by Grace Greene
I braced myself for criticism. Barbs, maybe. Disappointment, certainly. I had hoped she would understand.
She knelt for a closer look. “Kara, this is good. It’s the wrong kind of paper. You can do much better with a good grade of paper, and white, not this brown stuff. I didn’t know you could draw. Your dad never mentioned you were artistic.”
I had to replay her words in my head before I understood they were positive. Encouraging. Something reached into my chest. It felt like a fist, and it squeezed so hard that it stole my breath and forced moisture up into my eyes, onto my lashes. I reached up to brush it away before it could roll down my cheeks, dabbing at my eyes with the back of my hand to hastily hide the evidence.
I said, “An artist? I’m not. The map helped me think more clearly.”
Nicole watched my face closely. Her expression had gone blank as she stared at me. She rose to her feet and walked over to where I stood. She put her hands on my arms. I was startled. Nicole wasn’t generally a toucher or a hugger.
“That’s artistic expression, Kara. I’m not an artist myself, but I understand that people speak in more than words. Art. Music.”
“Nicole, I . . .”
“Don’t examine it, Kara. Don’t judge it. Let it marinate. Keep working on this project, both the documents and the map. Don’t second-guess it. Promise?”
“Okay.” I was stunned by the energy in her body and in her voice. It felt electric, and I felt it in her touch as she continued holding my arms. “Sure, okay.”
“I’m sincere, Kara. Don’t make your choices now based on what your life used to be.”
I nodded, and she released me.
“Nicole?”
“What?”
“Thank you.”
Nicole paused in the doorway. “For what, specifically?”
“For being a friend. My friend.”
She smiled. “My pleasure, Kara.”
Nicole drove away. I congratulated myself, if only for having the guts to expose my work to someone, especially her. I’d trusted my gut. My instinct. I poured a tall glass of strawberry water and drank it down, amazed that I still felt a little shaky, but in a good way now.
She’d never said it, not outright, but I knew Nicole had doubted whether I’d ever find my way forward with this project. Not whether I could . . . but whether I would. And frankly, she’d had reason to doubt me.
Now she knew better, and so did I.
How silly to be called an artist. I was working on a retreat. A creative retreat. This was a business.
I stood at the foyer table and opened the top drawer. There they were. The women. The girls. As if patiently waiting. Waiting.
I’d felt that myself, especially at night—alone and waiting.
For what? For life? For more?
For my mom to come back to me? I shivered. Why? I wasn’t still caught in that fourteen-year-old’s brain, was I? When Mom had died two years after she’d left, I’d cried. It had been hard. But it had also been almost anticlimactic. I had already mourned her. Only the sadness had remained, and there had really been nothing I could do but accept it.
So what was I waiting for? Self-expression? Growing my life? In more ways than via spreadsheets and needlework?
Seth called that evening. I hadn’t heard from him in several days.
“I miss you,” I said, “but I’m making progress, and it feels good.”
“On the house?”
“Yes. Well, technically, the professionals are doing that work. I’ve been creating the business plan and such.”
“And it’s getting easier each time you work on it, right?”
I laughed. “It is. Is that how your job is?”
“My job seems to be more of a client-pleaser gig, and then I have to come up with campaigns that live up to the brilliant work I’ve promised.”
“You are definitely a pleasing person. Handsome and charming too. But ugh, that job wouldn’t work for me. I’d rather be doing this.”
This time he laughed. “Exactly.”
“Exactly what?”
“I have a theory, Kara. When a person gets out of their own way, they will naturally gravitate to where they belong.”
We said goodbye soon after. But I was uneasy. There was subtext in his words that troubled me.
I sent him a silent wish: Come home soon, Seth.
I went shopping. I’d shaken off the unease from the night before after my phone call with Seth. Everything always looked better in the morning light. Today was no different.
Per Nicole’s advice, I purchased a better grade of paper. I also bought a second table, a file cabinet, and a small lightweight bookcase to hold my supplies. The store loaded the file cabinet and other items into the back seat of my car. Hopefully Will or one of his workers would be willing to help me get the furniture into the house.
