The Ground Beneath Read online

  “Sheila?” I’ve hit a hell of a nerve.

  After another long sigh, she says, “I suppose marital status won’t stop you. All I can ask is that you respect what I’m asking, to simply leave her alone. If there is any sense of gallantry in that one-track mind of yours, then you’ll be a perfect gentleman around her. Better yet, you’ll try to be around her as little as possible.”

  Her assessment of me today is on the brutal side, but maybe I can’t blame Sheila too much—it’s not like she’s ever witnessed me being in an actual relationship with a woman. And we could go around in circles here for another fifteen minutes, me poking holes in Allison’s supposed innocence by reminding Sheila girls who are innocent don’t wear dresses that short, but that’s a dick move, and I don’t have it in me. I don’t want to reduce Allison to a caricature.

  “Okay.” I say it clearly and concisely and without whatever else Sheila seems to expect of me.

  “Okay? Really? You’re actually going to honor my wishes on this?”

  I pretty much jump out of my chair. “Yeah. I’m not going to mess with her. You have my word.”

  And for all of my deficits, my word still means something.

  Chapter Two

  ALLISON

  “Is it a good time?” I peek my head into Sheila’s office a few minutes after I’d watched Hunter Lawrence walk past me at the reception desk, giving me nothing more than a quick smile before he’d walked out the door. I’ve never been a big follower of the NFL, but of course I know all about him. He grew up in Mountainside, five miles up the road from where I did, small town boy making more than good. Seeing him up close, I’d blushed—how could I not with a guy as famous and handsome as he is?

  “Yes, yes, of course! Come on in and have a seat.”

  I close the door behind us and make my way to the chair across from her, balancing the notebook I’d been using to take notes on my lap. “I’m so sorry about earlier. I guess I was in the copy room when he came in, so I didn’t know—”

  “It’s not a problem,” Sheila says before I can get out my entire excuse. “We were just practicing a promo. Anyway, how is your first day going—I guess you must have had a question for me when you popped your head in?”

  “Yes,” I say, looking down at my open notebook. “I’ve written down a few of them actually. I’m having trouble pulling up your scheduling program, and I think I hung up on someone earlier, so I could use a quick refresher on the phone system.”

  “Okay…” I think I hear an edge of annoyance in her voice, one that she’s trying to hide.

  “It’s just that I don’t want to mess anything up,” I hurry to say. If Sheila hadn’t been my mother’s good friend at one point in her life, there’s not a chance in hell I’d have gotten this job or would have a roof as nice as Sheila and Lisa’s over my head. I know how much I owe her.

  “You’re doing great for your first day,” she says, loosening her features back up. “And some of my clients… well, I wouldn’t mind hanging up on them myself! Lets take a look at the phones and the scheduling, okay? Then I think we’ve both earned ourselves a break.”

  With a degree of patience I’m grateful for, Sheila goes over my responsibilities as her assistant again and gives me brief tutorials on the technology that is all so new to me. I’m not a complete luddite of course—I’d worked as my dad’s assistant at his church through high school afternoons and then full time all of last year, and I’d been around hoards of computers through school, especially working for the school paper, but we didn’t have anything like the more complicated setup Sheila has here.

  “Thanks,” I tell her, having taken another page of notes that I’ll be going over again tonight, just as if I were preparing for a test. “I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it.”

  “You will,” she says, putting her hand on my shoulder. “It’ll feel overwhelming, but just remember there’s nothing life and death here. You won’t be killing anyone by dropping a call.”

  Life and death.

  I know she doesn’t mean anything by it—it’s just an expression—but I deflate at the reminder of death and everything that comes with it. She sees it too by the way her smile falls into a deep frown.

  “I’m so sorry.” She shakes her head. “Sometimes I just forget. But I wasn’t there—I’ve been out of that town for so long, so… separated. I can only imagine your pain, Allison.”

  I won’t cry.

  I simply won’t.

