by Liz Flaherty
For just a moment, Grace felt a grain of sympathy for her father. Duped by the woman he loved and the woman he coveted. He must have felt violated.
No, not that. It wasn’t a word he’d have understood. He would have been outraged and humiliated that he’d been outmaneuvered. And unforgiving. Definitely unforgiving, but—
“How did he forgive Mama?” she asked. “I know he did.”
“I told him she had nothing to do with it, that I planned the pregnancy on my own and then didn’t want the child after all, but Debbie did. He believed it, especially since it absolved him of guilt—in his own mind anyway,” Maxie added almost as an aside. “Even later, when he was cold and uncaring toward you and Debbie told him it was her idea because she’d wanted another child, he blamed only me. Robert liked honesty as long as it was a truth he could deal with and finagle to suit his own wishes. He couldn’t accept the notion that Debbie might have—even in her most desperate hours—been devious.”
Grace was bewildered. “Why? What on earth does that have to do with anything?”
Maxie smiled. “Think of Faith,” she said gently. “She’s Debbie’s mirror image in both appearance and temperament. Picture her being less than sweet, kind and honest.”
She tried, but couldn’t. Faith was teeth-jarringly perfect and had always been.
But then, there was the tattoo.
“Why did he hate me?” She hadn’t meant to ask. It had taken too many hours out of her life to learn to shrug off that hatred.
“Because you made it impossible to put the episode behind him. As long as you were there with your solemn little face and fuzzy brown hair, he couldn’t pretend it never happened. He became such a monster. After while, I couldn’t remember the man I’d loved. I’m not even sure Debbie loved him anymore, but she never let him know it if she didn’t.”
Grace reached for her glass and took a drink of tea, grimacing when its watered-down taste touched her palate.
“Why did he keep me here?” The words burst from her. “When Mama died, you asked me to stay with you. Promise’s parents wanted me to stay with them. When I got out of high school, he wouldn’t let me go away to college. Later on, whenever I’d try to leave, he’d keep me here somehow. Faith needed me here in town, or I was too stupid to learn a trade that would support me. Then, when he got sick, I knew I’d never get away. If I tried to leave him when he needed me, he’d tell Steven and Faith how ungrateful and mean and heartless I was and they’d hate me like he did.”
Like lava flowing from an angry volcano, the words kept on coming. When they finally stopped, to her horror, tears were pouring down her cheeks at the same rate of speed. “I’m afraid to get mad at them,” she whispered, “to fight when Steven says something nasty or Faith…” She stopped and looked at Maxie through the tearful fog. “But there’s something about Faith that no one can get mad at her. It’s not just me, is it?”
A deep-throated chuckle came from behind her, and she swung her head to see Dillon standing in the doorway. His eyes were tired, and his face wore enough conflicting emotions that she couldn’t have chosen one to describe his expression, but it didn’t matter.
She was so glad to see him.
He walked into the room, scooped her into his arms and appropriated the chair with her in his lap. “Hey, Max.” He lifted Maxie’s hand to his lips. “Are you behavin’ or has the vice squad been chasin’ you down again?”
A box of tissues sat on the bedside table, and he pulled out a handful. He mopped Grace’s face, gave her a short, hard kiss, and said, “No one could get mad at Miss Debbie, either, could they, Maxie?”
“Heavens, no. Even her mama and daddy used to wonder sometimes where she’d come from. It’s such a gift to have someone like that in your life.” Maxie smiled, and the old twinkle was in her eyes behind her mascaraed lashes. “But it can get wearing.”
The smile faded as she gazed at Grace. “He thought you were his punishment for being unfaithful. He blamed you for Debbie’s dying because it kept him from blaming himself. We’re all changed by what life hands to us. Robert was no different.”
There’s where you’re wrong, Maxie. He was way different. Grace started to rise even though sitting on Dillon’s lap was the most satisfying experience she’d had in days. “Your soup is cold. Let me heat it up.”
