by Lisa Wingate
I’ll be here to help him in whatever way I can, but the truth is that I’m not ready for a political run. I’m not experienced enough. I haven’t paid my dues. The office shouldn’t be handed to me just because of who I am. I want to earn it the old-fashioned way. I want to gain an understanding of the issues—all of them, not just a limited few—and decide where I stand. If it is ever my turn, I will run the race on my own merits, not as my father’s little girl. In the meantime, Andrew Moore mentioned that his seniors’ rights PAC needs a good lawyer. The pay is undoubtedly low, but that isn’t the point. If I want to dip my toe in the murky world of politics, that is the sort of place an average person wades in, and I am a good lawyer.
Will my father understand?
Will he still love me?
Of course. Of course he will. He’s always been a dad first. I know it’s true. Yes, there will be disappointment when I inform my parents of my plans. Yes, there will be some fallout, but we’ll make it through. We always do.
“Avery, I am not letting your grandmother out of the car here.” Honeybee surveys the little cottage, the river down the hill, the overgrown trees hanging low over the porch roof. She hugs herself and rubs her hands up and down her arms.
“Honeybee,” Dad attempts to placate my mother, smiling at me indulgently. “Avery wouldn’t have brought us all this way without a good reason.” He leans close, slips an arm around Honeybee’s waist, and squeezes the ticklish spot only he knows. It’s his secret weapon.
She struggles against a smile. “Stop that.” The look she turns my way isn’t nearly as cheerful. “Avery, for goodness’ sake, was all of this really necessary? Why so cloak and dagger? Why are we coming here in a limousine, of all things? And why in the world did we need to drag your grandmother along? Taking her out of Magnolia Manor is so confusing for her. It’s hard to settle her into the routines again afterward.”
“I wanted to see if she’d remember something,” I say.
Honeybee’s lips smack apart. “I doubt she’d remember this.”
“Someone, actually.”
“She wouldn’t know anyone who lives here, Avery. I think it’s best that—”
“Just come inside with me, Mama. Grandma Judy has been here before. I have a feeling she might realize that.”
“Is anyone going to get me out?” My grandmother beckons from the car.
Oz looks to us for approval. My father nods. He’s afraid that if he lets go of Honeybee right now, she’ll bolt.
I take charge of my grandmother at the gate, and we move along the path together. Despite her mental decline, Grandma Judy is only seventy-eight and still gets around quite well. That makes the dementia all the more unfair.
I watch her as we walk. With each step, she brightens. Her gaze darts about, landing on the climbing roses and azaleas, the bench by the river, the old picket fence, a trellis of wisteria, a trumpet vine, a bronze birdbath featuring statues of two little girls playing in the water.
“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh, I do love this place. Has it been a while?”
“I think so,” I answer.
“I’ve missed it,” she whispers. “I’ve missed it so.”
My mother and father hesitate at the top of the porch steps, blink at my grandmother and at me, agog. Honeybee is in a situation she can’t control, and because of that, she hates it already, no matter what it is. “Avery Judith, you had better start explaining all of this.”
“Mama!” I snap, and Honeybee draws back. I’ve never spoken to my mother that way. Not in thirty years. “Just let Grandma Judy see what she remembers.”
Laying a hand on my grandmother’s shoulder, I guide her across the threshold into the cottage. She stands for a moment, her eyes adjusting to the change of light.
I watch as she takes in the room, the photographs, the painting over the old stone fireplace.
It’s a moment before she notices that the space is occupied. “Oh, oh…May!” she says as naturally as if they had just seen one another yesterday.
“Judy.” May tries to get off the sofa, but it’s saggy, and she can’t push to her feet, so she stretches out her arms instead. Trent, who was about to help her up, backs away.
My grandmother crosses the room. I let her make the journey alone. May’s eyes fill, and she lifts her arms, her fingers opening and closing, beckoning her sister to her. Grandma Judy, who is so often unsure of people now, shows no hesitation. As if it is the most natural thing in the world, she leans over the sofa and into May’s arms. They share the shaky embrace of old age, May’s eyes closing as she nestles her chin on her sister’s shoulder. They cling to one another until, finally, my grandmother sinks exhausted into the armchair beside the sofa. She and her sister hold hands across the end table. They gaze at one another as if there’s no one else in the room.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” May admits.
My grandmother’s buoyant smile seems innocent of all the obstacles that have kept them apart. “You know I’ll always come. On Thursdays. Sisters’ Day.” She motions to the rocker by the window. “Where is Fern this afternoon?”
May lifts their joined hands, shakes them a bit. “Fern is gone, sweetheart. She passed in her sleep.”
“Fern?” My grandmother’s shoulders slump, and her eyes grow watery. A tear squeezes out and trickles alongside her nose. “Oh…Fern.”
“It’s just the two of us now.”
“We have Lark.”
“Lark died five years ago. The cancer, remember?”
Grandma Judy sags a little more, wipes another tear. “Goodness, I’d forgotten. I only have a little of my mind left.”
“It doesn’t matter.” May stretches to cover their joined hands with her other one. “Remember when we spent that first week on Edisto?” She nods toward the painting over the fireplace. “Wasn’t that a fine time? All four of us together? Fern loved it there.”
