by Deborah Reed
The dishes could not be replaced. June would be plucking shards from the grass for weeks. She would need to wear shoes out here.
Then laughter coming from her grandparents’ yard. For a fractured second she didn’t understand how that could be, how anyone could be over there, and the sound haunted her, frightened and confused her.
Then she turned to see Jameson, braced forward with his hands on his knees, laughing.
“You saw that?” she called.
Jameson straightened up and nodded.
“Bleedin’ hell,” June said.
Jameson came toward her, smiling. “Bold little bastards.”
June shook her head. She lifted her hair off her neck and wiped the sweat away, her hand there suddenly recalling the way his shirt collar had wrapped around her last night.
Jameson was looking in the direction the raccoons had gone. “Weird,” he said.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” she said.
Broken cups and saucers lay across the table and on the ground.
“I didn’t mean to intrude. Looks like you were expecting company.”
June felt the heat in her face. A child planning a tea party with an imaginary mum. “Excuse me,” she said. “I’ll just be needing the broom.”
She grabbed her flip-flops and the broom and dustpan, and she twisted her hair atop her head for the heat. When she returned, Jameson was right where she’d left him, watching her now as she swept the slivers from the patio. “I was going to get some shots with my camera. I wasn’t expecting company. Certainly not raccoons.”
“How long have you had that camera?”
“My father gave it to me when I was seven.”
Jameson looked at her closely.
“Would you like some lemonade?” she asked, and stood upright with the dustpan full of shards in one hand, the broom like a staff in the other.
Jameson shrugged. “Thank you. The roofers are late.” He glanced behind him at the bungalow. “I want to have a word with them before I head out.”
“What time do you leave?”
“She should—Sarah Anne—should be here anytime.”
“Well, then. I’ll bring extra glasses for her and the boy—what’s his name?”
“Ernest.”
“Ernest.” June smiled to one side, gave a soft nod.
“Can I help you with anything?” Jameson asked as June stepped toward the house. Her mind flashed on all they had said to each other, their hands clutching, and after lightly touching as they walked together to her front door, where Jameson stepped back as if embarrassed by his behavior, and abruptly said good night. He was smiling now, different, as if he’d awakened in a fine mood. His wife was on her way. Maybe that was it. He hadn’t seen her in weeks.
“No need,” June said. “I’ll just be a moment.”
Inside, she gathered what she needed from the kitchen and returned with glasses full of ice and a pitcher of lemonade on a tray, and they sat facing each other at the table.
“I made that drive once,” June said. “That she’s—Sarah Anne—is making today. To the high desert. With my father. Though technically I returned with my grandfather. A long tale for another time.”
Jameson glanced at an imaginary watch on his wrist. “I’ve got time.”
June poured them each a drink and relaxed back in her chair. “My father wasn’t well,” she said, with such seriousness that it surprised her. “We took a road trip, as I mentioned. The first and last time we ever went anywhere. He was talking to me about my mother, which he rarely ever did. And he closed his eyes while driving. He did that. Closed his eyes often when he spoke, as if it were a terrible struggle. I don’t know, I was a child, but when the truck veered off, I have to say I wasn’t terrified at all.”
“Were you hurt?”
“My front teeth were knocked out.”
Jameson cupped his mouth.
“To be fair, they were already loose. Baby teeth.”
Jameson smiled faintly, and June wondered what he was thinking behind the faraway look on his face. She guessed his own children. “What were you, if you weren’t scared?” he asked.
June swallowed the tart lemonade. “I was a bit thrilled, to be honest. My first thought was that I was going to see my mother.”
“Oh.”
“Now look who’s being crude.”
Jameson shook his head.
A dreamy kind of quiet exhaustion settled in. They glanced toward the golf course, then the chickadees zipping for the feeder, the juncos hopping on the ground beneath it where June had sprinkled seeds just for them. Then June looked directly at Jameson and he at her. They were free to say what they liked to each other, she thought. He would soon be gone, and they would never see each other again, so what did it matter?
Jameson said, “That little kit up on the table with the cup. It was like he’d come for tea.”
June smiled.
Then he spoke of his children, haltingly, spoke of their love for each other and how it seemed to be not of this world. The words caught in his throat, but he said them anyway, said some part of him believed that they must be better off, having left a world where such a thing, the thing that happened to them, could be allowed to happen.
What she saw in his face, and in his shoulders and back, was relief.
“I was sent away to an awful place when I was their age,” June said.
She told him about the young girl who had needed her, had needed someone, anyone, to help her, while June did nothing, never even spoke of what had gone on in that place until she was grown.
Jameson started to speak, and June cut him off.
“Please, if you don’t mind, I’d rather not hear how I was just a child and didn’t know any better. I’ve heard it all before.”
“I was going to say that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”
“Oh. Oscar Wilde.”
“Yes,” he said. “And that your guilt must feel overwhelming, even now.”
June’s eyes welled up. “Yes,” she said. “It does.”
