Pieces of Hope

by Carter, Carolyn

  “And I was in love?” I smiled back at her. “With Ethan?”

  “We didn’t call him Ethan back then,” Charlotte said, her voice taking on a higher nervous pitch. “His name was Quinn . . . Quinn Lakin.”

  “Quinn,” I uttered in surprise. “Wasn’t that the same name Cat mentioned once?”

  Charlotte frowned. “She gets her decades mixed up all the time.”

  “And what about Daniel?” I asked, curious now. “What was his name?”

  “Charlotte already told you,” Rin broke in rudely. “His name was Finley.”

  “I’m going out on a limb here and say that they were both Irish,” I said, disregarding Rin’s interruption. “Was there a big Irish population in Mac back then?” Vacantly, I stared at the Ferris wheel, glowing golden as it spun absent a rider. Its single seat drifted past me once. Then twice. Then I remembered what we were talking about. “Finley what?” I asked at last.

  When no one answered, I looked at Charlotte. The sides of her mouth drooped.

  “Did you hear me, Charlotte? Finley what?”

  Charlotte’s lips were moving, but I could barely hear her. “Finley—Finley—”

  Rin looked sideways at me, rolling her eyes. It reminded me of the way Claire had looked at me right before my accident. Like she thought I was stupid. My stopped dropped to my feet. I wasn’t sure how I knew the name, but I did. Maybe I heard her thoughts. Maybe I guessed. In the end, what did it matter?

  “No, it can’t be!” I reached for my heart. “That’s. Not. Possible!”

  Charlotte nodded in misery. “I’m sorry, Hope. It’s true.”

  “Finley Lakin?” I gasped in horror. “I fell in love with brothers?”

  Rin gave me an I-told-you-so look. “I warned you several times, but it fell on deaf ears. I told you Finley Lakin was nothing but trouble—too charming, too good to be true. If I said it once, I said it a gajillion times, ‘Finley Lakin will break your heart.’ You never listened to me. And it went straight downhill from there—”

  I couldn’t think clearly. I simply couldn’t think. My mind had all the makings of a cluttered etch-a-sketch—nothing but scribbled, indecipherable messages. The best that I could hope for was that someone would pick me up and shake me. Hard.

  Charlotte glared at Rin, cautioning her again about something. But in the midst of the chaos, I cared little about what it might be.

  “How could I—? How did I—? It had to have been such a small town . . . smaller than it is now.” Heat rose in my face. “Oh, God, did everyone know?” And then, without meaning to, I blurted, “Something must have been wrong with me. Was I brain-damaged?”

  “Well, some people did wonder . . .” Rin gave a little shrug.

  “You and Quinn were high school sweethearts,” Charlotte continued, ignoring Rin’s stupid comment with a wave of her hand. “You dated for four years before he went away to war, and it was a difficult goodbye. War was different back then. There were more casualties, and plenty of boys didn’t come home. Oh, but Quinn . . . he was red, white, and blue on the inside. That’s what he used to say, anyway, and he couldn’t wait to join. He even gave up his scholarship to Cornell. He was going to be a doctor, but the war changed all that.”

  “He was going into the medical profession back then, too?” I looked at her face, tried to put a word to it as she paused. She was nothing short of star-struck.

  “Quinn had just finished basic training with the Army, and his unit was headed off to the Aleutian Islands to fight the Japanese. But as luck would have it, his train had a layover in Portland, and he rushed over for one last night with you.”

  Rin smirked. “Lots of war babies were conceived that way.”

  Charlotte ignored her commentary. “There was a dance at the town hall that night. Well, actually, it was the high school gym that doubled as the town hall, and Quinn found you there. I still remember the first moment you saw him—like you thought you were the luckiest girl in the world. And who could disagree? The Lakin brothers were the guys that every guy wanted to be, and every girl wanted to be with. And you and Quinn, you were head-turners. I haven’t seen a more beautiful couple since.” She gave me a dreamy smile.

  I tried to picture us back then, tried to picture Quinn. Blurry at best.

  “Especially when you danced,” she said, slightly out of breath. “A-ma-zing.”

  “Are you sure that was me?” I asked. “Brody says I have two left feet.”

