The Road Home

by Susan Crandall

  “Maybe I could go another weekend—one that won’t be so busy for Bud.”

  After a moment, she said, “I think that’s a very mature decision.”

  “Well, I have an obligation.”

  She smiled at him and drove out of the parking lot. Whether Riley knew it or not, she could see that he respected Clay. The positive influence Clay was having on her son’s character was showing more every day.

  “You know,” she said, “Bud’s real name is Clay. Clay Winters.” She paused to see how the topic settled.

  “Hmmm.” At least he didn’t turn his back to her.

  “He was a good friend of your dad’s when they were kids.”

  Riley turned suspicious eyes her way. “And what about you?”

  “He was my friend, too. He and Dad and Uncle Luke and I spent summers together.”

  “I’d never kiss my friend’s wife.”

  She sighed softly. “That’s where things get complicated. First of all, your dad and I aren’t married anymore—and no matter how much you wish for it, we won’t be again. Your dad and I just aren’t good for one another.”

  “How can you say that? Remember how much fun we had when we went to the beach?”

  “Of course there were good times. And I don’t expect you to understand all of our reasons, but if your dad and I stayed married, I’m afraid he would never have gotten help for his drinking.”

  “But he is! And he’s getting better.”

  She nodded. “He is. But it’s not me that he’s working to get better for—it’s you. No matter if we live together or in different houses, your dad will always love you, and you’ll always be able to do the things you want with him.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before.”

  “Yes, I’ve said it all before, but I don’t really think you’ve heard it.”

  “So what? You want to marry Bud now?”

  “I don’t want to be married to anybody, not right now anyway. I have to find a job, a new place to live….” She glanced at him; his face wasn’t pinched and angry like she’d feared. “I’m going to want to see Clay, spend time with him—he’s my friend, Riley. Like Mickey is yours.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t kiss Mickey!”

  Lily turned her gaze his way and let it linger. He looked away and his ears turned bright red. She said, “But maybe someday you’ll want to.”

  He did turn his back to her then. And that was just fine. She’d opened a dialogue, hopefully in terms he could relate to. This was a beginning—a very good beginning.

  The next day when Lily arrived to pick Riley up from work, he and Clay were standing out in front of the office. They appeared to be engaged in a serious discussion. Riley made no move to come to the car, so Lily shut off the engine and waited. She wasn’t close enough to hear what they were saying. Neither of them looked angry. Suddenly she realized that they looked that way less and less often.

  Clay handed Riley an envelope and shook his hand. Then headed back inside the office, giving Lily a casual wave.

  Riley got in the car. Lily waited for him to explain, but he didn’t.

  “So?” she finally asked. “What was that about?”

  He lifted a shoulder and held up the envelope. “He gave me a check.”

  “For what?”

  “My pay. He said I’ve covered the cost of the repairs to Mr. Willit’s boat. He paid me for the hours this week that were beyond that amount.”

  “Oh.” Lily tried to make the single word sound neutral.

  “He said he called Sheriff Clyde. I don’t have to come back anymore.”

  “I see. That’s good, isn’t it?” This would be the litmus test to truly gauge how things were between Riley and Clay. She nearly held her breath as she waited for him to respond.

  “I told him I couldn’t leave him without help for the Fourth, so if it’s all right with you, I’m going to stay on.”

  “Well, the Fourth is just next week….”

  “He might need me to work a little longer than that. Is it okay?”

  “I suppose.” Lily had to press her lips together to keep her happiness from bubbling out of her mouth. Maybe there was a possibility that the three of them could be a family in the future.

  After a minute, he asked, “Do you think Bud would mind if Mickey came to see the fireworks from the marina dock? We won’t have any work to do then, everybody will be watching.”

  Lily tilted her head and raised a brow. “You’ll have to ask Bud.”

  The old Riley would have asked her to talk to Bud about it.

  He pressed his lips together the way he did when he really wanted something. “I will. Tomorrow.”

