still warm.” Poppy sniffed the bag. “Mmm-hmm. And extra chocolate supplies. Had no idea Brits understood chocolate, but this, girlfriend, is the real deal.”

Poppy reached inside the bag and waved two long, thin sticks of chocolate wrapped in twisted yellow foil. They resembled emaciated Christmas crackers, the kind Inigo had introduced to Christmas dinner when the boys were little. Such a fraud, the ex, flooding their lives with all things British—or rather Celtic—when he’d left Wales as a two-month-old. A Christmas memory snuck out: Inigo, Galen and Liam popping crackers and giggling. Her guys, the three people she thought she’d known best in the world. Turned out she hadn’t known them at all. If her mother were still alive, how would she label this bottomless emotion Hannah refused to name? Was it grief? Was she mourning her before life?

Think better, Hannah.

“Cadbury Flakes, they’re called,” Poppy continued. “The Brit section in Whole Foods is opposite the dog food, but don’t let that put you off. What time d’y’all get back last night?”

“Late. Or early, depending on your definition. And it’s just me.”

“Our boy?”

“Couldn’t spring him from the post-hospitalized program. Another twelve days and then he can come home.” Hannah paused. “I need to find him a therapist here. And an A.A. group.”

“On it, babe. I know a shitload of drunks.”

“Somehow, I never doubted that.”

Poppy disappeared into her car, muttering about a lost cell phone. She bobbed back out. “Sleep on the plane?”

“I rested.”

“The answer’s no, then.”

“Welcome to my brave, new world.”

Poppy took a bite out of one of the chocolate croissants, then shoved it back into the bag. Her eyes flicked toward the house; clearly she was thinking, Coffee. But talking about Galen was easier in the dark surrounded by sounds of the waking forest rather than under the glare and hum of kitchen halogens.

“I just need to get him home,” Hannah said. “Out of California, away from the ex-girlfriend and the mental hospital. Home to the cottage, so I can help him heal.”

“Think that’s a good idea—leaving him unsupervised in the cottage?”

Acorns splattered the cottage porch in a series of pops as if fired from a muzzled BB gun, and the Crayola-colored spinners she’d hung for her father the week before his death swirled in a sudden breeze, whirring softly.

“He’ll be home,” Hannah said. “And he won’t be unsupervised. I’ll be watching over him, which is better than right now. His therapy ends at four and then he returns to an empty apartment for the rest of the day. He spends every evening and every night alone.”

Poppy sucked chocolate off her fingers. “And the whole heavy-duty meds thing isn’t freaking out your inner holistic-ness?”

“Sometimes medication is the cure.”

“And sometimes it makes things worse. People in pain do painful things, Han.”

The downside of exposing secrets to a friend: she knew how to hurt you.

“So.” Poppy rustled the bag closed. “You figure out what happened? I mean, the whole sequence of events?”

“Not entirely, since Galen didn’t want us in any of the therapy sessions. It still makes no sense to me. How can you return to grad school, drop out of classes and decide to die in a matter of weeks? I was hoping, when he came home, he might talk to you.”

Poppy broke eye contact. “Sure.”

In the forest, a pair of coonhounds bayed, a nasty reminder that at least one of the fancy new homes on the ridge was now occupied.

“On to happier things. Fill me in on your life,” Hannah said. “What have I missed?”

“I met this guy.”

“Poppyyyyy. Not again.”

“Eighty-year-old guy. You’d approve.”

Hannah slapped the side of her head. “Argh, sorry. Completely forgot about Hawk’s Ridge. How’s it working out?”

“You were right about the whole art therapy thing. Love hanging out with the old folks. Don’t think it’s going to turn into a paying gig, but the director and the staff stay clear. Let me do my own thing. There’s this sweet guy, Jacob. You, missy, would love him. Knows a shit-ton about plants and trees. A real woodsman. Such a shame to see him cooped up in that place. Has this grandson who’s on an amazing European adventure. I took Jacob to Walmart the other day and we bought a huge map and colored Sharpies so we could plot the kid’s route. They’re not supposed to tape stuff to the walls.” Poppy grinned. “So we stuck it up with half a roll of packing tape. Bwah-hah-hah.”