  “Maybe you haven’t danced with the right partner,” Charlotte mused, then shook her head a little to snap herself out of her daydream. “Anyway, when Quinn showed up, the two of you did your thing on the dance floor for a while.” Charlotte looked at me, dazzled. “You were so pretty, Hope.” She hesitated. “I mean, not that you aren’t now . . . But back then you were blonde and fair. Just this pretty little thing who loved to climb and then tell the whole town where to get off if they didn’t like what you did. I was constantly surprised at what flew out of your mouth!”

  Rin groaned. I must have driven her crazy—the younger sister who never heeded the good advice given to me. Why was I still doing that?

  Charlotte seemed to have missed the exchange and went on, “That night, as the two of you waltzed around the floor, Quinn got down on one knee . . .”

  I flashed back to a dream Ethan had mentioned—a dream of us from an earlier time dancing together in some old gym. Me, a red-lipped blonde wearing a sexy dress. And Ethan, a young man in love in a military uniform. He said he’d had a terrible feeling that some sort of ending was coming. Or maybe, if the war had anything to do with it, some sort of ending in the days that followed.

  Charlotte continued, “And the band was playing a favorite of Quinn’s, an old song by—”

  ‘“You Go To My Head,’” I cut in. I could hear it playing, muffled, in my head. I felt a tear roll down my cheek.

  “Yes, that was it!” Charlotte looked astonished. “Are you remembering?”

  “No,” I sniffled. “Not really. It just sort of popped into my head.”

  “Maybe we should stop now,” Charlotte said quietly.

  “There’s more?” I cried. “Haven’t we gotten to the part where I’m doing the same thing yet? I loved them both. What could possibly be worse than that?”

  “Tell her the rest,” Rin commanded, arching her eyebrows at Charlotte. “Tell her . . . or swear I’ll do it myself.”

  Charlotte swallowed and nodded, evidently not thrilled with Rin doing any telling. A few seconds passed before she faced me, first taking my hands in hers. “After he left, Quinn tried to write to you regularly,” she began. “But when several days would pass and there was no letter, you began to imagine the worst. I kept trying to reassure you. I told you everything would be okay if you gave it enough time. I told you God had a master plan . . . that the two of you were meant to be together.”

  I sniffled again. “You said that?”

  Charlotte nodded stiffly. “I did, and I nearly had you convinced of it. But then Finley rushed home from college announcing that he wasn’t going to let his younger brother have all the fun, and that as soon as he passed the physical he was going to join Quinn him in the Aleutians. I think Finley only wanted to go because he didn’t want Quinn to outshine him. I know he never thought much of the war. His father tried to discourage him, reminding him of the broken bones he’d suffered a few years earlier, and the physical limitations that went along with that. It was obvious that Mr. Lakin was worried he might lose not one, but both of his sons . . .”

  “As if that mattered to Finley,” Rin muttered. “He could have cared less.”

  Charlotte inhaled a breath, then held it several seconds before letting it escape. She was on the verge of tears. “This can’t be good for Hope to know! I—I—I can’t tell her!” she blubbered. “Besides, Creesie is going to kill us!”

  “She can’t kill us,” Rin disagreed, eyeing Charlotte with impatience. “Last time I checked, we were already dead.” />
  “I can handle it,” I assured Charlotte, hoping I was right. “Just tell me the rest.”

  Charlotte started to speak, but Rin slung her arm around the back of the bench and unexpectedly touched her shoulder. Into Charlotte’s weepy eyes, she said softly, “Let me tell her. It should be me, anyway. I’m the one who found her.”

  It was like a slap across my face. That didn’t sound good at all.

  Rin was staring down at her hands, fidgeting with them as she spoke. “When Finley first came home from college after Quinn left for the war, he was instantly smitten. When he left, you were just thirteen, a little girl. And when he came back, you were eighteen, and all grown up. I think you took Finn by complete surprise, but the opposite wasn’t true. All your life, you were susceptible to Finley Lakin’s charms . . . Then again, who wasn’t?”

  Something in Rin’s expression led me to believe he’d had the same effect on her. If I remembered it right, she was the same age as Finley. They might have sat next to each other in school. Passed each other in the hallway. Flirted back and forth. And he had a crush on her little sister—me!