“No, it’s fine.” Maxie began to eat as if the soup were the most important thing in the world. Halfway through the bowl, she stopped to smile at Grace. “He was so wrong, honey. You’ve been a gift your whole life, just like your name says.”
Grace blinked, surprised by the sentiment. And touched.
Maxie waved her spoon. “You children go on now. Give him some lunch, honey. The poor dear’s exhausted. I’ll just rest a bit.”
“We’ll wait till you’re done,” Grace said, “and take the tray with us. You can sleep all afternoon.”
Maxie frowned at her. “You think I won’t eat if you leave me alone?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Oh, well…” Maxie ate more soup. “It wasn’t me, you know.”
“What wasn’t, Max?” Dillon’s voice vibrated against the back of Grace’s neck, and gooseflesh erupted over her body.
“When my mind would…er…wander. Dr. Sawyer and Steven figured out it was the medication I was on. Steven,” she added with mock indignation, “wanted to leave me on it for entertainment purposes.” She laid down her spoon and looked at them thoughtfully. “Odd, isn’t it, that there was such a simple solution to what seemed to be a major problem?”
Chapter 21
“Summer’s winding down.” Promise faced the early afternoon sun as it dappled the ground under the trees in the backyard. Her expression was morose. “I should be in my classroom getting ready for this year’s bunch of kids. Instead, they’ll have a substitute who won’t care that Clay has to be approached in a different way from Susie and Brandon has dyslexia and Joe’s mother is an alcoholic.”
“So, why aren’t you? In there getting ready for them, I mean.” Grace folded Mrs. Rountree’s underwear. Twenty-eight pairs this week. The problem must be getting worse. Maybe she should talk to the old lady’s daughter-in-law. Becky loved her husband’s mother. She would help without sabotaging her dignity.
“You know I can’t teach. Schools are harvest houses of infection.” Promise glared at her.
“I know that, so why don’t you meet your substitute, help with lesson plans and tell her about the kids? Decorate the classroom? Hellfire, you’ve had me standing on ladders putting stuff on walls for at least ten years. Why is this year any different? It’s still your classroom. You’ll be in there next semester to shove Clay’s nose up against that grindstone.”
The shadows of the leaves seemed to be reflected in Promise’s eyes, making them dark and melancholic. At Grace’s suggestion, though, a spark of interest glowed. “Do you think so?”
“No, I just said it to hear myself.” Grace threw a pillowslip at her. “Have you even talked to your substitute? It might help her to not go in there blind. And it would be nice for the kids to know you’ve been a part of things already, that you haven’t deserted them.” She stared at Promise, willing her to meet her gaze. “That you’re a survivor.”
“Maybe I could just go over to the school. See if I can help,” Promise mused.
“No maybe to it. I’m tired of you sitting here like Melanie Wilkes, all brave and suffering and not even helping me fold this laundry.”
“Shrew.”
“Wimp.”
“Nag.”
“Weak-hearted, weak-willed and weak-kneed.”
“That was three.”
“Yes, it was.” Grace put down her basket and grinned. “So, do you want me to drive you to the school?”
“No.” Promise’s eyes sparkled bright and blue and joyously alive. “I’ll drive myself.”
Grace stepped outside, carrying an empty basket. The towels should be dry. A soft breeze had been murmuring through the leaves
all day. The wind had an autumn sound to it already, and there was a new crispness to the morning air even though the temperature still rose into the upper seventies most every day.
Dillon was asleep in the hammock, Rosamunde snuggled beside him, and Grace sat on the stoop and watched him. Although he hadn’t mentioned it, she knew he’d be returning to Boston soon. He’d go back to wearing a shirt and shoes even if he didn’t plan to leave his house, back to a laundry service and a lawn service and a housekeeper who picked up his dry-cleaning on the way to work. The women he ate dinner with and made love to would be the statuesque blondes he wrote about in his books.
