by Liz Flaherty
“Yeah, she would,” he admitted. “But you could trust her to get over it, to love you even more when the shouting stopped.” He walked on, raising his arm to wave at Deac Rivers as the huge minister entered the church. “I guess that’s the key. Trust.”
“What?” Another soda can, another refuse container. “The key to what?”
“Most anything. All the good marriages you know are based on it. It’s at the root of doctor-patient relationships.” He led the way through the cemetery gates. “It’s a big part of what you feel for Dillon and Promise. If they give you any grief, you give it right back in spades.”
“So?” She took the dying flowers from Debbie’s vases and laid them aside, reaching for the stolen chrysanthemums.
“If it’s me you’re mad at, or Faith who’s driven you crazy, you retreat. You don’t trust us enough to think we’ll still feel the same when the shouting stops.” He lowered himself to the grass, grimacing when the dew soaked through his jeans, and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Either that, or you don’t care enough.”
“What?” she said again. She stared at him, a flower in each hand. “What do you mean, don’t care enough?”
“You don’t care how we feel. You just shut us out like we’re telemarketers who’ve called during dinner. At least, that’s how it seems.”
The fury washed over her like an unexpected shower. It blinded her with its strength, held her motionless with the surprise of it. She stared down at the flowers, their stems crushed in her fists.
“Why, you jerk.” Her voice trembled with rage, her chin wobbled and her movements were clumsy when she stuffed the flowers into one of the vases. She was on her knees in the wet grass, and the heat of the anger rippled through her thighs. “You unmitigated pain in the ass. Who in the hell do you think you are?”
She rose to her feet and paced on unsteady legs.
“I kept quiet for entire school vacations when you came home because Papa said if you couldn’t study, you wouldn’t pass. I wore Faith’s hand-me-down stuff that looked hideous on me because he said since she was pretty, she needed pretty things. I didn’t go to college because there wasn’t enough money after medical school and Faith’s society wedding that I couldn’t even be a part of. I was good enough to press the damn dresses and arrange every fresh flower in Peacock, but I couldn’t wear one of the dresses. I couldn’t carry any of the freaking flowers. I could do your stupid laundry every time you came home from school, but I wasn’t even invited to your graduation. I bought you that lab coat and I stitched your name on it myself—bled all over the sucker because I can’t embroider worth a damn—and you never mentioned it.” Her voice rose to a shout and she waved a finger in her brother’s face. “You never even acknowledged it, even though I addressed every one of your stupid thank-you notes that summer.”
“I never got it.”
“To even suggest that I don’t care. I could…” She stopped pacing, standing in front of him. “You what?”
“I never got the lab coat. I’m sure Papa disposed of it somewhere between here and my graduation, which you were, by the way, invited to. I was pissed when you didn’t show up. Promise tried to convince me it wasn’t you, it was him, but I didn’t believe it. I wasn’t a complete idiot—I knew he favored Faith and me—and he knew I wanted you there. I guess I didn’t want to believe he was that spiteful.”
“You’d rather believe I was?”
“Then? Yeah, probably. You were still the bratty little sister. He was the benevolent father who’d paid my way through college and medical school. If I thought he was an S.O.B., what would that make me?”
Grace could understand that. Geezy Pete, even she’d spent much of her life convinced her father could do no wrong.
“Faith wanted you in her wedding,” Steven continued, “but Papa said you wouldn’t even consider it. She tried to talk to you about it, but you wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t listen.” He met her gaze. “That old bastard told you she didn’t want you, didn’t he? He told you I didn’t want you at my graduation, didn’t he? And you believed him, didn’t you? Just like we did.”
Yes, she had believed him. She had always believed him. Because he had told her—“He said if I wasn’t good, Mama would die.” The words left her in a rush, and it was like falling down a hill full of thistles. Painful as it was, the progress down the slope couldn’t be stopped. “When I sat on her feet that night, he said Mama would die if I wasn’t more careful. And she did, Steven, she did. I wasn’t good and I sat on her feet and she died.”
