by Lisa Wingate
“We live in an entertainment-driven world,” Trent says soberly. “Everything’s fair game.”
I open my mouth to further vent about the attacks on my family and then think better of it. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to unload on you. Maybe I need another trip to the beach.” It’s not until the words are out that I realize how flirty they sound.
“How about lunch instead?”
“What?”
“I just thought I’d see if you were free, since I’m in Aiken. I’ve been doing a little digging around in my granddad’s papers and talking to people who helped him with his searches. One of them is a man who was a courthouse worker in Shelby County, Tennessee, back when all the adoption records were still sealed. From what I can tell, he funneled quite a bit of information to Granddad.”
Instantly, I’m back in the thick of it. The scents of that tiny Edisto cabin tease my senses. I smell pipe tobacco, old newspaper clippings, dried-out bulletin boards, peeling paint, faded photos. “You mean so that your grandfather could help adoptees find their relatives, right? So…you’re taking up where he left off then?”
“Not really. I was nosing around for May Crandall. Thinking maybe I’d uncover something about the little brother she never found, Gabion.”
I’m momentarily stunned. This guy is genuine to the core. He’s also a better person than I am. I’ve been so obsessed with family problems, I’ve been delaying calling the seniors’ rights PAC about May’s situation. Now I realize that I’ve been brushing this task aside on purpose. I’m afraid to have anything to do with her, given all the controversy after the “Aging Unevenly” article. If word got out that I was helping her, our political enemies would accuse me of using her to prop up our bruised public image.
I can’t be seen having lunch with Trent either. I can’t possibly go, but I can’t quite make myself say no, so I continue the sidetrack. “That’s really nice of you. What did you find?”
“Nothing significant so far. There was an address in California in the court paperwork. I wrote to it just to see if they might know anything about a two-year-old boy adopted from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society in 1939…or possibly even just who lived at that address in the late thirties. It’s a long shot, though.”
“So you drove here to tell May that?”
“Nah…I don’t want to get her hopes up unless something comes of it. I actually came here for jelly. When I left you last time, I went by to visit my aunt outside Aiken. She was putting up blackberry preserves. They’re ready now.”
A little laugh puffs out of me. “Two and a half hours is a long way to drive for jelly.”
“You’ve never tasted my aunt’s blackberry preserves. Besides, Jonah loves to go there. Uncle Bobby still has a mule.”
“So Jonah’s with you?” Lunch suddenly seems a possibility if it’ll be the three of us. Even if we were seen, no one would think twice about it with Jonah there. I rush through my mental queue of the afternoon’s plans, trying to calculate whether I can rearrange a few things and sneak away long enough. “You know what? I’d love to have lunch with you two.”
“I think I can tear Jonah away from Uncle Bobby and the mule. Tell me when and where. Any particular place you’d like to go? We’re pretty flexible…as long as it’s not during naptime. That can get ugly.”
Again, his comment makes me chuckle. “When’s naptime?”
“Around two.”
“All right, then. How does an early lunch sound? Maybe about eleven? Is that too soon?” I don’t have any idea how far out of town his aunt’s house is, but if there’s a mule involved, it isn’t close to where I am right now. No one has farmed around Magnolia Manor for years. The estates here are pristine. “You pick the place, and I’ll meet you there. Nothing too upscale, though, all right? Something kind of out of the way would be good.”
Trent laughs. “We don’t do upscale. We’re actually into eateries with playscapes. Know one of those, by chance?”
My mind skips back in time and lands on a nice memory. “Actually, I do. There’s an old drive-in with a little playground not far from my grandmother’s house. She used to take us there when we were kids.” I give him directions, and we’re set. Best of all, if we meet at eleven, no one will even miss me at home.
I am an adult, I rationalize, navigating a U-turn and starting toward Grandma Judy’s neighborhood. I shouldn’t have to feel like a teenager sneaking out just because I make lunch plans with a…a friend.
