Pulling Home by Mary Campisi

they
    call them starving artists.”
    “I guess it would be polite to inquire, but I never had the inclination.”
    “She’d probably fabricate a story anyway.” This from Tilly who wanted nothing
    to do with loose women or loose morals.
    Alice sighed and lifted the tray of sweet rolls. “It doesn’t matter anyway. I doubt anyone would believe what she said.”

    ***
Audra sat on Jack’s bed with her back against the wall, staring at a New York
    Giants pennant. It was a simple headache . That’s what she’d told Dr. Vincent, Kara’s pediatrician in San Diego, when she’d called this afternoon for an appointment. What did she expect of an eight year old whose father suddenly died? The pain had to go somewhere. A simple headache . Audra would continue repeating this until she had proof otherwise because she could not permit her brain to consider any other possibility. And God, wherever He was these days, would not be so cruel as to strike one family, twice in one month. Would He?
    Kara slept next door in Rachel’s room amidst a mountain of ruffles and Barbie
    dolls. Each year since Rachel’s death, Alice Wheyton bought a Barbie doll, carefully removed the packaging, dressed and accessorized her, and placed the doll on the shelf near the one from the previous year. There were twenty Barbie’s since Rachel’s passing —blondes, brunettes, redheads, swimmers, skiers, dancers, veterinarians, and pilots, wearing sandals, stilettos, clogs, tennis shoes, and cowboy boots.
    Alice vowed Rachel would have loved them all. Kara certainly did. She traced
    their faces and curls with the reverence of one who realizes she’s been granted a unique gift. Audra remembered Grandma Lenore talking about the tragic loss of the Wheyton’s only daughter. Meningitis, the feared fever of the brain. Audra hadn’t known Christian or Jack then, and had only heard her grandmother speak of Alice as one of St. Peter’s Guild members. How much sadness filled the world every day and yet, people went about the business of breathing, eating, sleeping. Hoping.
    The pains in the world were not only relegated to the deserving. No one was
    immune, not even the good-hearted or the young. Did the Wheytons think Audra
    deserved the ill that befell her? What if they knew the truth behind her actions? It didn’t matter because they would never find out.
    She lay on Jack’s bed as the cool breeze from the open window blew over her
    skin. Alice chose Jack’s room for Audra, an ironic gesture considering the situation.
    Christian’s door remained closed, the memory of his teen days plastered at eye level.
    Before she left, Audra would slip inside and revisit the childhood room of her dead husband. She’d only been in the Wheyton house three times as a teenager, never as an adult until this week. It was hard to imagine Jack as a child, peering out the window into the blackness of night or stirring up mischief by dropping a ball or cup of water out the window. Perhaps he’d done both or none of those things. By the time she met him, he was a serious medical student with a constant four o’clock shadow who rarely smiled and spoke little. But there’d been no need for talk in those days. No need at all.

    ***
Growing up hadn’t been easy. The town all knew about Corrine Valentine—some
    through gossip, others firsthand, and by the time Audra was eight, she knew, too.
    Grandma Lenore did her best, cooking vegetable soup and homemade stews,
    canning tomatoes from the garden out back, making Vick’s rub soaks when Audra’s chest grew tight, to ward off the croup , she said, and lemon-honey tea to ease a sore throat.
    There was always plenty of food, and Audra’s clothes, though often hand-me-downs from Mrs. Mertigan’s grandchildren, were clean and neat. And every Sunday, they
    walked to St. Peter’s Church, three blocks away, Audra holding her grandmother’s arm as the elderly woman shuffled along, a black sweater thrust over her shoulders, a