Songs Without Words by Ann Packer Page A

shameless enough to go out in her pajamas to retrieve the book she’d left in her car.
    She wasn’t, quite.
    Instead, she carried her tea to the front window and watched the familiar sight of the Heidts doing their morning relay. The Heidts were the family of five that lived in the house in front of hers; it was their driveway she used to get to and from her house.
    Bonnie came out first and started the car, an old white Volvo station wagon. She was followed soon after by her husband, Rick, who carried three-year-old Isaac and his fire truck lunch box. As Rick buckled Isaac into his car seat, Bonnie got out of the car and headed back to the kitchen, only to step aside as Chloe and Pilar burst from the door and raced down the steps. Chloe was ahead, but she stopped abruptly, made an extravagant gesture of displeasure with her arms, and then turned and trudged in the direction from which she’d come. Which left Pilar, apparently free now, to set down her backpack and spread her arms wide and twirl.
    She was Sarabeth’s favorite—six years old and impossibly winsome. A couple days ago, she’d accosted Sarabeth on the sidewalk and said, “Guess what we did at school today,” and though Sarabeth had been on her way out, she’d been helpless to resist the conversation.
    “Let’s see,” she said. “Did you learn a new song?”
    Pilar rolled her eyes. “We have singing on
Mondays.
”
    “Silly me.”
    “Guess,” Pilar said, bouncing on her toes and smiling a smile crowded with tiny white teeth. She was wearing too-small purple leggings and a pink turtleneck, and a ribbon of white belly showed where they didn’t quite meet. She also had green paint in her hair, which was probably a clue.
    “Was it good or bad?” Sarabeth said.
    “Good!”
    “Did you learn how to stand on your head?”
    “We made a real train!” Pilar exclaimed, and she turned and raced away.
    Mornings were very regular, and once Rick had pedaled off on his bicycle, and Bonnie had backed the car out of the driveway and headed off to drop the children at school, Sarabeth returned to her kitchen with her empty mug.
    It was the day she’d been dreading, the one-year anniversary of her breakup with Billy, and yet she felt OK. Maybe it would end up being like turning forty: lots of trepidation beforehand but the day itself absolutely fine. She was even feeling unusually sanguine about her house, which was in a state of serious ill repair. There were days when she worried over the old wiring, the dilapidated roof, but today she looked around her living room and thought that the structure didn’t matter that much because she really liked her stuff: her braided rag rugs and flowery armchairs, the curlicue wrought-iron shelving she’d rescued from an ice-cream shop that was going out of business. She liked her stuff.
    At ten, Jim pulled up in front of the Heidts’ driveway in his shiny white Lexus, and she waved from her watch point at the window and headed out. She was joining him for part of the weekly realtors’ tour, as she sometimes did when she had time.
    “Sweetness,” he said as she got into the car, and they leaned together and kissed cheeks, his close-trimmed gray-white beard bristling her a bit. The radio was tuned to his customary classic rock station, and he reached for the volume knob and turned it down. In certain moods, he would leave the volume high, sing along at the top of his lungs to “Helpless” or “Brown Sugar.”
    “You look charming,” he said, tweaking the hem of her skirt, a flippy knee-length print with bright orange and yellow flowers scattered across a black background. “Are you debuting this or have I just not seen it?”
    “This would be its second outing.”
    “It’s cute. Very I-may-not-earn-much-but-I’ve-got-style.”
    “Ouch.”
    “Sorry.” He waited for her to fasten her seat belt, then pulled away from the curb. “I’m pissy because I’m furious at Angela. She asked me to take these clients