  I left our little town—Coalton—and came to Seattle to get away from the tears half of my community couldn’t get past. It’s been a year since the accident, and people back home still looked at me in that way you look at someone you feel sorry for. They were still baking pies and casseroles for my parents and saying things like, “God has a plan,” or “He doesn’t give us more than we can handle,” and, “He has his reasons, doesn’t he?”

  That was a lie, a pile of crap, and there were so many times I wished I’d just said those things aloud instead of standing there and smiling and thanking them for their worry.

  “We do have to move on,” Dad would remind me while Mom still spent half her days in bed with the curtains drawn and in tears. “God would want that.”

  But I didn’t care much what God wanted. He’d given me way more than I could handle and broken my heart into a million different pieces. And I wasn’t fond of what Dad’s ideas were for me to move on either. My only hope of surviving was running and starting anew.

  “It’s okay,” I manage to get out through the wobble of my chin. “I just really appreciate this, Sheila. It’s going to be better here—I can feel it.”

  She smiles. “That’s the best kind of attitude to have, and I think you’re right. There are so many more possibilities here, room to find yourself and what you want to do with your life. I never would have made it in Coalton.” She shakes her head and gets a far off look in her eyes.

  I’m not sure what thoughts she has of Coalton, but I can’t imagine all of them are good. Otherwise, she might not have left like she did all those years ago.

  “I have vague memories of you,” I say, her eyes snapping back to me. “I mean, sort of recollections, but I think you used to push me on the swing set out back, right? I remember Mom telling me to call you Aunt Sheila.”

  She swallows hard, nods, then clears her throat. “That’s right. And I had the silliest nickname for you—I called you Baby Alli.” Then she laughs. “But you weren’t a baby by then. I think you were three when I moved away. And now you’re all grown up. Your parents must be proud.”

  “I’m trying to do right by everyone,” is how I choose to answer that.

  Mom and Dad were stumped for words when I told them I tracked Sheila down. I was so desperate to get out of Coalton, desperate to find anyone who might be able to help me, and when Sheila responded to my message to her, it was a stroke of luck I hadn’t expected.

  Her first words back to my inquiry about any advice she could offer me about a move to Seattle were, “I’m sorry.” The phrase wasn’t an apology for not being able to help me—in fact she’d go above and beyond doing just that—but because she’d heard about the tragedy back home. She’d wanted to send flowers and condolences but hadn’t been sure they’d be received well, and so she hadn’t. I told her we’d nearly drowned in flowers but thanked her deeply for her sentiment. When I told her how stuck I felt in Coalton, how I often felt the residents there kept me anchored to the past, she offered me a way out, a job and a place to stay.

  “It’s the least I can do,” she told me.

  But it was so much more than that.

  “I’m meeting Lisa for lunch,” she says, pulling us back to the present. “You’re welcome to come along if you’d like, but I have to warn you, Lisa’s thinking about a career change, so our topic of conversation isn’t going to be very light.”

  “I’ll be okay on my own.” I’m already imposing on Sheila and Lisa’s alone time at their condo, and I don’t want to d
o more of it. “I kind of want to walk down to the waterfront and grab something to eat there anyway. I’ve got an hour, right?”

  “That’s right. Just give me a minute to grab my stuff, and I’ll take the elevator down with you.”

  “Okay,” I say, stuffing my notebook into my purse while she locks up her office.

  It’s just she and I in the elevator, and after we pass half a dozen floors going down, she turns to me and asks, “Did Hunter say anything to you on his way out of the office?”

  “Hunter?” The ease with which she says his name makes me envision a deliveryman or a copy machine repair guy. “Hunter Lawrence you mean?” I’m really going to have to get used to dealing with pro sports players like they’re just regular people.

  She lets out a nervous chuckle. “Yes, Hunter Lawrence. I’m sure you’ve heard your fair share of things about him.”

  I nod. I don’t really want to say out loud that Hunter’s flings with an endless line of women is common knowledge, so I settle on something that is equally true and more flattering. “He’s an amazing quarterback.”

