A Flicker of Light

by Katie Powner

  Grandma June stopped, and Bea pulled up beside her.

  “Look.” Grandma pointed.

  Bea followed her finger to a small harem of elk in a field about a hundred yards beyond the jackleg fence. There was one strikingly handsome bull and about half a dozen cows with their yearlings. They’d almost walked right by without noticing.

  “Wonder what they’re doing down here?”

  Grandma studied them carefully. “Enjoying the day, I would say.”

  After watching them for a few minutes, she started walking again, and Bea followed suit. It felt so normal. So easy. Hope surged in her heart. Maybe Grandma was going to be okay. Maybe her condition wasn’t as big a deal as everyone thought.

  Bea glanced at the mountain and remembered the snowstorm. The helplessness. The fear. The woman she’d tried to help that day was not the same woman who walked beside her now. What if that other Grandma reappeared and this Grandma never came back?

  Bea thought about what she and Jeremy had learned from Great-Aunt Gladys. The son out there somewhere who’d never met his biological mother. If they didn’t find him soon, he might never get the chance. This Grandma—his mother—could be gone.

  They reached the end of the drive and turned around.

  Bea stuck her hands in her pockets. “Did you ever want more kids, Grandma?”

  Grandma didn’t slow down or look at Bea. “You have no idea what a handful your father was as a child, dear. He was all I could manage.”

  Bea didn’t know how hard to push, but a sense of urgency compelled her to ask another question. “Didn’t he wish for a sibling?”

  A cloud passed over Grandma’s face. “We wish for a lot of things in life, Beatrice. But wishing doesn’t change what we have. It only makes what we do have harder to love.”

  Bea’s throat constricted as she realized her hands were touching her stomach. She’d spent a lot of time the past few weeks wishing for a different life. What if all those wishes for what could’ve been were keeping her from loving what was? What if Grandma and her firstborn son were better off not wondering what might’ve been?

  As they neared the house, gravel crunched behind them. Bea spun around. From the driver’s seat of her Ford Explorer, Amber waved and brought the vehicle to a stop.

  “Be right back, Grandma.” Bea jogged over to the window as Amber rolled it down. “Hey.”

  “Hey.” Amber’s smile was tentative. “Thanks for letting me come over. I’m sorry I acted like such a jerk the other night.”

  “I’ve been worried about you.”

  Amber nodded. “I think you were right about Axel. I told him he can’t just be around for the fun times. He needs to prove he can be around for the hard times, too.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. He took off again.”

  Bea’s shoulders drooped. “I’m so sorry.”

  Amber opened the door and climbed out. “I was tired of doing this parenting thing on my own. I wanted to believe . . .”

  “I wanted that for you, too. I really did. I just—”

  “I know. I wish you’d been wrong.” Amber lifted one shoulder and gave a small smile. “You’re lucky, you know.”

  Bea thought about Jeremy. He wasn’t perfect. They were still learning what it meant to be married, and now they had to figure out what it meant to be parents on top of that. But she loved Jeremy. More than she’d ever thought possible. And as scary as it was to think of becoming a parent, at least she didn’t have to face it alone.

  “I know.”

  Amber opened the back passenger door to unhook Hunter from his car seat.

  “Who’s that?” Grandma called.

  Bea turned and smiled. “I have a surprise for you.”

  FORTY

  The little boy won’t stop looking at me. It’s like he can see things in my face no one else can see. He jabbers and bats at my feet as his mother trims my hair, and I want to scoop him up and hold him close. Smell his hair and kiss his hands. Press my face into his neck and cry.

  “No hitting, Hunter,” Amber says. “Leave Miss June alone.”

  “No, no.” I smile at the boy. “He’s fine.”

  It feels good as Amber pulls a comb through my damp hair. We’re sitting in the front yard, letting the hair disappear into the grass. I didn’t realize how long it had gotten, but as it falls away, I feel a lightness I haven’t felt in a long time.