She hoped time would erase the painful memories that held his heart in its grasp. She hoped he fell eyebrows over toenails in love with someone and married her and lived happily ever after with her and their two-point-three children. He could trade the Mazda in on a van and exchange his condo for a suburban Victorian. When his children were old enough, he could coach Little League and take a video camera to ballet recitals.
The dreams she wished on Dillon were her own. She realized that, but could imagine none that were superior to them. She wanted only the best for him, even knowing the wishes for his future didn’t include her.
She was, after all, still cranky Grace Elliot—plain as a poker and too damaged by life to be any good to someone else. She was like the last roses of summer, droopy and with the color washed from their petals, but still hanging on their stems. That she had loved Dillon Campbell since the farthest reaches of her memory was immaterial.
He could do so much better.
Dillon watched through slitted eyes as Grace sat on the stoop with Louisa May draped over her bare feet. An empty basket rested on the ground at her side, but Grace was motionless—and had been for the past half hour—her elbows on her knees and her chin propped in her cupped hands.
What was she thinking?
Her face was wistful and young, her nutmeg-brown eyes soft as they gazed somewhere off in the distance. Her curly bangs were falling into her eyes. She needed to have her hair trimmed again.
It was September already, he realized with a start. The weekend coming up was Labor Day.
The lease he’d signed on the guesthouse would expire.
The thought made him sit up straight in the hammock. It swung wildly with the motion, and Rosamunde leaped to safety, tossing an indignant look over her furry shoulder. He scrabbled for solid earth with his feet, but couldn’t gain purchase. The hammock dumped him unceremoniously to the ground.
Grace Elliot was laughing out loud. The sound fell on his ears like music. Deep and clear and strong like the rush of water through the rocks in an Appalachian stream, it overwhelmed the hushed rustling of the leaves overhead. He’d heard it so seldom that for a moment, he didn’t know what it was, but then he saw her. Her hands were covering her mouth, but the song soared unchecked. He lounged on the grass, his hands looped around his knees, and listened. Even the cats sat at attention and watched, Louisa May leaning toward her with her existing ear.
“So you thought that was funny,” he called, springing to his feet and loping across the yard.
Her eyes were still alight with merriment. “Yes,” she said, her voice hitching with remnants of laughter, “I did. It was undoubtedly your finest hour.”
He dipped his head modestly. “I do my best. Scoot over.” He sat beside her and hauled her up against his side. “Steven be in today?”
“Uh-huh. He’s staying till Wednesday.”
“We should do something special for Labor Day weekend. Have a cookout or a picnic or something. Maxie…everyone would enjoy it.” He left unspoken the thought that Labor Day could well be Maxie’s last holiday. He didn’t want to dim the glow on Grace’s face. “What do you think?”
“Sure. I’ll ask Faith.”
He looked around the back yard, his eyes narrowed in appraisal. “I wish there was time to work on the gazebo. Jonah and I never did get to it this summer.”
She stiffened like the proverbial board, pulling away from his arm and getting to her feet in one motion. “I have to get the towels off the line,” she said shortly, and walked away. Tension radiated from her body so palpably it reminded him of the dust that surrounded Pigpen’s presence in the “Peanuts” comic strip.
A sound from behind drew his attention. Promise stood inside the screen, her frowning gaze on Grace.
“What’s that about?” he asked.
“You’ll have to ask her,” she said evasively, and pushed the door open. “Move.”
He stood to allow her to exit, then watched in amazement as she moved across the yard. She was practically skipping.
“What’d they say?” Grace called from the clothesline.
“They said they’ll appreciate any help I can give. My substitute is fresh out of college and scared to death. He practically begged me to help her with the classroom and stuff. I’m going back to school even though I can’t teach yet,” she announced gleefully and went to help fold towels.
He stayed on the porch long enough to hear a raucous and slightly obscene version of the Peacock High school song before going into the house. He found Maxie sleeping. Jonah sat beside her bed, a hand over his eyes, and Dillon withdrew silently.
