No One Ever Asked Read online

  “Austin.” Camille wagged the can of SPF 30 at her son. “We came here to swim, not read.”

  He folded the corner of the page to hold his spot.

  Paige gasped. “That’s a library book!”

  Austin set the book in the beach bag and peeled off his T-shirt, revealing skinny white arms and some red pimples on his back. She’d talked to Neil about calling a dermatologist, but Neil had scoffed.

  He’s getting to be that age, Camille. I had them too. They went away. Don’t make it a big deal.

  “You look frazzled,” Kathleen said, sliding her sunglasses down her nose.

  “I let Taylor drive.” She fished a second bottle from the bottom of the bag—SPF 50—and began spraying Paige, who had already removed her bright-pink cover-up and stood with her arms held out to her sides. Austin finished with the SPF 30 and dropped it on top of the beach towels.

  Paige’s body rocked as Camille rubbed the white spray into her shoulders. “Mom thinks Taylor’s the worst driver in the whole world.”

  Kathleen laughed.

  “I think no such thing, missy,” Camille said, her attention sliding to the bad driver. Taylor had slipped out of the clubhouse and was heading toward Cody and Alexis. Camille watched as Taylor took off her shorts. Her shoulders and arms remained covered by the long-sleeve, lightweight cover-up Camille had purchased for her a couple of weeks ago.

  Kathleen saw the cover-up as further evidence of Taylor’s uncommon responsibility. A teenager who cared about the dangers of skin cancer. Camille knew it had more to do with self-esteem. While most people would die for a runner’s body like Taylor’s, she suspected her daughter was insecure about her chest. Or lack thereof.

  “Mo-om,” Paige whined, giving her leg an impatient wiggle.

  Camille finished her spraying, then patted Paige’s side—a nonverbal cue that she was free to go.

  She ran off to the shallow end, where Dane—Kathleen’s youngest—was swimming about with a snorkel and flippers, and very quickly began coaching him on the proper way to accomplish an underwater handstand. Dane was going into third grade, which meant he was one year older than Paige. Cody was one year older than Taylor. Both sets of children would—of course—grow up and get married. Their families would vacation together every summer in the Dominican, and Camille and Kathleen would officially be two of the best grandmothers of all time. At least, this was their plan.

  “Why don’t you have Neil give her driving lessons?” Kathleen said.

  “He can’t. Not with his work schedule.”

  “You’re a saint.”

  “Taylor would beg to differ.”

  Across the pool, Cody did a running cannonball into the deep end, sending up a fountain of water that had Taylor and Alexis shrieking and pulling up their knees. Cody surfaced with a grin, shaking the water from his hair like a wet dog. It had turned a rich golden in the sun, his skin as tan as Taylor’s nut-brown legs.

  Austin jumped into the pool where it was waist deep. He sucked in his stomach against the cold, his hands hovering above the water as he waded over to Bennett. Camille didn’t miss the way Bennett frowned at Austin’s approach.

  It had the knots in her stomach tying tighter.

  She and Kathleen met at a women’s Bible study at their church, and quickly hit it off. At the time, Cody was in first grade at Lewis and Clark Elementary. Taylor had just started kindergarten at O’Hare. Both women were getting their feet wet with the PTA, and both women had drooling baby boys on their hips—Austin and Bennett. It didn’t seem possible that this year those boys were both going into middle school.

  Camille had mixed hopes. Maybe Austin would finally have a best buddy—that one tight connection he could never seem to make in elementary school. But then, sometimes Bennett treated her son like a convenient friend—someone he’d hang out with when it was just the two of them but ditched as soon as anyone “better” came along.

  This past spring, just when Camille had worked up the nerve to talk to Kathleen about it, the locker room incident happened with Cody, and Kathleen grew extra defensive about her children. Besides, Camille could never be sure she wasn’t imagining Bennett’s surly attitude. Case in point: the two were currently splashing each other good-naturedly in the pool.