  Bea sits at my feet to keep an eye on Hunter. She is radiant in the late-afternoon light. Her cheeks are rosy with life, and the sun shines on her hair like an anointing. I can’t believe she’s going to have a baby, but her soft glow declares the truth as plain as day.

  She’s so young. Still has so much to learn. But she’s older than I was when I became a mother.

  The little boy—what is his name? It starts with an H. He sits on his bottom and runs his hands over the grass, then grabs a clump and shoves it in his mouth.

  “Hunter, no,” Bea says.

  That’s right. His name is Hunter.

  She sticks a finger in his mouth to clear out the grass. “Icky.”

  Tears fill his eyes, and his chin quivers. Oh, Mylanta, it hurts me to look at him. Hurts to see anguish on a little boy’s face after spending forty-five years imagining what pain would look like on the face of my firstborn son. Imagining it and knowing there was nothing I could do to make it go away. I wonder if the pain was ever because of me.

  I pat my lap. “Come here, Hunter. Don’t cry.”

  Please. Please don’t cry.

  He cocks his head and sniffles. Studies me again. Then holds up his chubby arms. My heart catches. Oh, God, thank you. You have given me this moment. I don’t deserve it, but I am grateful.

  Bea helps him onto my lap, and his bright red sneakers leave wet marks on my knees. The warmth and weight of him is like an anchor, holding me fast to this life. These people. These fleeting memories. After my first son was born, I didn’t think I’d ever hold another child. But you brought Mitch along for Rand’s sake, didn’t you, Lord? It certainly wasn’t for mine. Holding Mitch sealed up the festering wound in my heart enough for me to go on living. Scarred and disfigured, but living.

  Hunter nestles into me, forming to my body. He smells of grass and Cheerios and sunshine. I put my hands on his sides to steady him, and he pokes at them. His fingers are wet with drool.

  “Almost done, Miss June,” Amber says.

  I say, “Okay,” though I wish this could go on forever. Wish I could always remember everything about this day, down to the tiniest detail. But it’s like I told Bea. Wishing doesn’t change what you have. And what I have is limited time.

  I don’t remember when Bea’s baby is due, but I know I won’t be around to see it. Not around like this, anyway. I’ll be someone else by then. This is as close as I will ever get to being a great-grandmother. I don’t know how I know exactly, but it’s as sure and inevitable as an early season snowfall in September.

  I gently pinch Hunter’s thighs, and he giggles. It’s the sound of happiness and regret.

  “There.” Amber pulls the towel from my shoulders and steps back. “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you.” I pull the baby a little closer with a smile. “Feels good.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Mitch stared straight ahead down the gravel road as he drove away from his parents’ house, but he could still see the look on his daughter’s face from the corner of his eye.

  She raised her eyebrows expectantly. “So? How did it go?”

  He cringed. It had been torture trying to get his father to admit he couldn’t be responsible for his mom by himself. Even harder for Mitch to admit that he couldn’t take her in, either. He had to work. In the end, he’d been forced to remind his father how horrible it had felt when his mom went missing and how they couldn’t afford to allow that to happen again. It was too dangerous.

  “We agreed to look into assisted-living homes in Ponderosa.”

  “You’ve
got to be kidding.”

  “There are a lot of nice places, B.B. Bea. I’ve looked at some on the internet and—”

  “No.” Bea’s voice rose with her indignation. “There’s no way you’re sticking her in some nursing home somewhere.”

  “Calm down. It’s assisted living, not a nursing home. And it’s Ponderosa, not somewhere.”

  “Same thing.” Her voice was thick with emotion.

  He grimaced. It wasn’t like he wanted to move his mother out of the house she’d lived in her entire life. It felt like giving up—like failure—but he was backed into a corner. He still had twenty-some years before he could retire, and Caroline was gone.

  “No, it’s not the same.”

  Bea smacked a palm against her leg. “I’m not going to let you do this.”

  Mitch wiped a hand over his face. “It’s not up to you.”

