His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia

by Theodora Taylor

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Marian, you must be confused. I’ve never had any dealings with your son, Trevor.”

  Ms. Marian jerked her head back as if he’d confused her but good with that statement.

  “Of course not, my son died ten years ago. Luckily, he didn’t linger like Daddy. Poor Thel was traumatized and poor Dylan never forgave himself—he’s still wandering out there on that road behind him. You probably drove right through him when you rode here. But Trevor’s spirit went right on its way, and now he’s living with lesbians in California.”

  Ms. Marian let out a sad sigh. “I still miss him mightily though, let me tell you. Sometimes I think about putting myself on a plane and going out there to visit him. But you know he’s an oriental now, and not the Buddhist kind either. I don’t think his family would understand if I came round...”

  Okay, thought Sawyer, so much crazy. He felt like an idiot as he backed away.

  “I shouldn’t have stopped by unannounced. I’ll just be going now. Um, thanks for the book, I guess.”

  “No, you can’t leave yet,” said Ms. Marian, flapping one thin hand at him in a motion to stay. “I never get lines in my daughters’ stories. Never. Let me do it just this once.”

  Then before he could answer, she yelled over her shoulder, “Trevor put down that book and get out here! The man you’ve been waiting to meet all your life is at the door!”

  Sawyer shook his head, stunned by the direction this conversation had just taken. “Seriously, ma’am, I don’t know him. And I don’t want to upset him—”

  He stopped short, however, when Trevor appeared in the doorway, slipping in beside her. Because instead of the overlarge teenager he’d remember seeing following his sisters around town on the weekends, the boy he was looking at now really couldn’t have been much older than seven

  Maybe even five or six. He was tall, but had the big cheeks and wide eyes of someone who was only now beginning to develop real features.

  But his age wasn’t what disturbed Sawyer the most. What disturbed him the most was he’d seen this boy before. In a picture taken beside the lake at his grandfather’s vacation home in Connecticut. Where Sawyer had once spent an entire summer almost exclusively outdoors, getting so brown and baked, he’d been nearly the same color as this little boy. They even had the same color hair—except this boy’s sandy brown hair was cut short with a bed of small coils on top of his head. Whereas younger Sawyer’s had grown long and shaggy that summer.

  But other than that, the boy standing at the door was a mirror image of the Sawyer from that picture taken when he was six. Down to the brownish-green eyes.

  And he stared back at Sawyer with the exact same look of fascinated wonder.

  “No,” a voice yelled out behind them. “No!”

  Sawyer looked over his shoulder, still in a daze, as if he’d just been hit by a flash grenade. Willa was running toward them now.

  “Trevor get back in the house!” she yelled. “Mama, take him in the house!”

  Neither did as she asked. They all just stood there, watching her running toward them.

  And when she finally reached them, Sawyer was the first to speak.

  “How did this happen?” he demanded, pointing at the mirror image boy. “What did you do?”

  15

  What did you do?

  The question reverberated through the air as three set of eyes stared at Willa: One set confused, one set all-knowing, and one furious as hell. All of them waiting for her answer.

  For a moment, Willa could only stand there. What had she done? It wasn’t like there was any easy way to answer that question.

  Luckily, Thel chose just that moment to come running up. She paused, breathing hard beside Willa, and quickly assessed the situation.

  “C’mon,” she told her nephew, heading toward the door. “Let’s go inside.”

  “But—” Trevor said.

  At the same time Marian whined, “I want to see how this story unfolds. I’ve been waiting so long for the next chapter! And I want more lines.”

  “No buts—except for both of yours gittin on into that house. C’mon now…” Thel said, hustling Trevor and Marian, who might as well be another child, back into the house.

  “That’s okay, Dylan will tell us what all took place after they’re through,” Willa heard her mother tell Trevor as they went back inside. “But it’s quite a cliffhanger, isn’t it?”

  Then the door closed, and there was nothing left outside the house, except for her and Sawyer, and of course, Dylan, the drunk driver who’d killed her brother, openly staring at them from the road. More than ready to get all the tea for Marian.

  Willa made herself look away from the ghost and up into Sawyer’s angry stare.

  “What the hell?” he asked, his eyes glittering with anger. “What the hell is this, Willa?”

  She supposed she should start from the beginning. “I was at the same medical center as you for the summer you were in Germany. On a fellowship.”

  “Yeah, so I heard. But I was only awake for a few of those days, before they flew me back to Walter Reed. And I know for damn sure you weren’t there for any one of them.”

  “That’s because they wouldn’t let me see you. I tried to be there for you when you woke up, but they wouldn’t let me. So no, I wasn’t there after you woke up, but I was there before you woke up. Just not in a way you could see. Or could believe.”

  Sawyer shook his head slowly, “You’re not making any sense. All I know is you and me were in the same hospital while I was in a coma. Then I woke up with a shitload of muscle atrophy and half my leg gone—”

  He broke off and looked at Willa like she was horror incarnate. “Wait a minute. They said they had somebody coming around everyday to do a little PT. Was that you? Did you come into my room and—”

  “No, that’s absolutely not what happened,” she said, raising her hands against even the thought of her doing something so disgusting as that to a patient in his condition. “See, I knew you would go there, which is why I didn’t tell you about Trevor. Why I couldn’t tell you. Because I knew you wouldn’t believe me.”