“Yes, it was,” Grandma Judy agrees. I can’t tell if she really remembers or is just trying to be polite, but she smiles at the painting, and suddenly there’s a look of clarity. “You gave us the dragonfly bracelets. Three dragonflies to remember the three we never saw again. Camellia, Gabion, and my twin brother. We were celebrating Camellia’s birthday the afternoon you gave them to us, weren’t we? Camellia was the dragonfly with the onyx.” The light of memory shines in my grandmother’s eyes. The love of sisters warms her smile. “My, but we were lookers back then, weren’t we?”
“Yes, we were. All of us with Mama’s lovely hair, but you were always the only one who had her sweet face. If I didn’t know that was you in the painting, I’d think it was our mama standing there with us.”
Behind me, my mother whispers through her teeth, “What is going on here?” I feel the heat radiating off her body. She’s sweating, and Honeybee never sweats.
“Maybe we should step outside.” I try to gather my parents and move them back to the porch. My father seems almost reluctant to leave the room. He’s busy staring at the photos, trying to make some sense of all this. Is there a part of him that remembers his mother’s unexplained absences? Does he recall being in the background of that photograph taken on Edisto? Has he always suspected that his mother is more than just the woman he knew?
Trent nods across the room at me just before I close the door between the porch and the cottage. His encouragement makes me feel strong, capable, confident. He’s a believer in letting the truth be what it is. He and Hootsie have that in common.
“You’d better sit down for this,” I say to my parents.
Honeybee reluctantly balances on the edge of a rocker. My father takes the two-seat glider and assumes a posture that lets me know he’s expecting something grave and unpleasant. He leans forward with his feet firmly planted, elbows resting on his knees, fingers steepled together. Whatever the situation is, he’s ready to analyze it and do damage control.
“Just let me tell you all of it,” I plead. “Don’t ask me anything until I’m finished, ok
ay?” Without waiting for an answer, I gather a deep breath and begin the story.
My father listens from behind the usual stoic mask. My mother eventually sinks against the rocker with a wrist braced against her forehead.
When I’m done, the air hangs silent. No one knows what to say. It’s obvious that even my father had not an inkling of this, although there’s also something in his expression that tells me a few details about his mother’s behavior have begun to make sense now.
“How…how do you know all of this is true? Maybe…maybe this woman…” My mother trails off, looks toward the cottage window. She’s thinking of what she heard in there, of the photos on the walls. “I just don’t see how it’s possible.”
My father breathes over his joined fingertips, graying eyebrows gathering together. He knows it’s possible; he just doesn’t want it to be. But I’ve told him what Trent and I have learned about the Tennessee Children’s Home Society, and I can see that most of it wasn’t new information to him or my mother. No doubt, they’ve heard of the scandal, perhaps seen the TV shows that have reenacted events at Georgia’s notorious children’s home.
“I can’t…My mother?” Dad mutters. “Did my father know?”
“I don’t think anyone knew. Grandma Judy and her sisters were grown women by the time they were reunited. May told me they didn’t want to interfere with each other’s lives. Considering that the paper trail was set up to keep birth families from finding one another, it’s a miracle that even four of the siblings were brought back together.”
“My God.” He shakes his head as if he’s trying to rearrange the thoughts there, to put them in some workable order. “My mother has a twin?”
“She was born a twin. She did search over the years, but she was never able to find out what happened after that—whether her twin died or survived and was adopted.”
My father rests his chin on his hands. He looks upward through the trees. “My dear God in heaven.”
I know what he’s thinking. I’ve been turning the same things over in my mind since the day I learned the truth. All week long, I’ve gone back and forth between taking the secret to the grave with me…and setting the truth free, come what may. In the end, it boils down to this: My father deserves to know who he is. My grandmother deserves whatever time she has left to spend with her sister.
The five little river gypsies who suffered at the hands of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society deserve to have their stories carried forward into the future. But for a strange twist of fate, my father’s mother would have grown up on a riverboat, among common folk, surrounded by the poverty of the Great Depression.
She wouldn’t have been of the class to have met my grandfather, much less married him.
We wouldn’t be Staffords.
My mother regains herself a bit, lifts her chin, and reaches across to unfasten my father’s hands and hold one of them. “It’s ancient history. There’s no sense in agonizing over it now, Wells. There’s no reason to be bringing it up at all.” A glance slides my way—a warning.
I resist the urge to wilt. For me, there’s no turning back. “Dad, what you decide to do from here is your choice. All I ask is that Grandma Judy be able to have time with her sister…for however long they have left. They’ve spent their whole lives hiding away from the world, for our benefit. They deserve to be at peace now.”
My father kisses my mother’s fingers, folds them between his, and nods. Silently, he’s telling both of us he’ll mull this over and make his own decisions.
Honeybee leans closer to me. “What about this…the man in there? Can he be trusted not to…well…to use this information? With the Senate run coming up next year, there’s nothing Cal Fortner would like more than a personal scandal to distract from the issues.”