I do have a right to some sort of life of my own, don’t I?
I lose myself in my mental debate for a while, my thoughts turning corners along with the car. Maybe I’ve gotten spoiled up in Maryland, living in my own little anonymous world, working a job that was mine and only mine, not tied to a support staff, to offices in D.C. and the home state, to constituents, contributors, and an entire political network.
Maybe I never realized how much being a Stafford is an all-consuming thing, especially here in our native territory. The collective identity is so overwhelming, there’s no room for an individual one.
Once upon a time, I liked that…didn’t I? I enjoyed the perks that came with it. Every path I stepped on was instantly smoothed down before me.
But now I’ve had a taste of climbing my own mountains my own way.
Have I grown beyond this life?
The idea splits me down the middle, leaving half of my identity on each side of the divide. Am I my father’s daughter, or am I just me? Do I have to sacrifice one to be the other?
Surely this is only a…a reaction to all of the stress lately.
Pausing at a stop sign, I look down Grandma Judy’s street, past the dip in the road where we kids splashed in puddles when it rained, past the neatly trimmed hedge and the mailbox with the iron horse head atop.
There’s a taxi sitting in my grandmother’s driveway. In a town the size of Aiken, it’s not a typical sight.
I hesitate at the intersection and watch the cab a moment. It doesn’t back away and leave. Maybe the driver is unaware that nobody lives there anymore? He must be waiting in front of the wrong house.
Turning down her street, I fully expect him to be leaving when I pull in, but he’s not. In fact, he seems to be…dozing in the driver’s seat? He doesn’t move when I drive past him and get out of my car.
He looks young, almost like a teenager, but he must be old enough to have a commercial driver’s license. There’s no passenger in the backseat and no one around the house as far as I can see. I’d suspect that this was related to some sort of hideous news exposé, a reporter skulking around snapping photos to show how the other half lives, but why would someone like that travel by cab?
The driver jumps about a foot when I knock on the half-open window. His mouth hangs open as he tries to blink me into focus.
“Ummph…guess I fell asleep,” he apologizes. “Sorry, ma’am.”
“I think you’re in the wrong place,” I tell him.
He glances around, stifles a yawn, flutters his thick, dark lashes against the bright late-morning sunlight. “No…no, ma’am. The reservation’s for ten-thirty.”
I check my watch. “You’ve been here for almost a half hour…sitting in the driveway?” Who would’ve directed a cab to my grandmother’s house? “You must have the wrong address.” Some poor customer is probably pacing the floors about now.
The driver doesn’t seem worried in the least. Straightening in his seat, he glances at the console. “No, ma’am. It’s a standing reservation. Every Thursday at ten-thirty. Prepaid, so my dad…I mean my boss says come here and sit, since it’s already paid for.”
“Every Thursday?” I cycle through the schedule—what I can remember of it—from the time when Grandma Judy was still living here with a full-time caretaker. The day she ended up lost and confused at a shopping mall, she was in a cab. “How long have you been doing this—coming here every Thursday?”
“Ummm…maybe I should…call the office, so you can talk…”
>
“No. It’s okay.” I’m afraid the office won’t answer my questions. The kid behind the wheel doesn’t seem to know any better. “When you picked my grandmother up on Thursdays, where did you take her?”
“Over by Augusta, a place on the water there. I only drove her a few times, but my dad and my grandpa did for…maybe a couple years. We’re a family company. Four generations.” The last part sounds sweetly as if he plucked it straight from the billboard.
“Years?” I’m so confused, the word doesn’t even begin to describe me right now. There was nothing in my grandmother’s daybooks about a standing Thursday appointment. She had no standing appointments, other than bridge circles and beauty shop visits. And Augusta? That’s thirty minutes or so each way. Who in the world would she have been visiting regularly in the Augusta area? And in a cab? And for years?
“And she went to the same place every time?” I ask.