I was a businessperson. I was a project manager. Was I an artist? How would I know? I’d never tried. Weren’t artists compelled to create? Could it come later in life? Maybe when the environment was more conducive?
After the new items were home and set up in the middle room, I removed the framed photo of the young women from the foyer table drawer and set it atop the bookcase across from my table and computer. I leaned the picture against the wall for support. It was fairly weighty. When it seemed steady, I released it and gave the ladies a thumbs-up.
Will grew plants using soil, water, and fertilizer. His tools. Perhaps this room and these items were my tools. I wasn’t growing plants . . . not even wildflowers. I was growing me.
That afternoon I looked out the kitchen window and caught a glint of light—a quick spark that caused me to pause and take a second look—and saw Maddie Lyn climbing onto the bench down beside the creek. The top of her head was barely visible above the back of the bench. I looked a moment longer, expecting to see someone else following close behind. My heart gave a short leap: perhaps Seth on a surprise visit? But no one else arrived. No adult. Not even another child. Just Maddie. A barely five-year-old girl out on her own?
I stepped out to the back porch and looked again, thinking that surely Mel or Nicole would emerge from the woods, having allowed Maddie to run ahead. By now, I was already descending the steps and crossing the terrace.
Was Mel okay? I walked quickly down the grass toward the creek, picking up my pace, thinking only of reaching Maddie Lyn before she ran back into the woods and I lost track of her. How on earth would I explain to Mel that I’d found and then lost her granddaughter?
I hurried, and my thigh tightened. I was afraid I’d fall. If she dashed off, I’d never catch her, not with this thigh acting up. I slowed down and pressed my hand to the cramping muscles. I kept moving, limping, and called out, “Maddie? Maddie, honey?”
Her fingers gripped the top of the bench as she came to her knees. She saw me heading her way and lifted one hand in a hesitant half wave. I forced a smile and dropped my hand from my thigh. I was close enough now. I’d make it in time.
I crossed the last few feet to the bench, and with a welcoming smile on my face, I asked gently, “What’s up, Maddie? Did you come to visit me?” Her hair was in pigtails, and she was wearing pink leggings and a flowery top. She looked fine.
She didn’t nod but looked past me up the slope toward Wildflower House. I followed her gaze, then turned back and saw disappointment on her face.
I eased onto the bench beside her. I placed one hand on hers. “What’s going on, sweetie?”
She fisted her other hand and rubbed at her eye. I heard one telltale sniffle, and then she seemed to recover herself. Her hand dropped from her face, and she smiled—a bare smile, hardly a smile, and a tiny one—at me.
“Are you thirsty, Maddie? Would you like to come up to the house for a drink and a snack?”
She shook her head no, but it was so slight I would’ve missed it if I hadn’t been watching for a response.
“Would you like me to walk you back home? To your grandmother’s hou
se?”
Maddie looked down at her entwined fingers and nodded.
I’d heard this child chatter on and on when Seth had been here with her, so I wasn’t concerned about the present lack of words. She’d speak when she felt like it. Meanwhile, the question was, Should I go back to the house for my phone? I’d been so focused on reaching Maddie . . .
No. While I had Maddie, silent or not, I wouldn’t leave her to fetch my phone and risk her disappearing.
Taking her hand in mine, I stood. Maddie left the bench, and we walked together back toward the woods and followed the path to the bridge. She was quiet until we reached it. There she stopped, and I stopped beside her. I looked down at the top of her fair head, still feeling the small hand in mine, and wondered if I should ask what had prompted her trip over to my house.
I opened my mouth and breathed in, forming a question, but before I could ask it, Maddie raised her hand and put a finger to her lips. I closed my mouth and listened.
Then I heard them—animal noises that had formed part of the background. I heard the birdsong first but then a deeper, rumbly grunt-grunt sound. Animals did thrive along Cub Creek, especially deer. But these sounds weren’t from deer.
