by Grace Greene
No, that was never going to be a possibility. The truth was the truth, and the actual truth was that Ellen hadn’t been born to me, that she had come to me in a very different, but no less genuine, way, and after so many years, excellent years, it couldn’t be undone. No matter what.
I was back onsite for the final dismantling of the springhouse, and a few days later when the logs were put into place for the new house. The porch would integrate with those logs. I tried to target my visits for when the crews were gone so I could stand where the deck would be and consider the view. Sometimes I sat in Roger’s lawn chair, put my head back, and listened to the old familiar songs of nature. How different would this be from what I’d grown up with? Not very. It gave me comfort.
On the other hand, the perspective from the back deck would be different. It would be wide and span most of the back of the house. What would I see? The cabin, of course, and also the creek, the cemetery, and as far up toward Elk Ridge as the forest would allow. It would be perfection.
I was at the jobsite when the stonemason reerected the chimney. I’d taken the mystery box that had served its owners like a safe-deposit box under the hearth to an expert in Richmond to be opened. We discovered old documents, along with some ancient cash, plus the original survey plat of the land and an old will. I was having a copy made of the plat, which I’d frame and hang on the wall by the fireplace.
Per Roger’s advice, I’d been picking through the metal storage unit in the front yard and had found some antique tools with decorating potential.
The main room would be large and open across the back of the house where it met the back deck. The kitchen would be on the south side of the house. On the other end would be bedrooms and a study. The master suite would be upstairs, again with an outstanding view of Cub Creek, Elk Ridge, and the glorious woods in which I’d grown up.
A beautiful house with a beautiful view. I didn’t want to live alone, but if that’s how it ended up, and it looked like it might, then so be it. I’d have my pottery cabin and continue my business from here. I didn’t need the storefront.
All those years of growing up barefoot and living on a meager budget had been unnecessary, and I didn’t understand why my grandparents had chosen that lifestyle, but they had, and I respected that. While I didn’t like excess or waste, I had never embraced an unnecessarily parsimonious lifestyle for Ellen and myself. As long as I had the choice, I never would. In fact, had I not needed to clean those houses for cash—that first loss, the greatest loss, would never have happened. How might that have changed how Gran and I responded to the gift Mr. Bridger left on our porch?
These thoughts flitted through my head as I watched the progress, the changes, occurring in Cooper’s Hollow. Framed and roofed, the house looked huge, vast and echoing. Almost churchlike? Solemn. A work in progress teetering on the edge of the future.
Suddenly, doubt hit me. I stood at the wall of window openings that overlooked the back. The toolshed was long gone, the springhouse was gone, the pottery cabin was looking better, and the cemetery in its peaceful setting seemed almost eternal. It wasn’t, of course. Nothing lasted forever.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow. A small shadow atop the cemetery wall. Perhaps an animal?
I stared at the cemetery and at the hill. The only shadows were those cast by the trees. Anything else was born of my imagination. Reassured, I smiled and looked down. Eventually the deck would be finished, but for now it was about a three- or four-foot drop down to the raw, red dirt and I needed to mind where I stepped.
I drove home but couldn’t rest. The baby book was still on Ellen’s desk. I didn’t want to touch it. It was an emotional bomb for me. Or was it a warning that things—my life as I knew it—were about to change beyond my own plans, beyond my control, beyond all recognition?
Could I take counsel with Duncan? He was still my attorney. I didn’t doubt his discretion. But anything, once told, was subject to be repeated or written down or to be divulged in some way whether on purpose or accidental.
It was a huge risk. I’d lived in this bubble for the last few years, had grown comfortable and almost complacent, but with Liam in town, it was as if my chickens were—more than metaphorically—coming home to roost. What I’d sown might have to be reaped after all. Did my original intent matter? Not in the face of the actual choices I’d made and acted upon.
There was no one I could speak to about it.
I could talk to Liam.
No. The idea sent a jolt, a painful, burning jolt, throughout my body. No. I rejected the possibility of it. Despite . . .
