Matt stayed where he was, somehow wanting to be on the sidelines tonight.
Dale Brooks wandered over, leaning up against Wilks’s Mustang and hooking his thumbs through the pockets of a pair of faded overalls. Dale was a good guy, valedictorian of their class, headed for MIT in the fall.
“You’re at the Miller place this summer, right?”
“Yeah,” Matt said.
“What’s it like out on the farm?”
“Not too bad.”
Dale ran a hand across the top of his blonde buzz cut. “Becca’s family, right?”
Matt nodded.
“I had some classes with Becca before she left school. That’s one smart girl.”
For whatever reason, Matt had never had a class with Becca, and he was intrigued by this piece of information. “Really?”
“Yeah, not just book smart though. She had the common sense kind, too. This intuition for when something was right or wrong. If she’d stayed in school, I probably wouldn’t have been first in the class.”
Dale was prone to modesty, but Matt could hear the sincerity in his voice, and something else, too.
“You have a thing for her?” he asked, keeping his voice casual, as if it didn’t matter one way or the other whether Dale answered.
He tipped his head, conceding. “Maybe a little,” he said.
Matt folded his arms across his chest. “So why don’t you ask her out?”
Dale lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “Figured it would be a waste of time, you know?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that I’m not one of them and that kind of thing probably wouldn’t work.”
He thought about Jacob and Linda and what Becca had said about them. “Yeah, I guess not,” he said.
Angie edged up beside Dale then, giving him a playful bump with her shoulder. “My turn,” she said.
“Oh, pardon me,” Dale said, grinning. “I didn’t realize there was a Griffith line.” He gave Matt a thumbs up behind her back, then headed over to Wilks and Joey who were retelling their diving stories from the day before.
Matt leaned back against the Mustang, palms planted on the trunk. “Hey, Angie,” he said.
“Hey.” She smiled, her green eyes nearly level with his, her straight, dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. Voted Most Popular in their class, Angie Taylor was one of those girls born knowing what she wanted. And she’d never been shy about going after it.
When they’d broken up last spring, Wilks summed up Matt’s stupidity with his usual elegance. “What the hell are you thinking? Every guy in this county would give a nut to date her.”
Angie put her back to the car now, close enough that their arms touched. “Haven’t seen you out this week,” she said. “Where you been?”
“Working,” he said.
“I heard.”
“Seems everybody has.”
She smiled. “Not exactly where I would have pictured you this summer.”
“Me, either. What are you doing?”
“Helping my dad. Answering the phone and stuff.”
A general practitioner, Angie’s father had been Matt’s doctor since Gran stopped taking him to the pediatrician in Roanoke. “That’s probably interesting,” he said.
“A lot more interesting at five o’clock when I get to leave,” she said, laughing.
They talked for a while, and it was like it always was with Angie. She was warm and flirted like somebody who’d had a lot of practice. Which she had.
They hit on the subject of college, what it would be like not to see all the kids they were used to seeing every day.
She turned around, planted her elbows on the trunk of the car, looking up at him. “Sweet Briar’s not that far from Charlottesville, you know,” she said. “Maybe we can plan a weekend road trip.”
“Yeah,” he said, not sure where they were going with this, even less sure where he wanted it to go. “That’d be nice.”
She smiled, glanced away.
“What?” he asked.
She traced a finger through the dirt on Wilks’s car, making a question mark. “That thing you do. Go along just to change the subject.”
“I don’t,” he said.
“Yeah, you do,” she said, still smiling. “But that’s okay. I’m on to you now.”
They studied each other for a moment, and he decided to let it go.
“I’ve got my car here,” she said. “Wanna take a ride?”
Matt thought about Becca and the way she’d refused to talk to him throughout the day. Every time he’d tried to approach her, she’d found some reason to go the other way. “Yeah, sure,” he said.
He walked over and told Wilks he was getting a ride with Angie. A couple of the guys let out a wolf whistle. Wilks just shook his head, giving him a two-finger salute.
Angie pulled up in the white convertible she’d gotten for graduation. Matt got in, and she made a right out of the Minute Market, heading down Route 40 and then left on 122, the opposite direction from his house. He knew where she was going, considered telling her not tonight, but instead, sat back in his seat and closed his eyes.
A couple minutes later, she turned onto a gravel road. A quarter mile down was the asphalt paving company her uncle owned, a secluded spot they’d made use of more than a few times. She pulled around to the back, cut the engine.
There weren’t any lights on that side of the building, dark except for the few stars overhead. They sat for a minute or two, not talking.
“I think about us a lot, Matt,” she said, the first to speak.
“We had some good times,” he said, one shoulder against the door.
“So why did we break up anyway?”
“Seems like we were doing a lot of arguing.”
“Um,” she said, turning in her seat so that her knee pressed against his thigh. “I can’t even remember what about.”
She leaned over, kissed the side of his face, pausing a second before nipping the lobe of his ear with her teeth.
“Look, Angie—” he began.
“Hey, I know we got this part right,” she said.
