Tomorrow River

by Lesley Kagen

  Mama hugs me and so does Woody and that’s all it takes. I feel like a lily blooming in our field after a long winter.

  As we’re leaving the room, Alice returns red-eyed and pulls me aside. She tells me, “Your mother is going to need some time. We gave her some powerful medications. We . . . we didn’t know. When Doctor Keller admitted her, he told the staff that her name was Laurie Smith and that she was suffering from schizophrenia. She told us over and over again who she was, but . . . a lot of the patients in here . . . there’s a woman who thinks she’s Marie Antoinette.”

  I’m not sure that I have ever witnessed a living Act of Contrition, but that’s exactly what Alice looks like when she goes to my mother’s side and says, “I don’t know what else to say, but I’m so very sorry, we all are. Good-bye and God bless.”

  Mama, being so forgiving like she is, takes Alice’s hand in hers and says, “You were always sweet to me. Take care of yourself.”

  And then I tell the bony nurse, “‘To err is human.’” It’s all I can think of to say that would make my mother feel proud of me, but my heart? It feels like a cannonball dropping to the bottom of the ocean. It has sunk in. All this time spent searching for Mama, thinking she’d been nabbed or had amnesia or ran off with the carnival, but then coming to grips with her death. I don’t feel so forgiving. I don’t care how repentant she looks. I want to throw Alice out of the window.

  My sister and I are taking turns pushing Mama’s wheelchair down the sidewalk in front of the hospital. Sam thought it might be a good idea to have her stay one more night and leave bright and early the next morning, but Mama told him, “No,” and like he always has, he respected her wishes.

  At the curb, the sheriff is leaning on the fender of his car. Doc Keller is in the backseat now. He’s handcuffed. I am practically knocked to my knees when it comes to me that Sheriff Andy Nash is not at all what I thought he was. He has not been bought and sold by the Carmody men. I don’t understand his part in all this yet, but if he was on my father’s payroll, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be pushing Mama towards the car. I’d be up in that hospital room taking my medicine.

  Sheriff Nash takes off his police cap and says to Mama, “How do, ma’am.”

  She tilts her chin up at him. “Thanks to you, Andy, I’m doing a lot better than I have in quite some time. Without your help, your integrity . . .”

  The sheriff says bashfully, “Good to have you back, Evelyn.” And then, like it’s all in a day’s work, he sets his hat back atop his head and gets in his car.

  I lean into his window and whisper to him, so my mother can’t hear me, “Ya might wanna go to Lilyfield and pick up Gramma Ruth Love. She confessed to me that she murdered Clive Minnow with one of her pies. And you already know she tried to do away with Mama, right?”

  The sheriff doesn’t seem real surprised when he says, “Sounds like you got out of there in the nick of time, Shenny,” and then drives off. Like the Lone Ranger, I think. Only Doc Keller isn’t his faithful companion, Tonto. He’s a bad man who I’m certain will get exactly what he has coming to him, if Andy Nash has any say in the matter.

  Sam picks Mama up in his arms and carries her to Beezy’s beat-up brown Pontiac that’s parked nearby. He says, “Evie, this is the man I’ve been telling you about.”

  Curry, who I have completely forgotten about, scrambles out to open the back door. My mother says, “I . . . thank you.”

  I don’t know what part he played in Mama’s rescue either, but he must’ve been heaven-sent because Sam is looking at Curry like he’s an angel. I glance back up at the redbrick hospital one more time. Thinking what could’ve been, I throw my arms around Curry’s Italian waist and say grazie over and over again until he pulls me off him. “You’re welcome, Shenny,” he says. “What say we blow this pop stand?”

  I stare into his mysterious eyes. “Ya know, I have absolutely no idea what that means, but if it’s something like let’s hightail it out of here . . . I got your backside.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  We’re on our way home the same way we came.

  Through our beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains. Well, not exactly the same way. Sam is sitting beside Curry in the front seat, Ivory between them. Mama is wedged between Woody and me in the back. We each have one of her hands and I think that I will never let go of her again. I understand now how Papa couldn’t bear letting her out of his sight.