  “That he is,” she says, looking up at the digital display of the floors we’re passing, then quickly adds, “but he’s also very popular with the ladies, and I’d hate to see you get mixed up with him, Allison. Can you promise me that, even if he tries, you’ll work hard on remaining immune to his brooding charm?”

  I don’t mean to laugh, but I can’t help myself. As if Hunter Lawrence would have any interest in me. Even with his rotator cuff injury that made news a couple weeks ago, I’m sure he has at least a dozen women throw themselves at him on any given day.

  “I’m being dead serious,” Sheila says. “He’s expressed an interest in you, and it’s my duty to make sure you steer clear.”

  Hunter Lawrence has expressed an interest in me?

  A flush of adrenaline pours through my body. How could it not?

  Hunter Lawrence is probably the hottest guy in the NFL, his face plastered on social media and in magazines and of course on TV. He’s like six-foot-two with the kind of broad shoulders you could climb. His blue eyes are big and beautiful, his skin tanned and just a little freckled, his hair blond and thick enough to grab onto. He’s got a masculine sexiness to him that most women wouldn’t be able to resist.

  And maybe in a different life, I wouldn’t be able to resist him either.

  But there’s no danger of me falling for him.

  “That’s not even on my radar, Sheila. I’ve done the whole football player thing, and it didn’t work out.”

  “Oh… no… yes, well, I didn’t mean it that way.” She’s flustered now, probably wishing she’d never opened her mouth.

  “I know you didn’t,” I tell her. “But really, I’m beyond flattered Hunter would even look my way twice, but, like I said, you don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Okay,” she says, looking relieved when the elevator doors open and drop us on the ground floor. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

  I walk toward Pike Place and the waterfront, well aware of the looks men give me for my choice of wardrobe. Like Hunter’s supposed interest in me, it’s flattering to have men look at you, to be interested in you, but that isn’t my objective.

  After I’d bought my bus ticket to Seattle, after I spent a few nights at Sheila and Lisa’s, been offered this job and trusted things would work out here, I’d gone on my first big shopping spree. I spent a lot of the money I’d saved up over the last year on new clothes, opting for short skirts and dresses, snug fitting blouses and shirts, and heels that were higher than anything I’d worn back in Coalton. I’d also had my hair cut, twelve inches of my dark brown locks gone just like that, my new style going just past my shoulders and cut into layers that made it lighter and more modern. I’d barely ever worn makeup back home, but now I did, nothing too outlandish but enough to highlight my features, enough to fit in.

  In Coalton, they wanted to keep me innocent like I was some un-ripened fruit they never wanted to spoil. That innocence is what I blame for the accident, just a little over a year ago now. My parents wanting to keep me virtuous, I could understand. My father is our town’s Episcopal priest, my parents both firm believers that you don’t have sex before marriage. But it was Wyatt, my husband, who built me up into such a paragon of purity that it was stifling. If only he’d trusted me to take the same steps he was taking without me, if he’d loved me enough to hold my hand through it and discover things together, then maybe he’d still be alive.

  The sun warms my skin, and I soak in as much of it as I can. Seattle is known for cloudy weather and long days of drizzle, but today, in the earliest days of September, it’s warm and sunny, just the slightest of breezes coming up off of the water. Wyatt never liked Seattle. He said it was too big, too full of people who didn’t care about the things you were supposed to, about family and football. I told him he was crazy—Seattle had their Twelfth Man, and they loved their Seahawks. He said that’s not what he meant, that they were missing “the heart,” the kind of heart you could only feel in a small town on a Friday night cheering for your high school football team.

  “You don’t find that in the NFL, and you sure as heck don’t find it in Seattle,” he said once, his words as clear now as they’d been then after one of the games he’d won his senior year. Like Hunter Lawrence, Wyatt Mitchell was the star quarterback for his team, and I’d once felt honored to be the girl at his side.