  * * *

  At eight o’clock in the evening on the Fourth of July, Lily picked up Mickey at her house. They then swung by the Crossing House to get Benny and Faye—who, by some miracle of modern witchcraft, had convinced Benny to leave the bar in the hands of the newly hired bartender for a couple of hours.

  Faye had hold of Benny’s arm, literally dragging him to the car. He was still grousing when he closed the door.

  “Dad,” Lily said, “if this guy is sighted and breathing he can handle the bar while the entire town is occupied watching fireworks. You’ll be back here before it gets busy.”

  Her comment was met with an indecipherable grumble.

  Lily caught Faye’s eyes in the rearview mirror. Faye gave her a playful wink and Lily smiled in return. Theirs was a relationship made of milk chocolate: Too much heat or handling and it would melt into a gloppy mess. But they were slowly finding a balance that would preserve its integrity.

  When they reached the marina, there were so many boats anchored for the fireworks that it looked like you could cross the lake by stepping from one boat to the next.

  Riley raced up to meet them.

  “I’ve got us all set up,” he said to Mickey, pointing to a blanket spread on the grassy hill overlooking the parking lot. “I thought it would be too crowded for all of us to cram onto the dock.” He looked over his shoulder at Clay, who walked up right then. “Bud said that spot on the hill is the best.”

  Riley and Mickey said a quick goodbye and headed up the hill.

  “Too crowded, huh?” Faye chuckled. “I think the love-bug has taken a big bite out of that boy.”

  Lily smiled as she watched the two kids sit down next to each other on the blanket. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if love could remain as innocent and uncomplicated as it was for thirteen-year-olds? She wished she could go back in time, to that first romantic summer with Clay, and revel in the certainty that love was all that mattered, love could easily conquer any challenge—as long as you had faith in each other.

  But it was going to take more than faith to hold her life together now. It was going to take work.

  With one last happy wave from the kids, Clay, Lily, Faye and Benny headed out on the dock. About halfway to the end there was a bench. Faye stopped and sat down.

  “I think Benny and I’ll be more comfortable on this bench than dangling our feet in the water out there. You go on.”

  Benny sat next to Faye and she threaded her arm through his.

  He said, “I hope this thing gets going. I need to get back.”

  As Lily walked away, she heard Faye trying to coax him into enjoying himself. And for the first time, resentment didn’t well up in Lily’s throat.

  She took Clay’s hand as they strolled to the end of the dock. “Seems nobody wants a crowd tonight.”

  Clay smiled, then glanced at the kids on the hill. “Did she say anything about her dad?”

  They sat down on the dock. Lily took her sandals off and plunked her feet in the water. She shook her head. “She’s talked to Riley some, nothing to me—not that I’d expect it. Poor kid; Riley says her mom won’t talk about him at all.”

  Lily had decided not to tell Clay that she’d deduced that Tad was the one who had been in her house and following her. Tad had dirtied enough of their summer.
/>   “Good thing she has a friend, then,” Clay said.

  “Yeah.” She leaned closer and rested her cheek on his shoulder. “Me, too.”

  He whispered, “Good thing you have Riley—or good thing you have me for a friend?”

  She laughed and sat back up. “Both.”

  For a long while they sat there, close enough to feel each other’s body heat but not touching. It grew dark, Lily could only see the running lights on the boats now. A few boaters had sparklers that flared occasionally in the night.

  She grew so relaxed, absorbing Clay’s nearness, listening to the mix of conversations coming across the water, that her body felt like it was made of butter.

  When the first test rocket went off, she jumped.

  Clay leaned close to her ear. “Remember our first Fourth?”

  A little chill followed his voice, tumbling down her body. “How could I forget? I have the scar to remind me.”

  He slid his hand up her thigh and softly stroked his fingers under the edge of her shorts. “The best thing about fireworks is that they come after dark.”

  She laughed quietly. “That and the fact nobody is watching the people on the ground….” Leaning closer, she kissed him.