“Yes, ma’am. As far as I know.” He looks extremely uncomfortable now. On the one hand, he realizes I’m grilling him. On the other hand, he doesn’t want to lose what has obviously been a long-standing fare. I can’t imagine what the price for the trip to Augusta might be.
My hand settles over the top of his window. It might be silly, but I want to make sure he doesn’t try to flee the scene while I sort out the barrage of information. A place on the water there…
Something completely unexpected pops into my mind. “A place on the water. You mean on the river?” The Savannah River runs through Augusta. When Trent and I talked to May, she mentioned Augusta. Something about going home and drifting down the Savannah River.
“Well, yeah, the place could be on the river. The gate’s all…kinda overgrown like? I just drop her off there and wait. I don’t know what happens after she goes in.”
“How long did she usually stay?”
“A few hours. Pop used to walk down to the bridge and fish while he waited. She didn’t care. She’d come out and honk on the cab horn when she was ready to go.”
I just stand there gaping at him. I can’t even begin to reconcile all of this with the grandmother I knew. The grandmother I thought I knew.
Was she writing May Crandall’s story after all? Or is there more?
“Can you take me there?” I blurt out.
The cabby shrugs. He moves to exit the car so he can open the back door for me. “Sure. Yeah. The fare’s paid for.”
My pulse inches upward. Goosebumps dot my arms. If I get in this car, where will I end up?
My phone buzzes, reminding me that I was headed someplace before this detour. It’s a text from Trent telling me he and Jonah are holding down a table for us. The hamburger stand is already crowded this morning.
Instead of texting back, I slip away from the cabby and call Trent. I apologize for not being there and ask, “Can you…could you…come with me to do something?” The explanation of where I am and what’s happening sounds even more bizarre when I voice it out loud.
Fortunately, Trent doesn’t decide that I’ve lost it. Actually, he’s intrigued. We make plans for the cab to swing by the restaurant so Trent and Jonah can follow in their car.
“Meantime, I’ll grab a burger to go for you,” Trent offers. “World-famous shakes here. Jonah’s giving it the thumbs-up already. Want one?”
“Thanks. That sounds good.” But I’m not sure I could eat a thing at the moment.
On the short ride to the restaurant, I can hardly stay focused, I’m so on edge. Trent is waiting in the parking lot with Jonah already buckled in. He hands me a sack and a shake and tells me he’ll be right behind me.
“You okay?” he asks. Our gazes catch for a moment, and I’m lost in the deep blue of his eyes. I find myself relaxing into them, thinking, Trent’s here. It’ll be all right.
The thought almost lifts the mass of dread that’s growing inside me. Almost.
Unfortunately, I understand the feeling well enough to know I shouldn’t ignore it. It’s the sixth sense that always comes alive when I’m about to learn something practically unthinkable about the players in a case I’m working on—the trusted neighbor was responsible for the child’s disappearance; the innocent-looking eighth grader was stocking up on pipe bombs; the clean-cut father of four had a computer full of disgusting pictures. That sense is preparing me for something; I just don’t know what.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I’m just afraid of where this cab is going to end up…and what we might find.”
Trent lays a hand on my arm, and my skin seems to heat up under his fingers. “You want to ride with us? We can just follow the cab.” He glances toward his car, where Jonah is waving madly from his booster seat, trying to get my attention. He’d like to share his fries with me.
“No. But thanks. I need to talk to the driver some more on the way.” Really, I think he’s told me all he knows, but I want to keep the young man busy so he doesn’t check in with the office. His father may have a different opinion of my using Grandma Judy’s fare to transport me to a mystery location. He may be savvy enough to realize this could bring up a privacy issue. “And I don’t want to take any chances on his getting away from us.”
Trent’s fingers trail down my arm as he lets go…or maybe that’s just my imagination. “We’ll be right behind you, okay?”