  “I guess you needed someone to help lift you back up,” Rin continued, looking up now. “You weren’t a wimpy girl—pretty sure of yourself, I’d have to admit. But Quinn’s absence left a hole in you that no one could fill. It was a sign of the times, I guess. Everyone was scared. I can see that now . . .

  “And Finley Lakin, well . . . he distracted you. It was innocent enough at first, but it quickly turned into something more. Too much chemistry. Always the recipe for a nuclear disaster.” Her voice trailed off. Despite the fact that I didn’t remember any of it, guilt crept steadily up on me. I could feel it breathing down my neck.

  She lowered her voice. “I think the clarifying moment came when he told you he loved you, and said that he wanted to spend all of eternity with you.”

  My hand flew sideways. In my exuberance, I nearly knocked Charlotte from the bench. “That’s what he says now!”

  Rin nodded without enthusiasm. “Not surprising. People have a tendency to—”

  “Keep doing the same things again and again—yes, yes, so you’ve said.”

  “You were, of course, appalled by your behavior, and planned to break it off with him the minute you realized how deep you had gotten yourself in.” I hoped that was true, that I’d thoroughly beaten myself up about it, and that Rin wasn’t telling me this to make me feel better. Then again, it was Rin that I was thinking of. When had she said anything just to make me feel better?

  “Albert Kelley told me about it later,” Rin said, meeting Charlotte’s eyes. “As you already know, you and I weren’t exactly close, but I overheard you a few times muttering to yourself, ‘This would kill Quinn if he knew. Just kill him.’ But as you may have guessed, that perfect moment never arrived, and before you had the chance to end it, Finley left for the Aleutians.”

  I forced myself to ask it. The question hung over my head like an ominous, black cloud. “There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”

  Rin nodded solemnly, and that foreboding sense of guilt moved into my chest. “I guess we got word about a year later that they had both been killed in action. The Lakins lost both their sons, and you lost the two people you loved most in this world.” Her voice cracked, and I turned to see her crying. “I found you, Hope. I’m the one who found you.”

  She avoided picturing it so I couldn’t see it in her head, but I knew, just as I knew so many things I couldn’t have known otherwise that we were nearing the conclusion of my little tragedy. This was the thing they feared I might repeat in this lifetime.

  “I killed myself?” My voice was barely a whisper.

  “We don’t know for sure,” Charlotte said in a small voice. “It could have been an accident, though that would have been surprising. You were a meticulous climber, always going on about safety and all. The whole town searched for days.”

  Tears welled in my eyes as I experienced a pain I didn’t quite remember—the loss of two people I loved, my untimely, perhaps accidental death—and Rin’s heartbreak, and the loss of a sister she never really understood.

  “How terrible for you, Rin. I’m so sorry.” And truly, I was.

  “Three weeks later,” Rin choked, attempting to speak between tears, “the war in the Aleutians came to a close and Quinn and Finley came home to Mac.”

  In stunned silence, I could only shake my head. A weight pressed heavily on my chest. “But you just said . . .”

  “Who knows? Some sort of misidentification. They had been captured, not killed, we were told, and they looked terrible when they got back—all gaunt and sickly. But you were the only thing on Quinn’s mind. He couldn’t wait to find you so he could keep his promise. He planned to marry you that very day.” Rin’s head dropped. Charlotte burst into tears. “He didn’t believe you were gone until we showed him your gravestone.”

  I waited while they composed themselves. Rin was incapable of speech. She wasn’t merely crying; there was visible pain on her face. Eventually, Charlotte continued for her.

  “Quinn died a painful death that day. It was awful to see. I’ve never seen a person fall apart like that. He swore he’d never love again; it was like he was punishing himself . . . and then when Finley heard the news, he told Quinn what had gone on between the two of you—”

  “Why would he do that? How stupid could he get?” I shouted.

  In a resigned voice, Charlotte said, “He was so sad, Hope. We all were. The sadness filled up every little space so that there wasn’t room for secrets anymore. And I’m sure the guilt was overwhelming. That’s quite a burden to carry around.” Rin, for once, agreed with Charlotte.

