Bethlehem

by Karen Kelly

  There had been just a few times in their marriage that Frank had done something completely out of character, like driving straight through a red light in downtown Philadelphia simply because it was late at night and the intersection was clear, or emptying a box of Cheerios into Daisy’s crib to buy a little extra sleep on a rainy Saturday morning. As he ushered them forward, Joanna felt a rising panic that this was one of those times. For a few helpless moments she was convinced that Frank had taken a mind to confront Daniel, family in tow. Why else would he be headed for Grange House? But then he tipped his head down and she heard him ask his mother a gentle question: “It’s over here?” And she knew where they were going.

  “There’s Baby Hayes!” Daisy skipped ahead, Charlie on her heels. She got there first, squatting down to trace her finger over the brief epitaph on the granite marker. “This is the baby with no mother,” Daisy explained.

  “I told you—it had a mother.” Charlie wore his exasperation like sackcloth.

  Joanna strode forward, taking the children in hand. “Let’s go and wait in the car. Maybe we can ride in the long one.” Both Charlie and Daisy had been deeply disappointed that morning when the hired stretch limo filled up and left without them, and they were relegated to the old Silver Cloud. Now they practically pulled their mother off her feet in a mad rush to secure a spot on the exotic expanses of the banquette seats.

  Susannah turned to her son. “Go ahead with them—I’ll just be a minute.”

  He understood the need for privacy, but before he stepped away, Frank asked another quiet question. “Don’t you think it’s time he took his rightful place?”

  His mother hugged him then, wrapping her arms around his chest to bury her face against the soft cashmere of his overcoat. And her shoulders shook. And that was her answer.

  * * *

  Susannah stood alone in the weak January sunlight, gazing at the inscription. There would be a new stone, one that told the truth. She heard the words of the minister, spoken just that morning: redeemeth and restoreth. The baby would lie next to his father now, near the place where she would someday join them.

  Deep in thought, she didn’t even notice that Doe had appeared, standing next to her with a cardboard box. “I don’t mean to interrupt … but I have something for you. I was looking for a letter from Hedy this morning—something she sent me years ago, after Sarah left. It meant so much. I wanted to read it again. She was…” Her voice broke, and she had to take a moment to gather herself. A long stratus cloud came and went before she could continue. “Daniel likes to tease me about my filing system, but I knew right where it would be. And I remembered there were some other things in that box. Some things I’ve been saving for you.” She set the cardboard on the cold hard ground and lifted the lid, looking up at Susannah with a sad smile. “No time like the present.”

  The first thing she withdrew was a plain envelope, slightly yellowed with age. Suddenly nervous, she said, “I took the liberty. I knew it wasn’t my place, but I just … had to. I thought someday you might want…” Her words trailed off as she held it out.

  Scrawled on the front was only one line—just a name: Charles Hayes Collier Jr. The envelope wasn’t sealed—the flap was simply tucked under the lip of the opening. In what felt like slow motion, Susannah opened it. Inside was a tiny lock of hair. Carefully, she picked it up. For a long moment, she studied it in her palm, running a finger gently over the sable softness. And then, clenching her hand tightly, she brought her fist to her mouth and pressed her lips against it.

  “Hedy didn’t know. It was just before we closed the coffin.” Doe was teary again, her voice thick. “It’s true what they say, you know. The smallest coffins are the heaviest.”

  Susannah’s eyes were squeezed shut, and she breathed deeply. Doe turned away, granting a private communion between mother and child. When Susannah finally opened her eyes, she looked to the old woman with an aching smile. “Thank you for this.”

  “There’s something else.” Doe stooped down and lifted out a baseball glove. “I saved this for you too. I thought you might want it back someday.”

  Susannah took it in her other hand. “Where did you get this?” She stared at the worn, cracked leather, smooth to the touch and heavy in her grasp.

