One More Summer

by Liz Flaherty

They carried their lunch to the table on the screened porch and sat down. “I’ll have a mastectomy next week,” Promise said in a voice so soft Grace had to strain to hear, “then probably chemo. After that, we’ll see what happens. It depends on the lymph node involvement.” She raised a distressed gaze to meet Grace’s. “I’ll be sick and I’ll probably need help. I’d almost rather die than ask it of you.” She lifted her spoon then laid it down again, her hand unsteady. “However, since you didn’t catch me when I fainted in the eighth grade, it’s probably no more than you owe me.”

  Grace swallowed again. What was wrong with her heart, for God’s sake, that it kept sticking there and making her unable to speak? “That’s one way of looking at it.”

  “It’s the only way.”

  The soup had no flavor whatsoever, but Grace sipped a spoonful anyway. When she spoke, her voice was firm. “Are you going to lose your hair?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’ll probably grow back plain brown and bushy like mine.”

  Promise snorted. “God wouldn’t do that to me.”

  “And you’ll list when you walk.”

  “It’ll be sexy. I’ll start a trend.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “We certainly will.”

  It was only later, when Maxie and Jonah had gone to bed, that Grace sat alone on the back stoop with Louisa May in her lap and Rosamunde chewing on her bare toes. She bowed her head. “Please,” she said softly. “Please. I try not to ask for much, and I’ve gotten used to the hair and the eyes and the fact that no one can tell if my bra’s on backward. Please take care of Promise, or at least help me take care of her. Be with Steven when he finds out. You know how much they love each other.” In a rare burst of anger that would have scandalized her father and shaken Faith to her perfectly polished toenails, she raised her eyes and one fist to the heavens. “You owe me.” It was a whispered shout. “You owe me.”

  Chapter 2

  “You owe me one, Campbell.” The words, delivered in Steven Elliot’s Southern Comfort voice, rang in Dillon’s memory as he negotiated the hairpin curves that wound their way down through the Appalachians into Peacock, Tennessee.

  “What exactly do I owe you?” Dillon had leaned back in his creaky office chair, prepared to enjoy the conversation. He would, he was sure, do exactly as Steven asked. Because the one he owed was a big one.

  “You stood my little sister up fifteen years ago when she was all dressed up for the prom in that godforsaken hand-me-down of Faith’s. Got Promise so upset she wouldn’t go either, and I had no choice but to go out behind the old Methodist church with you and get drunk.”

  At the mention of the long-ago prom night, Dillon took a swallow of coffee, grimacing when his tongue registered that it was cold. “I didn’t have any choice, either, Elliot. Your old man made sure of that, saying he’d have me for statutory rape if I showed up that night. He’d have done it, too, and that would have been a hell of a lot harder on your sister than missing the prom.”

  Silence followed that pronouncement, until Steven’d demanded, “Why didn’t I know that?”

  Dillon had leaned forward, propping an elbow on the cluttered desk and rubbing his eyes behind the rimless glasses he needed more and more these days. “He was your father too. I didn’t see where there was anything to be gained by telling you. What were you going to do, stay home from college and protect her from his asshole-itis?”

  “Maybe.”

  Dillon snorted. “You forget, we were twenty years old. Neither of us was big on thinking of anyone besides ourselves. But I wouldn’t mind helping Grace anyway, so why don’t I just give you some money for her? You can pass it on to her and say it came from an anonymous donor.”

  “Because it would show up in Deac Rivers’s collection plate down at the new Methodist church the next Sunday. The church could always use the money, so you can do that if you want to, but it won’t help Grace any.”

  Dillon had closed his eyes against their tired ache. His mind brought up an image of seventeen-year-old Grace Elliot, her hair wild around her ordinary face, baggy jeans and tee shirts disguising whatever body she may have had. Something about the image made him smile. “She hasn’t changed, then.”

  “Not a lick.”

  “All right, Steven. What do I have to do?” Because he owed Steven Elliot much more than the other man would ever ask for or expect, he’d known what his answer would be. Want me to take a bullet for you, Elliot? Glad to.