  “Unbelievably, it got worse,” Rin said, wiping hastily at tears that dripped from her eyes. “Quinn refused to forgive his brother, and that set off a violent reaction in Finley where every time he spotted Quinn, he wanted to rip him apart. The feeling was mutual. They hated each other.”

  Here was a thin thread linking the past and the present. Suddenly, it all made sense—their burning desire to maul each other on sight, their inexplicable animosity . . .

  “But that’s how they behave around each other now,” I said, astonished. “They can’t wait to rip each other’s heads off. Is it possible they’re remembering?”

  “Not consciously, no.” Charlotte was shaking her head. “But on some level, maybe.”

  “It’s mind-boggling, isn’t it? It’s like there’s an eighty-car pile-up in my brain.” I admitted, rubbing my aching head.

  “That’s a good one,” Rin agreed with a little smile. “I couldn’t have said it better myself. It feels the same way in mine.”

  We wiped away our tears, at a loss for words, sniffling several times as we did so. A minute later, as Charlotte asked again, “What could be keeping them?” it came to me.

  “Would you show me what you used to look like . . .?” They balked, but I persisted, “Come on, what can it hurt now? I already know every dirty detail.”

  I knew I had them when Rin said, “The girl has a point.” And instantly, Rin morphed into a tall, curvy girl with a head of thick blonde hair. She had fuller features and wide-set eyes, and when she smiled, everything fell perfectly into place.

  “You’re a knock-out, Rin.”

  “Edith,” she said, grinning at me. I realized it was one of the names that had come to mind earlier when I’d thought of names worse than Lucille.

  “Oh! Oops,” I muttered, red-faced. “Hello again, Edie.”

  I turned to Charlotte, but she had moved off the bench and was kneeling in front of me. As she transformed, a wheelchair appeared beneath her, and a frail, stick-thin boy took her place. He had light brown hair, a pleasant face, and like Edie, his smile lit up the dark night. Even so, I couldn’t stifle my gasp.

  “What—what happened to you?” I tried not to stare.

  “Polio,” Charlotte said simply. “There was an epidemic in the forties. I contracted it a cou
ple of years before we became best friends.” At last, Charlotte’s recent ramblings about me made sense. She smiled. “Like I said, I couldn’t climb, but you didn’t care.”

  “I’m sorry I was mad at you,” Rin blurted, morphing out of her Edith-shell. “As if you could remember . . .”

  But I was thinking that if I had remembered and if I had done all the things I was supposed to do, would I still have met Charlotte and Rin? Making mistakes could have been my saving grace. But instead of saying any of that, I laughed.

  “And to think it only took you seventy years to forgive me,” I managed to say.

  “Trust me,” Charlotte said, “Rin can stay mad forever! Only Cat can beat her in that department.” Charlotte transformed out of her Albert Kelley-shell, flipping her hair off her shoulders in one silky movement before squeezing me in her twiggy arms.

  “Easy there, Charlotte. I can’t breathe.” After letting me go with a quiet giggle, Rin gave me a long sisterly hug.

  “They’re here!” Charlotte jumped from the bench and pointed. “They’re here!”

  I spotted them strolling in our direction, not in a hurry despite all signs pointing to the eleventh hour. Creesie was in front, flanked closely by Cat. Mac waved at me, a huge child-like grin on his face; Gus pulled up the rear with a lovely teenaged girl on his arm.

  For some reason, she captivated me. She had long wavy brown hair, and an olive complexion that seemed to be lit from within. She wore jeans, the kind that belled out at the bottom, and a sunshine-yellow top that billowed out from her body.

  The four of them greeted me with enthusiastic hugs—Mac, chuckling about some joke that Gus had just told, repeating some silly punch line which had him doubling over; Creesie was back to her usual effervescent self, even Cat looked rather happy to see me. She had probably heard that I was going back; word travelled fast in dead circles.

  Foregoing the usual slow-poked chit-chat, Creesie mumbled a giddy apology for being late, mentioning something about a special guest. Then, extending one arm as if to part the Red Sea (the others following in slow-motion, it seemed) the mysterious, dark-haired girl in the bright yellow blouse walked toward me.