Winter Flower

by Charles Sheehan-Miles

  But as it turned out, Grandpa wasn’t the one I needed to worry about.

  The day we got there, it was beautiful outside—the sky clear, temperature warm. Brenna was curled up asleep on the back bench, as she’d been much of the previous few days. When I realized we were getting close, I texted Hayley one last time: Almost there.

  Hayley: lemme know what happens. ily

  Sam: ily2

  I felt a spasm in my stomach when Grandpa and Grandma’s brick house came into view. I knew the house well: we had visited often when I was younger, though this was the first time since Brenna’s disappearance. For half a second I wondered why that was, but then the answer hit me. Stupid. Dad had to get permission to travel, I knew that.

  Then I saw Grandpa. He was in the front yard, kneeling next to a bed of flowers, a look of intense concentration on his face. He looked the same as always, not even slightly older than the last time we’d seen each other. His hair was a shock of white, buzzed close to his scalp, his face the weathered, deeply creased look of a man more comfortable outdoors than anywhere else.

  He was going to hate me.

  The tension in my stomach shifted from anxiety to terror at the sight of him. My heart began to thump in my chest as my breathing constricted. I couldn’t breathe. I put a hand to my chest and struggled to get a breath.

  “Sam, what’s wrong?” Mom asked in an urgent tone.

  I fought to answer her question. I struggled to say anything, but I couldn’t breathe, and she looked increasingly alarmed as she twisted around in her seat and stared at me. Then I croaked out one word: “Scared.”

  “Oh, baby,” Mom said.

  I felt Brenna’s hand on my arm as she leaned forward. “You’ll be okay, Sam.”

  Mom reached back and took my hand as Dad parked the van. She met my eyes and said, “Breathe deep. Slow. Breathe with me, Sam. One—two—three…”

  On three, she took a deep breath. I matched it, keeping my eyes locked with hers. We did it again, and again. Then I said, “I’m sorry. I’m all right.”

  And I was, just barely. I reminded myself that there would be worse things than having Grandma and Grandpa reject me. Living a lie was one of them. I wasn’t going to do that anymore. I closed my eyes, counted to ten, then reached for the handle to open the door.

  By this time, Grandpa was approaching the van. Brenna had gotten out on the passenger side, her expression unreadable as she stretched, and approached our grandfather.

  “Oh, my soul.” Grandpa’s face worked, the lines around his eyes deepening as his eyes watered. “Can your grandpa give you a hug?”

  What a weird question, I thought. Why would he ask her that way? But Brenna gave a faint nod, and he wrapped his arms around her. Then I realized—he was asking permission. He knew that people—men—had been touching her without her permission. It was crazy that he thought of that. Crazy and respectful and kind.

  “I missed you so much, kiddo,” he said.

  “I missed you, Grandpa.”

  Not letting go of her, Grandpa looked up at me. I was acutely aware of my knee-length skirt, my makeup, and the purple clips in my hair. What must he be thinking? Did he see my eyeliner and blush and feel contempt? It felt he was looking right through me. I felt another stab of terror.

  I almost broke when he reached out his right hand and said, “You too, Sam, come hug your grandpa.” The terror dissipated, and I stepped forward. Wrapping his arms around us both, he said, “You kids are my life. You know I can’t promise you nobody will ever hurt you again, but I can damn sure try my best. I’m glad you’re home.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. There were no words to respond to this, no way to say what it meant. I just asked one question. “You don’t hate me?”

  He shook his head, stepping back, a hand on my shoulder. “Hate you? Nah, I could never hate you. I can’t say I understand, but I want to. Is that okay?”

  I nodded, silently.

  “Where’s Mama?” Dad asked.

  Grandpa sniffed and answered in a dismissive tone. “She ain’t feeling well. She’ll be down later.”

  Erin

  Getting settled in at Cole’s parents’ took a little while, but I was thankful they had the room for us. Cole and I shared one of the upstairs bedrooms, and Brenna was in the room next to us, with Sam in the guest bedroom downstairs at the front of the house. As soon as we got our things inside and gathered back downstairs in the kitchen, Brenna asked if she could go outside to smoke a cigarette.

