Jacob began to hum, or rather warm up his voice. She’d only heard him sing once before—a smoky, guttural voice that held unexpected power. When his melody boomed through the door, goose bumps rose on her forearms. How tragic that he’d packed away his music along with his memories. Did he still have his banjo? She looked around the room but saw only the stack of taped cardboard boxes in the corner and a small framed photograph on the nightstand.
Hannah picked up the picture and gasped. The beautiful older woman in the photo could only be Will’s mother, but she was no stranger. This was the woman who had found Rosie scavenging in the Occoneechee Mountain parking lot. And she had the same eyes as her son.
Twenty-Five
A muscle in his neck cramped into a spasm, and Will kneaded it with his fingertips.
“You okay?” Galen asked.
“Hmm.” Will sat up and swallowed. Aged sawdust contained more moisture than his mouth. “How long have I been out?”
“Since we left the parking lot.”
“All those manly pursuits and fresh air. Damn. Used to be the only thing on my mind after a climb was cocktail hour. Now I sleep like the poster child for those Old Guys Rule T-shirts. Tell me I wasn’t drooling.”
“Only for the first hour.” Galen gave a muted smile, but a good one. Genuine.
Will cleared his throat. “What time is it?”
Galen turned the power off. “Around midnight.”
No moon, no stars, just a blanket of darkness. Ahead, a fortress of trees rose like a battalion of undead guards. Two coyotes howled; Saponi Mountain was alive with the kill.
“Once you closed your mouth, you looked peaceful.” Galen picked up the smart key and tossed it to Will. “And the unlit country roads were so tranquil. I decided to drive in circles. Let both of us zone out.”
“Hey, it’s cool. I haven’t slept like that in weeks.”
“Will?”
The kneading of his fingers sent strokes of warmth down his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Thank you for giving me a second chance—after I was such a dick when we met. Today was a good day. I’m glad I spent it with you.”
The porch light from the cottage shone into the driver’s side, illuminating Galen’s face with a ghostly glow. The guy really should put on some weight, puff out those cheeks, but at least the gray pallor had gone.
“You’re not going to suggest a man hug next, are you?” Will said.
“Not your thing?”
Will shook his head. “I’m a non-discriminating non-hugger.”
A quiet laugh. “Did I stress you out today?”
“Only when you dyno’d over that ledge and out of view. Next time, don’t make me wait until I see your head at the top of the climb. Answer me when I call.”
“Really, you’d take me climbing again?”
“Sure. Anytime.”
Galen turned to stare out into the night. “I imagine you’re already planning your first father/son climb with Freddie.”
Will snapped wide-awake. “I haven’t thought about it.” An honest answer, because it had always been a given: One day, I’ll teach my son to climb.
Another dream lost, but today he’d also won a small, surprising victory over grief. Today he had focused on the physical and emotional well-being of another person out of choice. Dealing with the old man was not about free will, and soloing in the Gunks had been nothing more than a self-test, the desire to prove he was still alive. Today hadn’t been about proving anything, and while he wasn’t paying attention, Will found himself caring—about Galen’s safety and Hannah’s trust. It went deeper, too. He’d wanted Galen to enjoy the experience.
“It was a good day for me, too, Galen.”
“Like talking to God?”
“Yeah.” Will smiled. “I think so. How about you?”
Galen nodded. “There’s a poem circulating in my head.”
“Seriously? That’s fantastic, man.”
“I’m going to try and write it down before I go to bed.”
“And share it with me tomorrow?”
Galen nodded.
Maybe the climb had been a step forward for both of them. And maybe the incident with the ledge was as meaningless as the moment Galen decided to jump before clipping a bolt.
Will tumbled out of the passenger seat and stretched. Galen closed the driver’s-side door and then leaned onto the car.
“Tired?” Will asked.
“No. Just pensive.”
“I told your mom we’d be back by ten. Think she’s worried?”
“She didn’t text, so I guess not. She’s never been the type to wait up.”
“At least you don’t think she has.”
Hannah’s bedroom was sealed in blackness, as Will expected it to be. Even so, he pictured her sitting in the dark, waiting for her teenage sons to come home. Not wanting to fuss, but not being able to sleep until she heard the dead bolt on the front door click into place. He would have been that way if...just if.
“You want me to unload the gear?” Galen said.
“No, we’re good. Let’s deal with it tomorrow.” Tonight, Will just wanted to sleep.
The dogs waddled across the yard, tails wagging.
“Hey, ladies.” Will crouched down, and Rosie and Daisy headed straight for him.
“I guess Mom stayed up, after all.”
“Oh?” That sounded casual enough, right? Nothing lustful, nothing that announced, In my dreams, your mother’s naked.
“Yeah, she probably felt she should in case your dad needed something. She’s like that. Mom can sit up all night with a sick animal or a sick kid.”
“Or an aging dad?”
“That, too. Besides, if Rosie’s around, so’s Mom. Rosie’s her protector.”
Rosie licked Will’s hand; it tickled.