“You think that’s a good idea?”

“Rules, Han, are for breaking. Especially when you’re eighty. Can I borrow the truck today? I found a kiln for sale. Thought I’d check it out.”

Poppy already had two kilns but barely used one. The recession was strangling her ceramics business.

“And where are you going to put another kiln?”

“Lordy, a girl can never have too many kilns!”

“Okay, sure.” Hannah meant no. No, it’s horribly inconvenient; no, I need the truck for work. But no was such a difficult word. It always gummed up her mouth like sticky toffee. Still, good to know your greatest weakness, even if, at forty-five, it was more of a fluorescent tattoo inked on your forehead.

Hannah stretched her right arm, then her left. Fanning out her hands, she released the tension needling at her fingertips and imagined it floating up into the sky. Disintegrating into the earth’s atmosphere.

“Galen’s going to be fine.” Was she reassuring herself or Poppy? “It won’t be easy; it won’t happen overnight, but I can fix him.” Her words condensed into a tiny cloud, the only water vapor in what would, no doubt, be another beautiful, dangerously dry day. “And I’ve promised he’ll never have to return to another mental hospital.”

“I know, girl. We’ll keep him safe. So. We standing out here till the next millennium, or are you offering me coffee?” Poppy brushed past Hannah and jogged up the front steps. The dogs, except for Rosie, followed.

The screen door slammed, but Hannah stood still in the dark and listened for the sound of falling leaves. A reminder that cooler weather was on the way, that eventually the oppressive heat would break.

Ghosts stepped out of the shadows—memories of Galen and Liam riding bikes and falling out of trees. Well, Liam was the one who fell out of the tree, while he was grounded and attempting an escape. Galen, always the big brother, had tried to cover up the misdemeanor with a lie. Not a very good one, either.

Hannah smiled.

Lie to me and your asses are mine, she’d told the boys when they were old enough to understand. She had never elaborated, preferring to let their imaginations construct a suitable punishment. Liam had decided this meant Mommy would smack him with a wooden spoon—a threat she had issued once. But Galen’s mind had drawn an elaborate scenario that involved Mom locking him in the crawl space where he would be bitten by a brown recluse spider and die in excruciating pain.

Honest to God, she used to believe Liam would end up in Sing Sing. Constantly seeking to be high on life, his wild streak far exceeded hers, and she’d lost her virginity at fourteen. But Galen? The worst thing he ever did was stay up till 3:00 a.m. on a school night writing poetry.

Through the darkness, a flush of blooms hovered over her mutabilis rose like brightly colored butterflies. How wrong she had been to assume all roses were high maintenance. This old-fashioned plant had thrived in her parched garden, and now it burst open with a second round of buds and flowers the color of apricot, baby pink and crimson. As petals unfurled in drought and sometimes opened at dusk, hope grew in unexpected places.

Hannah shoved her hands into the front pocket of her UNC hoodie and stared toward the tree line, wishing on miracles and ignoring the whisper of concern that told her wind in a bone-dry forest was never a good sign.

Three

Needles of rain softened to a drizzle as Will slipped on his Ray-Bans and became another B-list celebrity walking through Central Park. A bag lady ranted about the Apocalypse, and a beautiful young woman pushing a double stroller smiled at him. Or maybe she was appreciating the ridiculously large bouquet of flowers he had bought for his overworked publicist.