  “What the hell am I supposed to believe here?” Sawyer demanded. “Because right now, the only thing I can see for sure is I somehow have a son. And you’re the mother.”

  Feeling like she was losing everything, including her mind, Willa reset. Then more words than she ever said in one breath came spilling out: “Okay, I guess the real beginning of the story is I have this strange thing I can do. If somebody’s in spirit form, I can see them. And while you were in spirit form, I could see you. I was the only one at the hospital who could.”

  She bit her lip and forged on despite the skeptical look on his face. “So during the three months you spent in a coma, we became friends. And then more than that. But you woke up, and the deal with spirit form is you forget everything that happened while you were in it.”

  She gave him an apologetic shrug, “That way babies aren’t born screaming because they were just horrifically murdered—though there is some back and forth about that. My mom insist babies hold on to their past lives until they’re all the way in the world. She says that’s why some babies come out angry and some are just surprised and some don’t come out crying at all, because they were maybe, like, monks or something the last time around and they’re totally at peace. But that’s just her theory—one I can see from the look on your face you don’t even remotely believe. But you asked what happened, so I’m telling you.”

  She stopped and clamped her lips before finishing with, “We were together, Sawyer. Then you forgot all about it. And that would have been okay, but as it turned out I got pregnant from our one time together. And then Thel showed up out of the blue at my apartment in Germany because she was sick. So I dropped out of med school and came back here to raise Trevor. Because what else could I do? I couldn’t get rid of him, and I couldn’t come find you to tell you he was on the way, because I knew you wouldn’t unde
rstand. Plus you were dealing with a pretty intense recovery, so I didn’t come find you. But then you moved back here, and everything just became so confusing because I still remembered you, and still wanted to be with you, but there was no easy way to explain Trevor.”

  She was breathing hard after all of that. Unable to believe all the words that had just come out of her mouth. She looked up at Sawyer to get his reaction, hoping he’d believe. Hoping that—

  “I’ll be taking full custody of Trevor,” he said, voice quiet and sharp as a razor.

  “No, Sawyer, please,” Willa said, choking on her own tears.

  But he was already headed back to his motorcycle. “My brother’s law firm will be in touch.”

  In a panic, she wheeled back toward the house. Okay, she had to get Trevor. She had to leave town. Right now.

  “And Willa…” She turned around and found him facing her again on the little dirt path. Swamp eyes blazing. “Both my brother and I are lawyers now with almost unlimited political resources. If you even step one foot outside of this state with my son, I will bury you underneath a jail, I swear to fucking God, and you will never see him again.”

  Then she watched him go. He climbed on to his custom bike, and revved the engine before tearing back down the road.

  Leaving her behind with a stomach full of nails. She’d just lost Sawyer. For the second time. And now she was about to lose her son, too.

  16

  There was no happiness after that.

  Life became an empty soundtrack over the next couple of days, and it felt like Willa was living from memory. The memory of how she was supposed to get up and take a shower everyday. The memory of how she was supposed to drop Trevor off at the childcare center. The memory of how she was supposed to then go to work. Doing the recreational therapy job she’d settled for after she’d dropped out of medical school.

  But then she woke to find Thel gone on Thursday morning. Her twin bed empty and the purse full of money left on top of their dresser with a note: Use this to get yourself a lawyer. Need to leave town for a while. Sorry.

  It was more than she had gotten the first time Thel ran off, but she’d read the note with a sinking feeling. Knowing Thel’s “leaving town for awhile” was another way of saying she was running away from home. Again.

  Sawyer, Thel, Trevor… it felt like she’d either lost or was on the verge of losing everything. Too depressed to even think about driving into Richmond, Willa called in sick and set Trevor up in his room with an iPad, which caused Marian to leave the house in a huff, complaining about daughters who didn’t appreciate literature and let their children be raised by spiritless technology.

  Whatever. She couldn’t help but relish Marian’s irritation. So much of this was her fault: the unnecessary Trevor reveal, the move back to Greenlee, and, well, having her in the first place.

  After Marian left, Willa did what she always did when life wasn’t going her way: went to sit out on the old cart with Pappy, the only spirit she’d never had any qualms about interacting with. Sitting next to the gray-haired man still dressed in the overalls he’d died in usually brought her comfort. They were both quiet individuals by nature, and for a while he let her stare dully at the empty balcony across the way in peace as he did his latest crossword puzzle.

  But then he said. “You know, I heard your sister in there yelling at somebody. I think she was trying to buy back something she sold. Any ideas what’s going on? Or why she left out of here on the first morning bus?”

  Willa continued to look at the house, knowing he was in there. Knowing, like

  her, he probably wasn’t able to manage going into work either, but for much different reasons. “Why don’t you ask Marian?” she asked her grandfather. “She knows everything.”

  “She said that chapter ain’t quite ready to unfold yet. And she wants me to be surprised when it do.”

