The House on Honeysuckle Lane by Mary McDonough Page A

but for the ticking of the stately grandfather clock in the living room, the house was absolutely still. Emma was not out of bed; she wasn’t meeting Maureen Kline for breakfast until eight-thirty.
    Andie made a pot of coffee and when it was brewed she took a cup into the backyard. She pulled her bathrobe more tightly around her and breathed in the cold morning air. How many early mornings had she enjoyed in this yard! She had often snuck out of the house before breakfast to watch the dew dry as the sun came up and to witness her mother’s flowers turn from gray to red and pink and white.
    For some reason she couldn’t identify, Andie suddenly recalled a birthday party at which one of the guests, a boy Andie didn’t know very well—but whom for some reason now lost to time she had invited—pushed a girl into a rosebush, where she cut her cheek on a thorn. Andie had never before witnessed an act of violence, and that’s what it was, though the boy—what was his name?—had laughingly sworn the shove was “just a joke.” She remembered feeling sick to her stomach, unable to enjoy the rest of her party even after her mother had cleaned the girl’s cut and covered it with a Band-Aid. Still, Andie had gathered enough courage by then to tell the boy to leave, and surprisingly, he had gone quietly. She had been less afraid to stand up to bullies after that.
    Andie took another sip of the cooling coffee, and more memories came rushing to her. As clearly as if he were standing there before her in flesh and blood, Andie saw her father at the charcoal grill, wielding a spatula and laughingly boasting that he was the grillmeister of Oliver’s Well. She remembered, too, all the times they had eaten dinner on the patio on a spring or summer’s evening, the sun still high in the sky, the sound of laughter from the neighboring houses drifting over them, her father lifting his glass in a toast to his family.
    Dad . My wonderful father. It wasn’t unusual for her to speak to Cliff now that he had passed on, even though when he was alive she hadn’t been in the habit of turning to him for advice or comfort. Sometimes, Andie thought, watching two little birds busily flitting around the birdbath situated near the rosebushes, it was only at a distance that you could see the value of what was once right before your eyes. Sometimes it was only at a distance you could learn to love a person in the way he deserved to be loved.
    Now Andie’s thoughts traveled into the recent past, touching on Rumi’s remarks at dinner about her mother needing to be the center of attention, about her mother having to be different, as if Andie walked at her own pace simply to be perverse. That wasn’t at all the way it was, and by now, Andie thought, Rumi should know better. It was upsetting that her daughter didn’t seem to understand her—or that she had decided she didn’t want to understand her.
    Andie sighed, her breath visible in the air. She and Rumi had shared so many good times through the years. There were the early visits to the ashram in a suburb of Baltimore—an adventure Rumi had particularly enjoyed—and later, the books they had read at the same time and talked about via phone, and the times when Andie visited Oliver’s Well and they would take turns closing their eyes and pointing to a spot on the map of Virginia and taking a day or overnight trip in Andie’s rental car. Such simple fun. Such comfortable companionship. It would be terrible if their relationship were to come to an end over something as trivial as not being around to blow out candles on a cake.
    But the fact was that people fell out of love, even parents and children. Maybe, Andie thought, holding her cup of coffee more tightly, this sad fact was something she would have to learn to accept in her own life. Andie remembered how when Rumi started high school she had announced that she would