“One time a friend of mine was drunk and accidently fell into Mom’s bedroom. Rosie pinned him against the wall. Probably would’ve attacked if he hadn’t been too terrified to move.” Galen paused. “Mom?”
“Think she’s okay?” Will stood and rubbed at his stubble.
“Mom?” Galen called louder.
Will spotted her first, curled up on the cottage porch swing in a white toweling dressing gown, a pair of pink velvet slippers abandoned on the boards beneath her. Never in a millennium would he have pegged her for a woman who liked pink velvet.
He pulled ahead of Galen, which wasn’t hard—the guy moved like a turtle—and reached the cottage steps. The dogs brushed past, but Will paused to lean into the railing. She looked as young as she did in the photograph from her twenty-first birthday. Not that they needed to, but the years had slipped away. As had her dressing gown, which revealed a bare thigh and the hint of pink-and-white-striped boxer shorts. What else did she own that was pink?
“Mom?” Galen stood next to him.
Will was about to say, Let her sleep, but Hannah sat up—revealing a white lacy camisole that hinted at the outline of her breasts. The breasts he’d imagined jiggling while he moved rhythmically inside her. God help him, he gave a low moan, and before he could cover it up with a cough, an owl answered.
“What time is it?” Hannah dragged her hands through her hair and looked sexy as hell. Despite the huge brown stain over her right boob. She grabbed the collar of her dressing gown and tugged it up to her neck, and he felt like a kid caught with his hand in the bowl of Halloween candy. Had he been staring?
“I spilled coffee down myself,” Hannah said. “Waiting up for you guys.”
“It’s my fault, Mom. We would have been back hours ago, but Will fell asleep and the roads were so quiet and mesmerizing. I just kept driving. Sorry.”
“No, no need to apologize,” Hannah said quickly.
&
nbsp; So, Will wasn’t the only one exhausted by the endless need for atonement. Although, now that he thought about it, Galen hadn’t apologized once today.
“How was the climb?” she asked Galen.
“Energizing,” Galen replied. “I’m going to head back to the house. Make some coffee and work on a poem. ’Night, guys.” Galen kissed his mother’s cheek, and Will felt something he probably shouldn’t have.
“Thank you, Will.” Her voice was husky with sleep.
She held his gaze and frowned.
“Something bothering you?” The question had slipped out unintentionally, but her stare was intense. Uncomfortably so. He shoved his hands into his pockets.
“No.” She shook her head, as if fighting off the remnants of a dream. “It’s fine.”
“My dad okay?”
“Fine.” Hannah stood and yawned.
Great. They’d established everything was fine. Except for the fact that Hannah was only partially dressed, and he was trying not to imagine her straddling him. Deep in his pockets, Will screwed up both hands into fists.
As if sharing his thought, she tightened the belt on her dressing gown. “I exhausted Jacob with a hike. He went to bed around nine, and last time I checked, he was sleeping like a baby. Or maybe not, given what appalling sleepers my two were. Especially Galen.”
“Colic?” Will said.
“Yes. Your son, too?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t meet him till he was nine months old.”
“Goodness. That’s rough.”
“Yeah. Nine months of memories I don’t have.”
Head cocked to one side, Hannah stared at him again. No way could she have figured out his secret, but she’d clearly caught a whiff of cover-up. From now on, he would say nothing about Freddie. Not one single comment would escape his lips. He would have to be even more guarded.
Twenty-Six
Overnight the energy in the house settled into a calm ebb and the constriction in Hannah’s chest unwound. Galen rose early, cooked her breakfast and ran out to pick up dog food. Finally, he left the house for something other than A.A. And rather than sleep all afternoon, he had spent the past two hours in the front of the old PlayStation blowing up zombies.
Everything felt different; everything had shifted. Thanks to Will, Galen had turned a corner. He had come back to her.
Hannah smiled. Imagine—she was actually grateful that her gifted poet was frying his brain, goofing off like a normal student. The living room shuddered through another video-generated explosion, but the dogs, collapsed around Galen, slept on. Only Rosie stirred.
“Popping over to the cottage,” Hannah said.
Galen grunted an acknowledgment, and Rosie pushed her muzzle into Hannah’s palm, handing her a still-warm memory of Will’s mother darting in and out of her life. Her own mother would have loved that fleeting connection, would have taken that brief moment in her daughter’s life and constructed grand meaning. Hannah, however, wanted only to ignore yet another gravitational pull back to Will.
But suppose someone could offer her a new story about one of her parents? What a gift! The map of life redrew itself constantly; the borders never stopped shifting. How wonderful, though, to rediscover that part labeled daughter.
Her parents had been ripped away too soon, and without motherhood to give her purpose, she would have been adrift as a grown-up orphan. There had been no time for final words or final moments. No time to presort memories and select ones worth keeping. But this was a good memory, and it belonged to Will.
“Coming with me, baby?”
Rosie’s tail thumped against the floor.
