Fragments of Light

by Michele Phoenix

For just a moment, Cal thought the standoff would end there. Their guns were nearly down and the fight seemed to have gone out of the young Wehrmacht soldier.

  Then he heard Buck roar.

  Part 2

  Chapter 19

  Darlene seemed determined to be cheerful at breakfast the next morning. She came downstairs in full makeup, her hair teased and sprayed, and a brave smile on her face. But even Tom’s famed omelet couldn’t dispel the disappointment I could glimpse when her defenses were down.

  An hour later, Brenda and I stood next to my car. Darlene was already in her seat, a notebook in her hand, scribbling rapidly.

  “Thank you for answering what questions you could,” I told our host. “Are you sure you don’t mind if we take a look inside the old house again?”

  “I want you to. Tom was over there first thing this morning putting down big sheets of plywood. If you stick to those, they’ll distribute your weight and cut down on your chances of landing in the crawl space under the house.”

  “That was kind of him.”

  Brenda’s smile was nostalgic. “He’s not much of a talker, but he sure looks out for people.”

  A sad sort of envy hummed somewhere in the back of my mind. “You’re a very fortunate woman,” I said.

  “I know that now.” She laughed. “Didn’t always, mind you. But all these years later, when the frustrating stuff has settled into normal, it’s easier to see the treasure in the trash.”

  It was my turn to laugh. “Is that a local idiom?”

  “It’s a Foggy Acres idiom—and I stand by it!” She gave me a hug, then stepped back. “You want the keys to the old McElway place or are you happy to let yourself in like you did last night?”

  I felt myself blush a little. “We really didn’t mean to trespass.”

  “Sure you did. Difference is, you belonged there. It’s the antique scavengers I have trouble with.”

  “Do you get a lot of them?”

  “A few every year. Caught one young couple sneaking out to their car with a couple bags full of pewter and a cookie jar. Another woman thought she’d serve herself to Lucy’s old china.”

  “Did you ever think of cleaning out the house?”

  Brenda shook her head. “It’s like I told you last night. We thought he might come back. And then—then we figured out he probably wouldn’t, but it still felt wrong to intrude on his space.” She saw my confusion. “Listen, people in these parts are equally sentimental and superstitious. It’s not really conducive to progress, but it sure is sweet. And as long as I live here, Cal’s house will live too.”

  “I’m so grateful, Brenda. If we’d found nothing at all, I’m not sure what it would have done to Darlene.”

  “Well, anything Darlene sees that she’d like to take—it’s hers, obviously. Aside from rodent nests and water damage, it’s pretty much the way Cal left it. Didn’t feel right to go poking around in there.”

  I thanked Brenda again and got into the car while she walked around to the other side. Darlene lowered her window and Brenda reached in to give her shoulder a squeeze. “You take whatever you want over there, okay? It’s all your daddy’s stuff. Just don’t go up to the bedrooms. Those stairs are too rickety to risk it.”

  A couple minutes later, we stood on the porch of the McElway homestead for the second time in twenty-four hours. I reached through the broken windowpane to open the front door. Brenda hadn’t lied. There were several lengths of plywood extending from the porch through to the kitchen, and more leading into the living and dining rooms.

  “We need to walk on the plywood,” I said to Darlene.

  “Okay.”

  Her tone concerned me. It was flat and listless. “Are you feeling okay?”

  She looked away, but I saw the tears coming to her eyes.

  “If you’d rather not look around—”

  “No,” she interrupted. “I’ve just—I’ve been documenting what we found out talking with Brenda last night . . . and what we didn’t. It just feels so . . .” She tried to shake it off, squaring her shoulders and taking in a deep breath. “Never mind me. We came to find out more about my father and since this was his place, we’d be fools not to look around.”

  She attempted a smile and I reached out to give her a hug, but she held up a finger like she was chastising a child. “If you so much as touch me, I’m going to start crying and ruin my makeup, so hands off, Ceelie Donovan!”

