Waking Savannah

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  Ade picked it up. He scanned the print. Yes, he had read it. And several similar.

  “What none of them say”—she took the clipping back from him—“is the whole truth.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Savannah stared at the clipping, squinted. Her fingers moved to her temple, first one hand, then the other. The clipping floated to the floor. Ade knew the look. He feared it. Taking her into his arms, he pulled her close. “Enough,” he said. “Enough for tonight.”

  She didn’t speak for a long time. Body tense, eyes closed, she took deep breaths until she was soothed. Lifting her head, she met his gaze in the room lit only by the moon rising and sunlight fading from evening to night. “I wanted to show you these things, Ade. Words are nice but they’re filler for the real stuff. You gave me your past, your fears, your deepest insecurities. I could do no less and still claim to love you.”

  He wanted the words. Badly. But he didn’t ask for them. Ade only pulled her close again and kissed her tenderly. Passionately.

  Savannah pressed a hand to his chest. “There’s more to tell you.”

  “I know,” he said. “But not this moment. When you are ready. We have nothing but time, corazón.”

  She nodded almost shyly, lifted her face and closed her eyes. Ade obliged, surprisingly content with kisses even if his body wanted more.

  Savannah smiled against his lips. “I dreamt this.”

  “You did?”

  “I did.” She pulled away just enough. “Dream after naughty dream. I was so embarrassed every time I saw you after one of them. You never noticed?”

  “Now that you say it…”

  “No!” She laughed, covering, her face with both hands. “I give you permission to lie to me without consequence if it means sparing me the humiliation.”

  Ade moved them, pulled her in, kissed her tenderly once, twice. “I want you in a way I have not wanted a woman since I was a young man with no experience. This is a tremendous thing for me. I thought I would never feel tenderness, Savannah. I did not think myself capable. I want you, but this time, when the time is right, not fortuitous.”

  “And the time is not right,” Savannah said. “Not until you know if Anita’s baby is also your baby.”

  “No, Savannah. And yes.” He squeezed her hands. “Whether or not the child is mine has no bearing on how I feel about you, but it could change how you feel about me.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “You don’t know the Dursts. Your life is complicated enough. You might not want me in it if it means dealing with them.” Ade smoothed the backs of his fingers along her cheek. “She will dredge up your past and make a circus of it if it pleases her. She will attempt to drag you through every horrifying detail and twist it to make you—”

  Savannah pushed off the bed. Arms wrapped around herself, she stood at the window looking out. Her hand started for her temple, and stopped. She faced him. “I can’t let her, anyone, dictate my life,” she said. “I am only now just realizing how I’ve let my past dictate my future. I thought I was living it by my own terms, but what I’ve been doing is denying it all, to an extent. That, and only that, is the reason I want to take this slower, Ade. I want to climb into bed with you right now and stay there for days, but it would be better to wait, for so many reasons. It’s not just sex for me. If it were, you wouldn’t have gone to bed alone after our first dinner together that night you arrived.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded solemnly. Ade attempted to quell the idiotic grin trying to make an appearance.

  “And you are becoming a new man,” she continued. “A new man who doesn’t jump into things. A new man who savors the moment. I want to savor this moment too, all these moments. Does that make any sense?”

  Standing beside her at the window, Ade took Savannah into his arms. He swayed back and forth, a slow dance to cricketsong. “There is something sexy about waiting, is there not?”

  She swayed with him, kissed his throat. “There is.” His jaw. “Have I told you”—his earlobe—“that when you’re around, my headache goes away?”

  “No.” Ade shuddered, cleared his throat.

  Her hands moved up his chest, and down, stopping at the buttons of his jeans before moving up to his chest again. “Right now, I have no headache at all. Carmen said—”

  “Carmen?” he asked. “The older woman who visited with Benny?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “Never mind.” She waved it away, a weary smile on her lips. “It’s silly. Too silly to even mention. I am wiped out. Maybe we should say good-night. We have a long day in the fields tomorrow.”