  “Right here.” Doe nodded at the headstone. “Where you left it. You remember—it was about a year after … well, about a year later.” She gave Susannah a peculiar look, registering her puzzlement. “You know Nico has a policy that we can’t save all the things people leave, but this was different. I’ve seen a lot of sweet offerings in my time, but this…” She shook her head. “I had to believe you would want it back someday.”

  Running a finger across the insignia, Susannah turned it over to see the owner’s name inked on the inside of the back strap. It was so faded that it was barely legible, but it didn’t matter—she knew what she would find there: Chap Collier. The sight of it … the feel of it … the fact of it … it was like he was there—a physical presence. It made her light-headed. And in the dizzying rush, it took her a moment to process the information. The glove was left here? How was it possible?

  And then, as clearly as if she were holding the page in front of her, she saw the words of a letter written long ago:

  I brought his glove back here with me. I needed something of his that I could touch. Something I could hold. Whenever I put it on, I swear I can feel him standing next to me.

  She hadn’t left the glove on her baby’s grave. It hadn’t been hers to leave. But she knew who had. The realization struck with a force that nearly brought her to her knees. Like the first time she’d stood there, so many years ago, her legs faltered. And as on that raw and tender day, Doe was there to brace her up, to keep her from falling.

  The letter had been signed as they all were—with just two words. They were the words that had been her salvation. They had been her future and her past. They had been her truth. But until that moment, she had not fully known the depth of that truth—and she had not known the cost.

  They were just two words, but they were the story of her life:

  Yours, Wyatt

  Epilogue

  NOVEMBER 1961

  “Mr. Collier? Can you hear me?” Betty was shaking her boss’s shoulder, willing him from the slumped sprawl that covered the blotter on his desk. She had asked too many times to justify the question, but she couldn’t stop. Her competence had always been unimpeachable. Mr. Collier relied on her. She couldn’t fail him now.

  And Wyatt could hear her—from a long, echoing distance. He could hear Joe Simons, too, calling out dim, buffered instructions. “Get Doc Erland! Call an ambulance! Someone find Frank!” It came in muffled snatches, like dialogue from a television playing in a room far down the hall.

  He knew it was Betty’s hand on his shoulder, but somehow, in the next moment, it was his mother’s. “See the dragon opening his mouth?” She was kneeling next to him in the garden, bringing the yellow snapdragon magically to life with the press of her fingers. And then she was laughing—clear and bright—from the top of the porch steps as he teetered across the yard on his new stilts. She had been gone for decades, but he was just seven years old—suffused with warm relief. There she was. There she was. There she was.

  Time had become fluid, nonlinear. Joe’s voice was now his father’s, hollering through cupped hands on the banks of the Schuylkill: “C’mon, Wyatt! Stay with it! You can do it!”

  He could hear a siren. “Where the hell is the doctor? Dad. Dad. It’s Frank. Stay with me. Just hang on. Everything will be all right.”

  “Look, Daddy—we found a kitten.” The twins, hovering over an open hatbox. The fox was too weak to open its eyes and there was a drip of foam at its mouth, but the strike of fear was allayed by a settling retrospect. He was there in the yard with Gigi and Frank, and yet he knew: except for the poor fox, everyone would be all right.

  “Clear the way, please. Everyone step out of the way.” Arms hoisting him up.<
br />
  Chap was standing behind him on a scruffy patch of turf, circling his arms around to clasp his hands over Wyatt’s on the bat, saying, “Step into it, buddy. Like this.” And then those arms enveloping him again as he shivered in the lamplight, shaken to the bone: “You didn’t have to go in after her, you know.”

  But he did. They both did.

  Chap. Ah, Chap. It wasn’t your fault. How could I blame you? I know you didn’t have any choice. I never damned you for it. If I had damned you for anything, it would have been for that bottle of Beefeater. But I couldn’t. I can’t.

  And I couldn’t damn her, either. My Susannah. What a price you paid.