  After a moment of surprise, I burst out laughing and gave her a hug anyway. She laughed too, through her tears, then declared, “Let’s scavenge the heck out of this place.” We moved toward the kitchen, careful not to step off the boards Tom had put down for us. The hardwood underneath them still cracked and creaked. A staircase extended up to our right, its roses-and-greens wallpaper faded to pastels.

  Something scurried and Darlene yelped and pointed. “Critters!” My eyes snapped to the kitchen, where a Formica table and yellow-painted cabinets seemed to reflect the morning sun. It sifted through dirty windows that faced the rolling hills beyond the farm. A mouse climbed up the peeling paper in the corner of the room and darted through a hole near the ceiling.

  I caught myself tiptoeing as I approached the cupboards, most of them gaping open. In one of them, there were still cans of chicken soup and peas from another era. Salt and pepper and spices in another. Boxes of noodles and toothpicks. Cleaning products cluttered the space under the sink. A mug and two plates sat on the drainboard.

  “Rural Missouri, the recession, two world wars, and decades of looters,” Darlene murmured behind me. “I’m not holding my breath for a silver flatware set.”

  “There still might be some collectibles,” I said, taking a tin of cinnamon off one of the shelves. “I’ve seen this type of thing at flea markets.”

  Darlene took it from me. “It’s a bit late in life for me to be starting a junk collection.” She pursed her lips and thought for a moment, her eyes on the cinnamon tin. “And here I thought all I’d gotten from him was a lifetime of resentment.”

  “That’s a little dark,” I said sarcastically, hoping to lighten the mood.

  She ignored my statement. “Let’s look around upstairs.”

  Brenda had warned us about the staircase, and one look at the partially decomposed steps confirmed her misgivings. “Uh . . . we’d be crazy to even attempt it.”

  “Uh . . . ,” she mimicked, “you’re in Missouri hunting for a guy who hasn’t been seen in seventy-six years. We passed crazy two hundred miles ago.”

  She had a point. “It really doesn’t look safe, Darlene.”

  Shoving me aside, she said, “Let me go—I’m on borrowed time anyway.”

  “Darlene!” I was horrified. Then I saw the sparkle in her eye and knew I’d been had. I looked at the dilapidated staircase and the moth-eaten carpet runner that spanned it. I really did want to scrounge around upstairs, but . . .

  “How about you walk on the very outside edges of the steps, where the nails or the glue or whatever makes them stronger, and then when you get—”

  Footsteps creaked on the porch outside the front door. Darlene whipped around and nearly lost her balance. I reached out to steady her just as Tom’s voice said, “Figured you two might get a hankerin’ to head up to the second floor.” He looked at us through the empty frame of the screen door. “I brought something over to make it safer.”

  “Tom,” Darlene drawled, suddenly sounding like a Southern belle, “I could just kiss you.”

  He seemed embarrassed by the offer.

  Two minutes later, without many more words spoken, he’d extended an aluminum ladder from the small landing at the base of the stairs, turning it sideways to lean against the railing that ran the length of the walkway between rooms on the second floor.

  Tom climbed the ladder with a hammer and proceeded to knock out several rungs beneath the railing. He looked down at me. “Big enough for you to pass through?”

  “I’m a bit insulted by the question, Tom.”<
br />
  We handed a few sheets of plywood up to him, requisitioned from the kitchen and dining room, and he pushed them through the hole he’d made, laying them out for me to walk on. “You can shift them around if you need to,” he said as he descended the ladder again.

  I thought he was putting far too much confidence in my adventurous spirit.

  “I’m going up too,” Darlene said.

  “Darlene—no, you’re not.”

  She planted her fists on her hips and raised her eyebrows at me in a defiant way. “Are you telling me that I can’t go exploring in my own father’s house?”

  I smiled as sweetly as I could. “One, you weren’t so inclined to call him your father an hour ago. Two . . .” I hesitated. She was a survivor gazing down a rather short track to the end of her life. I didn’t want to deprive her of anything joy-giving, but I didn’t want to see her further diminished by an injury either. “I’m younger. I’m stronger.” I pushed my luck. “I have catlike reflexes.”

