His words, clearly intended to win her over, had the opposite effect on Neal. Suddenly she felt overwhelmed, not only by her own losses, but by his expectations. Flattering as it might be to be the center of someone else’s world, it was also a terrible burden, this realization that she must keep the universe in balance or another human being might go flying off course into destruction.
Mike was still talking. “We don’t need to be married, babe. Don’t you understand? What we got is bigger than that. We got each other. You wait and see. It’ll be just the two of us—forever. I won’t ever let you go. Never.”
He was embracing her then, kissing her, stroking her face and shoulders with his grimy, soot-stained hands. He smelled of motor oil and beer. Neal’s stomach turned over.
He took her hand, led her across the room, and pressed her down upon the brown hairy blanket. When she looked up into his eyes, she saw that lost-puppy expression, an earnestness that bordered on desperation. And she did not resist.
Just as she had not resisted before.
In an intimate, candlelit corner of the Courtyard Restaurant, Abby sat with her back pressed against the wall and her fingers entwined with Charles Bingham’s across the spotless linen tablecloth. Night had fallen, and in the glass panes of the windows overlooking the square, candle flames reflected back like glimmering constellations.
Dinner had been perfect. Charles had ordered for her—a heavenly concoction of angel hair pasta with shrimp and scallops, and for dessert, a chocolate mousse pie light enough to float off the plate. Perfect. Until a strolling violinist stopped at their table. Then her mind spun out of control, and she found herself fighting back visions of Devin Connor’s sky-blue eyes and easy smile, hearing in the chambers of her mind the music that gave wings to her soul and set her heart flying.
“Abby?”
She blinked and looked up. Charles was frowning at her, his eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I . . . I drifted.”
“Well, drift back in my direction, will you?” He captured her fidgeting fingers and held them. With his free hand he reached into his pocket, drew out a small red box, and set it on the table between them.
“Charles, I—”
“Please, let me say this, Abby, and don’t interrupt. We haven’t been dating very long, I realize, but we’re not kids. We’re two mature adults, and we know what we want out of life.” He released her hand, picked up the box, and opened it. Inside was a modest diamond ring—not flashy or ostentatious, but very nice, very sensible. “What I want is you,” he went on. “I want to marry you. Please say yes.”
Abby stared, transfixed, at the solitaire. “I . . . I don’t know, Charles,” she stammered. “This is rather sudden.”
He smiled at her, his hazel eyes catching the candlelight. “Fair enough. But before you come to a decision, at least give me a chance to make a case for myself. I may not be the most exciting man in the world, but I’ll be a good husband to you. Although a college professor is far from rich, I make a good living, and you wouldn’t have to continue to work unless you wanted to. I don’t expect you to leave Quinn House, of course. I’m more than willing to live there. We’re both sensible, down-to-earth people, Abby. We’d have a good life together; I’m sure of it.”
“Yes,” she whispered, “you’re probably right.”
She continued to look not at his face but at the ring. It made sense, really. Here was someone to share the burdens of life, to relieve her of some of the overwhelming responsibility she had carried for so long. With John Mac, she had experienced her one true love, the fire and passion, the laughter and the tears. A woman couldn’t expect that kind of relationship twice in a lifetime. So what if her heart didn’t leap up and shout when Charles entered the room? He was a good man—a safe, stable, reliable man. Life with him would be peaceful, if not passionate. Simple. Uncomplicated. Exactly what she had wished for.
A fragment of Devin Connor’s music flitted through her mind, but she pushed it away.
“I know you’ll probably need some time to consider my proposal,” Charles was saying. “And that’s fine. I can wait as long as—”
“No.”
“No, you won’t marry me, or no, you don’t need time to think?”
“No, I don’t need time to think. Yes, Charles, I’ll marry you.”
He took the ring from the box and fumbled with it as he tried to slip it on her finger. It was too small. It finally slid over the knuckle into place, but it pinched her flesh and she took in a quick breath.
