Covenant

by Ann McMan

  “These.” Maddie examined the pamphlet. “It’s . . . a religious tract. Several of them, in fact—on a table here in the children’s section.” She rejoined Syd at the front desk and handed one of the printed brochures to her.

  Syd grimaced as she looked it over. The cover of the tract featured a graphic, luridly colored cartoon illustration of tormented souls writhing in what she guessed was a depiction of hell. Where Will You Spend Eternity? the title inquired.

  “Oh, great. And there was a second grade class in here today for story time. I wonder how many of the kids saw this thing?”

  “Hopefully not many. Where’s it from?”

  Syd turned it over. A name was stamped in faded blue ink in an open space at the bottom of the page.

  Full Gospel Tabernacle, Bone Gap, Va. “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.” John 3:5

  She showed it to Maddie. “Color me surprised—not.”

  “What is up with those people?”

  “I think we can guess. Especially after what Roma Jean shared about her encounter with Charlie’s father on Saturday. I guess they wanted to leave a handy little reminder for her here, too.”

  Maddie was still looking the tract over. “Probably not just for her, Syd.”

  “You’re right. We’re on the same highway to hell along with the rest of the town apostates.”

  Maddie crushed the folded paper. “Do you think it’s time for me to pay a call on our friend, Mrs. Black?”

  “No, I do not. We need to let Byron handle this. He said he would. Let’s give him the chance to do it.”

  Maddie sighed. “Against my better judgment, I defer to your suggestion.”

  “Good. Now throw those things away and let’s get out of here. I’m starving.”

  “Okay.” Maddie crossed the room to toss the tracts into the recycle bin beside the copier. Syd’s heart sank when she saw her detour and pause to examine the control screen on the front of the machine. “Why is this thing blinking red?”

  Oh, god . . . now we’ll be in here all night . . .

  “It’s nothing. I’ll fix it in the morning.”

  “Syd . . .”

  “It’s probably the fuser. It’s been on its last legs for more than a week now.”

  “Do you have another one?”

  “Someplace.”

  Maddie was opening the front panel of the machine. “Do you want to get it for me?”

  “Maddie . . . could we please not do this right now?”

  “Honey, it’ll only take ten minutes.”

  “That’s what you said the last time,” she whined, “and we were stuck in here for more than two hours.” She consulted her watch. “We have to pick Henry up at seven-thirty.”

  “We have plenty of time—and that wasn’t the fuser last time. Fusers are easy.”

  Syd knew it was a losing battle. She retreated to her office and located the box containing a replacement fuser. By the time she’d returned, Maddie had already removed the offending part. Syd handed the new cartridge to her.

  “Someday you’ll have to explain this obsession you have to fix broken stuff.”

  “You mean like people?” Maddie was removing the safety wrapper from the replacement fuser. “It’s not an obsession; it’s part of being an MD.”

  “No. The people part of the equation I get. It’s the inanimate stuff I don’t understand.”

  “I like to feel useful.”

  “Honey, believe me when I tell you that you have all kinds of enviable skills that make you beyond useful to me. Fixing photocopiers is not among them.”

  Maddie snapped the fuser into place and proceeded to close up the rest of the access panels on the unit.

  “Voila. Good as new.” She turned the machine back on and waited while it cycled through its startup screens. Blissfully, a bright green READY message finally displayed. She beamed at Syd. “My work here is through.”

  “Thank you.” Syd took the discarded part from her. “In exchange for the grace I just exhibited by enduring this repair interlude, I should be entitled to some kind of special perk. Don’t you think?”

  “That depends.” Maddie gave her a lewd smile. “What’d you have in mind?”

  “Oh, not that. I usually get that without having to sacrifice anything. I was thinking of something . . . more immediate.”

  “Immediate?” Maddie sounded suspicious.

  “Uh huh. I think you should let me order dinner for you.”

  Maddie’s face fell. “Oh, come on, Syd . . .”