He turned his face to hers, and she kissed him, nothing soft and introductory, just picking up where they’d left off, two people who knew each other’s bodies. He closed his eyes, but it was Becca’s face he saw on the back of his lids. Intent on erasing it, he kissed Angie back, and she leaned against the driver’s door. Matt followed, half lying across her.
She pulled his shirt over his head, and he unbuttoned her blouse, popping the snap on her bra, willing himself not to think. Just like that, and they were back to the way it had been when they were together.
He pulled away after a few minutes, drawing in a few deep breaths. “Angie,” he said. “This is nice. Real nice. But like you said, this was the part we got right the first time. If we’re going to start up again, maybe we ought to work on the other parts first.”
“I don’t have a problem with that.” She leaned over, kissed him again. “How about a date then? Saturday night?”
He’d started this thread. Not so easy to let it go now. “Saturday sounds good,” he said.
She hooked her bra and buttoned her blouse, then started the car. They drove back to town, music from the radio taking up the silence between them. And the whole way he wasn’t thinking about the girl beside him, but about the fact that everything he’d done tonight had been nothing more than an unsuccessful effort to get Becca Miller out of his head.
24
One Simple Truth
Each day provides its own gifts.
- American Proverb
Now
On Saturday morning, Becca asked Abby if she’d like to take a drive. She didn’t tell her where they were going, wanting it to be a surprise. They climbed into the old white farm truck, driving the few miles into town where Becca stopped by Tom Williams’ office to get the keys to Mrs. Griffith’s house. She’d called earlier to let him know she was coming, and he’d left them
for her at the front desk. Cowardly, maybe, but she was glad she didn’t have to face him, pretend she didn’t see the questions in his eyes. Walking back to the truck, she held the keys tight, the metal cold against the palm of her hand. They headed out of town and down 122 toward the lake.
“Okay, so what’s the big mystery?” Abby asked, her window lowered to let in the spring breeze.
“It’s a house,” Becca answered, keeping her eyes on the road, mostly to avoid the questions in Abby’s.
“What kind of house?”
“At the lake.”
“Really? Whose?”
“Actually, it’s mine.”
“Yours?” Abby turned in the seat, her back to the door, eyes wide.
Becca nodded, realizing she was starting to like the sound of it. Hers. She’d lived her whole life in the house where she grew up, a house that officially belonged to her mother. Aside from her potting shed, she’d never yearned to own anything that was strictly her own, but something here had struck a chord deep down. “Mrs. Griffith, the woman whose funeral I went to last week, left it to me.”
“Wow,” Abby said, amazement underlining the words. “Have you seen it?”
“A long time ago.”
“Are you going to keep it?”
“I’m not sure,” she said.
The drive from Ballard to Tinker’s Knob Lake took some twenty-five minutes. Becca made the right hand turn off 122 onto the gravel road that led to the house, surprised she remembered it so well and then at the same time realizing that part of her felt as if it had just been yesterday that she’d last come here with Matt. The bushes along the edge had grown out far enough that the old truck had to elbow its way down the half-mile stretch until they reached the clearing where the house sat a couple hundred feet back from the edge of the lake. The yard was in a similar state of disrepair, the grass knee-high, blackberry vines growing up against the side of the house.
“What a great place,” Abby said.
“It is,” Becca agreed. They got out of the truck, wading through the grass to the back door. She inserted the key, swinging it open and inside to find the kitchen basically the same as it had been eighteen years ago.
Only now cobwebs abounded, and mouse droppings dotted the linoleum floor. Becca’s fingers itched suddenly to make the place look as it once had when Mrs. Griffith had taken pride in it.
They walked outside, standing on the front porch and looking out at the lake, sunlight glistening off its blue surface. Across the cove, a deer peered out of the woods at the edge of the water. Overhead, a hawk soared, announcing itself. There were no other houses within sight, and the place had a peacefulness to it that made her imagine for a moment a lovely stretch of garden between the house and the lake.
“It’s beautiful,” Abby said.
“Yes,” Becca said, remembering the times she had come here with Matt, how in this place, it had seemed as if they might have been the only two people in the world. She put a hand on Abby’s shoulder. “Feel like doing some cleaning?”
“So that’s why you brought me along,” she teased.
Becca smiled and gave Abby’s ponytail a gentle tug. “Would ice cream on the way home help persuade you?”
“Cookie dough Blizzard at the Dairy Queen?” she negotiated.
“Deal.”
They headed back to the truck where Abby climbed over the tailgate and retrieved the mop, bucket and cleaning supplies. They started in the kitchen, scrubbing grime from the sink and counters, making the faucet and stove shine again.
They hit the baseboards next, rubbing away the caked-on dust until the white paint once again gleamed. The old wood table in the center of the room perked up beneath a good dusting and a coat of polish. Abby found a ladder in a closet and used it to reach the ceiling light fixture.
They worked until mid-afternoon without a break. It was nearly three o’clock when Abby said, “Okay, I’m starving. When do we get to eat?”