“Oh, Gracie—”
“And he said if I wasn’t good, I would never be pretty like Faith, and I’m not, and I’d never be smart like you, and I’m not. He said if I ever told, I’d—” She stopped abruptly, the anger draining from her as though someone had pulled the plug in the shower. Feeling weak and somehow numb, she said, “Promise went barefoot at the wedding because of me and now she has pneumonia.” Because I wasn’t good.
Steven got to his feet and came to where she stood. He put his arms around her and held her, rocking back and forth like a parent with a brokenhearted child.
Finally, finally, she understood that he wasn’t going to push her away, wasn’t going to turn her anger into a weapon that would harm her later. She understood that he was her brother and would always be, that he loved her and always would. He didn’t care if she was good or not.
Her arms crept around his waist, her hands meeting and clasping each other at his back so that she could hold him even tighter.
Together, in an act so personal and sentimental they both would have denied doing it if a gun were pointed at them, they wept.
Dillon was cooking breakfast and Faith was loading the washer with Mrs. Willard’s clothes when they returned. “I explained to her that you couldn’t do the night air this week, and she understood perfectly. I cleaned her house yesterday afternoon, and she said I wasn’t nearly as thorough as you are, but it would do.” Faith closed the lid of the washer and turned to face them. “Now, would you make some coffee? I was going to, but your coffee pot doesn’t like me for some reason.”
Grace stood before her sister, holding her wrists with light hands. “Papa told me you didn’t want me in your wedding. I believed him.” She swallowed. “I was wrong.”
“Yes, you were.” Faith met her gaze unsmilingly. “As much as I loved and still love Jenny Sawyer, it was my barefoot sister I wanted for my maid of honor.”
“I’m sorry.”
Faith turned her hands so that they held Grace’s. “And I’m sorry I didn’t drag you with me, kicking and screaming.” She smiled then. “If I got married again today—which Grant would probably be kind of weird about—I’d still want you.”
“Grant’s weird about a lot of things.” Grace sniffled.
“But he’s sweet, and I love him.” Faith hugged her close and hard. “And you.”
“Me too.” Grace returned the hug.
Dillon stood watching them, a crooked smile lighting his face. “You know,” he told Faith, “you were better off with Jenny. She has boobs.”
Steven came down the back stairs. “Promise is starving,” he said, grinning so hard his face was in danger of splitting in two.
Grace went to the back door to let the cats go out, and stood a moment where the morning sun lit the stoop. She whispered a thank You and went back into the house.
Chapter 23
“Anne of Green Gables is Mama Magpie’s favorite book. She never reads the last chapter because she doesn’t want it to end. She just keeps reading it again and again up to the last chapter and then stopping.” Grace leaned toward her audience in the children’s section of the Peacock Library and spoke confidentially. “Now, I think that’s kind of silly, don’t you? If she doesn’t read the ending, how can she go on to Anne of Avonlea?”
Dillon stood at the back with Promise in a chair in front of him. He didn’t know why it was important that Grace read the last chapter of Anne today, only that
it was. She’d been nervous as a cat all morning, even handing Jonah the sugar bowl instead of the dish of artificial sweetener when she’d given him his coffee.
It was the week before Halloween. The trees whose vibrant color had given Peacock its name were in full blaze and there was a bite to the morning air. Grace’s storytelling sessions took place in the evening now. Although she hadn’t planned it that way, school-age children had been loud and insistent that she change her hours to coincide with theirs.
Dillon had come to look forward to Thursday evenings. He walked Grace to the library, then to the Cup and Cozy afterward. Sometimes they ended the evening in his bed at the guesthouse, sometimes in Maxie’s room watching television with her and Jonah. They usually did that on the nights Promise felt well enough to go to the library with them. Those occasions were few and far between these days, the pneumonia having sapped the little strength left by the chemotherapy.
Dillon had renewed his lease. Sort of. He’d walked into the kitchen one morning, handed Grace a check, and said, “Till the first of the year?”
She’d shrugged, tucked the check into the front pocket of her overalls, and replied, “If you want, but I’m not paying your heat bills.”