  There was a sound, a repeated beeping, that somehow transmuted to a chime—the bell at Brynmor’s massive door. He had come to surprise her, carefully timing his arrival to coincide with Susannah’s return from Europe. It was a prize he had clutched all summer long, as firmly as he clutched his oar—pushing down the pain with every grueling stroke, fixing his gaze on the distant shore that was Susannah.

  But she wasn’t there. They expected her anytime, Harriet said. Come right in, Mister Wyatt. She’ll be so happy to see you. Only he hadn’t been back to Chap’s grave. It was something he needed to do. It was a step he had to make himself take. He could do it now, while he waited.

  The Center Street gate was closest. He could cut across the grass to the rise overlooking the river. It was a familiar path, though more rugged now—his step burdened by the added weight of an extra grave. The cemetery was quiet—hundreds of souls, not one in sight. But as he reached a paved walk, he heard something. Despite the trees and monuments that rose out of the undulating lawns, he had a clear sight line to the back of Grange House. His glance was reflexive—he expected to see one of the Janssens. Absently, he registered that it was Mrs. Janssen coming out of the house, but then there was an odd, disjointed moment where he was certain his eyes were deceiving him. Because behind her emerged two figures that didn’t fit the picture. In dreamlike disorientation, he looked on as the three women stopped not far from the door. And then the stillness was pierced by an agonized, gut-wrenching wail. It was the cry of an animal caught in the razor prongs of a trap; it was the cry of a prisoner on the rack; it was the cry of a mother who has lost her child.

  And he watched as Susannah crumpled.

  How long he stood there, he couldn’t have said. He was frozen in place long after the truck pulled away, and Helen moved toward the Church Street gate, and Doe went back into the house. His mind was numb to any processing, to any explanation. Instinctively, he pushed all speculation away. He wanted to refuse it outright. He needed to refuse it. Because there wasn’t really any question, and he knew it in his heart. It wasn’t just that something was wrong. Everything was wrong.

  Finally, slowly, his feet took him to the spot where the women had stood. And there he saw the headstone, and he knew. He knew it as though he had written the story himself—assured and fully fledged. A handful of small, fragmented slips fell together to form a whole—slivers of torn pages that had been scattered here and there, bits of stray inklings that drifted against the edges of perception, intently ignored, steadfastly denied. As he stood looking down at the grave, he knew exactly who lay there. BABY HAYES.

  “One, two, three, lift!”

  The voices were growing ever dimmer—it was all becoming a soft white hum. He thought he heard Frank again, shouting “Someone call my mother!” but he wasn’t sure if it was happening now or if it was something from before. Everything was oddly simultaneous. Anything that had ever happened was happening now, but it was all draining away … all but the image of sapphire eyes, dancing across the ripple of the river as he struggled in his fool’s mission to save her. My Susannah.

  Should I have risked it all and told you that I knew? I didn’t have the guts. I was afraid to let it out of its cage. I was afraid of its size. I was afraid it would eat us alive.

  There was silence now—peaceful, enveloping. No, I couldn’t take that chance. Oh, Sass, how I have loved you. I never had a choice, any more than he did. I hope you can forgive me.

  The last image he had was of the first time he’d seen her, eight years old and sitting at the table in the unfamiliar splendor of the dining room at Brynmor. She’d looked across at him and smiled that smile. “Welcome to Bethlehem,” she had said.

  It was all she had to say. He was home.

  About the Author

  Karen Kelly has a BA in English from Vanderbilt University and lives in Edina, Minnesota. She is also the author of Prospice. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Family Tree

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  BETHLEHEM. Copyright © 2019 by Karen Kelly. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 120 Broadway, 25th floor, New York, N.Y. 10271.

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Michael Storrings

  Cover photograph of woman © Mandy Erskine/ Arcangel Images

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-20149-2 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1-250-20150-8 (ebook)

  eISBN 9781250201508

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at MacmillanSpecialMarkets@macmillan.com.

  First Edition: July 2019