  “Buck up, buttercup.” It was Syd’s turn to pinch Maddie on the butt. “It’ll be an adventure.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Maddie’s grousing about her impending culinary disappointment continued until they were seated at Waffle House.

  Coralee Minor brought their cups of decaf and asked if they each wanted their usual.

  “Not tonight, Coralee.” Syd managed to cut Maddie off. “We’re going to mix it up.”

  “You are?” Coralee shot an inquiring look at Maddie, who was all but pouting on her side of the table. “Okay. I’ll leave these menus with you, then. Gimme a holler when you know what you want.”

  After Coralee retreated, Syd hissed at Maddie. “Stop acting like a five-year-old and tell me about Celine taking Dorothy to New York.”

  Maddie looked longingly at the color photos of hash browns and steaming bowls of Bert’s Chili on her menu before sighing and pushing it away.

  “That’s pretty much it. She said there’s a great concert scheduled at Carnegie Hall next weekend—some pianist who I gather is a true proficient, as Mom comprehends the term. She wants to expose Dorothy to this higher caliber of performance.”

  “Really? Do you remember the name of the pianist?”

  “Um…” Maddie thought about it. “It’s something Japanese . . . Mitsuko somebody?”

  “Mitsuko Uchida?”

  “That’s it. Mom said she was best known for Mozart, but was branching out into Beethoven.”

  “Well, your mom is right: she’s an incredible talent. It’s a fantastic opportunity for Dorothy.”

  “I agree. As long as it’s something Dorothy is interested in doing.”

  “Don’t you think she would be?”

  “I honestly have no idea. And I’m not persuaded Mom does, either.”

  This was surprising new territory. Maddie had never hinted at anything like this previously. Syd wondered how long she’d been ruminating about this.

  “What are you getting at, Maddie?”

  “It’s nothing, really. Just something I’ve thought about since Dorothy started staying out there with Mom.”

  Coralee wandered by with the coffee pot. “Anybody ready for a refill?”

  Maddie pushed her mug toward her. “I’ll take some.”

  Syd followed suit. “I might as well, too, since you’re here.”

  After Coralee had topped them off, she asked if they’d had time to look over the menu.

  Maddie’s exaggerated pout was enough to melt Syd’s veneer of determination.

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” She snapped up their menus and handed them to Coralee. “Just bring us our damn usuals.”

  Coralee and Maddie shared conspiratorial smiles.

  “I’ll have those right up,” Coralee promised, before hightailing it back to the grill area.

  “You really are impossible.”

  “I know.” Maddie gave her one of her most dazzling smiles. “But you love me, right?”

  In truth, it was hard for Syd to do little else when Maddie looked at her that way.

  “You’re just lucky you’re so damn gorgeous. So, quit flirting and tell me what you meant about your mom and Dorothy.”

  “Okay. For starters, you know how happy it makes me that Mom has taken Dorothy in the way she has, right?”

  Syd nodded. “Of course.”

  “So it has nothing to do with that. I honestly think the two
of them are insanely well matched. It’s almost like they complete each other in some surreal way. And Dorothy’s talent for the piano is . . . well, it’s pretty extraordinary. We all admit that. I can see why Mom is so over the moon about teaching her—and jumping at the opportunity to finally have a chance to share her own great gift with such a willing recipient. Lord knows I was never all that receptive, no matter how hard she tried to get me to focus. Sadly, the same goes for Henry.”

  Syd laughed. “You’re right about that. To Henry, even sitting down to practice scales is tantamount to Chinese water torture.”

  Maddie smiled. “He comes by that honestly.”

  “Now you sound like Celine.”

  “I know I do. I didn’t fall too far from the tree, either. Even though I fear I disappointed Mom in the same ways she thinks she disappointed her parents.”

  “I don’t think Celine shares that view, at all. She’s proud of you and the life you’ve made for yourself.”

  “I suppose.” Maddie considered Syd’s suggestion. “I guess I have my own damage when it comes to wanting to rewrite the past.”