  Jim looked startled but let that pass quickly. “Come out here on the back patio, I’ll find you an ashtray.”

  As soon as they were out of the room, I said, “I really wish she’d quit.”

  Cole frowned. “It’s too soon, I think. After what she’s going through with the drugs, I wouldn’t press her on it. Not now, maybe not ever. We’ve got to talk with her about getting her hooked up with a program of some kind.”

  “What kind of program?” Sam asked, looking suspicious.

  “Like, a detox or drug addiction program.” Cole’s face looked serious as he said the words. “You’ve seen what she’s like, Sam. Addiction isn’t something to mess around with. She’s going to need a lot of support. Honestly, if we had a way to get her into an inpatient program I would.”

  I glanced out the back window. On the brick patio out back, Brenna was sitting in one of the white painted rockers. Jim had taken a seat next to her. It didn’t look like they were talking. Just sitting next to each other.

  Sam started to rummage through the refrigerator and wandered off a moment later.

  “Your mother,” I said.

  “Yeah.” Cole’s mouth compressed in a flat line. “I don’t know what to make of that.”

  “She didn’t come down and see her grandkids,” I hissed.

  He nodded. “I know. God only knows what’s going on there. We’ll have to take it as it comes.”

  “But Jim is okay. Look at him, sitting with her.”

  Outside, Brenna looked sleepy, her eyes drooping, but Jim made some comment that caused her to laugh.

  Cole gave a wry smile. “It’s nice to see her laugh.”

  “Tell me it’s going to be okay,” I said.

  He wrapped his arms around me. “It’s going to be okay, love.”

  Two hours later, Cole’s mother made her appearance.

  The last time I had seen Virginia Grady Roberts was the Christmas Cole spent in jail. As always, she had been elegant, appearing at our door from a twelve-hour drive with her makeup in place and wearing pearls. Virginia was one of those ladies for whom appearances mattered more than anything.

  That’s why I was more than a little bit shocked at her appearance when she came down the stairs that evening. Jim had completely sidestepped the issue of the non-appearance of his wife, and Cole didn’t want to talk about it at all. There was no bustling about the kitchen preparing for the meal—Jim simply ordered Chinese.

  She appeared without warning a few minutes after the food arrived. Her hair, dyed a reddish bronze, had been loosely tied up, eschewing the elaborate French braids she normally preferred. Her clothes looked perfectly normal, a green blouse with matching pants, but she was barefoot. I didn’t think I had ever seen her feet before. But most shocking was the fact that she was visibly drunk.

  “Cole, my baby.” She slurred the words as he stood and kissed her on the cheek. His expression was carefully blank, and I knew he was hiding his own surprise and shock.

  Virginia’s eyes skimmed past Sam as if she didn’t see him and landed on Brenna. “Come here, child.” As she said the words, tears ran down her face. “We’re all so grateful you are home.”

  Brenna stood and let Virginia embrace her. Once they broke up the embrace, Virginia said a perfunctory hello to me, then said, “Well, then, let’s have dinner.”

  We all went silent. Her exclusion of Sam, to the extent of not even looking at him (her, damn it) was painfully obvious. I wanted to speak up, and I
wanted Cole to speak up, but I had no idea how to say it and it was obvious he didn’t either.

  “Mama.” Cole’s voice suppressed fury. “Don’t you dare treat my children that way—”

  He was interrupted, by Jim of all people. “Virginia, say hello to Sam.” His voice was low and firm and had a threatening edge to it.

  “Hello, Sam,” she replied.

  Sam looked desolate. “Hi, Grandma,” she whispered, then she turned away, hunching over her phone as her thumbs began to move furiously. She must be texting Hayley.

  Jim stood, his expression furious. “Excuse us,” he said to us, before grabbing Virginia by the arm. “We need to have a moment.”

  She pulled her arm away from him. “We need no such thing. We’ll eat now, thank you. Pour me a glass of wine, please.”

  “You’ve had plenty.” Jim sounded like the Marine he’d once been.

