by Liz Flaherty
She knew as soon as she heard the quiet footsteps behind her that they belonged to Dillon. “You can’t slay this one,” she said without turning around.
“You’re right,” he agreed. “But you can.”
No, she couldn’t. She couldn’t do anything. She was just Robert Elliot’s bastard child, the one who’d turned him cold and hard and hateful. She’d spent her life wondering why she’d gotten only the dregs of the family genes. Lord knows, she’d tried to make up for it by taking care of her father all those hard, hurtful years. By telling Magpie stories and reading Anne of Green Gables. Even though she never got it finished. Maybe if she’d read faster, Mama wouldn’t have died and the last twenty years wouldn’t have been so lonely.
Maybe the gazebo would be a nice, shabby structure in the backyard and not…
“I should have read faster,” she muttered, and walked faster instead.
“What?”
“If I’d read faster, I would have gotten the book done. She wouldn’t have died.”
“Ah, Gracie, no.”
Dillon had played the game himself after Iraq. If only he’d taken little John to the doctor instead of letting her do it. She was a terrible driver anyway. If only she’d taken the bus like she’d wanted to instead of driving the car because he suggested it. If only he’d insisted she remain in Paris instead of going to Iraq with him so the boy could see his biological family.
The game, he knew firsthand, could make you crazy.
He stopped Grace’s determined forward motion, wrapping her tightly in his arms and holding her so close he could feel her heart beating like a trip hammer against his ribs.
“It doesn’t work that way,” he said. “You know that.”
He wished, out of the blue, that his mother were here. She’d know what to say to this woman who’d never accepted the death of one mother and was afraid to face the possible loss of another. The only advice concerning women his mother had ever given him came to his mind. “Listen,” she’d counseled, looking at Dillon’s father with affectionate resignation. “It doesn’t matter if what she says is important. If she’s saying it, listen to it.”
“You know that, Grace,” he repeated now, keeping his arm around her as they walked on.
“In my mind, I do,” she agreed, “just like I know sitting on Mama’s feet didn’t make her die. And I know—” she swallowed convulsively, “— Maxie didn’t get sick because you bought me the washstand. But every now and then, something gets in the way of my mind.”
Something like a heart that’s been bent and dented and broken too many times. He didn’t blame her for trying to hide in the attic of her mind, but he couldn’t let her stay there. She meant far too much to him.
“Don’t you want to know the rest?” he asked quietly. “Doesn’t Maxie deserve that?”
“I don’t know if she does or not.”
“I’m talking about the Maxie who’s shared your house all these months. The one you love.”
They reached the cemetery gates and Grace led the way in. “She does,” she agreed, coming to Debbie’s grave and bending to straighten the bouquets of roses on either side of the stone. “Hi, Mama.”
“Hi, Miss Debbie. How you doin’?” Dillon stood at the foot of the grave, frowning. The austerity of the granite marker didn’t suit Debbie Elliot at all. “I got Gracie a wash thing like the one you used to have, remember? Now she’s getting all kinds of crazy ideas. You want to set her straight while I run over and check in with my grandparents? My mom was all fussed last time I talked to her about the flowers being delivered when they’re supposed to.”
He sketched a wave in Grace’s direction and sauntered across the cemetery.
She saw him stop where she assumed his grandparents were buried, then she sat in the grass and addressed what she thought was probably her greatest sin. “I’ve hurt Faith’s feelings, Mama.”
No magical answers came from beyond the grave, but Grace hadn’t expected any. When she lifted herself from the ground, however, she had a sense of what her mother would have wanted her to do. When Dillon came across the cemetery, she was able to lift her head and smile at him.
“Ready?” he asked, holding out a hand.
She placed hers in it. “I’m ready.”
Steven met them outside the hospital. He wore a lab coat with too-short sleeves over his shorts, tee shirt and Nikes. He’d released the band from around his unfashionably long hair. He should have resembled an aging hippie but didn’t. Grace thought there were probably women all over the hospital sighing in his wake.