“I’ll take it tomorrow to get it sized,” he offered apologetically.
“It’s fine. I’ll take care of it.”
He slid his coffee cup aside and took her hand, running his thumb back and forth across the face of the diamond. Abby looked at her watch. “I suppose we’d better get going or we’ll miss the play.”
“Right.” He signed the check, pocketed his credit card, and stood, extending a hand to help her up. “Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” she said, laughing lightly.
It seemed a strange response, given the fact that a handsome, eligible man had just asked her to marry him, but for the life of her, Abby couldn’t think of anything else to say. The overriding emotion that filled her at this moment was not joy, or excitement, or even anticipation.
It was relief.
The house was dark and quiet. Edith had put her supper in the oven at 350 degrees, just like her daughter had told her. Neal Grace wasn’t home yet, and Abby probably wouldn’t be back until after eleven.
She shuffled through the living room turning on a couple of lamps, but the exertion wore her out, and by the time she got across the room, she had to brace against the mantel to catch her breath.
She ought to be using her cane, Edith thought. Even in the house. But something in her resisted the idea. An image rose to her mind—a feeble, white-haired old crone, hunched over with osteoporosis and leaning hard on her walking stick. Was that what she looked like to others? To her own daughter? To Neal Grace?
A tear welled up in her left eye. She tried to blink it away, but it leaked out and dripped onto the mantel.
She hated this. No one should live long enough to become a burden to the people she loved. And she was a burden; Edith knew it without question, even though Abby never said so. That girl could never hide anything. The expressions on her face spoke volumes, and the particular one she wore all the time these days was a look of sheer exhaustion and utter frustration.
Edith understood and didn’t fault Abby for her feelings. There was only one place to put any blame for this: squarely in the lap of God.
“Why didn’t I die?” she whispered to the empty house. “Why did you make me stay? Why leave me here half-alive and good for nothing?”
No answer came. Just the quiet ticking of the clock and the creaking of the house as it settled in for the night.
Her eyes wandered to the bookshelf next to the fireplace, where Grandma Gracie’s Wishing Jar sat cradled in its velvet-lined box. From childhood she had heard the legend of the phoenix, that magical, mythical bird who went to its fiery death singing its sweetest song. Edith shook her head. She had tried to go down singing, too. She would have welcomed death, embraced it as a long-awaited friend. But something—Someone—snatched her back.
With a shaking hand she reached out, took the jar from its place, and held it up to the light. “Why?” she repeated. “I wish I knew. I wish I could understand—”
A screaming wail pierced the silence, and for a minute Edith stood frozen in place. Then she identified the sound: the smoke alarm! But that wasn’t possible. Her dinner hadn’t been in the oven more than fifteen minutes. Hadn’t Abby said— No, she remembered with a surge of panic. Abby had said to put it in the microwave.
The acrid scent of melted plastic assaulted her, mixed with the odor of burning cheese. She turned toward the kitchen, caught a glimpse of gray smoke wafting up toward the ceiling. With the Wishing Jar still
clutched in her good hand, Edith ran for the door. She had to turn the oven off, had to clean up the mess before—
But she forgot. She couldn’t run. Her left leg weighed her down like lead, caught on the edge of the living room rug. She was falling, falling . . .
The ginger jar slipped from her grasp and hit the rug an instant before Edith did. It fractured clean open and lay there, its two halves wobbling, the red-and-gold phoenix spreading its wings in preparation for flight.
From a great distance, she heard a heavy thud and knew it was her own body making contact with the floor. But she felt no pain. Her eyes were fixed on the Wishing Jar, broken, just out of her reach. Light seemed to stream from it—a pristine white light, glowing, illuminating everything. A light so bright she could see nothing else.
Her head swam with dizzying speed, and a flash like lightning caught her behind the eyes. But nothing mattered except the light. She had to reach it, had to get inside it.