  “I’m feeling a bit drained myself.”

  She pulled out of his arms, offered him a teasing handshake. “Good-night, Ade.”

  Ade took her hand and kissed it. “Good-night, Savannah. Sleep sweet.”

  “Sleep sweet.”

  Closing the door behind himself, Ade blew a breath through his lips, pushed fingers through his hair. He crossed the hall to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, inspected the growth of facial hair and decided to let it go, anything to keep his mind off Savannah in her own room, probably undressing, waiting for him to finish in the bathroom they shared. His mind wandered and his body responded. In his own room, he stripped down to nothing. Sliding between the cool sheets only heightened his arousal. Desire knew nothing of pretty words and noble actions and earnest promises. Ade groaned. And so did the door that opened with a rush of air. He came up on his elbows.

  “Savannah?”

  “Screw waiting,” she said, and dove into his arms.

  * * * *

  Well, now…uh…I wasn’t expecting that. Oh, Savvy, you have no idea how lucky you are. Come along now, you two. This is nothing you need to be seeing. Your mom is safe with Ricky Ricardo. Let’s go keep an eye on your daddy, though, just in case.

  * * * *

  Spent and sweating in Ade’s arms, head resting on his chest, Savannah listened to the beat of his heart. She listened to heartbeats all the time. Mothers’. Babies’. None of them sounded like his. Ade’s thumped like a symphony in her ear, against her cheek, the most beautiful sound she had ever heard, and she was glad she hadn’t let him go to bed alone.

  Whatever the future had in store, they had at least this night of confessions and promises and love. Like the keepsakes in the Box, she would be able to take it out and revisit it, live it over and over again. It was more than she ever expected to have.

  She will dredge up your past and make a circus of it...

  His words had nearly undone her, had almost made her deny what she wanted not just for herself, but for Ade. Listening to him prepare for bed, the water running and the pipes creaking, Savannah’s mind had reeled and her body rebelled. She loved him. He loved her. No one, nothing, should have the power to keep them apart.

  Lying against his chest, fingers soothing circles into his just-enough chest hair, she felt slumber take him in the gentle rise and fall of his chest. Savannah considered slipping quietly from his bed and going to her own room. Briefly. Instead, she settled more comfortably beside him, closed her eyes and, smiling, let slumber take her too.

  Chapter 17

  friends long dead

  “You must come, Savannah. Quickly.” Ade tugged her from the row of beans she was picking, insistently when she lagged.

  “Is something wrong? Is it Edgardo? Raul?”

  “No, no. Nothing is wrong. I have found something exciting. Please, corazón, just let me show you.”

  “Finish this row before you leave,” she called over her shoulder as Ade hauled on her arm. The kids among the beans shouted or waved back. Savannah picked up her pace so Ade wasn’t hauling her as much as leading her. “What’s got you all excited, sugar? Did you find something up in the field?”

  “Not in the field. On the way back.” He climbed into the coot, barely waiting for
her to sit all the way before taking off. The machine didn’t go very fast, but Ade’s enthusiasm made it seem like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Savannah grabbed the back of her seat and held on tight. She laughed over bumps, her heart as light as the sunshine dappling through the trees. Sharing their days, sharing meals, sharing a bed had changed everything and nothing between them. Each day she told herself if this was all she got, she was already more than grateful, and each day made that a little bit more of a lie, because grateful as she was, Savannah wanted more.

  Ade slammed the coot into park and leapt over the side. Savannah barely got a leg over before he was there, holding out his hand.

  “You’re vibrating, sugar,” she drawled. “The suspense is killing me.”

  “Only a moment more. Come.”

  Hand in hand, they left the dirt road and struck out into the woods. Ade had already hacked through the underbrush, so the going was fairly easy as well as short-lived. The coot on the road was still visible through the trees. He halted.

  “There.”

  At first, Savannah saw nothing but more green and bramble. Then, “Peaches!”