As they crossed the gravel, a thrush—nature’s flautist—announced the gloaming. Another thirty minutes and darkness would fall, but right now the house and the cottage were suspended between day and night, caught in that moment when nothing was defined and everything seemed possible. Galen had written several poems about the gloaming, and she often found herself out in the woods with her camera at this time. The French called it the blue hour; photographers called it the golden hour; Hannah called it the in-between hour. It spoke of endings and beginnings. And today, it spoke of promise for a better tomorrow.
Orange sunlight entered the forest from the west, skimming through the treetops and casting tendrils of shadows. Hannah smiled, imagining her father, her guardian angel, waving from the tree line.
Thank you, Dad, for keeping Galen safe.
Rosie mounted the cottage steps ahead of her and went straight to Will, who was pushing back and forth on the porch swing.
“Do you have a minute?” Hannah asked.
“Sure.” Will shot up and looked at her with his mother’s eyes. The swing continued to rattle behind him. “How about a glass of wine? It’s nearly six o’clock on a Friday, and I have a cabernet that comes well recommended.”
Life could change in five minutes, in one minute, in thirty seconds, but there was harmony to drinking that bottle of wine, this evening, with this person, with this dog at their feet. If she could choose to be anywhere in the world, with anyone, it would be here, right now, with Will.
“Wine would be lovely. Thanks.”
He disappeared into the cottage and Rosie lay down. Hannah placed her palm on the swing cushion—still warm, still molded to Will’s body—and sat as far away from his indentation as possible. A squirrel barked, and crows called one another home. Hannah tugged off her sweatshirt. Once again, the heat of the early evening had caught her off guard. Once again, she’d dressed for fall, as if pretense had the power to influence seasonal change.
When Will elbowed open the screen door, she leaped up to help, claiming the glasses in a clumsy handoff. He sat next to her, close but not too close, and she had the most ridiculous thought: Which bra am I wearing?
She twisted her legs together and angled them away from him, then folded her left arm across her stomach and tucked in both elbows. With her right arm braced across her chest, she held up the wineglass that had been part of a wedding gift. As Will poured, she stared at an object that had once represented the happiest day of her life, and felt nothing. Then she watched Will set the bottle down on the porch, and silently acknowledged the desire coiling in her gut.
“Cheers.” She chinked her glass against his. “And thanks again, for yesterday. I assume there were no problems?”
“Galen totally nailed it. Awesome focus for a beginner.”
“But?”
“A couple of things niggled. Nothing big.” Will sipped his wine. “I’m sure they were nothing.”
“Will.” She uncrossed her legs. “You can’t say that and not elaborate.”
“He was a little careless.”
“Beginner’s mistakes?”
“Possibly.” Will paused. “How honest do you want me to be?”
“As honest as if he were your son.”
Will sucked in a deep breath. “I was concerned—at one point—that the thought of slipping to his death might not be a problem for him.”
The porch swing creaked as it swung like a pendulum.
“Are you going to freak out now?” he said.
“No, because you’re wrong. Galen’s in a good place. I can’t explain how I know, I just do.”
Will nodded, but kept the frown. “Did he write that poem?”
“Working on it, apparently.”
“How was Dad yesterday?”
She swirled her glass and wine sloshed against the side. If she didn’t talk about the morning, she wasn’t lying. “He reminisced.”
“About?” Will’s tone suggested caution.
“His musical career. Have you ever considered writing down some of his memories?”
“No, for the simple reason he didn’t have a musical career.”
“No. He did what he thought was right for Mom. Always.” Will’s voice hardened. “I just filled in the cracks.”
“It didn’t sound that way to me.”
Will glanced sideways at her. “What exactly did he tell you?”
“That he was in a band with your uncle and they were offered a recording contract, which meant traveling. Jacob refused the deal because he couldn’t leave you alone with your mom, and your uncle was furious.”
Will drained his glass. Then he leaned down to retrieve the bottle. He topped up her glass, even though she’d drunk only two sips, and filled his to the top. Was she allowing her son to hang out with a closet drinker?
“So. Now Dad’s rewriting the family history.” Will took a slug of wine. “Whatever he’s told you, this is the truth—my dad was a grave digger with a talent for the banjo, my mom was a storyteller who was batshit insane. There were so many overlapping realities, it was hard to know where madness ended and illusion began in our house. Mom could create whole worlds in which good battled evil. When I was a kid, her stories and her manic energy were the best. The embarrassment and shame came later, as her behavior grew more erratic. One day I was living a fairy tale, the next I was on the set of a disaster movie. I never had friends over. Couldn’t risk it, not when the house throbbed with her moods. Hiding our lives became a time-consuming lie. She refused to seek help and Dad refused to force her hand. They made their decisions, and our lives revolved around her craziness. Maybe it rubbed off on him.”
Will stomped on the decking boards and the swing stopped moving. “Recording deal, my ass.”
They resumed their rocking.
“I used to do this every night,” Hannah said, “sit on the porch with a drink and star gaze.”
“Why did you stop?”
“After my father died, my thoughts turned maudlin, especially at night. Time alone wasn’t wise. I took a step back, grieved for both my parents and then forced myself to start life over. I changed some of my old habits and started new ones. It seemed an important part of my healing process to establish a before and an after line.”
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