  She straightened, wiping unconsciously at her sleeve where he had grabbed it, then walked around him, eyes straight ahead. At the counter, she pulled the cork from an already open bottle of Chianti, poured a very heavy portion into a wine glass, then walked out of the room.

  Jim spoke to Sam in a sad, remote voice. “Sam, please accept my apologies for her behavior.”

  Sam looked up at her grandfather, tears brimming in her eyes. “It’s not your fault, Grandpa. It’s okay.” But I could see it wasn’t okay. She looked heartbroken. “I’m gonna go lie down for a while, okay?”

  “Don’t you want to eat?” Cole asked. “We got you General Tso’s chicken.”

  I didn’t think dangling Sam’s favorite food was going to help here. Sam stood. “I’ll eat later, I’m tired.” She left the room, barely looking up from her phone.

  I took a deep breath. “I’ll go talk to her.”

  “Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Cole asked.

  I looked at him, helpless. How was I supposed to know if it was a good idea, or the right thing to do? I was lost. “I don’t know. But I have to try.”

  I found Sam in his new room, lying on the bed, holding the phone up in front of his face. Her face. Damn it, it was a struggle to remember. But every time I got it wrong out loud, it hurt her. And I didn’t even know if it was the right way to deal with all of this.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “You okay?”

  She didn’t answer verbally, just gave a barely noticeable shrug.

  “Sam, I need you to know that you are loved. But I think you already know—some people aren’t going to know how to deal with this. Some people will be terrible. But I promise you, we’ll be there through it all the way with you. We love you.”

  The only acknowledgement I received was Sam’s eyes tearing up. She rolled to her side, away from me. In a muffled voice, she asked, “Can I borrow the van to go see Hayley on Saturday?”

  A thousand objections immediately formed in my mind. Was it safe for Sam to go to Alabama? It was a three-hour drive. The guys who beat her up were there. Anything could happen. We didn’t have money for gas.

  But all I could see was her lying there on her side feeling rejected by her grandmother. “Yes, that should be fine. Can we talk?”

  In a tiny, tortured voice, she said, “Please leave me alone.”

  Cole

  Brenna wasn’t out of the woods yet.

  The first week of her withdrawals were the worst—sweating and pain. She’d slept much of the time, and when she wasn’t asleep she twitched and moaned. On the third day of driving home we’d taken her to the emergency room when she started vomiting. The doctors there gave her buprenorphine to help with the withdrawals, and it did seem to take the edge off, at least enough that we were able to continue the drive.

  Almost every night she woke up screaming from nightmares. One of us would go lie down with her and she’d cry herself to sleep, sometimes mumbling things that sent chills down my spine.

  She needed more help than we were qualified to give.

  Erin and I worked together to help find her the resources she needed. We found two inpatient treatment centers, one with a thirty-day program and one with a twenty-one-day, both of which would take her for free, but she begged to stay home with us. So we found other resources. A sliding-scale therapist in Sandy Springs agreed to meet with her twice a week. A low-cost addiction treatment center with daily outpatient visits and group therapy. And the day after we arrived in Atlanta, Sam drove her to her first Narcotics Anonymous meeting.

  One of us was always with Brenna unless she specifically asked to be alone. She took to spending a lot of time outside with Daddy in the garden. He’d point out what he wanted done—weeding or trimming or various other tasks—and they’d work side by side, neither talking much. When she was out there with him in the garden, Brenna sometimes even looked content.

  A week after we arrived, I drove back to Alabama to meet with my parole officer. The whole drive back to Alabama I had a pit in my stomach. They didn’t have to let me move to Atlanta. They didn’t have to let me take the job there. In fact, they didn’t have to let me leave Alabama at all, ever. I still had several years left on my sentence, and my life was entirely under the control of Joyce Friendly and—if she gave the go-ahead—a judge who would make the final decision.

  Everything was so fragile. I had both of my children at home, and Erin back in my life, and it could all be swept away in a moment.