Some things never changed.
Grace read the chapter flawlessly, her voice rising and falling with the emotions of the characters. She read, “The End,” to the accompaniment of cheers and applause.
In lieu of a song, she read James Whitcomb Riley’s poem, “When the Frost is on the Pumpkin,” eliciting laughter from the audience.
But when the cry of “Magpies! Magpies! Magpies!” rose, she froze.
Dillon watched as the color left her face and understood that her emotional strength was completely gone. He walked through the crowd, excusing himself when he stepped on feet. When he reached the oversized rocking chair, he lowered himself cross-legged to the floor, his back against Grace’s knees. Behind the folds of his denim jacket, he grasped her ankle and held it.
“I think,” he said, “Miss Grace’s voice has just about given out for the night. But do you all know what Ben Magpie told me just the other day? I saw him down behind the Cup and Cozy skulkin’ around. He said he didn’t want Papa catchin’ him because…”
He felt the tension ebbing from her as he told a story about young Ben Magpie bleaching his hair and having it turn as orange as a pumpkin. Steven wouldn’t thank him for the publicity, but it was all he could think of on short notice. Promise’s smile told him he was doing all right. Grace’s soft sigh of relief told him he’d done the right thing.
He ended the story with Ben wearing a crew cut all summer, and kept Grace in her seat by holding her ankle until the crowd had dispersed.
“Pretty good, Campbell,” she said, her voice sounding rusty.
“Would have been better if you’d revealed that Ben’s best friend was the one who bleached his hair.” Steven stepped around the end of a bookshelf, coming to stand beside Promise with a hand on her shoulder. He still wore the Dockers and cotton sweater that were his office uniform. His hair was tied back the way it was when he was in the hospital.
“What are you doing here?” Grace asked, tugging her ankle free and rising. “It’s only Thursday.”
Something in Steven’s face made Dillon get to his feet, too, and put an arm around Grace’s waist.
“Jake called me,” Steven said quietly, his gaze locked on his sister. “Maxie’s losing a lot of ground.”
Maxie’s skin was blue under her fingernails.
Grace covered the ridged ovals with her favorite cranberry polish. “Want me to do your toes too?”
“No.” Maxie’s voice was breathy in its weakness. “You tickle too much.”
“Well,” Grace said in mock offense. “I suppose Jonah does it better.”
The twinkle still shone in Maxie’s eyes. “No, but I enjoy it more.”
Jonah chuckled from his seat beside the bed. “Promise told Maxie you finished Anne of Green Gables tonight.”
“Uh-huh.” Grace nodded, capping the nail polish and setting it on the bedside table. “We’ll start Avonlea next week.”
“Could you…” Maxie’s voice faded and she turned her face toward Jonah, distress evident in her features. He leaned close and she whispered in his ear.
He looked at her for a moment, then at Grace. “Could you read it again, Gracie? For Maxie and your mama?”
She sat very still, her gaze moving from Jonah to Maxie. “Sure,” she said finally, her heart pounding with unnamed dread. “Let me get the book.”
When she returned, Faith was in the room, running a brush ever so gently through Maxie’s hair. “I have to tell you this, Maxie, because it’s important to me that you know. I want to thank you for my little sister. Life would have been less complicated if she’d been Mama’s baby instead of yours, but then she wouldn’t be Grace, would she? She wouldn’t be nearly as crabby or funny or wonderful.”
Grace stepped back outside the door and bit down on her knuckles for a moment before pasting a smile on her face and going in.
Maxie raised a thin hand to pat Faith’s face. “Thank you, dear heart.”
Faith smiled in return and bent to kiss her cheek. “I’m going to listen, too, okay?”
“Sit on the bed,” Maxie requested when Grace went to the chair, “so I can see your face while you read.”
“Okay.” Grace sat cross-legged, the footboard of the antique bed at her back, and opened the book. She was careful to keep her weight away from the bumps in the comforter that were Maxie’s feet. “The chapter is called ‘The Bend in the Road.’”