I put my face close to Maddie’s.
“Turkey,” she whispered.
That grunt-grunt changed to gobble-gobble in my head now that I knew its source. Gradually their voices diminished.
“They’re gone now,” I said.
“Yup.” Maddie nodded and tightened her grip on my hand, and together we crossed the bridge.
I was thinking of Seth—the bridge reminded me of holding his hand and of our kiss before he’d left for LA that first time—and I stumbled. Maddie tried to catch me. I appreciated her gesture but was glad I hadn’t taken us both for a tumble.
“I’m fine. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Finking about turkeys?”
I laughed. “How did you know those were turkeys?”
“Daddy tole me.”
She said it so easily. So casually.
“Daddy?”
“Daddy Seth.” Except the th came out with a slight f sound. Like Daddy Seff. I’d never heard her call him that before.
I asked, “Your uncle?”
“Yup.” Midstride, she gave a little hop. “Uncle Daddy Seth.”
I was curious, but I let it go for now. “You miss him, I know.”
She nodded and swiped at her nose with a small fist.
“I do too,” I said. “And Grammy and Nicole.”
“Uh-huh.” She sniffled.
“It’s okay to miss the people we love,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” She stopped. “Here.”
“What?”
We were standing beside a tree trunk. Not freshly cut, so this tree had been downed many years ago. The trunk stood about waist high for me. Maddie raised her arms.
My brain tried to catch up. She wanted me to lift her onto the tree trunk? Could I? She was petite, but my old injuries . . . suppose my arm cramped? I could drop her. But Maddie believed I could. So I put one arm around her back and the other under her legs and scooped her up and lifted her to stand on that trunk. Maddie Lyn weighed about as much as a sack of feathers. Her height was more of a problem than her weight.
She patted the tree nearest the trunk. “See?” She pointed up and could just barely touch the figures carved in the bark.
Keeping my hands on her legs, afraid she’d fall since she wasn’t paying any attention to how small that space was under her feet, I leaned forward. There were letters carved. Not recent, and hard for me to read, but once I got a good look, it became apparent. Someone had carved these letters—someone taller than Maddie Lyn, and the carver must’ve stood on this same trunk, because they were above my head too.
I read the letters aloud. “PA & MM.”
“That’s my mommy.”
“Mommy,” I repeated. Patricia. Mel’s middle child. The daughter who’d died. “Your mommy.”
“Yup.”
I turned her to face me. “You miss her.”
She nodded fiercely. “I was a baby. But I remember.”
She’d probably overheard adults talking about her being too young when her mother had died to remember her.
“Of course you do.” I kept my voice even. “I lost my mom when I was young, too, so I understand.”
Maddie nodded again.
“And you miss your Uncle Seth.”
“Yup.”
I asked, “Did you think he might be at my house?”
After a long pause, she moved her thin shoulders in a mighty shrug.
“He isn’t, you know. Seth is away now. He’s learning a new job. He’ll be back, but we don’t know exactly when. I know it’s hard to understand why he’d leave, but it doesn’t change how much he loves you.”
“I could go with him.”
Her voice was so soft I could hardly hear her.
Shades of the past, of memories I’d put behind me of my mom leaving, of Dad saying it was good she hadn’t taken me with her, flooded me. But I hadn’t really put the memories behind me. I’d only locked the emotional damage away as if that would be good enough. I shuddered, then put my arms around Maddie.
“Try not to worry too much. Do you talk to Uncle Seth on the telephone?”
“Yup. On the computer. I see him. He can see me.”
“That’s good. Meanwhile, we’ll have to tend to our business just like Uncle Seth is tending to his, until everyone can be together again.”
“’Kay.” The syllable was accompanied by a huge sigh.
I lifted Maddie down. She didn’t resist.
“Your grandmother must be worried about you.” I guesstimated Maddie must’ve been gone at least twenty or thirty minutes, assuming she’d come directly to my house. Hard to know for sure. But thirty minutes would be an eternity for Mel if she’d realized Maddie was off on her own. “We’d better hurry along.”