  His friend’s answer was what had Dillon Campbell sweeping around the curves of State Road 91 on a warm evening in June. “Goin’ home for the summer,” he murmured over the sounds of the Eagles coming from the CD player. “Haven’t done that in fifteen years. Why would I do it now?” The bullet, remember?

  Steven’s impatient voice rang once more in his memory. “’Cause you’re tired. Writing five best sellers in five years has worn you down. You’ve got writer’s block. Hell, I don’t care what you use for an excuse.”

  All those things were true. The celebrity that had once been exciting had worn thin over the years, forcing him into an unnatural near-reclusion. Words that had flowed almost without effort since his high school days came now with all the exertion of pulling permanent teeth. And he was tired. A few months in Peacock, with its one stoplight, its plethora of trees that made its existence a surprise when one drove down the mountain into it, and its unquestioning acceptance of its natives, grew more appealing by the hour.

  There was more to his story, of course. There was the darkness. Always the darkness, trying to push its way back in.

  He thought about Grace again. Steven, the oldest of the Elliots, was brilliant. Faith, a year younger, was not only beautiful but so nice she set your teeth on edge. Grace, two years behind Faith, was smart enough, but nowhere near her brother’s level. She could have been passably pretty if she’d ever taken the trouble, which she hadn’t. And, if he remembered right, she hadn’t always been all that nice, either.

  Faith had gotten around old Robert Elliot’s meanness with the charm that was natural to her. Steven had outsmarted it. Grace had faced it head on. Dillon remembered one time the man had slapped her, hard enough to cut her cheek with that big old diamond ring he wore. She’d stood silent and stiff before him, the shape of his hand emblazoned on her pale face and blood trickling from the cut below her eye.

  Steven, as pale as his sister, had pushed her behind him and faced his father. Although he was probably fifty pounds lighter, he’d been taller than Robert. “Don’t you ever touch her again,” he’d said. Even at sixteen, his voice had been smoky and calm, and his father had nodded his head and walked away.

  Dillon waited while Steven’d bathed the cut and left Grace lying on his bed with an ice pack on her face, then the boys left the house together.

  “She didn’t cry,” Dillon had said, his voice a mixture of wonderment and some kind of dread he couldn’t name. “Not one tear.”

  He went home and puked his guts out.

  Even twenty years after the incident, with the evening air blowing gentle and warm on his face, the memory of Grace’s face with bright red blood trickling down it made him feel queasy and cold. Made him feel that peculiar sense of dread that told him there was more to the story.

  He was glad Robert Elliot was dead.

  The sun was down when he drove into Peacock, but the streetlights hadn’t yet come on, so the waning light sifted golden through the trees. Dillon parked just down from the new Methodist church and got out of the car, taking a writer’s moment to stand quiet and enjoy.

  He’d come home often in the first five years after college to see his parents, but when they retired to Arizona, he’d stopped the visits altogether. He flew into Knoxville a couple of times a year to see Steven, sent gifts to the weddings and flowers to the funerals of old acquaintances, and sent Reverend Deacon Rivers a fat check every December. That was all.

  Until this moment—standing beside his car staring acro
ss the street at the Cup and Cozy, the coffee and tea shop that still had the same crooked sign from fifteen years ago—he’d thought it was enough.

  He lifted his head and sniffed, detecting the faint aroma of popcorn. Ah, yes, it was June. That meant half the town was at the Little League field at the city park. The parents of those pint-size boys and girls were his age and younger, and his heart registered a moment of sorrow that he’d chosen the path of no commitment.

  But it seemed too late for that particular regret. The things he’d seen as a reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan had successfully removed the all-things-are-possible belief of the small-town boy he’d been. It had been replaced by a soberer not-all-things-are-meant-for-all-people tenet that kept him, if not happy, mostly content. As long as he could keep the darkness at bay.