  Stunted, bug-eaten, they were nonetheless peaches even to her untrained eye. Ade led her forward. He plucked a slightly shriveled thing from its branch. “Taste.”

  “Are you certain it’s safe?”

  “This is as organic a peach as you will ever get, corazón. It has been growing untouched here for, if I guess correctly, close to one hundred years.”

  Eyeing it skeptically, Savannah bit into the fruit. Her eyes rolled. “It’s like honey straight from the hive. Peach honey. And so…so…”

  “Juicy?”

  “That too. It’s soft without being mushy. I’m from Georgia, and I’ve never tasted a more delicious peach. Is it one of those extinct varieties you told me about?”

  “Not extinct,” he answered. “But rare. Very few growers bother with this kind of fruit. It’s a clingstone, most assuredly. See how the flesh holds on to the pit?”

  “Oh, yeah. Is that what they mean by ‘yellow cling’ peaches? They’re clingpits?”

  “Clingstone,” he corrected. “When the flesh clings to the pit they’re clingstones. When the flesh separates from the pit, they’re freestones. There are also semi-freestones, but you can figure that out, I’m certain. But this, Savannah, this peach is precious. The age of the tree, the location of it, the size and texture of the fruit tells me many things that lead me to assumptions requiring more research to see if my guess is correct. But come. There is more.”

  “More?”

  He took her hand, led her further into the wood. Savannah tried not to be too distracted by the feel of his hand in hers, the sweat of their palms mingling, and how that mingling sweat brought to mind other mingling sweat through coolly humid nights unable to get enough of one another.

  Focus, Savannah. Focus. This means a lot to him.

  “Wow.” She saw the old foundation before he pointed it out to her. Stones set in a rectangle, the remnants of a cellar door, a chimney and hearth, bits and pieces of a house left barely standing. All of it charred in places evidencing the fire that must have taken it. “I wonder if this is the original homestead.”

  “I would imagine so,” Ade said. “If not the original, then a subsequent one. If we can date the house, we can date the peach tree, maybe even find records to tell us for certain what old variety it is. I would not be surprised to find more of them hiding in the forest. If there are, we could potentially resurrect the orchard, maybe even rebuild the old homestead. We could—”

  “We?” Savannah held on to his hand all the tighter while the woozy sensation ebbed. Ade’s blurred image sharpened into focus.

  “My enthusiasm ran away with me,” he said. “I shouldn’t make assumptions.”

  “I just…” Savannah moved a step closer, took his other hand. “I haven’t thought about our future beyond the DNA test.”

  “I have. I do. Most of my thoughts are nothing but.”

  “But if the baby…”

  “I don’t care, Savannah. If you will have me with or without Anita Durst making our lives miserable, there is no place I want to be but here in Bitterly, on this farm with you.”

  “It’s a little soon to be pledging your life to me and my farm, sugar.”

  “Is it?” Ade took her into his arms. “Says who?”

  “Says…I don’t know. Sensibility?”

  “I disagree. Do I make you happy?”

  “Is that a real question?”

  He smiled and held her closer. “Denying happiness is not sensible. It is wasteful. It is…blasphemous.”

  “Well, fiddle-dee-dee. Those are strong words. And how do you know we will still make one another happy in five years?”

  “You would have us wait five years? Just to be safe?”

  “Maybe not five years, but it has only been a few weeks.”

  “Five days? Five weeks? And it has been nearly two months. So what is your point?”

  “It’s so soon. Still so new.”

  “Again, your point being? That something so new cannot be trusted? That one must wait for something to go wrong? Please, tell me, corazón, what has caution gotten either of us?”

  Determined, like a pit bull with a rabbit in its jaws. And earnest as one of those hands-in-the-air faithful Savannah used to look askance at back in the days Auntie Bea took her to church. The waiting headache throbbed once, and subsided as it always did when he was near. Always warning, reminding her. There was one secret left to tell.