If she could only get to the light, she would be safe and whole. And everything would be all right . . .
PART 2
What Was
Only a few fresh days are left to me,
while hundreds, thousands of used ones
lie behind.
I slide down the backside
of life’s arc,
unable to reverse the gravity
that pulls me toward the darkness.
I could be facing west,
glorying in the colors of the setting sun,
and yet my heart cannot resist
the backward glance,
the longing ache,
the bittersweet nostalgia
of all the virgin moments that can never be recalled.
11
A Glimpse of Yesterday
Edith couldn’t tell if the light was fading or her eyes were adjusting to the brightness. She blinked, looked around, and sat up, leaning heavily against the sofa.
She was still on the floor in the living room of Quinn House. She was sure of it, and yet everything appeared so . . . different. The sofa at her back, for one thing. It was not the familiar beige couch she remembered, but a dark green velvet settee on curved mahogany legs, flanked by two matching chairs. Her fingers ran absently through the nap of the rug. It felt less matted and worn, and the colors were bright and vibrant. Everything seemed newer, in fact—the wallpaper, the woodwork, the Wishing Jar in its green-lined box on the second shelf next to the fireplace.
Wait. The Wishing Jar. It had broken when she fell. Only there it was, in its accustomed place on the shelf. The red-and-gold phoenix looked down at her with its bright beady eye, and she could have sworn it winked.
She heard voices from another room, footsteps drawing closer. And then, with a clarity that chilled her through, Edith realized she was not alone in the room.
Slowly she turned. In the corner, between the sofa and the wall, a small child crouched—a girl, perhaps three or four years old, with dark blue eyes and amber-colored ringlets framing a round, tear-streaked face. She was wearing a blue satin dress and black patent high-top boots.
Edith put out a hand toward the child, intending to calm and comfort her. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered. “I won’t hurt you.”
But the girl never moved, never gave any indication that she saw or heard Edith.
The footsteps grew closer. In the background, Edith now realized, she could hear a low buzz of conversation coming from the dining room. From her vantage point on the floor, she saw a man’s legs, swathed in black trousers, come through the doorway, followed by the lower half of a woman shrouded in long, full skirts of black silk.
“Abigail, darling—there you are!” the woman exclaimed. Edith’s eyes traveled upward, past the cinched-in waist, up the high neckline to a face as familiar to her as her own.
Her grandmother, Gracie Quinn.
But not as Edith had known Gracie. This was not the venerable old woman with a countenance as soft and wrinkled as flannel. Not the grandmother with the beatific expression and heaps of gray curls piled on top of her head. This Gracie was young and vibrant, with shining auburn hair and flawless skin. Exactly like the portrait that hung on the wall in Quinn House.
Except for the smile. The smile wasn’t there. The young woman’s eyes, though not bracketed by crow’s-feet, nevertheless held a look of exhaustion and unutterable sorrow. She was dressed all in black.
Gracie Quinn was in mourning.
“Come, sweetheart,” she urged, kneeling down in front of the girl. “I know this is difficult for you, as it is for all of us. But you mustn’t hide. Mama’s here. And everything will be all right, you’ll see.” She sat on the sofa and cradled the child in her arms, giving no indication that she had seen Edith or even realized she was in the room.
Edith’s mind spun. Was she dying? Or already dead? Rumor had it that when people died, their lives flashed before their eyes. But she had always assumed such belief to be a myth. And besides, this wasn’t her life, and it wasn’t flashing. It was going by in perfectly normal time. The only odd thing about the scene was that Edith herself seemed to be completely invisible.
A dream, then. Maybe it was a dream.
But dreams were usually made up of shards of experience, disconnected images, not whole scenes in such elaborate detail. If she were dreaming about Gracie Quinn, wouldn’t her grandmother have been old, as Edith remembered her?
It was too much to figure out. Far too confusing.
“Are you all right now?” Gracie whispered, brushing a curl away from the girl’s temple.