  “You and Celine have made incredible strides repairing your relationship. I don’t think she believes you have any rewriting to do where she is concerned.”

  Maddie had picked up her teaspoon and had been obsessively turning it end over end. “I hope not.”

  Syd reached out to still her hand. “Maddie?”

  Maddie looked up at her.

  “You don’t need to rewrite your past. I promise.”

  Maddie laid the spoon down. “I just don’t want Mom to make the mistake of thinking Dorothy can rewrite hers.”

  “If you think there’s a chance she might, then maybe you should consider asking her about it.”

  “Yeah.” Maddie sat back and folded her arms. “I hate this kind of stuff.”

  “I know. It sucks you’re so damn good at it.”

  She could tell Maddie was gearing up to argue the point. But before she could get very far, Coralee arrived with her hash brown bowl, and Maddie suddenly had a more urgent—and welcome—task to undertake.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Dinner at Gramma C’s was always one of Henry’s favorite things to do.

  As long as Gramma C. didn’t make him sit down for a piano lesson . . .

  Buddy was at Gramma C’s when Henry and Dorothy got off the school bus. Henry was excited to see him because they hadn’t had very many chances to hang out together since school started. After he and Dorothy did their homework at Gramma C’s kitchen table, she told them they could go outside and keep Buddy company while he worked in her garden. Henry was excited to go because he loved helping Buddy. But Dorothy wanted to stay inside and practice the piano.

  Gramma C. gave him a big glass of iced tea to take to Buddy, since it was so hot in the sun. Henry carried it very slowly so he didn’t spill any on the walk from the house.

  Gramma C. really liked Buddy, and that made Henry happy. Not a lot of people were patient enough to try to understand the special way Buddy talked about things—and sometimes, they were mean to him. He knew Dorothy’s daddy had been that way. But Dorothy had always had a special friendship with Buddy. She told Henry once that Buddy always tried to look after her—just like Maddie and Syd always looked after him.

  Even though his daddy had never been mean to him, or to anybody else.

  Henry knew Dorothy was sad that her daddy was gone, but he was glad that Dorothy didn’t have to be afraid of him anymore. But it worried him that Dorothy said she was responsible for what had happened to him on the 4th of July. Henry didn’t really understand what everyone was so upset about. He knew that Mr. Watson had drowned in the river, and that not everyone was as sorry as Dorothy was that he was gone.

  Henry imagined how sad he’d be if his daddy had drowned. But he didn’t know why Dorothy felt like it had been her fault, and he was afraid to ask her about it. She got kind of strange whenever he brought it up, and he didn’t want to upset her or make her feel worse.

  People were hard to figure out sometimes.

  Buddy said once that Dorothy had the thumbprint of God on her head, and that her daddy had messed up her numbers.

  Numbers mattered more to Buddy than anything. But Henry didn’t understand what Buddy meant when he kept talking about things like “little phi” and “golden ratios.” That sounded a lot like math problems that were way beyond what he was learning in school. He barely understood multiplication tables. And he mostly only got those right because he memorized the answers—not because the ways they worked out made sense to him. He didn’t see patterns the way Buddy did. Buddy saw patterns in everything.

  Even the garden rows he was planting.

  Buddy showed him how to count them: one, one, two, three, five, seven, eleven.

  Buddy said the rows made a sequence that was part of something called a “golden ratio.” He said the golden ratio was what Dorothy was missing—only Buddy called Dorothy “Goldenrod.” That’s when he told Henry about the golden dog that was supposed to protect the children—and how the orange dog tried to hurt them instead.

  Henry wondered if orange dogs were like stink bugs. Syd said the stink bugs were especially bad this year, and they were eating the vegetables in their garden at home. He remembered her talking with Maddie about spraying for stink bugs and orange dogs, and some other kind of caterpillar.

  But he didn’t think anybody would ever use stink bugs to look after children . . . not even old gods like Zeus.