  The drive to Anniston that day was cold and grey, with stop-and-go traffic much of the way until I was well outside of the Atlanta area. As I drove, I did my best to marshal my arguments. I had a letter from Jeremiah, which indicated the company wanted to transfer me to the Atlanta area, and Stan Wilcox was sending another describing the circumstances of Brenna’s disappearance and her rescue. Maybe Brenna’s new therapist could write one before I went to court, but she’d only met with her once.

  When I finally got there—and waited nearly an hour in the lobby—Officer Friendly ushered me to her cube, sat down and said, “Tell me what happened.”

  So I told the story. She didn’t comment as I narrated what had happened, except to gasp when I described the shooting of Laura Felker.

  When I finally reached the end of the story—including the fact that we were in Atlanta and I had a job starting the next week—she sat for a long time, thinking. The silence made my stomach twist. Nervously, I took out the letter from Jeremiah and handed it to her. “This is from my boss—it’s about the job transfer. I know that asking to move out of state is unusual, but the kids—they need it. You’re also going to get a letter from Stan Wilcox with the FBI—”

  She waved a hand to interrupt me. “I got the letter from Agent Wilcox already. Cole, you don’t have to convince me. It’s plain that you’d be best off with your probation transfer being approved. I’m just thinking through the best approach for Judge Riley—it’s not me you have to convince.”

  I exhaled. “Okay. Okay. Sorry—I—” I closed my eyes and took a breath. Calm down. This wasn’t me, getting this wound up with anxiety.

  But I finally had my family back. And I was terrified of losing them again. I opened my eyes. “Sorry. I can’t even begin to tell you how important this is. How fragile things are, and I’m just trying to get my family back in one piece again.”

  She leaned forward. “You’re doing just fine, Cole. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll approve a travel pass for you to Georgia for six weeks. You go do your job, then come back and see me then. We’ll get you set up for a court date, and I’ll recommend that you be transferred to Georgia’s Department of Corrections. And we’ll move forward. Call me in two weeks, and I’ll let you know what I’ve found out. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.”

  I drove from her office to the tiny little house we’d rented in Oxford. Erin had given me a list of things to bring back to Atlanta, and so had Sam (Dad, I need my computer). In a couple of weeks we would come back out and pack everything to actually move. Most of what we owned—which
wasn’t a lot—would go into storage for the time being.

  Finished, I headed back home. Barring any unforeseen problems, I would be home in time for dinner.

  Brenna

  “What’s this one?” I asked, pointing to a section of richly colored red blooms that seemed to grow vertically.

  “Snapdragon,” Grandpa said. “That’s a good one. If you take good care of it, and cut it back a little in the heat of the summer, it’ll bloom year-round. Doesn’t like the heat, but around here it’ll flower all the way through winter if we don’t get too bad a frost. And winter flowers are beautiful.”

  I touched one of the delicate blossoms. Not so delicate, if it could survive and bloom through winter. Rubbing the blossom between my thumb and index finger, it felt like silk. I breathed in the smell of the flowers, a complex floral smell that reminded me vaguely of childhood. It seemed strange to me, foreign, to sit in a garden and look at flowers and smell them and care for them.

  I told Laura about the gardening the other day. She laughed but then told me she thought it was great. She got accepted to a program in New York for girls like us—girls who were trying to leave the life. She said they’re tough, but it’s good. She said she might come visit, but I don’t think she will.

  Grandpa went on. “By spring there will be a bunch of dead stuff to cut back—flowers and stems. Lot of people think they’re dead, and take them out, but all you gotta do is cut it back. They’re hardy. One of my favorite flowers.”

  I wiped sweat off my forehead. I was in a T-shirt and jeans, sweating like a pig. Grandpa wore a sweater.

  “You okay, sweet pea?”

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I think I might have a case of the shakes coming on.”

  He nodded. “It’ll get better soon. The physical stuff. When I came home after my second tour in ‘Nam, they had me on morphine for a long time. Terrible stuff. But after about four weeks, the physical craving died down.”

  I sat back, legs splayed out on the ground, leaning on my hands behind me. I hadn’t known that. I’d vaguely been aware Grandpa was in Vietnam, but wounded? I swallowed, then said, “You were addicted? How long before you stopped craving it in your head?”