  “Sheesh.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Let me go up. I’ll take pictures. And you and Tom can wait down here with nine-one-one pre-dialed into your flip-phone in case I wander off the plywood and crash through the floor.”

  She considered the proposition for a moment. “If you see anything worth more than forty-nine cents, bring it down for me,” she said.

  Tom nearly smiled.

  There were three rooms that extended off the long hallway. The plywood Tom had put down extended into one of them, so I entered it first. It was filled with boxes, small pieces of furniture, bags of linen, and frames leaning against a twin bed—post-empty-nest storage or something of the sort.

  It was in the room next door that the eerie feeling of trespassing on sacred ground shivered across my skin again. I moved the planks of wood as I went, directing them to the places I wanted to see. I had started to sweat under my wig but didn’t let it deter me. A moth-eaten cardigan and a few shirts hung in the open closet of the second bedroom. Sheets and blankets were still on the double bed, as if someone had just pushed them back to get up, and a pair of wool slippers protruded from under the box springs.

  The dresser near the broken window had three drawers, all swollen and warped from exposure to the elements. I got the first one open with a little effort. Nothing there. There were a few undershirts and socks in the second one. Work pants in the last. I moved to the desk, testing exposed floor joists before putting my weight on them—Tom’s plywood system was functional, but far from user-friendly. There was nothing significant in the desk either.

  A few wall hangings decorated the space and a stack of magazines that had seen better days sat on the floor next to the bed, but the room felt spartan. I had to remind myself that it had last been inhabited in 1944 by a man whose life was simple and whose priorities were surely not the esthetics of the home.

  I stood in the middle of the room and took a few pictures, berating myself for expecting to find something there that would explain Cal to me. I just so deeply wanted Darlene to have answers. But there seemed to be nothing in the house other than the discarded vestiges of a life rendered mute by absence.

  Darlene called from the base of the stairs, as if reading my mind. “You uncovering any treasures?”

  “Not much.”

  “Well, hurry up and find something,” she said. “Tom and I ran out of things to talk about roughly ten seconds after you climbed that ladder.”

  Imagining Tom’s discomfort made me smile. “Can you manage a couple more minutes of scintillating repartee?” I asked.

  She didn’t answer me directly, but I heard her say in the most natural way, “So, Tom, what do you think about those sissies in Congress?”

  I picked up the pace, as much for Tom’s sake as for mine, and repositioned the plywood to visit the last bedroom. I was anxious to get on the road. We had about four hours to drive before stopping outside Hannibal for the night, and Darlene wanted to visit a couple historic locations we’d passed on the way to Kinley.

  The last bedroom felt different from the other two. It faced away from the morning sun and the tattered remains of floral curtains were pulled across two windows, darkening the space. While the rest of the house was more austere, this space seemed to still have a soul. I felt goose bumps rising on my skin.

  The bedroom I assumed to be Lucy’s was furnished with modest pieces—a wardrobe, a simple oak rocking chair. The bed was made, and a crocheted bedspread, eaten away in spots, hung nearly to the floor. Just inside the door, a pink-shaded lamp and a couple framed photos stood on a maple dresser. I lifted them toward the light shining dimly through the curtains. Then I peered more closely.

  In the first black-and-white snapshot, the same man I’d seen in Darlene’s baby picture looked younger—maybe sixteen or seventeen. He wore dark pants with a light-colored, button-down shirt tucked into the high waist, its sleeves rolled up. He stood in front of a barn door, laughing directly into the camera’s lens, holding a disgruntled kitten in one hand, while another cat clawed its way up his sleeve and yet another huddled close to his neck. The bright delight of his smile had not faded with the ink of the picture, and I wondered if the devil-may-care, all-male aura young Cal exuded had been one of the traits that had attracted Claire.

  The second picture seemed older. The quality was grainier and the printing a muddy, dark brown. It featured a car that looked to me like an old Model T. A young man stood next to it, one foot propped on its running board. A softly smiling woman sat in its open door holding an infant wrapped in a blanket. It was an idyllic scene that spoke of birth and family. Darlene would love it.