  Camille grabbed a stick of gum from her bag and sank back against the lounge chair. “Lonnie was talking about the South Fork transfer on the drive over.”

  “Did you watch the news last night?” Kathleen asked.

  “I try to avoid it these days.”

  “A student at South Fork High stabbed someone yesterday. The man’s in critical condition at the hospital.”

  Camille shook her head. That was exactly why her stomach was tying into knots. South Fork was one of the most violent districts in the entire state of Missouri, and suddenly, because of some poorly written law, those students had the option of coming to Crystal Ridge. She looked at Austin and Bennett, who were still splashing in the pool. Come August, they’d be walking the halls with much bigger, more mature eighth graders. She stuck the stick of gum in her mouth. “I can’t imagine they would come here. I mean, we’re their biggest rival, and there are two other districts just as close.”

  “I’m sure some of them will come to our schools.”

  “Have you talked to Jill?”

  Jill was Kathleen’s second cousin and the vice president of the school board, which made her their informant in all things district related.

  “I guess the superintendents in the area are meeting sometime today to come up with a game plan.” Kathleen snagged her Chick-fil-A lemonade off the ground, the ice inside rattling as she took a long pull from the straw.

  Across the pool, Cody was attempting to grab Taylor’s foot and drag her into the water. Alexis watched with a look of irritation, as though she wanted Cody to grab her foot, not Taylor’s.

  “You know that dream I had the night before 9/11?” Camille asked.

  Kathleen raised her eyebrow—a gesture soaked in amusement. “The clairvoyant one?”

  “Laugh all you want, but I didn’t get anything out of order.” Her memory was sharp as a tack. She dreamed she was watching the news and everything was fire and chaos and she felt panicked and horrified. It was a dream that happened before those towers fell, no matter how much Neil and Kathleen and anyone else she told the story to insisted she must have had it after.

  “I woke up this morning with the same feeling now as I did then.”

  “Impending doom?”

  Camille tossed the crumpled wrapper at her friend.

  “I’m sure everything’s going to be fine,” Kathleen said. “The school board and our superintendent will make sure everything works out.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Of course I am. Now tell me about this idea of yours.”

  “Oh, right. I was thinking. What if next year we turned the 5K into a color run?”

  “What’s a color run?”

  “You know—those paint races, where the runners get covered in a bunch of color as they go. My cousin from Denver ran one. She posted a bunch of really cool pictures on Facebook afterward.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  “Doesn’t it?” Camille smiled. “I’ll bring it to the table at tomorrow night’s meeting. Which, by the way, is going to start a half hour later than planned.”

  “Then maybe I’ll actually be on time.”

  “Mo-ommy!” Paige walked toward them, dripping wet and clutching her stomach.

  Camille sat up. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

  “My belly feels gooey.”

  “Uh-oh,” Kathleen said. “Impending doom.”

  Five

  “I’ll need you to fill out this form, sweetie. Don’t forget to turn that top page over and answer the questions on the back.” The receptionist slid the cli
pboard over the counter as Jubilee tugged the hem of Jen’s shirt.

  She made her hand into a fist, stuck out her pointer finger, and jabbed herself in the arm, looking up at Jen with big, wanting-to-know eyes. Was she going to get a shot? It was the same question Jubilee had been asking all morning. The same question Jen continued to dodge.

  With the clipboard and pen in hand, she found a seat near the play area and nodded toward the bins of toys, where a little girl with pudgy fingers and wispy brown pigtails sat building a tower out of oversized Legos.

  “You should go play.”

  Jubilee didn’t budge.

  She stood resolutely in place, stress oozing from her pores and seeping into Jen’s. It had been a traumatic twenty-four hours, thanks to the big production Mom made out of her goodbye the night before. This morning, Jubilee woke up dysregulated and unhappy with almost everything—the itchy tag on the back of her shirt, the oversized dollop of toothpaste on her toothbrush, the lack of a swing set in their new backyard.