  But if I’d known the truth about him, I wouldn’t have felt honored at all. There are still days I miss him like crazy, days I wish I could change history. But of course, he’s not the only one I wish I could go back and save.

  I get a huge pile of French fries, some coleslaw on the side, and a cup of coke, more ice than soda, and sit on a bench overlooking the water. There are so many people all around me, vendors selling postcards, framed photos and flowers just down the road, a homeless man playing the guitar under a tree, his case open and encouraging of donations. There are tourists lining up to go into the original Starbucks and men and women in business attire grabbing a quick bite to eat on their lunch breaks.

  As much as Wyatt would have hated all of this, Abe would have loved it. My brother was a small town boy at heart, but he loved the big city too. When he was fourteen, and I was twelve, our parents brought us to Seattle for the entire weekend. He’d gawked at pretty much everything he saw when we were out and about, doing the thing that tourists do. There were probably more people in a square mile of Seattle than there were in all of Coalton, and there were so many differences among them. Even then, I’d known Abe was different too. I imagined I’d lose him one day to a big city, whether it was Seattle or Portland or somewhere further, New York or Los Angeles.

  But as I take a bite of my deep fried potatoes and take a sip of my icy cold Coke, surrounded by so much life, I’m still kind of amazed that I’m the one who’s here. And it’s only because Wyatt died and took my brother with him.

  I don’t like to think about them being gone—of course I don’t. If there was a procedure that could erase that day, where I could believe that Wyatt was living his life out on some ranch in Montana and Abe in some big city far away, then I’d do it. Even if I believed I’d never see them again, never know exactly how their lives unfolded, all I’d want is to know that they’re alive, living the lives they’d always wanted.

  Dad likes to remind me they are still alive, only in a different way, in an afterlife and in God’s embrace.

  There are days I struggle with that, days I’d really like a lot more proof.

  “Anyone sitting here?” It’s an older woman who asks, taking me out of my thoughts.

  She’s wearing too much perfume and giant sunglasses that seem to hide half of her face. I’m just about finished with my food, so I smile and say, “Nope. It’s totally free.”

  “Oh, good,” she says, nearly collapsing her body next to mine and sighing. “My kids are driving me nuts. I am not going to stand in line for ha
lf an hour to get coffee at the original Starbucks when it’s the same damn thing as any Starbucks in any place in the entire country. I mean, am I right?”

  I shrug. “Probably.”

  “Oh, it’s the experience I guess,” she says, barely turning my way before looking around at all of the people and places and things happening all at once. “They’ve wanted to visit Seattle since that whole grunge thing in the nineties, so I guess I should be glad they let me tag along with them and the grandkids.”

  “Where are you from?” I ask her, taking a quick look at my phone to be sure I’ll have enough time to get back to the office.

  “Columbus, Ohio. Never been west of the Rockies until this week. It’s breathtaking seeing all these mountains,” she says, the snow-capped Olympic range on display in the far off distance.

  “Yeah,” I agree, having grown up on the eastern slopes of the Cascades. “I’ve lived in this state all my life, and they still amaze me sometimes.”

  “You’re married,” she says all of a sudden, and I follow the tilt of her head down to my hand, the one I still wear my engagement ring on along with the band I’d thrown in Wyatt’s face the last day I saw him.

  “Oh… yes.”

  “How long?” she asks, painted on eyebrows seeming to push beyond the upper edge of her sunglasses, her eyes underneath surely expectant.

  “Um… well… a year.”

  She clasps her hands together. “A newlywed! You know, I was married for forty years when my husband…”

  I stop listening to the words she’s saying, though I do at least look at her and nod. Suddenly, the rings on my finger feel like weights that could pull me down to the bottom of the ocean if I let them. I’ve kept them on partly out of guilt and partly out of respect.

  But why am I wearing them now?

  Why should I tell anyone I’m married when I’m not?

  I’m a widow, Wyatt’s death making me a single woman, not legally bound to him or his family or the small town I’d finally had to leave.