The path climbed steeply toward Dene Rock, and Will followed. He would perch on the outcrop and find the solution to unraveling this mess with his dad. Lying once about Freddie’s death had been an unforgivable lapse of judgment, and yet Will was now stuck in the middle of that lie—a spider caught in its own web. The old man had hooked up with the substitute art teacher, and the two of them were tracking Freddie’s trip with an energy previously reserved for circumventing the rules at Hawk’s Ridge Retirement Community. The first time Will had lacked the patience to deal with his dad’s memory loss, the first time he’d thrown out some comment that was meant—meant—to be forgotten, and his dad had glommed on to it. How could the old man recall a brief, late-night phone conversation but erase the evening Will had told him about Freddie’s death? Some cruel cosmic joke that wasn’t funny. And it had spun out of control. Time to bring the charade to a close.

Tucking the bouquet under his arm, Will scrambled up the slick rock behind the rustic summerhouse. As he sat, his iPhone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hey, Dad. How did you sleep?”

“Good, good. Had a great day, son. Had a great day.”

“Had? It’s only nine o’clock.”

“Been to Walmart and bought a map.” The old man chuckled. Chuckle was a verb Will hated, a word he would never use in his writing. His dad, however, was definitely chuckling. “Bought me a huge world map, son. To track Freddie’s trip.”

“I know, Dad. You told me yesterday.”

“I plan on showin’ it to that new guy, Bernie, down the hall. His grandsons visit every Sunday. Take him to that fancy diner on Main Street for blueberry pancakes. Wait till I tell him the whole cotton-pickin’ story about Freddie. Hell. Five years old and he has a passport. I never owned one, son. Never been outside the state.”

Will flopped onto his back. Droplets of mist fluttered to his sunglass lenses, but in his mind a slab of grief was falling from heaven, crushing him into dust. Three months and nine days, and each hour the grief took on a more solid form.

“Willie? You still there?”

Will positioned the bouquet across his chest like an arrangement of funeral lilies. “Dad, Freddie isn’t—”

“Able to contact us. Yes, yes, you told me yesterday. Shame on you, son. Just ’cos Freddie’s out of reach don’t mean we should give up on him, do it?”

“Dad—”

“Sorry, son. Poppy’s here with some more of them colored markers. Got to go.”

For real? His dad had hung up on him? Will stared at a flock of gray pigeons moving silently through a gray sky. Always he forced himself to look up, never down, forward never backward, and yet these days his mind lingered in places he didn’t want to visit: the last game of tickle monster; Freddie pumping his legs on a swing and singing “The Wheels on the Bus”; Freddie standing alone on a crowded street because the woman who should have been holding his hand had wandered off to look at a pair of five-hundred-dollar shoes in a boutique window.

If only he’d paid as much attention to Cass’s personality as he had to her ass, then maybe he would have figured out that she was a total psycho and self-medicating with alcohol. You’d have thought, given his childhood, he’d be able to spot crazy—despite the disguise of a well-cared-for body poured into sexy, couture clothes. Unlike his mom, Cass could’ve afforded the best treatment. When Will was sixteen, he’d found a psychiatrist who would take Medicaid patients, but always his dad had the same answer: “I’ve seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, son. Besides, your mama’s just high-strung. That’s the price we pay for her beauty.” As if his dad were really that shallow.

Will breathed through his nostrils, panting like a beast.

He’d spent three decades praying he didn’t have a dark side, since that concept came with seriously twisted DNA. Retreat was his strategy for relationships; anger was a soul-sucking distraction he had learned to push aside...and yet. And yet. If he allowed himself to think of Cassandra, the person who had murdered his son, who had turned his baby into a statistic, another kid killed by a drunk driver with a blood alcohol level of point two-six, Will would have to admit that he was capable of violence. How could he wish two people were still alive for such different reasons—Freddie so he could hold him and never let go; Cassandra so he could kill her himself?

Will jumped up and scrambled down the rock. There was only one thing left to do.

* * *

The light would be fading and the temperature dropping as he down-climbed, but he wanted to feel air on his back, on his exposed skin; he wanted to strip away his layers. If he could climb naked, he would. Will tugged his T-shirt over his head and tossed it into the trunk of the Prius along with his iPhone.