  “I hate dis oatmeal.”

  Don’t eat it, then, Jen had wanted to snap.

  Instead, she slammed the silverware drawer shut and rummaged through a box on the counter for the can opener. That was when Nick suggested they reschedule the doctor appointment for a time they could take Jubilee together. Her waspish thoughts turned into biting words.

  “I can handle a doctor appointment, Nick.”

  She was a nurse after all.

  But now, with her irritation no longer hot to the touch, she had serious reservations. Jubilee was terrified of doctors, and Jen had a hard time handling Jubilee’s fear. Over the past couple of months, Jen had discovered that she had a hard time handling a lot of things.

  Jubilee shuffled over to a bin of picture books.

  Jen stared at the top section of the form. Pregnancy and birth. It wanted to know things like weight and length, the type of delivery, whether there were any complications. If Mom drank alcohol or smoked cigarettes, and if there were any health concerns during the pregnancy.

  Beneath that, Family History: Check if the child or immediate members of the child’s family have had the following illnesses or problems.

  The words settled in Jen’s soul like wet snow. With a resigned breath, she filled out Jubilee’s name and the sparse details she knew when the front door to the pediatrician’s office opened with a swoosh of humidity. A woman walked inside holding the hand of a little girl. They had matching blue eyes and matching pointed chins and matching long hair swept up into matching messy buns. The girl wore a bright-pink swimsuit cover-up and flip-flops. The woman wore cutoff jean shorts and a loose-fitting tank and a tan leather tote over her sun-kissed shoulder.

  She knew the receptionist by name. They laughed together as she removed one of the masks in the small basket on the front counter and placed it over her daughter’s mouth, looping the strings around the backs of her ears.

  The mother-daughter duo found two seats across from Jen, and the woman’s eyes met hers in that awkward way eyes sometimes meet—whenever a person was caught staring. Only instead of looking quickly away like she hadn’t noticed, the woman spoke in a familiar, friendly tone, as if they weren’t strangers. “It’s a shame to be in here when it’s so nice out there.”

  Jen nodded, hoping the gesture didn’t look as stiff as it felt.

  “I’m Camille.” The woman came out of her seat to reach out her hand in a gesture so reminiscent of Leah, Jen’s heart squeezed. Leah was a hand shaker too and had introduced herself in the exact same way the first time they met all those years ago.

  “I’m Jen.”

  “This is my daughter, Paige. I’m pretty sure she has strep throat. It always starts the same. A stomachache and a headache. Is that your daughter there?” She nodded toward the pigtailed toddler building the Lego tower, her mother on the other side of the waiting room, typing furiously into her phone.

  “No, actually. That’s my daughter.”

  Jen watched, wondering what would come after the flicker of confusion, the scramble to make two mismatching pieces fit. It wasn’t curiosity or disapproval but a slow-moving pleasure that left Camille with her hand pressed against her chest. “She’s absolutely beautiful. What’s her name?”

  “Jubilee.”

  “Where is she from?”

  The question came like a scrape against vinyl. It always did. Why did Jubilee have to be from anywhere? Sometimes Jen got the urge to answer with something snarky—like Des Moines or Minneapolis—but then she would reprimand herself for the unkind thoughts. “Liberia.”

  “Liberia. Wow. You don’t happen to know Deb Zykowski, do you?”

  “We’re new to town.”

  “Ah. So that explains the southern accent.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “It’s that charming. What neighborhood did you move to?”

  “Winding Hills.”

  Camille lit up like a tree at Christmas. “That means Jubilee will be going to Kate Richards O’Hare Elementary. That’s where Paige goes. What grade?”

  “Second.”

  Camille’s countenance went even brighter. She turned to her masked daughter. “Did you hear that? Jubilee is going into the second grade at O’Hare, just like you.”

  Paige looked neither impressed nor unimpressed with the news. She sat in the back of her chair, arms casually resting on the armrests, wiggling her toes like she didn’t have a care in the world.