Despite how he’d looked, standing there in the low light, in the echoey openness—a tall man dressed in old jeans and a cotton shirt, his hands hanging at his sides—I sensed a need in him, something missing. Did I sense it because I knew about Ellen? Or was that my conscience speaking?
I knew nothing about him, really.
He could be a worthless drunk for all I knew.
Regardless of right or wrong, or of what it might do to me, I couldn’t risk exposing my daughter to so much unknown.
I’d done what George Bridger had wanted me to do, hadn’t I? And he’d certainly known his son better than I did.
I set my small cooler in the area that would be the kitchen, and I could clearly see how that would look now, and then carried a crate of peat pots out to the raised garden beds Roger had constructed. He said the rest of the landscaping could be managed around them. This act, the first round of transplanting of my plants, seemed like an official event. The first step of the actual move. Now I needed the house to be finished. A minor point, I joked silently.
It was encouraging. We were still in May, but the latter half. I appreciated that he’d gotten this done ahead of schedule. I spaced out the pots. The soil looked amazing. Roger had promised, and he’d delivered. I sunk the plants into the ground but kept the rim of the pots a fraction above the soil level. Then I took a water jug I’d brought and gave each a drink. Roger had cautioned that the water wasn’t running there yet, but I liked the idea of transplanting in stages, so I’d decided to proceed regardless.
When I was done, I took off my gloves and pulled out the hand sanitizer. I grabbed my lunch bag from the cooler. It had seemed like a fun idea to have lunch out here, but I was realizing the flaw in my plan. The only restroom was a portable toilet.
Better than nothing, but if I had the option, I’d drive the two miles down the road to the gas station/convenience store.
As I walked through the house, I saw movement outside. Liam. He was standing on the ground, below the level of the porch floor, and he’d been half-hidden by the porch posts. His truck was parked near my car. I hadn’t heard a thing.
Was this a problem?
Hadn’t I handled Spencer? Only a few unseen emotional scars had resulted from that. Nothing I couldn’t live with. What about Liam? He had even less reason to be curious about Ellen. Yet he had more reason to be told.
From the open doorway, I said, “Hello there.”
“Hannah. Hi. I hope I didn’t disturb you.” He waved a hand. He was holding woodworking tools. “I’m starting the posts today.”
The porch posts were special. I didn’t know where Roger had obtained the pieces, but the wood was fine-grained and the diameter was impressive. Like showpieces-to-be. Art integrated with function.
I stepped out, over the threshold, onto the porch. “What do you have in mind, if you don’t mind my asking?”
He smiled a shy, secretive smile. “Make them distinctive. That’s my plan.”
Clearly he didn’t want to say more. It was as if he were protecting something . . . His art? I did the same when I was working my pottery and other clay projects.
“Hungry? I have two sandwiches.” I held up the bag. “I wasn’t sure which I’d want. I made two and figured there’d be someone here willing to eat the other.”
Liam averted his eyes. “I apologize.”
I frowned. “For w
hat?”
“I don’t know,” he said, looking up at me, “but I know there’s something bothering you, and I think it has to do with me. I see it in your eyes.”
“Not at all.” I tried to shrug it off. “That’s ridiculous.”
“I might think so if I hadn’t seen you talking to others and then seen . . . that change when you see me. If I’ve done anything to offend you, I apologize.”
“Hey,” I tried to joke, “I just offered you food.” I shook the bag. “I wouldn’t do that if you’d offended me in some way.”
He nodded. “Glad to hear it.” He looked at the tool he was holding, then stared again at my face. “If it’s about my father, I understand. I know your grandparents disapproved of how I was gone so much of the time. They worried about him. Maybe some of that influenced your opinion of me? I couldn’t blame you—or them, for that matter.”