  She took a step back, but kept his hand. “Let’s explore a little.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Let’s.”

  And though he squeezed her hand and led the way, Savannah couldn’t mistake his disappointment any more than she could the sunshine threading through the canopy.

  Bits of broken glass, pottery or china, a man’s shoe, charred beams moldering for years, remnants of lives lived and left to ruin after the fire. All these things and more lived in the dirt and leaf mold of decades.

  “It’s getting dark,” Savannah said, looking up from the old hearth shovel Ade had found. “We should head back.”

  “Perhaps tomorrow, we can go into town and do some research at the library.”

  “I’ll have to see how much got done today. If we don’t get those beans in, they’re going to start spotting.”

  “Yes, of course. And we have the whole winter to research. We should gather some of those peaches. Taytay and Tío will be pleased to know I found something”—he startled slightly, brushed dirt from her chin—“worthwhile in all my searching.”

  “And we—” She cleared the thickness suddenly tightening her throat. “We should mark the tree. So we don’t forget where it is.”

  Ade’s hand slowly dropped, grasped hers. They headed back through the wood to the coot where they placed their artifacts into the bed. Savannah looked over them, scarcely able to believe such things had been left behind. Had the family lost someone in the fire, making it too difficult to return to the scene? Maybe it simply happened at a time they were too busy to salvage anything, and then never did. Could it have been arson? Scenario after scenario, and any one of them viable, tumbled through her head. She would find out. She and Ade. Over the long winter months with nothing but time on their hands.

  Ade grabbed the fluorescent marker tape out of the coot bed. “I will gather some peaches and mark the tree. Why don’t you get started turning this beast around.”

  “Ah, so you discovered its shortcomings, have you?”

  He walked backwards, laughing. “It does prefer to go in straight lines, does it not?”

  By the time Savannah got the coot turned on the narrow road, dusk was falling. Ade came trotting out of the woods, glancing over his shoulder.

  “I think we might have disturbed the structure of the old place,” he said. “I’m hearing a lot of crashing noises. We should have the building insp
ector look at it before going in again.”

  “We probably should have thought about that to begin with.” She shrugged. “I got caught up in it, I guess. I’ll call Town Hall tomorrow.”

  Ade hopped into the coot beside her. Savannah drove the dusty, forest road, basking in the sensation of his eyes on her. He didn’t look away any time she turned her eyes to him, but smiled the sort of smile that turned her belly upside-down, and set her lusty bits afire. A flash of that same look of bewildered, seductive joy on Doc’s face threatened to spoil it all.

  I loved you. I did. And then…now I love him. Savannah’s jaw clenched. The ache twinging in her temples flared again. I can’t allow the past to define my future.

  Over and over she pushed those words through her head, words given to her by Auntie Bea during one of the numerous, recent phone calls. A mantra. A chant. A prayer. Whatever it was, it worked. Headaches bloomed into happiness instead, spread through her blood and bones. Each time, it became easier. Each time, it became more true.

  * * * *

  My stomach hurts. But I don’t have a stomach. I don’t have anything. I’m nothing. In Nowheresville. And this is where it all began. Ended, I guess. This is where it E.N.D.E.D.

  How did I get here? Where I never-ever-ever wanted to be again. I just wanted to see where Savvy and Ricky Ricardo were going. I’m tired of hanging around the farm. Was it so wrong to want to wander a bit? I didn’t realize…I had no idea Savvy lived so near the shack. She owns it, for goodness sake. Is that really what drew me to her to begin with? Was there some psycho draw that pulled me in without me even knowing it? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!

  But here I am, only there’s no shack now. Just a burned out foundation where his place used to be. Did he burn it down to hide the evidence? Maybe Pop did. Or Mom. If I could do more than hurl stuff around, I’d finish the job. I’d dig a hole to hell and push it in. Dammit! I said hell. Now I swore and said it twice. Who cares? I’m doomed anyway. I have been since the minute I laid eyes on that…that…