He was carrying a cup of coffee, but he tucked his other arm around Grace and kissed the top of her head. “I’m doing that now, because if you tell me you’ve damaged my truck I’ll be yelling and won’t feel like kissing you.” His eyes were grave, and her heart sank.
Don’t tell me, Steven. I don’t want to know. Not yet. “I just blew the carbon out of it,” she protested.
“Jonah’s with Maxie. She’s holding her own and I’ll tell you more about her condition later.” Steven gestured toward the courtyard. “Faith called Grant and he brought over some dinner.”
Grace had a sudden vision of Faith holding off gun-wielding burglars while she lit the candles and laid the table for dinner. Then, of course, she would invite them to join the family for a meal, provided their hands were clean.
But Promise, whose appetite had become as capricious as the late August weather, was eyeing Jean Rivers’s stuffed mushrooms greedily. Only Faith would have known how to tempt her.
Grace laid a hand on her sister’s shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, slipping into the chair beside hers.
Faith squeezed the hand that rested on her pink shirt. “It’s okay. If you do it again, though, I’ll tell Mama.”
“I already did.”
“What did she say?”
“That she always liked me best.”
“We both know that’s a whopping lie.” Faith’s laughter was warming and infectious. The entire group smiled in response. “It was Steven she liked best.”
“And who could blame her?” Steven said righteously. “I was the only one who stayed out of her Cashmere Bouquet.”
“That was the great thing about your mom,” Grant said. “She liked all of you best, for different reasons.” With the boyish smile that made Grace think there was more to Grant Hartley than she ever gave him credit for, he added the one thing guaranteed to ease tension. “Even you, Gracie.”
As subliminal as it was, she got the message they sought to impart. She was still Grace to them. It didn’t matter in the least that she’d apparently had a different mother.
“By the way,” she said to Faith, “I also told Mama you have a tattoo on your butt.”
Steven left once during dinner to check on Maxie. When he returned, he merely said she was sleeping and so was Jonah and retrieved his seat. But he didn’t eat any more, and the expression of gravity was back in his eyes. His hand found Promise’s on the arm of her chair and held it.
Dillon sought and captured his friend’s gaze, and its bleakness was chilling. He touched Grace’s back and felt the tension there, knotting her muscles and stiffening her spine.
Grace’s mouth was firm, her eyes inscrutable, when she spoke. “Why don’t you tell us about Maxie now, Steven?”
He nodded. “Her heart is in terrible shape. There are so many blockages, I’m amazed she’s gone this long without going into cardiac arrest. She needs a quintuple bypass.”
“Then do that.” Grace looked expectant. “You’ve done them lots of times.”
“I’d like nothing better.” He reached across the table to take her hands in his, and Dillon watched the renowned surgeon become simply Grace’s big brother. “The state of her general health and her own wishes make that unfeasible at the present time.
“I’m so sorry, honey, but—barring a miracle— Maxie’s dying.”
Chapter 20
“I’m so sorry, sugar,
but your mama has died.”
It wasn’t Steven’s voice, but that of Noah Bridges, who had been the Elliot family doctor from before Steven’s birth. The whimper that followed the statement was Grace’s now, just as it had been then.
She came awake with a start, her head throbbing and her eyes aching with unshed tears. God, if she had a dollar for every time that had happened, Elliot House would be up and running. She folded her arms on her drawn-up knees and pressed her face against them, willing the pain to go away and her heart to slow its pounding.
“You don’t even cry!” her father had raged in those empty early days after Debbie’s death. He pointed at her, the ring that had scarred her face seeming to loom away from his finger in a threat. “You caused your mama’s death sure as I’m sitting here and you don’t even have the common decency to cry!”
The bedside clock told her it was nearly dawn. She tossed back the covers and got up, pulling on her robe. Padding softly down the hall, she saw no sliver of light beneath Promise’s door. Hopefully, she was sleeping. The next chemo treatment was coming up in a couple of days. She needed to be rested for the pervasive attack on her system.