  Jen wondered if she shouldn’t explain to Camille that Jubilee’s place of education was still undecided.

  “I know I’m biased, but if you ask me,” Camille leaned forward conspiratorially, “O’Hare is the best elementary school in the district. I love that it’s smaller than the others. A two section school. The rest are all four. It gives it a family feel, you know? My oldest daughter’s at the high school, and my son is officially a middle schooler now, a fact I’m trying hard not to think too deeply about. Both went through O’Hare from kindergarten through fifth, which makes me an O’Hare veteran.”

  “I’ve heard really good things.”

  “There’s going to be a new second grade teacher this year. Mrs. Pennelin had to move back home quite suddenly last month to take care of her mother. It was sad to see her go. My other two both had Mrs. Pennelin in second grade and loved her to pieces. But I’m sure whoever they hire to replace her will be just as wonderful. O’Hare only hires the best.”

  “That’s…great,” Jen said.

  “I hope you’re not too worried about the transfer situation.”

  “The transfer situation?”

  “Oh. Well, one of the nearby districts lost their accreditation earlier this year. The students have the option of transferring to an accredited district. It has things in a bit of flux at the moment, but I’m positive it’ll get worked out. We have an excellent school board. Our superintendent is always on top of things. He’ll look out for our kids.”

  Camille touched her daughter’s hair, an instinctive gesture that looked as natural as breathing. “We should get our girls together for a playdate. Get you plugged in. I’d love to introduce you to Deb. She adopted two girls from China when she was almost forty, bless her heart. Her youngest is best friends with Paige. She had a cleft palate, and the older one had a heart defect. Faith was only ten months and Hope was almost two when they came home. Both girls had to have multiple surgeries.”

  “Wow.” The thought left Jen’s head spinning.

  “They celebrated six years home two weeks ago. When did Jubilee come home?”

  “This past April.”

  “Oh, wow. So it’s very new. That settles it; you have to meet Deb. Are you busy tomorrow night?”

  “Um…” Jen shifted in her seat.

  “Sorry. I’m talking a mile a minute. I promise I’m not normally this overwhelming. I’m just so excited
we got to meet like this.” Camille pulled a pad of cupcake-shaped sticky notes and a purple gel pen from her tote. “Every Memorial Day, a group of us PTA moms organize a 5K for the city. We’re having a meeting tomorrow night at my house to start discussing next year’s run, and Deb will be there with her two youngest. The ones adopted from China. You should come! I promise it’s much less of a meeting and much more of a social hour.”

  The door opened. A nurse stepped out. “Jubilee Covington?”

  And just like that, Jubilee’s entire body went rigid.

  Camille scribbled a number on a Post-it note and handed it over with a smile. “If you can’t come tomorrow, that’s no problem. Either way, call me. We’ll get the girls together for a playdate.”

  Jen nodded distractedly, slipping the note into her purse. She went over to Jubilee and took her hand, but Jubilee began to shake her head and dig in her heels.

  Heat flooded Jen’s face.

  “She’s not a fan of the doctor,” she explained with a falsely lighthearted laugh, hating that she felt compelled to explain anything.

  “Oh, neither is Paige,” Camille said sympathetically.

  The little girl sat with her legs swinging back and forth, looking perfectly at ease.

  Jubilee tried yanking her arm away.

  Jen could feel Camille’s stare on her back like a laser beam. With a plastic smile fixed in place, Jen tightened her grip on Jubilee’s arm and began walking her forward.

  * * *

  If not for Camille’s utter confidence in the staff at Dr. Porter’s office, she might have slid out into the hall to make sure nobody was being tortured to death. By the sound of it, you would think someone was breaking the child’s legs.

  “Okay, Paige,” the nurse said, holding up the long white swab. “You know the drill, right?”

  Paige nodded primly and set her hands in her lap. It was as though the hysterics in the next room had turned her daughter extra stoic.