I didn’t know what to say. “You were gone by the time I was in my teens. I hardly knew you, but I did know your father. I don’t blame you, though. How could I? I have no idea what was between the two of you.” I waggled the bag again. “Look, these aren’t improving with age. Want one? How about chicken salad? Or, if you prefer roast beef, you can have that. I don’t have a strong preference.”
His face relaxed. His mouth curved up in one corner, and he shook his head. “Chicken salad sounds good.”
He stepped up onto the porch and I held the sandwich toward him.
“Homemade,” I said. “The cooler’s in the kitchen. Be right back with the drinks.”
“The cooler?” he asked. But I was already moving. I took two water bottles and closed the lid again. I returned to the porch and gave him one.
I sat in the open doorway to the porch, cross-legged, and set my water bottle beside me so I could unwrap my sandwich.
“So, where were you?” I asked.
He was sitting down himself, and he looked at me, surprised. “You mean all those years I was gone?”
“Do you mind my asking? None of my business, right?”
He held the sandwich and looked at it for a few moments before speaking. “I went off to school first. That didn’t work out. I got married. That didn’t work out well, either. I joined the service for a while but didn’t re-up. It wasn’t for me.”
He unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite.
“Somewhere in there you learned to carve wood?”
“Irony.” He shook his head. “Ready for it? I learned how to carve before I ever left home. Not with my dad but from an uncle. He was an artist, though he would have decked you if you called him that. ‘Craftsman’ is what he called himself.” He took a drink, then set the bottle back on the porch floor. “So, here I am, years later, back where I started, doing what I love, and wondering why I ever left in the first place.”
“Sometimes, I guess you don’t know until you’re gone, right? It’s good you figured it out before it was too late.” I looked at my porch posts and Liam’s tools and smiled. “I’ve seen something on TV where the guy carves with a chainsaw.”
“Not me. Although I’ve been known to do the rough cuts with a chainsaw.”
A large, long, beat-up red tool chest was on the porch.
He pointed at it. “I have what I need in there.”
“Do you make a good living at it?” I added quickly, “I’m sorry, really sorry for asking that. That’s very personal.” I laughed. “I throw pots and do some clay sculpture, and I have some regular customers, but I can’t make a living at it.”
He looked around at the growing house. “You must be doing good.”
“This? No. I couldn’t afford this if I didn’t have some money from my family.”
“I guess that’s true for me, too, though I could make better money if I was willing to travel more, but I’ve lost the taste for it. You’ve met my cousin? Up at the house?”
“I have. I met her several years ago, but I’ve seen her only a few times.”
“Mamie’s talking about leaving here and going to live with her daughter. She’s not getting any younger, as she says, and she’s got a grandchild now. I have to decide. Do I stay? And if I stay, do I stay at the house? I’m there now, but I don’t have a lot of good memories.”
I sat, chewing and sipping and thinking. George Bridger was set in his ways and could be a little odd, but I’d never seen cruelty in him. If there had been, my Grands wouldn’t have had anything to do with him.
“It sounds like you two didn’t get along. Too different, I guess.”
“Likely true.”
“If we’re lucky, we live long enough to work out our differences—that’s what Gran used to say. I remember Mr. Bridger saying shortly before he died that you were coming home to see him. I’d taken him up some cobbler. He was looking forward to the visit.”
“I didn’t make it. I tried. My wife and daughter were going there, but then she went missing. I was overseas.”
The word daughter felt like a slap. What conscience I had left in me recoiled. I hid it as quickly as I could and must’ve done it well because Liam kept speaking.
“By the time I was able to look for her . . . We’d had problems. I didn’t think she was in any sort of danger or anything . . . only that she took off. I couldn’t locate her. I didn’t know it was over between us. At least, not as soon as she did. So, when I couldn’t contact her, I came back to our home, but she was gone. I went on a wild goose chase trying to find her and Trisha.”
“Trisha?” I said her name deliberately, like a test of myself. Like when a tooth hurts and you keep checking it to see if it’s still tender. “Did you find them?”