  An ache behind his eyes made him realize he’d had no caffeine since lunch, and he jaywalked to the Cup and Cozy, hoping its brew was as strong and dark as it had always been.

  It was, and he appreciated its warmth as if it had been fine brandy. The possibility that he was avoiding knocking on Grace Elliot’s door occurred to him, and he did a little internal squirming before convincing himself it wasn’t true. “I’m thirty-six years old, for God’s sake,” he told the heavy cream-colored mug from which he drank.

  “Congratulations!” the young, blonde waitress said pertly as she refilled the mug, and he grinned sheepishly at her. It took only returning to his home town to restore his ability to be embarrassed.

  Twenty minutes and another refill later, he laid a ten-dollar bill beside his cup and left the shop, nodding at the young woman who was brewing more coffee in the large and complicated machine behind the counter.

  He drove around town. Past the house where he’d grown up. The television tower he and Steven had used as an escape apparatus on warm summer nights no longer climbed past the double window of what had been Dillon’s bedroom. Past the old foundry that was now a newer, bigger, brighter textile factory. Past the Little League field where shouting and high-pitched chants of, “Hey, batter, batter,” fell on his ears like music.

  He stopped in front of the old Methodist church where he’d attended kindergarten and first grade before the new elementary school was built. It was a restaurant now—The Deacon’s Bench—owned and operated by Deac’s wife, Jean. The parking lot was full, he noted, and was pleased for reasons he didn’t fully understand. This hadn’t been home since the day he left for college—what did he care whether businesses prospered in Peacock, Tennessee?

  He drove down Lawyers Row—the nicest street in town. There was the old Boarding House, which had been, in turn, a house of ill repute, an actual boarding house and a home for unwed mothers. It was the Methodist parsonage now. A doctor lived across the street, Mrs. Rountree two houses down, her attorney son Davis another block down and across the way. A subscription to Peacock’s tabloid-size weekly kept Dillon apprised of local events, including changes of address, who visited whom, and the mayor’s unprecedented and unpopular suggestion that curbs be put on Lawyers Row.

  On the end of the street nearest downtown, where the houses were large but not as large, fancy but not as fancy, stood the Elliot house. It was big and white and square, with a railed porch on the front and a screened one across the back. The house had, like all the others on Lawyers Row, a buggy shed converted into a two-car garage and, hidden in the trees at a discreet distance from the house, a small guesthouse.

  The Elliot guesthouse was why Dillon was here. He had to convince Grace he needed to rent the cottage for the sake of privacy, rest and relaxation.

  And he had to make her accept an exorbitant amount of rent.

  “She wants to open a bed and breakfast,” Steven had said. “She doesn’t have enough money and won’t accept a dime from Faith or me. If you rent the guesthouse for the summer, it would be enough to get her good and started. I’ll give you the money, if that’s a problem.”

  The conversation had gotten rude then, and Dillon smiled with the memory. There was nothing like being called names by your oldest friend. Unless it was calling him names back.

  He drove straight up to the closed garage door and stepped out of the car. He started toward the front of the house, changed his mind, and veered to the back. White sheets and multi-colored towels flapped cheerfully on the clotheslines. He wondered if the hammock between two trees was the same one he and Steven had hung there, if anyone since them had sat in the gazebo and guzzled illegal beer and smoked Marlboros while discussing the physical attributes of every girl in town.

  There’d been limits to their discussions, of course. Promise Delaney and Steven’s sisters were off limits. Steven loved Promise, Faith was far too nice for that kind of conversation and Grace, as far as their adolescent eyes could see, didn’t have any attributes.

  The house needed painting, Dillon noticed with a frown, and some of the screens on the porch and gazebo needed to be either replaced or repaired.

  Potted geraniums bloomed on the back steps. Between them lay an orange one-eared cat and a black kitten with a snub nose and dark blue eyes. He remembered the sun shone bright on this stoop during the day and bet the cats loved it.