  The mood in the car is being set by the sultry night and the song that Sam found on the radio. It’s not a show tune. It’s something sad, but sweet. Hoagy Carmichael? Yes, it’s “Stardust.” That makes me think of my father again.

  I have no idea how long Mama’s been up at the Colony and why she never wrote or called to say, “Come get me,” and how . . . well, just everything. I big-wink at my sister. “You ready to explain now, Uncle Sam?”

  Woody’s laugh reminds me of our barn door during a storm. It really does sound rusty.

  Sam turns and grins at the Carmody girls with those beautiful headstone teeth that he inherited from my grandfather. He must be almost as happy as me and Woody to get Mama back. “If that’s all right with your mother.”

  “Mama?” I ask. I am still having a very hard time believing she is here by my side and not in the ground buried six feet deep.

  “Maybe just a few questions. It’s so late.” She puts an arm around each of her girls. “It’s past your bedtime.”

  I never thought I would welcome those words. She’ll probably make us take a bath when we get home, too. And say our prayers and brush our teeth and gargle.

  I ask, “Who . . . what . . . ?” Starting down this road . . . it’s like picking the right trail home when you’re in unfamiliar territory. I’m completely lost.

  Lieutenant Sardino shows me the way. He asked us to call him Tony, but I just can’t. He’ll always be Curry Weaver to me. “I guess the best place to start the story is when Sam called me a year ago and told me about your mother’s disappearance.”

  “Tony and I go way back. He’s the best investigator I know,” Sam says. “He introduced me to Johnny.” As always, his Adam’s apple goes wobbly at the mention of his dead partner’s name.

  I ask Curry, real put out, “Why didn’t you just tell me that Mama was alive at Miss Artesia’s shop tonight? Why’d you lead me on like that? And you, Sam . . . you could’ve said something when E. J. and I saw you in the back of the sheriff’s car in front of Slidell’s. Told us you weren’t really arrested.”

  “I’m sorry,” Curry says, and really sounds so. “We wanted to tell you sooner, but Sam, the sheriff, and I decided that we had to let this all play out.”

  Sam pipes in with, “We couldn’t take the chance that you might let something slip to your father, grandfather, or uncle. If they found out before we had the chance to . . . we couldn’t risk something happening to your mother before we were able to free her.”

  “Besides,” Curry says, looking at me in the rearview mirror, “if I had told you in the secondhand shop that your mother was alive and up at the Colony, would you have believed me?”

  I don’t admit it, but he and I both know that I wouldn’t have. I barely believed that he was an undercover cop and not a hobo. That’s also probably why the sheriff didn’t tell me on the ride to the hospital that he wasn’t taking me to be committed, but to see Mama. I wouldn’t have bought that neither.

  Somewhat mollified, I say to him, “Let’s start over, all right? When Sam first called and told you that Mama had vanished, did you think she’d been kidnapped or fell down and hit her head or . . . ?” I don’t say, “Or ran off to join the carnival,” because that seems really imbecilic now.

  “When Sam filled me in about your mother’s plan to leave your father and hide nearby until he could bring you girls to her, I didn’t take much of what he said seriously,” Curry says. “I thought your mother had not followed through because . . . well, people change their minds. Especially scared ones. Not knowing her, I thought t
hat once she was safe from your father, Evie had just kept running.”

  He really doesn’t know her.

  “What changed your mind?” I ask Curry, thinking how hard I tried and how bad I failed at finding her. It must’ve been triple difficult for this stranger to piece together her vanishment. Like one of those cruel one-color jigsaw puzzles they sell down at the drugstore.

  “Many phone calls later, the more Sam talked about her, the more your mother didn’t seem like the type of woman who would escape a bad situation with the intent of reuniting with her children and not stick to the plan. Her body never turned up either. That left me with a couple of other options, none that I could act on long distance. So I decided to take advantage of the two weeks’ vacation I had coming.”

  I say to Sam, “You acted like you hadn’t done one thing to find Mama, you faker.” All those visits to the Triple S asking for his help and him deflecting me. My nose is pushed out of joint.