I’m relieved when she automatically looks to my father, not me, in regard to the next Senate race. I feel life shifting toward its old balance, and I’m glad. It’ll be easier to tell them there won’t be a politically advantageous wedding in our garden during azalea season. I’m not ready to broach the subject yet, but I will.
Being here, seeing May and my grandmother together, makes me all the more certain of it. All the more certain of myself. “You don’t have to worry about Trent. He wouldn’t do that. He’s a friend. If it weren’t for his grandfather, Grandma Judy’s sisters never would have found her. She wouldn’t have learned the truth about her past.”
My mother’s expression indicates that she’s unconvinced it wouldn’t have been better that way.
My father’s face says otherwise. “I’d like to talk to Mrs. Crandall a bit.”
Honeybee’s mouth falls open a little. Then she pops it shut, straightens herself, and nods in acquiescence. Whatever path my father chooses, she will walk it right beside him. This is how my parents have always been.
“I think May would welcome that. We can leave the four of you alone so she can tell you her story.” Hearing it from May, in her own words, will bring it home to my father, I hope. This is our family history.
“You can stay,” my mother says uncertainly.
“I’d rather just let you have a bit of time.” Really, I want to be alone with Trent. I know he’s dying to ask how my parents took the news about Grandma Judy. He keeps looking at me through the cottage window.
He’s obviously relieved when we stand and cross to the door. Inside, my grandmother is talking about a boating trip down the river. She speaks of it as if it happened yesterday. Apparently, May bought a jon boat at one time. Grandma Judy is laughing about the four of them floating off down the Savannah River when the motor wouldn’t start.
My father moves tentatively to a chair, looks at his mother as if he’s never seen her before. In a way, he hasn’t. The woman he remembers was an actress playing a role, at least partially. For all the years since her sisters found her, there have been two people inside the body of Judy Stafford. One of them is a senator’s wife. The other carries the blood of river gypsies.
In this little cottage, on yet another Sisters’ Day, the two meld into one.
Trent is more than happy to vacate the premises with me.
“Let’s walk up the hill,” I suggest. “I wanted to grab a few pictures of the plantation house ruins…just in case this whole thing falls apart and we never come back here again.”
Trent smiles as we pass through the gate and leave the cottage gardens behind. “I don’t think it will.”
We walk the path to the edge of the trees. I think of Rill Foss becoming May Weathers all those years ago.
Could she ever have imagined the life she would live?
The sunlight warms me as we cross into the open field and start up the hill. It’s a beautiful day—one that hints at the upcoming change of the seasons. The shadow of the mansion’s ancient remains falls on the grass, making the towering structure seem solid again. My hands shake as I take out my phone and snap photos. This isn’t really why I wanted to come here. There was a reason I felt the need to move out of sight of the cottage…and out of earshot.
Now I can’t find the words…or the courage. Instead, I take a ridiculous number of pictures. Eventually, my ruse runs out.
I swallow a sudden onslaught of butterflies, try to muster up the necessary fortitude.
Trent beats me to it. “You’re not wearing the ring,” he observes, his eyes filling with questions when I turn to him.
I look down at my hand, think about all that I’ve learned since I accepted Elliot’s proposal, then moved back to South Carolina to do what was expected. That feels like a different life, the music of a different woman. “Elliot and I talked. He doesn’t agree with my decisions about Grandma Judy and May, and he probably never will, but it’s more than that. I think we’ve both known for a while now that we’re better as friends than as a couple. We have years of history between us, a lot of fond memories, but there’s just something…missing. I think that’s why we’ve avoided setting a date or making firm plans. The wedding was
more about our families than it was about us. Maybe in some way, we’ve known that all along.”
I watch Trent as he studies our shadows on the grass, frowning contemplatively.
My heart flutters, then pounds. The seconds seem like taffy, sticky and slow-moving. Does Trent feel the way I do? What if he doesn’t?
He has a young son to consider, for one thing.
I don’t know exactly where I’m going in life, for another. Working with the PAC will give me time to find out who I want to be. I like setting things right that were wrong. I think that’s why I’ve dug so deeply into May’s story, why I’ve brought my grandmother and May here this afternoon.
An old wrong has been set right today, inasmuch as is possible all these years later.
There’s a sense of satisfaction in that, but now the questions about Trent eclipse it. How does he fit into the future I’ve only begun to imagine? His family and mine are so different.
His eyes catch the light when he looks back at me. They’re the blue of deep water, and for the first time I realize that perhaps we’re not as different as we seem. We share a rich heritage. We’re both descended from the river.
“Does this mean I can hold your hand?” He smiles along with the words, raises an eyebrow, and waits.
“Yes. I think it does.”
He turns his palm up, and I put my hand in it.
His fingers close over mine, a warm, strong circle, and we walk up the hill away from the ruins of a life that was.
And into a life that can be.
CHAPTER 26
May Crandall
PRESENT DAY
Our story begins on a sweltering August night, in a sterile white room where a single fateful decision is made amid the mindless ravages of grief. But our story does not end there. It has not ended yet.
Would I change the course of our lives if I could? Would I have spent my years plucking out tunes on a showboat, or turning the soil as a farmer’s wife, or waiting for a riverman to come home from work and settle in beside me at a cozy little fire?