  Henry carried sprinkler cans full of water for Buddy to use on the new plants. Buddy said Gramma C. would have kale and collard greens before Thanksgiving this year, because the first frost would come late. Henry didn’t really like kale, but he knew Syd did. She liked to put it into smoothies she made for Maddie. One time, he saw Maddie dump one out behind the barn, but when she noticed him watching her, she told him it was entre nous.

  He didn’t much care for collards, either. Uncle David told him they were better with lots of vinegar, but Henry thought that idea was even more gross than eating them plain. He liked peas a whole lot better.

  “When will these peas be ripe, Buddy?” He gently touched the tiny plants.

  “Peas take seventy to eighty days, Bluebird. Peas will come before the Beaver Moon.”

  “What’s a beaver moon?”

  “The earth has imperfect alignment. The earth blocks the sun and the moon is a shadow.”

  Henry thought that didn’t sound too good. “Is that a bad thing?”

  “A Beaver Moon means imperfect alignment. It hides the light and makes shadows in the middle of the day.”

  “But we’ll still get peas first, right?”

  “Peas take seventy to eighty days, Bluebird.”

  Henry counted. That meant Gramma C. would have peas before Christmas.

  He’d ask her about beaver moons later . . .

  He wondered if Buddy would grow flowers for Maddie and Syd’s wedding. Uncle David said they’d need a lot—way more than the florist in town could supply. He had showed Syd some plans for big white archways that were covered in fussy white flowers.

  “I think we should have a series of these trellises,” he explained. “One for each year you’ve been together. You can progress though them while the chamber ensemble plays whatever tiresome extended voluntary thing you decide on. It’ll be sensational. The twelve bridesmaids will precede you in rows of two. I’m estimating we’ll need sixty to a hundred dozen lilies.”

  “That’s a lot of lilies,” Syd said.

  “That’s why it’s good we’re planning ahead.”

  Uncle David rolled up the plans and handed them to Syd. “Keep these someplace safe from prying eyes. I don’t want her head to explode if she sees this.”

  After Uncle David had left, Syd asked Henry to keep the flower thing entre nous.

  It was getting harder for him to keep all the entre nous stuff straight. There was a whole lot of it going on these days. />
  Gramma C. called out to Henry from the patio, saying it was time for supper. She told Buddy to come along inside, too.

  Buddy dropped his spade and wiped his hands on his trousers.

  Henry took hold of his hand, and led him toward the house. It made him happy that Buddy held on to him like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Their conversation was going no place in a hurry.

  But that wasn’t unusual. Not when it involved Tom, and something he wanted passionately.

  Lizzy was growing tired of beating her head against a wall. They’d planned to meet up for dinner tonight to hash some things out, but Tom had called to tell her he’d been held up . . . again. He hadn’t been back to Jericho since he’d dropped the bomb about the job in Colorado on her last Wednesday night.

  She didn’t really think that was an accident. She knew Tom well enough to understand that the more he put her off, the further he could advance his plans, making it that much harder for her to raise objections that would get in the way of what he wanted.

  When she tried to tell him that, he bowed-up, which also was a vintage defensive response of his.

  “Why do you always have to accuse me of doing something underhanded? I’m not looking for reasons to avoid talking about any of this with you.”

  “Oh really? Then why have you been unable to follow through on any of our plans to do precisely that?”

  “It hasn’t been that long. You’re over-dramatizing everything.”

  “Tom, I’m not doing that—and you know it as well as I do. If you really cared about my opinion, you’d make time to listen to it.”

  “I already know what your opinion is.”

  Lizzy couldn’t mistake the contempt and frustration in his voice. She tried to moderate her own tone.

  “I was surprised to learn that you haven’t talked with your sister about any of this yet. When were you planning to tell her?”

  “Why would I involve her? She’ll just take your side.”

  Lizzy closed her eyes. “Nobody’s taking sides, Tom.”

  “Oh, yeah? That’ll be a first. They just want you to stay there so you keep working at that clinic for free.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t work for free. The grant pays me.”