  “Spoilers,” Willa said with a mirthless laugh. That was the problem with her mother and her spirit knowledge. She took a childlike glee in revealing only the parts of the story she wanted to reveal, and in the most dramatic way possible. Like a child who saw a movie and couldn’t resist going around and telling others little tidbits of it, but then saying, “No, I can’t tell you that!” when you asked to hear how it ended.

  Pappy frowned, obviously miffed. “I guess your mama’s going to get her way on that tale. Again,” he grumbled.

  The patter of heavy work boots running toward the cart interrupted their conversation. And the Well Girls appeared in front of the cart, cheery in the way of children, despite their tragic deaths. Distant ancestors from a very long time ago, neither was quite sure of their ages, just that the younger sister had fallen into the well, and the older one had died trying to save her.

  “Can Trevor come out to play?” they asked in unison. Forever ghosts always seeking a companion who could see them.

  Plus, it had been a while since Trevor had played with them. Willa had been keeping him indoors ever since Sawyer’s return, and unlike Pappy, the Well Girls couldn’t come into the house. Like Sawyer who hadn’t been able to leave the hospital, the universe was designed so ghosts couldn’t stray too far from where they died and the well was just far enough away to make the house off limits to them.

  “Sure,” Willa answered, thinking why the hell not. “Just go knock on his window…”

  More pattering boots as they went over to the room Trevor shared with Marian and knocked on the window.

  “Trevor! Trevor! Come out and play!” they called. Then their shoulders slumped with disappointment. “He’s not answering.”

  Willa frowned. It wasn’t like her child to turn down a chance to play with the Well Girls, and he’d been complaining about her keeping him inside for weeks now.

  “I’ll go get him,” she said to the girls, hoping he wasn’t lying in his bed, sick. He’d been so quiet this morning, and hadn’t even gotten all that excited when she brought out the iPad.

  But Trevor wasn’t sick. He just wasn’t there. The made bed he’d been sitting on when she left him was empty, with nothing but a darkened iPad to show he’d been there at all.

  “Trevor!” she called out, her heart seizing with fear as she began a frantic search of the rest of the house. “Trevor!”

  “WHAT THE HELL do you mean I can’t get full custody right away?”

  “You’re a lawyer, too, Sawyer.” Josh, who’d come all the way from their office in Richmond to discuss this with him in the privacy of the Greenlee Place study, threw him a sour look. “You should know how the legal system works. Everything takes time—especially custody cases.”

  “Yeah, but this is a no-brainer. His mother is bat shit insane. I don’t see why we can’t just get an order—”

  “Because you can’t simply take a boy from his mother, that’s why.” Josh shifted uncomfortably in the creaky French Brittany chair, which had been built over a hundred years ago by someone with no clue that a 6’4 former SEAL turned corporate lawyer would one day be sitting in it.

  “Also, you’re not even on the birth certificate—”

  “Because she didn’t tell me about him! I know there’s precedent for that.”

  “Yes, of course there is. We’ll sue this woman into the ground. But first we need a DNA test to prove paternity. That’s another court order we’ll need to file, unless Willa Harper really is as crazy as you claim and she’s willing to volunteer it.”

  Sawyer thought about all her quiet resistance. The refusal to say any more than she had to whenever a subject that didn’t involve his gimp leg came up.

  “Okay, maybe not that crazy,” he grumbled, feeling stupid all over again.

  Two days later, the pain of her betrayal still felt fresh. Like she’d sliced him up bad and left him in his oversized home to bleed out. How could he not have seen it in her? He thought of the way he’d just about begged her to stay the last time she was here and his ribs squeezed with humiliation.

  “I want him in this h
ouse where he’ll be safe from his crazy mother,” Sawyer said, his voice barely above a growl. “He’s my son and he belongs with me. Me! Not Willa!”

  “What the hell is going on here! You had a son with Willa Harper?”

  Their father suddenly burst into the study, a fretful Grace behind him.

  “Oh , I am so sorry Sawyer. We had lunch together, and I was walking him out when we heard your voices in the study. I tried to stop him from eavesdropping, but you know your father.”

  “Don’t apologize for me,” The Admiral groused, glaring at Grace, and probably making her think twice about accepting another lunch date with him.

  “Well, if it is not me to apologize for your terrible behavior, then who?” she demanded, glaring right back at him.

  The Admiral was saved from answering by the doorbell.

  “Dios, who could that be? I’ll get it,” Grace said, scuttling out of the room.

  “Send whoever it is away,” The Admiral called after her.

  Then he turned his frigid scowl on Sawyer. “Why am I just now hearing about this?” he asked, obviously struggling to keep his voice even.

  “Because he’s just now finding out about it,” Josh answered, rising out of his chair.

  “And because it has nothing to do with the campaign,” Sawyer added, also coming out of his chair.

  His father started, as if Sawyer had just accused him of something repugnant. “Of course this has nothing to do with the campaign. This is about my having a grandson! A grandson. If it’s true, I should have been your first call.”

  Josh looked back at Sawyer over his shoulder and they exchanged a similar stunned look. Wow, not at all how they would have expected their father to react to the news of having a half-black grandson.

  A knock sounded on the door then, interrupting the shock. And Grace stuck her head into the room.