“The police found her first. Her car had washed away in a flash flood. They found Sheryl downstream. They never found Trisha. The child seat and some toys were in the car, but they don’t think she was strapped in. Never found.” He was staring at the empty wrapper, crumpled in his hand, as if it might have answers.
Who had answers? I did.
I pressed my lips firmly closed, tightening my jaw muscles, clamping my mouth shut.
“It was a long time ago,” he said. He lifted his gaze and stared at me. “I’m sorry. I said too much. I didn’t mean to go on. As I said, it was a long time ago.”
I nodded. Still not able to speak. The words couldn’t form; I refused them. Let him think I was overwhelmed with sympathy at his sad story. Let him believe I was a better person than I was.
He stood in one movement. “I’d better get to it. Roger contracted with me to do these posts. I hope you’ll like them. I’d rather not discuss the ideas, though. When I try to put my ideas into words, sometimes they evaporate. Better to let the wood guide me and trust the cosmos.”
His remark shook my jaw loose. “The cosmos?”
“Sure.” He grinned, but ruefully. “Our better angels. God. Eternity and infinity. Where ideas come from. You feel it, too. I know you do. When you’re working with your clay?”
I nodded again. “I do. I’m sure I’ll be delighted with whatever you carve.”
With a grin, he said, “I hope so.”
The timing was right to walk away. I stood, gathered my trash, brushed the seat of my jeans, and went inside. In the house, with the dim light and the smell of fresh-cut wood mixing with that of nature and the swaying pines outside, it felt otherworldly. Like a blank slate. A page not yet written on in which all things were yet possible and no wrongs had been done. I wished I could live in it this way—at least until the cold arrived. Winter would come in its time. Rain would fall and blow in through the open spaces. Raccoons and squirrels would come and go at will. Half-done, the house might feel special at the moment, but it wouldn’t do in the long term. Would the same happen in my head? With my conscience?
I turned around and saw Liam running his hands along the post. He might get splinters. All actions yielded a result, right? Sometimes we got lucky. Maybe he would.
Hopefully he knew what he was doing, since I’d have to live with what he carved.
/> Sooner or later, my choices would yield results that couldn’t be hidden or ignored, and my position would become untenable. Was this denouement something I could control? By driving it? By altering the current path to avoid an outcome I didn’t want?
It was up to me. It was my information and my choice. It was inevitable that my decisions would impact people. Likewise, I’d been the recipient of impacts from the decisions others made.
They had their paths to follow, as I had mine.
A day later, I dropped by the jobsite and discovered Ellen and her friend, Bonnie, hanging out on the porch. They weren’t alone. Liam was there.
I stared, trying to take in everything and determine what was happening. Liam was older than the girls by almost thirty years, I estimated, but he’d kept much of his good looks. And that hair of his, longish and curly, lent him a certain quality . . . something that hinted of danger and tragedy. Unworldly, romantically charged teen girls might find that intriguing.
Graduation was close now. These kids were all heady with it, high on life. It was exciting for them but scary for a mom.
Clearly, the girls had been chatting with him for a while. Bonnie’s car was parked nearby. Bonnie was shifting her position with a movement that reminded me of a model’s hip thrust and then leaning against the wall in a languid sort of pose. Liam seemed not to notice but was listening to something Ellen was saying. Ellen was seated on the edge of the porch, her legs dangling. I saw nothing in her posture to worry me, but their direct communication certainly did. Liam was dividing his attention between the conversation with Ellen and his woodwork.
Ellen saw I’d arrived. She lost her relaxed slouch and tensed. What did that indicate? A guilty conscience? She said something to Bonnie, and they waved at me.
As I reached the porch, I asked, “What’s going on?”
“I wanted to show Bonnie the house. You don’t mind, right?”
“What about school?”
“We had an early release today. Did you forget?”
“I did forget.” I looked at her face closely, then at Bonnie, and decided it was all good. “It was fine to show Bonnie.” I turned to Liam. “I apologize for the distraction. I presume they introduced themselves?”