  The explosion of the first brilliant shower of sparks in the sky mimicked the flash of radiance that burst in Lily’s heart. She didn’t know exactly where she and Clay were headed, and had vowed not to worry herself thinking about it. She just wanted to enjoy their time together and see if they had enough to build a solid future.

  “I found a place to rent, yesterday.”

  “You’re going to stay?” He sat up straighter.

  “Don’t sound so surprised. I told you I wouldn’t take Riley away from you again. He’s made a friend here. I don’t want him back at Carrigan Park—and a little distance between him and Samantha and Bill has proven to be good for him.”

  She adjusted herself so she could look him in the eye. The wonder and excitement she saw there broke her heart. Oh, how he’d been cheated. Well, no more. “I know the time isn’t right just yet, but soon we’ll need to tell Riley the truth. He already looks up to you for so much, you’re already filling the role of father in so many ways. We can’t ruin it with a lie.”

  Clay swallowed dryly and rested his forehead against hers. He didn’t say anything for a long while. In a moment, his hand cupped her cheek and he kissed her. The kiss was laced with everything there was between them: friendship, regret, passion, loss, anticipation and unending love. When he released her from it, her heart was light and her body humming with possibilities.

  He pulled her close to his side and she rested her head on his shoulder. The fireworks exploded overhead with pops and crackles, showers of brilliance and color.

  Fireworks had brought Clay to her in the first place. And now, for the first time in fourteen years, she watched the breathtaking display with happiness in her soul, unbound by regret, looking squarely at a future. She was finally content, secure; no longer a nomad living in someone else’s world. She was where she should be, in Glens Crossing with her son and Clay by her side.

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  Susan Crandall!

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  MAGNOLIA SKY,

  available in paperback Summer 2004.

  Chapter 1

  The freezing February rain beat steadily on the roof of Luke Boudreau’s old Taurus. Through the water-spotted glass, he watched the winter-stripped trees mimic his own unsettled insides as they jerked and twisted in the gusty wind. He hunched a little deeper into his jacket collar and rubbed his chilled fingers against his thighs. Mississippi was the South, for God’s sake, the Magnolia State. How could it be so damn cold?

  He’d been parked here on this levee, watching the storm punish a broad, sweeping bend in the Tallahatchie River for the past hour. The rain slanted in silvery sheets. The clouds hung so low and gray that, despite the fact it was midmorning, an artificial twilight encompassed Luke’s solitary torment.

  The moment he’d been both dreading and anticipating for the past five months had come. In all that time, he’d debated long and hard about what he would say, yet had found no words to convey his regret. This morning he’d changed his clothes between civilian and army uniform three times before he left his motel in black pants, a sport coat and tie—funeral clothes. He came to Mississippi as a man, not a soldier. Still, he felt as unprepared as if he’d come straight from the battlefield to speak to the mother of the man who shouldn’t have died.

  Died. He could think of no four letters more powerful, more cutting, more capable of drawing raw emotion to the surface, like blood in a fresh wound. Even so, that word was far from adequate to express what had happened to Calvin Abbott. Calvin had been obliterated. But no one outside his own team would ever know the reality of it.

  Each and every time Luke closed his eyes to sleep, he heard the shouts, the garbled static of his communications earpiece, the steady whomp-whomp of the helicopter blades, the explosions, the automatic rifle fire, his own ragged breathing—Abbott yelling his name. It was Luke’s own private hell, one he couldn’t share, even with his fellow Rangers.

  Occasionally, a moment in his life allowed the memory to sag to the rear of his mind. But quickly his own body brought it sharply back to the forefront. His fingertips still tingled, every step was marked by a stiff and painful right knee. Today’s weather brought a sharp and steady stabbing in his back.

  At least he could feel. He reminded himself of that every day.