  He peered through the screen to see if anyone sat at the table and chairs on the porch. No one did, so he opened the wooden screen door, grinning when the spring whispered, “Braaang,” when it was stretched. That sound was one of those good memories, like the conversations in the gazebo. He wondered why, in places like his Boston townhouse, there were no wooden screen doors. The people who lived there could stand having “braaang” whispered in their over-busy ears now and then. It might take them back to the gentler summer times of their youth. Might, he decided, make them nicer people. Though there was nothing wrong with the kind of people they were now. They were just…different from Peacock folks. That was all.

  Lord, he didn’t want to knock on this door. He would go see Deac Rivers instead, get him to give Grace the money she needed and make her keep it. Deac could shout down an army if need be—surely he could put the fear of God into Grace Elliot.

  He turned around and stepped toward the screen door. The black kitten sat there, its nose pressed to the screen. What are you doing? Will you let me in?

  “I don’t know if you’re allowed in.” Dillon had spoken aloud before he realized he was talking to a cat. He pushed the door open with a sigh. “Come on. We’ll ask.”

  The kitten scrambled over the threshold, followed by the one-eared cat who swished her tail against Dillon’s bare legs as though he were in her way. “Well, excuse me, your highness,” he muttered, and allowed the door to close with a quiet slam.

  And because he didn’t know any way to delay it further, he stepped to the kitchen door of the Elliot house and knocked.

  It opened quickly enough to startle him, and he faced Grace Elliot for the first time in fifteen years. Her brown hair was braided into a thick rope that hung over her shoulder. She was barefoot and wore a white tank top under shapeless bib overalls that appeared to have garden dirt ground into their knees. Her face was tan and devoid of makeup, the small scar from her father’s ring shiny on the matte surface of her skin. Tiny gold studs twinkled from her earlobes, but her hands, small and square with short straight nails, were bare.

  As he watched, a thumb fiddled with the hammer loop on the side of her overalls and one bare brown foot moved to cover the other. She bit her bottom lip with a row of straight white teeth and grasped the edge of the door with her free hand.

  Oh, hell, was she going to slam it in his face? Steven would die laughing—unless Dillon killed him first.

  “The cats wanted in,” he said.

  She nodded, the braid bouncing with the movement of her head. Why had he ever thought that face was ordinary? Grace Elliot wasn’t beautiful, or even classically pretty, but she certainly wasn’t ordinary, either.

  Dillon felt like rubbing a hand through his hair to make sure it was lying down, like licking his upper lip to remove
any possibility of a mustache from the coffee he’d drunk earlier. He almost checked to ascertain that the fly of his khaki Dockers shorts was zipped.

  Finally, when the silence between them had stretched out long and loud enough to be an agonized scream, Grace spoke.

  “Dillon,” she said, “you’re late.”

  Chapter 3

  He looked the same. How could that be after all this time? But his hair was still thick and wavy and caramel-colored, still tousled as though he’d run a hand through it. His eyes were the same midnight-blue with silvery lights, set wide apart above high cheekbones and a nose that didn’t advertise that it had been broken one night when he fell out of the gazebo.

  He was bigger, she noticed, his shoulders wider and his legs more muscular.

  He still made her heart bang against her ribs.

  The cats were safe inside. She could just close the door in his face and pretend he’d never been there. Then she could crack open a bottle of wine and get herself well and truly toasted, even if it was only Thursday night. Jonah was down at the carpenters’ union hall telling lies with his cronies and it was Maxie’s poker night. Grace could get drunk and still have time to be in bed before they got home. Promise would figure it out tomorrow when Grace looked like warmed-over death, but that was okay. Promise knew all there was to know about her anyway.

  Could she close this door and pretend he hadn’t been there?

  No. Life had been hard, all thirty-three years of it. Grace had given up pretending a good many years ago, along about the time she figured out she was never going to get away from her father.

  Whatever Dillon Campbell was doing here, she had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t escape that, either. With a shrug, she stepped away from the door, stumbling over Rosamunde in the process. Some things never changed. She caught herself on a kitchen chair and closed the door behind him. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked politely. “There’s beer and wine and sweet tea.”