  “I did what I could,” Sam says. “I checked in at local hospitals where I knew folks and spent time driving the backroads. I also spent quite a bit of time trying to sort things out with Sheriff Nash. If you take some time to think about it, Shen . . . I couldn’t tell you what I was up to. I didn’t want to let you and Woody down if the news wasn’t good. The sheriff agreed with me.”

  Like I normally do upon hearing Andy Nash’s name, I say, irritable, “That man can’t add one plus one and come up with . . .” But then I remember how he helped save Mama. And me. It’s going to take some time to start thinking of the sheriff not as a dunce, but more like Albert Einstein. I’ve been so overwhelmed with finding Mama alive, I forgot all about what I leaned in the window and told the sheriff before we left the hospital. I don’t know if the timing is right, but I can’t keep it inside me anymore and Mama deserves to know and not have it sprung on her by somebody else who does not love her. “Gramma killed Clive Minnow!”

  My mother gasps and says, “No.”

  “Yes, she did, Mama. She got me up in our bedroom and she had one of her fits and told me she did in Clive with one of her pies.”

  Curry says, real coplike, “The sheriff knew Clive had been murdered, but not by who. The medical examiner found—”

  “Rat poison,” I say. Remembering how proud she was when she told me she kneaded it to the crust on the advice of the Lord makes me shiver.

  “That’s right,” Curry says.

  Sam asks, “Did your grandmother tell you why she murdered Clive?”

  “He was blackmailing Grampa for a lot of money. Clive must’ve been looking for UFOs the night of the carnival but heard Mama and Gramma arguing out in the clearing. He took pictures of them with a fancy new camera he got that can see in the dark.”

  Mama stifles a cry when she wraps her arms around me and gives me the most breathtaking hug. She knows the same way I do what it feels like to be at the mercy of my grandmother. Once she relaxes her grip, I say, “Something’s been botherin’ me.”

  “What’s that?” Sam asks.

  “How did the sheriff know to come lookin’ for me under my bedroom window after I got away from Gramma?”

  My sister tries to speak. It comes out as gobbledygook, so Sam says, “I think Woody’s trying to tell you that Louise Jackson told the sheriff and me that you were in trouble.”

  “Lou?” I ask my twin.

  She nods.

  “Really?” I think of the last time I saw our housekeeper. In the kitchen. Drunk Grampa and Uncle Blackie salivating over her.

  Sam says, “Lou came running to the sheriff’s office crying about how your father, grandfather, and uncle were being, and I quote, “ ‘Wicked. Something real dangerous is happenin’ up at that house. I throwed the bones. Sprinkled red pepper powder. Now y’all better go get that girl outta there or I’ll find me a gun and do it myself. Woody’s over at the Tittle place, you get her, too. Those peas need to be in the same pod.’ ”

  So Lou did get the hoodoo mind message I was sending her! Once again, I am astounded by how much smarter some folks are than they appear.

  “Obviously, rescuing your mother in the middle of the night was not part of our plan,” Curry says. “We’d intended to take you and Woody up to the hospital to reunite with her a few hours from now, but after Lou showed up frightened for your safety, we had no other choice but to act. So Sam and I left to get Woody from the Tittle place and the sheriff hurried over to Lilyfield. Lou Jackson told us that you were in the kitchen with your father and grandfather, so Andy went around to the back of the house. He found you lying unconscious.”

  “Why’d he have Doc Keller with him?” I ask.

  “We needed Keller to check Evie out of the hospital,” Curry says. “I have no jurisdiction there and the sheriff doesn’t either.”

  Mama is biting her fingernails. “I think that’s enough questions for tonight.”

  I want to ask how she got from the clearing after Gramma tried to murder her all the way up to the Colony. “But what about . . .”

  “Shenny, hush.” She nods towards Woody. My twin is doing her SOS eye blinking and twitching like crazy. Finding our lost-then-dead-and-then-found mother . . . almost losing me . . . my grandmother murdering Clive Minnow . . . it’s all too much for her. I reach across Mama’s lap and take Woody’s other hand into mine and shut my mouth.