  I took a few pictures on my phone. The vase perched on a deep windowsill, undisturbed after so many years. The delicate vanity near the window—a yellow enamel hand mirror and matching hairbrush on its dusty surface.

  Before heading back downstairs, I made my way to the plain, pine nightstand, where another small, framed photo next to a stained glass lamp had caught my eye. I lifted it toward the light coming through the curtains and felt my breath catch.

  Cal wasn’t smiling in this one. He looked into the camera with gravity, the straight lines and angles of his military uniform accentuating his broad neck and strong jaw. His eyes, shadowed by the brim of his visor cap, were startlingly intense.

  I opened the drawer of the nightstand and froze.

  For a moment, I wondered if my mind was playing tricks on me, but there was no denying the reality of the envelope that lay at the bottom of the drawer, the handwriting on it crisp and stark. I reached for the letter and held it for a moment before raising it into the dim sunlight. Lucy’s name was on it. The return address was Ramsbury, England, and the name of the sender was Callum McElway.

  Chapter 20

  Discomfort seemed to be coming off Tom in waves when I rejoined him and Darlene downstairs.

  “Find anything?” she asked, expectant.

  I held out the three framed photos and the yellow mirror and brush set I’d taken from Lucy’s vanity. The letter was in my jacket pocket. I’d show it to Darlene later, when we were alone and able to process it. “Pictures,” I said. “And a few of Cal’s mother’s—your grandmother’s—things.”

  She seemed to hesitate before taking the frames from me. Her hands were shaking as she looked at each one.

  “Are you sure it’s okay for us to take these?” I asked Tom.

  He’d collapsed the ladder and was heading for the door. “This is your family’s house.” He tipped an imaginary cap and left.

  Darlene and I sat in the car for a few minutes and looked at the pictures. She dusted each one with a Kleenex and stared as if they might hold the information she needed—something to connect her to the heart of the man who had left her when she was still too young to remember him.

  “You think this is Lucy and Cal Senior?” she asked.

  “That’s what I assume. And your dad in her arms.”

  “They look like a normal family, right?” The qu
estion sounded more like frustration than endearment. “Mom and dad and baby boy.”

  She moved the picture of Cal and the kittens to the top of the stack. “And again,” she murmured. “The smile. The happy-go-lucky, farm-boy pose.” She glanced at me, then looked back at the picture again. “I thought I’d feel something—some sort of mystical connection if I stared at these long enough, but . . . How in the world did he go from this to . . . ?”

  I could see her shoulders tensing, her eyes laser-sharp on the photos.

  Reaching over the console, I lay a hand across hers and suggested, “How about we take a breather?”

  “I don’t need to breathe.” There was something petulant in the way she said it. It didn’t sound like Darlene. It hadn’t been lost on me that her moods had been erratic for the past few days, starting shortly before we’d launched off on our trip. Given how tired I felt, I wasn’t surprised that the journey, along with the emotional weight of what we were trying to uncover, was taking a toll on her.

  “Okay,” I said calmly, “but thinking about something different for a bit might do us both some good.”

  She pulled her hand out from under mine and placed the picture of Cal in uniform on top of the stack in her lap.

  “How about we put on that audiobook?” I suggested, wanting to give Darlene’s emotions a reprieve. “We can talk about all of this when we get to the motel. Are you okay with that?”

  Her gaze didn’t waver from the photo of her father.

  “Darlene?”

  Still nothing.

  I put the car in gear, entered our motel’s address in the GPS, and drove back down Mud Creek Road.

  Dinner was a somber affair. I picked up salads at the Denny’s next door to the Travelodge and hoped putting something in Darlene’s stomach would improve her mood. It didn’t.

  We sat on her bed when we were finished eating and looked at the pictures again. I tried to draw her into a conversation by commenting on what her grandparents were wearing and the antics of the kittens using Cal as a climbing wall, but the woman who had been an insatiable talker since the moment I’d met her in the Breast Health Center seemed to have run out of words. She just stared at the pictures and chewed on her lower lip.