A few minutes later, Grace sat on the back stoop, coffee steaming from the mug in her hand, the cats twining themselves around her legs before coming to rest at her side.
She wasn’t surprised to see lights in the guesthouse. Dillon declared himself a morning and night person. Even when he was up till midnight, he woke before the sun. He often napped during the day, sprawling bonelessly in the hammock with Rosamunde dozing at his side.
The gazebo loomed gaunt and decrepit between the house and the guesthouse, and she stared hard at it for a moment before averting her gaze.
Eventually she would have to hear the rest of the story. Good heavens, her thoughts sounded like an old Paul Harvey broadcast. “‘Now you know,’” she intoned aloud, mimicking the venerable newsman, “‘the rest of the story.’”
Did she want to know it? It wasn’t as if it mattered. Faith and Steven were still her siblings, Promise her best friend, Dillon was… Dillon. Jonah was still her fatherly renter, wearing his broken heart with quiet dignity. Maxie was…
Dying.
Grace bit down on her bottom lip until she tasted blood. “God,” she whispered, “is this my price for Promise’s life? I have to lose another mother? I know she never meant for anyone to be hurt and she’s still got stories to tell. You’ve already got Mama. Why do You need Maxie too?”
The shifting light told her when Dillon opened the guesthouse door. He leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed over his bare chest. She couldn’t see his eyes—it was too dark for that—but she sensed that he watched her.
Longing sang through her like Celtic music, bright and sprightly and so alive it was almost impossible to stay still. She wanted to be close to him, to feel the delicious friction of his skin against hers, the enveloping warmth of his arms around her and the tender stroke of his hands on her body. She wanted to be free for a little while of the burdens of responsibility, fear and love. She wanted to fly.
When she went toward the shaft of light that flowed through the open door of the cottage, he met her halfway.
“I’m glad to be home.” Maxie’s gaze locked with Grace’s. “I realize I’m asking a lot from you, but there are things I must finish. It won’t be for long,” she said quietly. “I don’t plan on lingering like your father did.”
“Don’t, Maxie.” Grace arranged the pillows behind her and set the tray across her lap. “Eat this soup. Promise made it, so it’s better than mine.”
“Will you sit awhile?”
Grace thought of the laundry she had to hang outside, the trip she needed to make to the grocery store and the fax from Steven she wanted to respond to so he wouldn’t call and yell at her. They were all viable excuses to refuse Maxie’s invitation. No, not excuses, but reasons. Good reasons. She could talk to Maxie later. More to the point, she could listen to Maxie later. When she felt less tired, less bruised, less alone.
Dillon was in New York, meeting with his editor, his agent, with other people who were part of the life he had away from Peacock, Tennessee. Away from her.
He’d be back, he promised when he left Monday, by Friday at the latest. She had shrugged, suggested he drive carefully on his way to the airport, and turned her back.
The memory of his response made her grin even now, when there wasn’t a single, solitary thing in the world to smile about. He’d draped her over his arm as if she were a set of curtains pressed and ready to hang and had kissed her senseless. Then he’d stood her back on her feet and, while her knees were still wobbling and stars were cavorting before her eyes, he’d said, “I’ll call,” and been on his way.
True to his word, he’d called every night. They’d argued most of the time, but then last night, Wednesday, he’d said softly, “Think of me, Gracie,” and she’d thought of nothing else since. She’d washed Mrs. Rountree’s sheets in cold water instead of hot this morning, she’d gone to the market and forgotten half the items on her list and the fax she composed for Steven had been so full of Dillon’s name she’d destroyed it unsent.
She’d been right the first time. Her list of avoidance tactics were excuses, because Dillon wasn’t here to run to. Well, she wasn’t having any of that. She’d survived thirty-three years without someone to kiss her every booboo. If the good Lord was willing and the creek didn’t rise, she’d continue for another thirty-three.
Maxie, however, would not.
“Let me get a glass of tea,” Grace said, “and I’ll be right with you.”