  He’d said the same thing when Bea had protested his and Caroline’s decision to forgo cancer treatment. She’d been angry then, as well.

  “She’s my grandma. And I live here now, too.”

  He kept his eyes on the road, afraid to look at her. Here they were again. He couldn’t sacrifice Bea’s future for his mother’s sake. June wouldn’t want that.

  The song returned to his mind. “Even if it breaks your heart . . .”

  “You can’t stay here forever.”

  She sniffled. “I’ll take the assistant-manager position at the Food Farm.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “You have no say in it.”

  “Jeremy does.” It rankled down deep, but it had to be done. “And I’m betting he would agree with me on this one.”

  She turned toward the window with a huff and didn’t answer. For two miles, Hank Williams sang “A Country Boy Can Survive,” and Mitch gripped the wheel. When Bea drove her black Blazer out of Moose Creek, leaving him alone in an empty house with stinging memories lurking in every corner, it had felt like losing Caroline all over again. Now here he was, driving Bea away on purpose.

  When she finally spoke, it was in a whisper. “How would they pay for it?”

  Mitch’s shoulders drooped. That was the worst part of the whole thing. “They’ll have to sell their house as soon as possible.”

  They drove the rest of the way to town in strained silence. He pulled up in front of the house with a sigh and put the truck in park. Jeremy’s car was gone.

  The frustration that had been building since they left this morning reached a boiling point. He’d had about enough of his son-in-law’s disappearing act. “Where’s he off to this time?”

  Bea glared. “His name is Jeremy.”

  “Well, has Jeremy made any progress on those ideas of his?”

  “Really, Dad? You want to do this again? Now?”

  “What? You can tell me what to do, but I can’t even ask if there’s hope of employment in your husband’s future?”

  “He’s going to figure it out.”

  “So you trust him to figure that out, but you don’t trust me to know what’s best for my own mother?”

  Bea flinched, and Mitch mentally kicked himself. He was pretty sure it was his helplessness talking. Caroline would be shaking her head at him right about now.

  He checked the time. He had five minutes to be at the church. “Look, I’ve got to get to a meeting.”

  Bea turned red, watery eyes at him. “With who?”

  Refusing to answer would be worse than telling the truth, but he didn’t have to tell the whole truth. “Frank.”

  She hopped out of the truck and slammed the door behind her.

  He rolled the passenger window down. “Don’t hold dinner for me.”

  “Fine.”

  She rounded the front of the truck and started up the walk. He was shifting the truck into drive to pull away when a movement caught his eye.

  Marge came bustling across the yard, waving an arm at him. “Yoo-hoo.”

  Bea stopped. Mitch gulped. When Marge waved her arm again, he rolled his window down.

  “You headed to the church?” Marge stopped a couple of feet from the truck and put a hand to her chest. “Whew. I’m out of shape. Anyway, I was on my way, too. I’ll just hop in with you.”

  Mitch resisted the urge to look to Bea for her reaction, but he knew she was watching and judging and jumping to conclusions. He could feel it.

  “Uh . . . sure.” He put the truck back in park. “Might as well.”

  This was what he’d tried to hide from Bea. That Marge was part of the meeting. Actually, it was Marge’s meeting to begin with. She wanted to talk with Frank about using the church building for a fundraiser for CJ’s family. According to Frank, she had big plans. And somehow Mitch had gotten roped into them.

  Mitch hadn’t realized it was possible to bounce into a truck, but that was what Marge did. Everything about her was bouncy. She buckled her seat belt with more energy than he’d had in months.

  Before he could roll his window back up, Bea called to him with a smirk, “You kids have fun.”

  He was sure the tips of his ears were flaming red.

  Turning the truck around, he headed toward the church, praying with greater fervency in his soul than he’d had in a while that Frank would not see him and Marge drive up together. Nothing like a woman to send Mitch pleading at the foot of the Almighty’s throne.

  Marge leaned toward him as much as the seat belt would allow. “What were you and Bea up to today?”