  He put the car in drive and bounced along the gravel levee road, each rut and pothole sending a white-hot shaft of pain up through his shoulder blades. His white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel loosened when he reached the two-lane blacktop that led to Grover. Heavy vegetation pressed close to its berm, making some stretches of it look as wild as it had been in the days of the plantations. Areas that weren’t cultivated with cotton supported trees so large and ancient they created a brittle archway overhead. He concentrated on the broken yellow line bisecting the lanes, silently ticking off the distance between him and Calvin Abbott’s bereaved mother.

  Occasionally, tin-roofed shanties rose like cankers in the brush beside the road, the rain sheeting off the gutterless roofs to puddle on the ground. Once a mud-caked mongrel dog shot out from a lane, giving chase for a good quarter mile before he tuckered out and gave up.

  None of the sights did anything to lighten Luke’s dark mood.

  Grover first appeared in dribs and drabs along the highway: a car dealer; a field; the John Deere dealer; a field; the Dixie Drive-in, “Home of the Calhoun Burger”; a baseball diamond with a single set of sagging bleachers; a Piggly Wiggly with six cars in the parking lot; a yellow-brick, narrow-windowed high school. Then, tree-lined neighborhood streets with small bungalows that soon made way for larger, more stately old homes.

  He passed an old brick church whose interior lights shone through the intricate stained glass, a beacon of warmth in the cold, stormy day.

  When Luke reached downtown, he was hit with a strong sense of familiarity. The square was still festooned with Christmas lights that draped over the streets between the courthouse dome and the two- and three-story buildings that housed storefronts and offices on all four sides. Browning evergreen wreaths with big red bows that dripped rain and twitched in the wind encircled the globes of sidewalk lampposts. On the courthouse square was a Nativity scene—apparently separation of church and state hadn’t yet been an issue in Grover, Mississippi.

  Underneath all of the superficial differences between his own Yankee hometown and Abbott’s southern counterpart, the small county seats were essentially the same. Same cluster of businesses around the courthouse square. Same dated storefronts. Same untimely removal of tired holiday displays.

  This felt just like going home.

  Instead of a growing sense of welcoming, the similarities made Luke feel as if he had sand under his skin. He hadn’t been home to
Indiana for more than a day or two at a time since he joined the army over fifteen years ago. Since his release from the stateside hospital a week ago, there was a quiet burning in his gut telling him not to go back. He’d decided it was because he couldn’t go home and pick up his life—the life he owed to Calvin Abbott—without first seeing Abbott’s family.

  But in the dark of night, when the truth couldn’t be pushed away with mundane tasks, physical therapy and innocuous friendly conversation, a knot of fear replaced that burning, and he knew his life, his identity, was the Army Rangers. He was special ops from bone to skin; there wasn’t anything else in him.

  He turned left at the courthouse and headed west. Calvin’s mother owned a greenhouse and nursery called Magnolia Mile, just west of town. Luke was going to take his chances on finding it before he stopped somewhere and asked. He had a strong sense of obligation not to speak to someone who might have known Calvin before he spoke to his mother—in the same way the first of kin had to be notified of a death before the general population.

  The rain slackened and the windshield wipers began to skip and complain across the glass. He turned them to intermittent.

  Businesses fell away in the same sporadic way they’d increased on his way into town. It was low country here, near the Tallahatchie River; he passed a swampy bog, then moved into a stand of old growth forest. He was just about to decide he was on the wrong road when he saw a brightly painted sign with MAGNOLIA MILE written in fancy script over an ornate gold arrow pointing to the right, down a single-lane chip-and-seal road.

  He turned. After traveling that narrow road another several minutes, Luke was about to think he’d turned too soon, had missed the part of the sign that said TURN RIGHT 1/4 MILE. The road bottomed on a low bridge over a creek, then took a near-ninety-degree turn to the left. And there it was, MAGNOLIA MILE written on a sign in front of a very large yellow Victorian house. The ornate white-trimmed front porch made a sweeping curve as it wrapped around the left side of the house.