“I don’t think I can be a father to that boy,” Jameson said. “Sarah Anne needs him as much as she’s needed anything in her life, and the cruelest thing I could ever do is deny her the child, and the next cruelest thing is to go along with the adoption when it isn’t what I want.”
June nodded. “I understand how a person can get into a predicament like that.”
“How so?”
“When I was young, Granddad used to chop and stack the fire logs near the side door under the eave over there. By the time I was seven I was in charge of keeping the house warm, and my father sometimes surprised me by coming out of his bedroom to stand in front of the fireplace with the camp blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a shawl. He’d thank me even though he didn’t look at me. His eyes were closed as if it were the only way to absorb the heat, and I would stare at his lids and lashes, his cheeks prickled in whiskers, his reddish hair made lighter by the orange glow. My love for him caused a terrible ache.” June paused, caught her breath, feeling the very ache. “The space between me and my father was never going to be the center that held up the world. He didn’t want to be left with me. He didn’t want me from the start.”
“My God, June. What an awful burden to bear.”
“I’m not saying it would be the same for you or Ernest. I’m not saying—”
“I understand. I do. It’s perfectly all right. The thing is, no one else wants that boy either. But Sarah Anne does. Very much.”
“Of course,” June said, and wished she could take back what she’d told him.
Surely they were going to be interrupted any second. Surely this was all about to come to an end. Was this why June said what she said next?
She didn’t know. It seemed to come out of nowhere when she declared, “I never loved Niall the way he loved me, not really, though the truth of it has never come to me before now, never fully formed, not like this, not until this m
oment of recalling how things had been for my father.”
She had really said it out loud.
Jameson stared, his mouth slightly open.
“Mother of God,” June said. “Every drunk knows it’s better to purge when you’re feeling sick than to try and hold it in.”
Jameson was laughing, his head thrown back, when the first cars arrived.
28
How else to say it except the calm before the storm?
One minute Jameson was sitting with June having lemonade and sharing a string of confessions, and the next the world was coming to a halt.
The roofers pulled up in two separate sedans, both with loose mufflers. Behind them came a rusty flatbed truck full of shingles. The lumberyard truck was fourth in line, with the plywood, as if they’d all coordinated their arrival before heading up the hill.
Jameson stood as a third truck pulled out around the rest and went straight into the driveway to park behind Jameson’s truck. Jameson shielded his eyes. He knew that truck. He knew the man getting out.
Van Hicks slammed the door and coughed.
“Quite a parade,” June said.
Jameson pursed his lips. “I was hoping to be gone before he arrived.”
Hicks stopped with hands on hips, looking around as if surveying the place. He walked up the driveway toward the bungalow’s front porch, then he looked across and halted his step. It was clear he was looking at Jameson.
“I’m going to guess,” June said. “Van Hicks?”
“The one and only.”
Jameson excused himself and walked toward him just as Hicks was headed in his direction. Jameson held up his hand as a gesture for him not to take another step.
Hicks stopped.
When Jameson stood within a few feet of him, Hicks lifted his right hand forward, so slightly it could have been missed. Jameson stuck both hands in the front pockets of his jeans. No way in hell were they going to shake. “You enjoying this, Hicks?” he said. “Getting me back out here like this?”
“I know you didn’t want to see me,” Hicks said, “but I figured you to be gone from here already.”
Jameson gripped his hips. Said nothing. Felt the small weight of the notebooks still in his back pocket.
“I was trying to help everybody out,” Hicks said. “That’s all.”
“Everybody.”
“Well, yes. You, Sarah Anne, this woman here.” Jameson turned to see June walking toward them. “She’s got no one at all, as I understand. I knew her grandparents. They were very fine folks.”
Jameson’s neck and face grew hot. “Why are you making our lives your business?” It sounded stupid, blustery, even to him. He couldn’t help himself. The man’s son had looked an awful lot like him. And that was just the start.
“She called me and I gave her your name. Nothing underhanded about it. You’re hunting down the wrong path here, Winters.”
June suddenly appeared. “What’s going on?”
“I was asked to do a job,” Hicks said.
Jameson took a step back, drew a large breath, and held the corner of his bottom lip between his teeth. So help me God, he thought.
June looked at Jameson as if she didn’t recognize him. “Is there a problem?”
Jameson looked away, burning with rage.
“I had nothing to do with nothing,” Hicks said.
“Double negative,” June said, and Jameson wiped the smile from his face.
Then the sound of yet another car, the hum of an engine he recognized.
Sarah Anne was behind the wheel, craning her neck, searching for him through the windshield, ducking her head to see between the vehicles and the roofers walking up the drive with handfuls of tools.
Then a moment of recognition as their eyes met, a softening of their bodies as if a long-held discomfort could now be let go.
His wife got out of the car and opened the rear door, and as she lifted Ernest to her shoulder, Jameson turned to June.
“There you are, then,” June said to him. “A good start is half the work, as Granddad used to say.”
Before he could reply, June turned briskly for the backyard of the bungalow, motioning for Hicks. “Have a wonderful few days,” June said, though she kept her back to Jameson, even as he thanked her and said he would see her soon.