Maxie’s chuckle was barely audible. “Good timing.”
Grace grinned at her, though her cheeks quivered, and began to read. Midway through the chapter, she realized Dillon and Steven had entered the room. They sat on the floor on either side of the door, their spines propped on the wall, their legs straight out in front of them. Faith and Promise shared the settee, leaning into its corners and burying their feet under a knitted blanket.
By the time Grace read “The End” for the second time that night, her voice was thready and thin, and her muscles were sore from having held the same position for so long.
“That was lovely,” Maxie whispered in a voice that was little more than a sigh. She laid a hand on Jonah’s. “I’ve made a decision, children. Steven, will you tell them?”
He hoisted his long length up from the floor and came to sit on the edge of the bed, taking Maxie’s hand in his. “She’s decided,” he said, his voice light, “that she’s not going to leave us without a fight. We’re taking her to Holston Valley in the morning and will do surgery in the afternoon.”
“I thought I was ready to go,” Maxie said. “I’d made my peace with God, with my children.” She reached past Steven to capture Grace’s hand in hers. “I’m not ready to leave you again.” Her gaze swept the room, ending on Jonah’s face. “I don’t want to leave any of you yet. I may have to, but I have the best surgeon around and I have heard the last chapter of Anne of Green Gables. My chances of survival are increasing by the minute.”
“Slim to none.” Steven leaned forward in the lawn chair, his beer bottle held loosely in both hands. “Her chances were better when she had the attack, and they were lousy then.”
Dillon flinched. “You could have refused to do the surgery, couldn’t you?”
Steven nodded. “But I’d never have been able to look Jonah in the eye again.” He chuckled, though there wasn’t much humor in the low sound. “And I thought, if Gracie can read the last chapter of Anne, not once but twice, how can I do any less? Who am I to say miracles don’t happen?”
His expression didn’t match his words. A new trace of hopelessness threaded through the Southern Comfort voice. “Elliot?” Dillon said sharply.
Steven shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I don’t know.”
“No one will blame you. If the miracle doesn’t take place, it won’t be because
you didn’t give it all you had.” Even as he spoke, Dillon knew he was addressing the wrong issue. He focused on the rectangle of light that shone from Grace’s room and wondering if she would be able to rest.
Promise’s window, beyond the round, stained-glass one that was in the wall above the claw foot bathtub, was dark. Dillon hoped that meant she was sleeping, gaining back some of the strength she’d lost. A sideways glance at Steven showed him that the sable eyes were watching the same darkened window.
“Elliot?” he said again, and Steven looked at him. The hopelessness that had been only a hint in his voice was full-blown and naked on his thin face.
Dread was suffocating, as heavy in the air as the omnipresent humidity. Dillon had to concentrate on breathing as he laid a hand on Steven’s shoulder and squeezed.
He stayed on his porch after Steven had gone to bed, watching until the light went out in Grace’s window. Even then, he waited, and when she appeared at the wooden screen door, he walked across the yard to meet her.
They neither spoke nor made love, just lay in the middle of the queen-size bed with moonlight splashing over them. Toward dawn, Dillon slept. When he woke, Grace was gone.
The ambulance arrived before he’d even had coffee. He hurried toward the house, arriving in time to help Steven, Jonah and the technician prepare Maxie for transport. If possible, she was even grayer than she had the night before, and Dillon exchanged a concerned look with Steven.
“Miracles,” Steven said quietly, and jerked his head toward where Grace and Promise waited.
Dillon nodded, and when Steven’s truck followed the ambulance out of the driveway, he went to kiss the top of Grace’s head and put an arm around Promise. She felt so frail that he held her lightly, and took as much of her weight as he could as they walked to the house.
Battle raged in Grace’s eyes, and he knew she was trying to figure out how to be in two places at once. She shrugged away from him, hurrying ahead to make coffee. Her back was arrow-straight, her hands steady. If she trembled, she kept it inside.
“You go on,” Promise urged, sinking to a kitchen chair with a soft little sigh of relief. “I’ll be fine here. I can call Faith if I…”