Carrying a glass of sweet tea, he returned to the porch. He sat in one chair with his feet in another and watched the women in the yard. At some level, he heard Promise’s laughter and enjoyed it, but mostly he thought of the couple inside the house.
Jonah’s devotion was almost tangible. It made a person feel like he was snooping just by observing it. As ill as she was, Maxie’s response was poignantly girlish. When Jonah wasn’t in view, she searched for him with anxious eyes. When he was there, the room became a cocoon built for two.
Although they weren’t that old—Jonah was only sixty-eight, Maxie a few years younger—their days together were more than likely cruelly numbered. Dillon had lived long enough and seen too much to be angered by the hand that fate had dealt, but was nonetheless saddened by it.
Jonah came onto the porch, his step heavy and slow. He took the chair beside Dillon’s and gazed outward through the screens, his unlit pipe drooping from the corner of his mouth. “Pretty day.”
Dillon nodded, watching Grace and Promise as they sauntered toward the house. They were deep in conversation, Promise’s perfectly coifed wig bent close to Grace’s bronzy curls. Grace carried the laundry basket propped against her hip and made broad gestures with her free hand, drawing laughter from Promise. His heartbeat hitched and trembled and he wondered what he’d ever seen in buxom blondes when he should have always known true beauty was too thin and wore baggy overalls.
He remembered a quote he’d found once while searching for book title ideas. Thomas Mann had said, “It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.” Dillon wasn’t sure if the memory was nudged by the woman in overalls or the taciturn man beside him. He didn’t know, either, what prompted his next remark, but he felt its rightness as he said the words.
“I think,” he said to Jonah, “you and Maxie should get married.”
Since Faith did the planning and Mother Nature knew better than to mess with the likes of her, the weather was outstanding on Saturday afternoon. The breeze was a mere whisper through the trees in the backyard and the sun blushed prettily as it released gentle rays on the party assembled there.
Every card table and folding chair in the neighborhood sat on the grass, the tables covered with cloths all the colors of the rainbow and a few besides.
Seth and Drew, Faith and Grant’s sixteen-year-old twins, ran around charming Maxie’s poker companions and suggesting seats near the beer keg to Jonah’s carpenters’ union cronies. Grace formed Dillon, Grant and Steven into a complaining, arguing assembly line that carried loaded trays from the kitchen as Faith and Promise arranged food on long tables borrowed from the church.
Steven shoved a platter of sandwiches into Grant’s solar plexus. “Tennis is a pussy sport. You
wear those girly headbands and—”
“Unlike professional wrestling,” Grant interrupted, “which I assume is more your speed?”
“At least it’s entertaining.” Steven didn’t deny the charge. “You don’t just sit there with your head bopping back and forth while two people in silly white shorts—”
“They should wear scrubs.” Grace handed him another platter. “That way they would look professional while they played.”
“My arms are getting tired,” Dillon whined. “Are we about done?”
“Then there’s golf,” Steven said, ignoring everyone. “You bankers like golf, don’t you?”
“Not as well as you doctors do, and we don’t have nearly as much time to play it, or as much money.” Grant rose to the bait like a hungry fish, then glared at his brother-in-law. “I can’t believe I went for that one.”
“Me, either. See? All that tennis is making you slow. Or else you’re wearing those shorts too tight.”
“Faith likes it when he does that,” Grace inserted, then stepped quickly out of Grant’s reach.
“Campbell, do you want to take this tray or do you want to just stand there with your mouth hanging open?” Grant turned his attack on Dillon.
“Give me a damn minute,” Dillon snapped. “I got the long leg of this relay, remember?”
Steven passed Grant the last tray and went to the refrigerator to remove three bottles of beer. “Maxie’s kids wouldn’t come?” he asked.
Grace elbowed him out of her way to put away the mayonnaise. “No. Her son thinks the whole thing is ridiculous and her daughter couldn’t make it. She sent flowers, though.”
“Do you think about them being your brother and sister?” he asked, handing bottles to Grant and Dillon but keeping his attention on Grace.