He pulled back his shoulders and stretched into a swan dive without leaving the ground. The clutter in his brain floated away, disappeared into the blue sky above the Shawangunk Mountains like a handful of balloons set free.

Nothing existed beyond the challenge ahead: the mastery it would take to scale Shockley’s Ceiling; the choreography of his body moving across the horizontal cracks; the euphoria of standing above the world and looking into the face of God.

He was going unroped.

He would ride doubt and push aside fear, and trust in nothing but his own judgment. And the payoff would come as his mind and body lapsed into harmony. When everything reconciled. When he found clarity. When he knew what to do next.

He grabbed his chalk bag and his nylon shoes. The rest of his rack was still in the car from his last climb. He would sort it out when he returned to the city.

Will began walking. He followed the connector trail to a twenty-foot-wide toe of rock and ignored the small group of tourist spectators. A woman with a pair of binoculars giggled.

Loss of concentration leads to poor self-control and frantic climbing.

Already, he was reading the route, decoding the puzzle, figuring out individual moves. He could climb left of the roof, but no, he would not avoid the crux. He would face the obstacle and crank it. A deceptive 5.6, pitch three demanded more skill than less-experienced climbers realized.

He strode past the large flake to the right and arrived at the base of the climb. He cracked his knuckles and stared up at the rock. No doubt, no thought except for one: I can do this.

* * *

An easy mantel would get him over. Don’t think, don’t hesitate, don’t stop.

Will pushed down on the ledge with his hands, swung his feet up, balanced and stood. Hard not to feel a little gripped. He had cleared the roof; he had nailed the crux. But he had to keep going. Momentum would take him the last sixty feet to the top. Soon he would rest but now wasn’t the time. His mind was often ready to quit before his body. He was not going to flame out.

He stepped around the corner to the second roof and eyeballed his next hold, trusting his left hand for balance.

He dipped into his chalk bag, blew on his fingertips, reached up with his right hand, found a roundish hold, gripped with his finger pads. The muscles in his shoulder stretched out. Taut. For a moment he hung, suspended in air. Time grew still, stripped down to a single camera shot, a study in absolute control. The world stopped breathing. There was nothing beyond the rhythm of the climb flowing through his limbs, through his muscles, through his breath.

He pictured his next move—a heel hook—held it in his mind, executed it. He was over the second roof.

Grabbing, pulling, swinging, Will kept moving upward into the sky.

When he topped out, he threw back his head and let his spirit soar toward the heavens. He released his voice into the air: a scream of triumph, a scream of existence, a commitment to life issued in his own private chapel. The echo floated down to the forest below, to the vast seascape of green speckled with advancing fall. Green, the color of rejuvenation, the color of life. His mind was clear; he knew his way forward. His work-in-progress may have grown cold, but Freddie’s adventure had a heartbeat. So what if it was fiction with an audience of two? He was crafting a better version of the truth, crafting a story worth living for, a story to remember. Giving his dad the gift of untainted memories when he had so few left.

Will flung his arms wide. Standing above the world, he got it. He finally got it.

In the four years since his mom’s death, his dad had been a mess of binge drinking and misfiring brain signals. Only a few weeks ago the old man had said, “People tell you it gets easier, son. But that ain’t the truth. Every day I miss your mama more.” Despite the mashed-up memory, his dad never forgot how much he still loved that one person who’d meant everything.

Just as his dad had never let go of his mom, he would never let go of Freddie.

He would never stop missing Freddie, and he shouldn’t have tried. He shouldn’t stomp down the memories. He should bust them open. He should celebrate Freddie’s life.

As soon as he got back to his apartment, he would start researching Freddie’s adventure. His last, great adventure. And for as long as it took, he would hold Freddie in the present tense.

* * *

The second he picked up his phone, Will knew he’d screwed up. Four text messages from Ally, all variations on a theme: “Where the hell are you, and why are you not answering your phone?” Then one message that said, “Have you lost your freakin’ mind?”