“Some mother you have. I forgot to feed you lunch.”
Abby smiled. “If you brought peanut butter and jelly, I won’t report you this one time.”
“I’ll try to do better.”
They got the cooler out of the truck. She’d brought along an old quilt as well, and they spread it close to the water. Over the years, waves from ski boats and Sea-Doos had eroded the shoreline so that it ran not so much in a straight line as a zigzagged edge like the hems Granny Miller used to sew in Becca’s dresses when she was a little girl.
The water was smooth today, its color a deep green. Across the cove, black Angus cows grazed the grass that ran to the water’s edge. Much of the lake had been built up, enormous houses occupying quarter acre lots with golf course quality yards. But this cove looked much the same as it had eighteen years ago. Mrs. Griffith had leased the grass pastures of her land to a farmer who lived nearby. Once, on a hot July day when Becca had been here with Matt, they’d floated across the cove on a tube to pet a cow who’d decided to wade out and cool off.
Becca blinked away the memory, handing Abby a thermos of lemonade. They ate in comfortable silence. When Abby finished her sandwich, she stretched out on her belly, chin propped on her hands, facing the lake.
“So it seems like there has to be more to this,” she said.
Becca took a sip of lemonade. “What do you mean?”
“Well, obviously, Daddy and Grandma are bent out of shape about something. They’re not speaking to you, and I’m guessing it has to do with this place. Why would they mind a nice old woman leaving you something?”
Sometimes, Becca wondered if Abby would grow up to be an investigator of some sort. Or maybe a psychiatrist. She’d always looked for clues in people, mulled over their words and actions, rearranged the pieces of the puzzle, until she became satisfied with the fit.
“My English teacher was talking to Ms. Taylor, one of the other teachers, about Mrs. Griffith yesterday. I heard her say something about a grandson who was here taking care of her will and stuff. She told Ms. Taylor that he was hunkier than ever and that she should never have let him get away.”
“Really?” Becca said, studying the crust of her mostly uneaten sandwich.
“Did Ms. Taylor date him?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Did you know him?”
“Yes.” With this, she shifted her gaze to the fishing boat now idling into the cove.
A man in a baseball cap lifted his hand in greeting, then cut the engine and cast his line. Becca wondered how much to tell Abby, sick inside at the thought of adding another single lie to the pyre she’d built in the past eighteen years.
“Were you friends with him?”
Becca felt the angle of Abby’s questions, and she wanted with sudden conviction to bring something of the truth out into the light where it had at least a hope of being seen for what it was. “We were,” she said. “Actually, we were more than that for a while.”
Abby looked at her, blinking in shock, as if she had cast her fishing line into the ocean under the assumption she would never catch anything, and now there was a whale on the end. “Oh. What, exactly?”
Becca stuck her sandwich back in its Zip-loc bag, buying herself a few moments. “We dated.”
“But he’s not—”
“No. He’s not.”
Abby processed this, her gaze on the boat sitting silent in the cove. “Did you love him?”
“I guess I thought I did,” she said.
“What happened?”
“Our lives were very different.”
“And you married Daddy?”
She nodded, looking up at the hawk making another pass over the cove, its shrill cry resonating inside her. “Yes.”
They were quiet for a good bit before Abby said, “Do you love him?”
“Who?”
“Daddy.”
She glanced down. “Your father is a good man, Abby.”
Abby considered this, and then, “But you don’t love him the way
you loved Matt.”
Honesty compelled Becca to say, “I don’t compare the two.”
Another span of silence took up the space between them, before Abby finally said, “I’m in love with someone, Mama.”
“I know, honey.”
Abby’s eyes widened. “How?”
“I’ve seen you outside the house at night.”
“And you haven’t said anything?” She shook her head as if it were again the last thing she would have expected.
“Abby, I trust your heart. It will tell you what to do.”
Abby pulled a blade of grass from the edge of the quilt, rubbing it between her palms. “But he’s not like us, either.”
“I know.”
“Daddy will have a cow.”
“He just might.”
Again, they were silent, letting these new revelations between them find balanced footing. “Was it like this for you? With Matt?”
“That was a very long time ago,” Becca said, feeling as if she’d said enough, that more would make her a traitor to Aaron. She got up from the quilt, brushing the crumbs from her dress, then leaning down and taking off her shoes. “Let’s see if the water’s warm.”
Abby followed her to the edge of the shore. She stepped down into the water, holding her dress above her knees, the soft red clay squishing up between her toes. Abby slipped off her shoes, stepping in beside her, giggling when a tiny fish nipped at her calf. The sun lay warm across their shoulders. Abby reached for her mother’s hand, entwining their fingers. “I love you, Mama. I’m glad we can talk like this. That we can be honest with each other.”
Becca swallowed hard, tried to answer, but the words stuck in her throat. How did she explain, after all, that one simple truth could not possibly obliterate such a tangle of lies?
25
Smudged Lines
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.
Crossing Tinker's Knob Page 12