29
Sarah Anne was petite, blond, and lovely in ways June was not. She embodied a radiating warmth. She was exactly who June expected to see.
June turned away, asked Hicks if he would like some lemonade. But Hicks began coughing and shook his head no. “What do I need to haul out of here?” he asked, and June led him to the backyard. He told her he’d have get the drop box out here, and before he returned would she mind asking Jameson not to leave his truck in the drive so Hicks could pull in as close to the backyard as possible? June nodded. She didn’t know what to think of this man aside from the awful crime his son had committed. Everything about him seemed pitiful.
“I hear it’s supposed to rain,” he said.
June looked up at the bright blue in every direction. “Says who?” she asked.
“My joints.”
“I see.”
“The radio, too. That hurricane down in Mexico is running off its edges up this way.”
“What hurricane? In June?”
“It happens. We’ll see in the next ten hours or so. Might be quite a wind. I’d like to get all of this cleared out of here today.”
When June pushed back through the kissing gate, Sarah Anne was still there, holding Ernest to her shoulder next to her car in the driveway. His small arms were wrapped around her neck, his head on her shoulder as if he were still waking up. “Look who’s here,” she cooed to the boy. “Look who we’ve come to see.”
Jameson reached for him, and the boy reached for Jameson, and they shared a hug, which lit up Sarah Anne’s face. And then she saw June, and for a brief moment appeared startled. But then her smile returned and she walked toward June.
“It’s nice to meet you,” Sarah Anne said as they exchanged names and shook hands. Her look was tentative now, nervous, it seemed, a look June guessed she had brought about. “I’ve heard wonderful things about your place. All true from the looks of it. What a beautiful piece of property.”
June glanced away in time to see the boy with his hand on Jameson’s cheek, and Jameson smiling ear to ear.
Van Hicks reappeared from the backyard, and Sarah Anne looked stricken. She excused herself and went straight to Jameson, and they whispered heatedly while the boy appeared agitated, leaning back and away.
Jameson handed Sarah Anne the child, and she placed him in his seat while Jameson moved his truck. June stood watching the entire thing as the roofers stepped out around her.
She was about to go inside when Jameson opened the passenger-side door of the car. He turned and waved with a single rise and fall of his hand.
June lifted her palm halfway, like Grandmam, no higher than her ribs, and jiggled it side to side. Jameson acknowledged her with a sheepish sort of nod, and she could not help the hurt feelings in her chest, the sting of being dismissed, as if whatever was happening now canceled out June.
He got in the car and closed the door and Sarah Anne leaned over and kissed him so fast that June had no time to look away. She was still staring when Jameson fastened his seat belt and shot her a glance she didn’t know how to read.
June turned her back and then heard the car stop and a door open. She spun around to see Sarah Anne out of the car and retrieving something from the trunk. She shut the trunk and then, instead of getting behind the wheel, she walked toward June in a hurry with something in her hands.
“It’s a housewarming gift. I made it myself. It’s been a while, but I like to offer up a vase for the new home, you know, for the showings after Jameson’s work is done. This one would look beautiful with white lilies.” She handed the vase to June.
Jameson sat sternly in his seat, watching.
“What
a lovely gift,” June said. “How incredibly thoughtful. Thank you. Lilies will indeed be perfect.”
Sarah Anne said it was all her pleasure. She darted back to the car, which she turned around, and drove her family to the cabin on the river.
30
It turned out to be as rustic as Jameson had hoped. No television, no cell service, no contact at all with the outside world, just a one-room cabin with wool blankets named for the national parks. Fishing poles leaned in the corner, tin cups lined the open wooden shelves. Out back a fire pit for roasting marshmallows, and beyond it, the river, though it was more a creek bed this time of year. It was enough for tossing rocks into with Ernest.
Sarah Anne had gotten a haircut. She had more color in her cheeks than he remembered. When Jameson brought their things in and set them down, she smiled at him in the cool shadows of the room.
“You look different,” she said.
“So do you.”
Ernest stood at the back screen door, looking out into the forest.
“The vase you gave June was beautiful. You’re back at it. You dug the wheel out? I had no idea.”
Sarah Anne came toward him, wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “I’m feeling like myself again for the first time in years.”
Jameson pulled her in. He held her close and looked past her shoulder to the open front door, to the blue sky cutting through the endless stalks of trees.
“I am, too,” he said, and it wasn’t lost on him that they’d come to this place within themselves, while the other was not around.
“Big trees,” Ernest said, and Jameson turned to see him pointing through the back screen door, smiling, though his smile appeared to be only for Sarah Anne. He seemed pacified, unknotted in the way that Sarah Anne seemed to be. They had both done well in his absence.
“He’s speaking so plainly now,” Jameson said. “It’s only been a few weeks and so much has changed.” He let go of Sarah Anne and crouched next to Ernest. A deepening ache struck his leg. “Let’s go out there and see what we can see,” he said.