The Underside of Joy

children’s emotional pain somehow eased my own.

Chapter Seventeen
    Thin ribbons of sleep weaved in and out of my frenzied thoughts. When the Claytons’ rooster crowed I sat up with a start. There was one letter. I’d forgotten. The letter Joe told me about. The Dear Joe letter, in which Paige had handed over the kids to him and said arrivederci. If I could find that letter . . .
    I got up in the rosy-tinted darkness and pulled on my jeans and a sweatshirt over Joe’s T-shirt. I picked up all my globs of Kleenex, scattered in the bed like jellyfish, then switched on the lamp, picked up the scratch pad, and jotted down all the things I needed to do. Life beyond rhubarb seeds and chicken feed.
    After I cleaned the coop, I rushed down to open the store. I flipped on the lights and for a moment felt comforted. Even though all my money was sunk into it, even though we’d taken a risk and every day left us more tired and a little more broke, it still felt exactly right. I was looking forward to the day when I wouldn’t be distracted by the custody worry and could focus on my mornings behind the counter, waiting on customers, planning menus with David while the kids were in school. David walked in just then, balancing a tower of boxes.
    ‘Were your ears ringing?’ He set down the boxes and started pulling out supplies. ‘Because I was just talking to a reporter from the Press Democrat. They want to talk to you too. And – you’re gonna love this. Sunset might do a story on us. I’m working on Real Simple too. But those are months away.’
    I nodded, kept nodding.
    He reached for my shoulder. ‘You okay? You look exhausted.’
    ‘Why, thank you.’ I straightened my back. ‘I’m fine. It’s just . . . I want to stay down here and play store with you, but I’ve got to go up and look through files for this discovery shit for the hearing.’
    ‘Oooh. Sounds like too much fun.’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘This too shall pass. And soon your kids will be back home with you. You’ll be walking them to school, then doing interviews for national magazines, giving them charming and clever quotes for their articles, stirring your homemade fresh-from-your-garden vegetable soup, and sashaying over to put another log on the fire.’
    ‘Right now I’m going to sashay up to the office to bury myself in piles of financial papers.’
    ‘Hey, did you roast the root vegetables?’
    ‘Um. No.’ I did not have time to roast root vegetables. ‘Do you need me to chop them?’
    ‘Oh. You didn’t even chop them?’
    ‘David. I’m sorry. I can do it now.’
    ‘Are you sure ?’ No. I meant yes, I was sure that I couldn’t. But I did. I chopped carrots and sweet potatoes and butternut squash and onions fast, the way he’d taught me, in big chunks, and I almost cut my finger off twice.
    ‘Oh my God,’ David said. ‘Be careful. The recipe calls for blood orange juice, not blood and orange juice.’
    I filled a half hotel pan and tossed the vegetables with olive oil and thyme, salt and pepper, a touch of maple syrup and freshly squeezed blood-orange juice, managing to keep my own blood out of it, and stuck them in the oven so the whole store smelled of love and nurturing and wholesome goodness, and then I dashed up the stairs two at a time so I could quickly try to discover incriminating evidence regarding the woman who was trying to get custody of Annie and Zach.
    I locked the office door, just in case David showed up bearing his lemon scones to ease my pain. I pulled out more of the unmarked boxes. I was going to find that letter and bring the true Paige to the surface.
    I’d find the letter. I’d have Gwen Alterman shoot off a declaration so Paige would realize that she could visit with them but she couldn’t push her way in now and take over, take Annie and Zach away from where they belonged. Here. With me. With us.
    I found a box with Zach’s empty baby book, not handmade like Annie’s, but store-bought with blue bears. All the spaces – for first smile, first laugh, first word, first tooth – empty.
    I found more photos too. Not family photos. Photos of Paige.
    Undressing . . .
    Nude.
    As soon as it struck me what they were, I dropped them in the file and stood up. Dizzy again. I obviously needed a Xanax, so I took two out of my backpack and swallowed them. I kicked the box back into the closet, unlocked the office door, started walking down the stairs. I stopped. I turned around. I walked back, locked