The child shook her head. “Mommy, am I going to die, too?”
Gracie took a firm hold on the little girl’s shoulders and looked straight into her eyes. “Abigail, you remember how sick your little brothers were?”
Abigail nodded.
“Neal and Richard caught a disease, an illness called measles. And they simply were not big enough or strong enough to fight it off. But you didn’t get sick, did you?”
“No.”
“We will miss them terribly, and we’ll all feel sad, probably for a long time,” Gracie went on gently. “But gradually the pain of losing them will get less and less, and we will remember the happy times. They will always be with us, because we loved them.”
The child stared at her mother with wide, round eyes. “But I wished! On the Wishing Jar! I wished they would get well. Why didn’t they, Mommy?”
Tears welled up in Gracie’s eyes, and she pulled the little girl into a fierce embrace and held on tight. When she spoke again, her voice was strained and coarse. “I wished, too, darling. I prayed— we all did. But sometimes our wishes don’t come true the way we hope, and our prayers—” She broke down and sobbed. “Sometimes we simply don’t get what we want in life.”
She released the child, accepted a handkerchief from the man who stood silent at her side, and dabbed at her face. “Go with Papa, now, and get something to eat. I’ll be along in a moment.”
The man held out his hand and ushered the little girl out of the room in the direction of the kitchen. Gracie leaned back on the settee, obviously trying to regain her composure.
Edith got up from the rug and sat in the chair at right angles to Gracie. She watched the woman’s face for a moment, then whispered, “Grandma?”
Gracie didn’t respond. But Edith knew. This was her grandmother, and if she remembered her dates correctly, the year had to be 1907. The year the tiny, premature twins, Neal and Richard, died at the age of eighteen months. That would make Abigail nearly four. And the man who had taken Abigail into the kitchen must be Kensington Quinn, called Kenzie—the grandfather she could barely remember.
Edith closed her eyes and tried to regain her equilibrium. The little girl was Abigail. Her own mother, for whom Abby had been named. The sole surviving child of Gracie and Kensington Quinn.
Edith knew about the boys dying from measles, of course. It was part of the Quinn family history. And she could empathize all t
oo well with losing someone you loved—even after all these years, the memory of the death of her own two brothers brought pain. Not a devastating, debilitating grief, but a twinge of loss, a familiar bursitis of the soul that acted up when the weather changed. Her older brother—James Junior, called Jay—had been gunned down on the beach during the first wave of the assault on Normandy. Kenny, three years younger than Edith, had died in a military training accident before he ever got to Korea.
Edith had loved her brothers, and missed them still. To tell the truth, she had always secretly thought God a little unfair to take both of them. Yet the death of two young soldiers in wartime was infinitely easier to understand than this: twin babies, dead before their second birthday because they had come into life prematurely and were too small and weak to fight off a disease like measles.
Yes, she knew firsthand about the pain that came with being left behind. But hers was a sister’s grief. She had never—thank God—experienced the unspeakable horror of living through the death of her own child. Any mother would gladly give up her own life to save the life of her son or daughter. And Gracie, apparently, was no exception.
“God help me,” Gracie was saying, “why didn’t I die instead? And where will I find the courage to keep on living?”
For an instant Edith imagined her grandmother was talking to her, and she opened her mouth to respond. But someone else was the object of Gracie’s plea. “They were barely more than infants, just two innocent little boys . . .” She clutched her fingers around the soggy handkerchief and pummeled the settee with her fist. “My darling babies.”
Edith leaned forward to put a hand on Gracie’s arm, but stopped just short of contact. She longed to comfort her, to tell her that everything was going to be all right. To let her know what a strong woman and wonderful mother her daughter, Abigail, had grown up to be. But it was just as well that Gracie could neither see nor hear her. Whatever consolations Edith might offer would be cold comfort, the pat answers of someone who had never suffered such misfortune and could not begin to understand her pain.
The Wishing Jar Page 8