“Rent is cheap,” Lucas said.

“I bet. I mean, I guess it’s cool in a Jetsons sort of way. Now all you need is Rosie the Robot to wash your socks. Or an Alice. Oh my God, do you remember the mom’s name on The Brady Bunch?”

“Can’t say that I do,” Lucas said.

“Carol. Carol Brady?”

“So?”

“So, Caroline? Living here?”

“Oh. Yeah, great.” Lucas swept his hand across the countertop and inspected his palm for dirt, then looked to see if Jeanie had gone outside to collect another box. She had. “That would be funny if Carrie was planning on making it out here at all.”

Mark’s smile faltered, then faded completely. “What’re you talking about? I thought she was staying behind for work.”

Lucas cleared his throat and shook his head. We aren’t going to talk about this, it said. Not right now. Mark rubbed the back of his neck, suddenly uncomfortable. Both their eyes darted to Jeanie the moment the girl wobbled into the room with a box marked “KITCHEN.”

“Where should I put this?” she asked, peering over the box that was far too big for her to handle. “I picked it up and something made a noise. I don’t think you packed this very well, Dad.” Lucas pushed away from the kitchen counter and took it from her arms. The tinkle of broken glass sounded from inside. “I didn’t do it,” she protested, holding up her hands. Whatever had shattered inside during the cross-country trek, Lucas couldn’t bring himself to care.

The few things he had managed to talk Caroline out of were old, replaceable—stuff she would have gotten rid of whether she and Lucas had split up or not. But a handful of kitchen bric-a-brac hadn’t been nearly enough to cut it. Along with the floor-model mattress, he had bought Jeanie a scratch-and-dent bedroom set off Craigslist. He’d found a glass-top coffee table for fifteen bucks at a neighbor’s garage sale and had splurged on a discontinued sofa at a furniture place a few blocks from the house. The move would have been easier without the extra stuff, but he had decided to drag it across the country all in the name of saving time.

Lucas placed the box against the wall while his daughter sauntered to the fridge and pulled open the door. “Can we get pizza later?” At least she was speaking to him again.

“Sure, but we’re going to Mark and Selma’s for dinner.”

“Selma’s probably planning out what she’s going to feed you even as we speak,” Mark told her. “You tell her someone’s coming over and she goes all Martha Stewart militant.”

Lucas responded with a grin, but the memory of Caroline acting the same way twisted a thorn into the soft flesh of his heart.

God, Caroline had loved entertaining. The holiday season made her smile glow a few watts brighter. She would spend weeks planning elaborate dinners for friends and family. If her parents in Jersey insisted Thanksgiving should be at their place, she would orchestrate an alternate Thanksgiving meal for the weekend after. It didn’t matter how many leftovers were packed into the fridge. Christmas was a production with her annual party. At the height of Lucas’s career, it brought in over two hundred ho-ho-hoing guests sipping hot buttered rum and snacking on spice cake. But then finances got tight. They sold the house in Port Washington, and Caroline’s inner domestic goddess withered like a neglected houseplant. It was just another aspect of their lives Lucas was convinced he had single-handedly ruined.

He liked Mark’s girlfriend; Selma was great. But it would be difficult to watch her flit back and forth between the kitchen and dining room without feeling like he’d killed a piece of his own family’s happiness.

Leaning against the counter with her phone in her hand, Jeanie looked up from the glowing screen of her phone and peered out the kitchen window just above the sink. “What’s that?” She nodded toward the glass, and both Lucas and Mark sidled up next to her to see what she was looking at.

There was a generous swatch of open space just beyond the window, and while it wasn’t quite a lawn, it wasn’t anything a mower couldn’t fix. But Jeanie wasn’t focused on the grass that had grown wild across the backyard. She was directing her attention toward a copse of trees—a dozen straight rows running back an acre or two.

“Orchard,” Mark said. “A pretty big one, too.”

“A cherry orchard,” Lucas clarified. Jeanie turned to her dad. There are cherries? He nodded at her eager expression. “Go ahead, check it out.”

She slid her phone into the pocket of her pajama pants and gave them both a faint smile before slipping out the kitchen’s side door.

“Man,” Mark said after Jeanie was out of earshot. “She’s gotten big. You don’t see a kid for a year and it’s, like, you hardly recognize them.”

Mark’s statement stopped Lucas’s heart. Was that what he had to look forward to; hardly recognizing his own daughter after she returned to New York to go back to school? Even if he saw her every summer, that was nine months out of the year that he’d be without his kid. She’d grow up out of his line of sight.

“Yeah,” he said, watching Jeanie through the glass as she moved toward the trees.

He would lose her. If he didn’t make this work, if this project fell through, he would have nothing. The only thing he’d have left would be memories. Mere shadows of Jeanie’s former self. Of his former life. Of what he’d once had but would never have again.

9

Sunday, February 14, 1982

One Year, One Month Before the Sacrament

AUDRA WASN’T A fan of Valentine’s Day, but she baked heart-shaped sugar cookies anyway. She spent all morning decorating them with pink icing, as if doing so would give promise to something new, something she had always wanted but never had the chance to take for herself. Deacon’s talk of spirituality had given her pause. It had been a little creepy, but she couldn’t deny the pull she continued to feel. So they were reverent, spiritual; that didn’t mean she had to be. Turning away from Deacon and his friends just because they had alternative beliefs—whatever they were—would have been petty. Deacon was offering companionship, a sense of understanding that she hadn’t experienced before. Rejecting such a gift on account of him believing in spiritual awareness and self-enlightenment struck her as an unforgiveable sin. She gazed at the sugar cookie held in the palm of her left hand, the word LOVE scripted in pink across its face. She was afraid, but maybe her fear was a sign that this was just what she needed. Throw off the bowlines. Walk into the unknown. Be fearless. Open your eyes.

She spent more money on groceries than she ever had before, buying enough food to feed what struck her as an army. The love army, she thought, and cracked a grin as she unloaded her shopping onto orange Formica. She roasted a couple of chickens, made a green bean casserole, tossed a salad, and followed the recipe for fresh baked bread out of an old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The plate of heart-shaped cookies was the finishing touch—an unspoken love letter to Deacon and his friends. Okay, it relayed. I’m scared, but I’m willing to listen. I’m tired of being alone.

She made all the preparations without the slightest idea of whether they were still on the beach, avoiding the thought that maybe they had packed up and left. She refused to believe that her chance to change her life had come and gone. When she slipped through the trees and into the clearing, her heart leaped at the sight of those two red tents. They shivered in the unrelenting wind, their hue darker beneath clouds pregnant with rain. Deacon looked up from the fire, Lily and Sunnie flanking him. He didn’t get up to meet her this time, allowing Audra to approach on her own. When she reached the warmth of the bonfire, she pulled her shoulders up to her ears and gave the trio an unsure smile.