  We listen to the hum of the car engine and the tires gripping the road. The radio has changed to something that sounds like a love song. My mother is staring straight ahead. Every once in a while, a car comes from the other direction and lights up her face in its headlights. Her cheekbones look like diving boards jutting over two empty pools. They must not have given her much to drink up in the hospital. I didn’t notice earlier how her once-lush lips are chapped and split.

  We have come to the crest of the mountain where we can see down into The Big Valley.

  “I haven’t been off the hospital grounds in such a long time,” Mama says. “Everything seems bigger and smells so much better than I remember.” She breathes in the fresh pine air, lets out a sigh. “I missed Christmas with you.”

  Thinking back on how Woody and I trimmed the tree and I sang, “Oh, Come All Ye Faithful,” makes my temper flair and I cannot hold back from saying, “I wish Gramma was as dead as she tried to make you. That’s the birthday wish I’m making this year.” I will never tell my mother that I almost made that come true. She wouldn’t like that. She is the biggest turn-your-cheek-the-other-way person I have ever met.

  Mama looks down at now sleeping Woody and whispers, “Your grandmother doesn’t understand the wrongness of what she did. In her mind, she was doing what was right. Defending her way of life . . . her family. She’s sick. Your heart has to go out to her, Shen.”

  No, it does not. My heart is not going anywhere near her. Ever. I will never forgive that old woman.

  When we come to the part in the road where I can see Lexington spread out beneath us, I think of Papa and Grampa and Uncle Blackie at the house. I worriedly ask, “Are we going back to Lilyfield?”

  Mama says, “No, baby. Sam has made other arrangements for us. We’ll be staying with Beezy for . . . I’m not sure how long.”

  That would probably be for the best. For a little while anyway. But in the long run, Lilyfield is our home. It’s all we got. I don’t tell her that. Mama looks completely drained and I’m feeling the same way, so just like my twin, I lay my head on her shoulder. She kisses me on the forehead and whispers, “Tomorrow is a river,” like I knew she would. I honestly cannot imagine how all my dreams can come true, but just for the littlest bit of time, I so desperately need to.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  The sound of sirens blaring through my dreams wakes me. And the smell of smoke.

  A fire is raging, flames licking out of the roof and windows of the second most magnificent house in all of Rockbridge County.

  Lilyfield is burning.

  “Papa,” I scream out the car window. The heat from the blaze is toas
ting my cheeks when Curry pulls to a stop alongside Lee Road. He must’ve seen the billowing clouds of smoke from the foothills and headed right over here.

  Mama yells, “Shenny, wait!” but I jump out of the car. Shout into the stunned crowd that’s standing helplessly by, some in their pajamas, “Did . . . did His Honor get out all right?”

  “Yeah. I saw him talking to the sheriff,” someone in the crowd calls back.

  Once I know that Papa is alive and well, I turn back to watch the worst blaze I have ever seen. I love Lilyfield, so I’m surprised to feel only a little distraught seeing it go up, the same way you would watching somebody else’s home. I know a lot of good things happened in this house, but I can’t hardly remember back that far.

  When Woody, Mama, Sam, and Curry come to my side, we try to find a place amongst the other folks who’ve arrived to watch the firemen fighting the conflagration. The trees in the front woods have already burned so there is a clear view of the house. A couple of people say when they spot her, “Is that Evelyn Carmody?” and there is also worried speculation. “How could such an awful fire get started?” Someone else in the back of the throng—Mr. Slidell from the drugstore, I recognize his high-pitched voice—says, “Has anybody seen the twins?”

  I call back to him, “We’re fine, Mr. Slidell,” because even though he’s such a crabby man, I am touched by his concern.

  When E. J. hears my voice, like a homing pigeon, he flies to our sides. Following close behind him are Louise, Beezy, and a sooty-looking Mr. Cole Jackson. All three of them just about collapse when they see Woody and me and Mama. I think Mr. Cole might be in shock, the way he is shaking. “Evelyn . . . I prayed every single night for your return.”

  Mama says, “Oh, Cole. It’s so good to see you,” and gives him a hug.