I nod and wave at Jonah, who gives me a fries-and-teeth grin, and then we’re off. The midday traffic is light on the thirty-five-minute trip, so it’s easy for the driver to chat. He tells me his name is Oz and that when he drove my grandmother she always gave him cookies, or chocolates, or sweets left over from parties and gatherings. Because of that, he remembers her well. He’s sorry to hear she’s in a care facility now. Clearly, he’s oblivious to all the newspaper coverage and controversy. He’s been busy working after having taken over much of the driving for his father, who’s having some health problems.
“I was worried about her the last time I brought her here,” he admits as we leave the highway and wind through rural roads, presumably drawing near our destination. Walls of lowland shrubs, climbing vines, and tall pine trees tighten around us, pressing inward as we turn, then turn again. “She was getting around okay, but she seemed kinda confused. I asked her if I could walk her in the gate, but she wouldn’t let me. She said there’d be a golf cart waiting for her on the other side, like always, and not to worry. So I let her off. That was the last time I drove her.”
I sit silently in the backseat, attempting to conjure the images as Oz talks. I try, but I just can’t fathom the things he’s describing.
“The week after that was my dad’s heart surgery. We had a substitute driver filling in for a month or so. Next time I drove on a Thursday, I came to the house, and there was nobody there. Been that way ever since. The substitute driver didn’t have any idea what happened. Last he saw of her, he let her off at a shopping mall, and she said she’d see him again the next Thursday. We’ve tried calling the number on her bill, but nobody answers, and nobody’s there when I show up. We wondered if something might’ve happened to her. Sorry if we caused a problem.”
“It’s not your fault. Her caretakers shouldn’t have been letting her leave alone in the first place.” Good help is hard to find these days, but my grandmother was also surprisingly adept at convincing her helpers that she was perfectly competent and we were being overly controlling. Obviously, they were allowing her to take off in a cab on Thursdays. Then again, she was the one writing their paychecks, and they weren’t unaware of that fact. She wasn’t above dismissing household help that gave her trouble.
The car bumps over an old WPA bridge with crumbling cement railings and moss-covered arches. The driver slows, but I don’t see any sign of houses or mailboxes. From all appearances, we’re out in the middle of nowhere.
Good thing Oz knows exactly where he’s going. Anyone who didn’t would’ve missed the turn completely. The barely visible remnant of a gravel driveway sketches two scraggly paths through the roadside grass and across a drainage culvert.
Just beyond, a massive stone entranceway lies hidden among trumpet vines and blackberry brambles. Heavy iron gates, each perhaps eight feet in height, hang askew, their weight supported by leaves and runners, the hinges long since rusted away. A decaying chain and padlock seem almost like somebody’s idea of a joke. No one has driven through these gates in decades. Just beyond them, there’s a sycamore tree six inches across, its muscular arms reaching through the bars and slowly lifting one gate higher than the other.
“There’s the way in.” Oz points out a narrow path leading to a walk-through entrance beside the main one. It’s obviously functional, the trail beneath it patted down enough that the summer grass hasn’t completely taken over. “That’s where she always went.”
Behind us, a car door slams. I jump and glance back before remembering it’s Trent.
When I turn around again, I’m struck by a strong feeling that the gateway should be gone. Poof. I’ll wake up in my bed at Drayden Hill thinking, Now that was a strange dream….
But the gate hasn’t vanished, and the path is still waiting.
CHAPTER 22
Rill
Fern freezes halfway across the sitting room. Her body goes stiff so that I can see every little string of muscle. A second later, she’s wetting herself for the first time in weeks.
“Fern!” I snap under my breath because I don’t want Mrs. Sevier to hear me and come see what Fern’s just done. Our new mommy’s so proud of Fern that she takes us to the movies and talks about trips we’ll go on together and how we’ll see Santa at Christmas and what he’ll bring for us. She’s even got it in her head that we should all drive to Augusta to visit her mama. I don’t want to go to Augusta, but I also don’t want any trouble now that Mrs. Sevier has started letting us out of her sight a little more.