She gave me another of those inscrutable looks, then said, “’Kay.”
Something nibbled at the back of my mind. “Did your Grammy know you left the house?”
She shook her head no.
“Is Grammy there? Was she there when you left?”
“No.”
“Well, Miss Maddie Lyn, I’m pretty sure she didn’t leave you home by yourself.”
“Annie came over.”
“Who’s Annie?”
“She lives on my street. Babysitter, but I’m not a baby, and she was on the phone, and I went for a walk.”
“Without telling her.”
Maddie squeezed her lips together.
“Then we’d better get you back quickly. I imagine right about now Annie is frantic. Maybe calling Grammy to tell her you’re gone. Lost.”
“Not lost.”
“Lost to her.”
She gave me an extra look at that, as if thinking it through.
“’Kay.”
We picked up our pace. The trees thinned as we neared the end of the path, and the house and backyard came into view.
We walked through the side yard, and I began to hear voices. Sure enough, Mel and a teenage girl were standing in front. Mel had a phone pressed to her ear and was talking, her manner agitated. Her other hand was in her short hair, a gesture of anguish. The teenager had a finger stuck in her mouth and appeared to be chewing her fingernail as she shifted from foot to foot.
Mel saw us. Maddie Lyn cast away my hand and ran to her grandmother. Mel leaned over to hug her, and Maddie wrapped her arms around Mel’s legs. I stood there and tried to smile courteously, wanting to ask how this child had been allowed to go traipsing through the forest on her own but refraining because this was Mel’s business and her place to ask.
“Hi, Mel.”
“What happened? Annie says she blinked her eyes and Maddie was gone.”
Annie didn’t seem inclined to add additional commentary to Mel’s account.
I kept my voice even. There was no value
in fueling the upset. “Maddie Lyn came to visit, so we walked back.”
Annie’s phone was half-in, half-out of her back pocket.
“If I’d called, I could’ve saved you some worry, Mel, but I didn’t have my phone with me.” Defuse Mel, I thought. Help her bring it down a notch. I put that message in my voice and in the gaze I fixed on her. The important thing was that this shouldn’t happen again. “Glad it all worked out okay.”
Mel drew in a deep breath. She stood taller but kept her hand firmly on Maddie’s shoulder. She looked at Annie.
“You can go home now, Annie. We’ll settle the bill later.”
Annie pulled the finger from her mouth and wiped it on her T-shirt. “Yes, ma’am, Ms. Albers.” She cast a quick glance at Maddie Lyn. “I’m glad she’s okay. Sorry I lost her.” She took off with long strides, as if something might be chasing after her, pausing only when she reached the asphalt road, where she retrieved her phone from her backside.
Mel knelt and spoke gently directly to Maddie. “What happened? Please tell me. You won’t get into trouble. No one will.”
Maddie said, “I went for a walk.”
Mel smoothed stray white-gold hairs away from Maddie’s face. “You didn’t like me leaving you with Annie. Was Annie mean to you?”
“No. She’s okay.”
“Okay,” Mel echoed. “Go on inside and get a snack. I’ll be right along in. I want to speak with Miss Kara.”
Maddie spared me a quick smile and then dashed up the concrete steps, and the storm door slammed behind her.
Mel said, “She likes her snacks.”
“She’s a growing child.”
“With a serious sweet tooth.”
I replied, “And a serious case of missing her uncle. She mentioned missing her mom too.”
Mel shook her head. “I don’t let much get me down. I learned a long time ago that wishing and regret were a big waste of time. But wanting to be enough . . . that’s even harder. I’m Grammy. Not Mommy. Not Daddy.”
“I know. I understand.” I moved close to her and touched her arm. “I saw Maddie down by the creek and went straight out after her. I wish I’d thought to grab my phone, but I was afraid she’d move on and I’d lose her. I guess Annie called you?”