“House seems quiet with Steven and Dillon both gone,” Maxie said, when Grace was settled in the chair beside the bed in Robert Elliot’s old room. “Promise had her chemo last Wednesday, didn’t she? Was it as bad this time?”
It was. Promise had spent five days swearing she was fine between bouts of violent vomiting. She’d told Steven at least three times that Grace knew of to “go back to Knoxville and get a life.” When he’d left Sunday, he’d been grim and silent, and Grace had held Promise while she wept.
“She’s better now.” Grace crossed her fingers in the pocket of her overalls. The vomiting had stopped but Promise had been unbearably quiet this week, moving around like a pale and listless shadow of her former self.
“She says dying would be easier.” Grace hadn’t meant to say the words. She bit her tongue and closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Maxie. You don’t need to hear that.”
“Well, she’s right.” Maxie smiled at her, and reached with a thin hand to give Grace a comforting pat. “It’s the living that’s hard. Always has been. You just have to make up your mind it’s worthwhile to make the effort.” The smile slipped from her face. “When it no longer is, you know, and Promise isn’t nearly there yet.”
“Do you think so?”
“I know so. I remember when your mother made that decision.”
“Decision?” Grace stared at her, the glass in her hand forgotten halfway to her mouth. “What decision?”
“To die.”
Anger such as she’d never known before hit Grace with all the force of a hurricane. What was Maxie saying? Debbie Elliot would never have chosen to die, to leave her children in their father’s unloving care. And if she had, she would have said her farewells and tied up her loose ends. She wouldn’t have gone without hearing the end of Anne of Green Gables.
“You’re wrong.” She forced the words past the boulder in her throat. “Mama wouldn’t have…” Her voice failed and she gazed blankly at Maxie. “How do you know?” she asked stiffly when she could speak again.
“Because we talked about it, and I watched it happen. She was so tired, but she also worried about you children. Especially you, since she knew Robert had never really accepted you. She knew he would take care of Steven and Faith.” Tears glimmered in Maxie’s eyes. “She trusted me to take care of you, I think, and it’s the major regret of my life that I didn’t.�
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Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you take me away from him?
“He wouldn’t let me have anything to do with you.” Maxie answered the unspoken questions. “He told me if I ever approached you with the truth, he’d go straight to my other children and tell them exactly what kind of person their mother was. It was more than I could risk at the time. I was the only mother they had, even though I wasn’t a very good one. You’d at least had Debbie, who was the very best.” Her laugh was short and light, unconnected to the hurt in her eyes. “You were the only gift I was ever able to give her.”
“Gift?”
“Oh, yes, she wanted another child so badly—good heavens, when we were young, she wanted a dozen—and she wanted it to be Robert’s child because she loved him so. Since I was half in love with him myself it didn’t take much talking on her part to convince me. It felt wrong, but I did it. Oh, we thought we were something, Debbie and I did, putting one over on everyone that way.” Her gaze went past Grace, and it seemed as though she’d gone somewhere else. “I stayed in the guesthouse, and he came out one night to fix something. I don’t remember what it was. I gave him a beer, and he told me my husband and kids were crazy to let me go. I’d felt so awful, so useless, and he made me think maybe there was still a future, that there was joy to be had. I convinced myself it was all right to make love with him because Debbie knew about it. I was, after all, doing it for her.”
Grace felt as though the world was spinning too fast for her to keep up. She set her glass on the table beside her, placing it carefully and making it a focal point to slow down the reeling. “Are you saying you and Mama planned it?”
Spots of hectic color rose in the papery skin of Maxie’s cheeks. “Yes,” she said. “Only we didn’t consult Robert. When he found out, it suddenly became a string of secrets and betrayals. He’d betrayed Debbie by being with me. I’d betrayed her by being with him for reasons other than the one we’d agreed on. She and I had betrayed him by planning a pregnancy without his consent. It seemed unending.” She shook her head. “And for a long time, none of us knew what to say to each other to make it all right. You were the only innocent one in the whole farce and you’re the one who paid the biggest price.”