  “We were just up at the ranch is all.”

  “Your mom seemed to be doing well on Sunday at the party. Did I hear you mention you were back at the neurologist’s last week?”

  He hadn’t told her about that, had he? Taking his mother to the neurologist wasn’t something he would mention.

  “Dorothy said that Frank said that you took Friday morning off work again.”

  Aha.

  “Yes.” Mitch turned down Main Street and cringed as several people peered into his truck as they drove past. Why hadn’t he gone the back way? “We had a follow-up appointment.”

  “How did it go?”

  Still reeling from his painful conversations with his dad and Bea, he shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it. Not again.

  “I’m sure this whole thing has been very difficult for you.” She made a sympathetic humming kind of sound. “Has the doctor given you a diagnosis?”

  Mitch pulled into the church parking lot. Diagnosis. What an ugly word. “They’re pretty sure it’s Alzheimer’s.”

  “Oh, Mitch.” Marge put a hand to her mouth. “I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”

  It wasn’t her problem. Wasn’t her mother. Wasn’t even her business, though whether something was or was not her business didn’t seem to impact her knowledge or interest in the something. Mitch killed the engine and grunted. She meant well. At least she cared. But . . .

  “We’ll be fine,” he said.

  She followed him out of the truck and into the building. He walked at a fast pace, hoping to deter any further questions. They paused in front of Frank’s office, and Mitch knocked.

  “Come on in.”

  Mitch held the door open for Marge and ushered her inside.

  Frank sat behind his desk with a grin on his face. “It’s good to see you two.”

  He didn’t tack the word together on the end, but Mitch could read it all over his face. Oh, brother. How had he gotten himself into this again?

  Mitch had been raised to tackle his problems head-on. So when Dorothy arrived and took Marge to the community room to start planning decorations for the fundraiser, Mitch didn’t waste any time.

  “Go ahead and say it.”

  Frank leaned back in his chair with an amused expression. “It’s nice to see you getting out more. Getting involved.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “You don’t want to say anything about”—he glanced over his shoulder at the still-open door and lowered his voic
e—“Marge?”

  “What’s there to say? You’re both concerned about the Tuckers and want to help. That’s all there is to it, right?”

  “Right.” Mitch let out a breath. “Exactly. That’s all there is to it.”

  “And even if there was more to it, you wouldn’t want me pointing it out or talking about it.”

  Mitch narrowed his eyes. “Right.”

  “And you definitely wouldn’t want me asking all kinds of probing and embarrassing questions about your feelings or intentions.”

  “My what?”

  Frank raised his hands in surrender. “You brought it up, not me.”

  Mitch shook his head. “You’re the worst.”

  “She’s very enthusiastic.”

  “I thought you said I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “We don’t always get what we want.” Frank laced his fingers together behind his head. “Besides, what you want and what you need are not always the same thing.”

  “There’s nothing going on.”

  “Does she know that?”

  “She won’t leave me alone.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?”

  Mitch squeezed the back of his neck. “Has the church board changed their minds yet about your salary?”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “I still think you’re getting screwed over.”

  Frank set his hands back on his knees and scooted his chair closer to his desk, his playful demeanor gone. “It’s not worth worrying about. It’s just money. God will provide.”

  “That doesn’t make it right, what they’re doing.”

  “Maybe not. But—”

  “You’re not going to at least tell them how you feel?” Mitch waved a hand. “Ask them to reconsider?”

  “I might. I haven’t decided. But at the end of the day, my relationships are more important to me than my finances.”

  “That sounds like a standard pastor cop-out.”

  “Well, I am a pastor. But it’s not a cop-out; it’s the way things are.”

  Mitch huffed. Even though they’d been estranged for two years, Frank was still his best friend. He wanted him to be treated fairly. And it wasn’t just the pay cut. How many times in the past twenty years had Frank gotten the short end of the stick from these people? How many times had he been taken advantage of and taken for granted?