“Surely?” Beebe said, chin dipped to her chest, hinting at the impossible.
“Let me tell the rest,” Callie said, her elbows on the rocker’s arms. “Months later, we were going through a box of his mother’s keepsakes. Her Bible was stuffed with several church bulletins and bereavement cards. You know, the kind printed for funerals. Going through those, we found that my grandmother knew his mother. They attended the same church. Sacred Heart,” she said, so Beebe would know.
“Their names were listed in the bulletins as members serving on the same committees, and she kept my grandmother’s funeral card. Jack’s handwriting was on the back. He’d jotted a note for his mother there. That reminded him that she asked him to escort her to the service. It was entirely possible that when he and his mother offered condolences to my parents, I was right there, a clingy four-year old. I wouldn’t have given my mother much space. We laughed that I enchanted him somehow that day while our mothers reminisced about a grandmother I don’t remember.” Callie smiled. “After Jack and I learned of our connection to my grandmother, he renamed the cabin. It was his surprise.” Callie strung a suspenseful gaze around the circle. “My grandmother was born Heather Kilgore.”
“It was your fate to meet,” Lizbeth said.
“Not my fate,” Callie whispered. “My fortune.”
A Woman Such As You
Beebe watched a solemn Callie get up. She returned her rocker to its position under the porch light. She went inside and into her room, just on the other side of the cabin wall. In Heatherwood’s stillness, Beebe barely heard Callie latch her door.
Contrastingly, Arnett’s departure employed a share of dramatic fluster. It was wordless, but not silent. She slapped a palm on the tabletop to hoist herself up. The chair legs scraped gratingly across the porch planks as she twisted the chair and shoved its seat under the table. She yanked the door pull and stamped inside, nose high. Two seconds passed. Her bedroom door met the jamb with a bang. The explosion’s retreating force fluttered the screen door a heartbeat later.
Beebe gave Lizbeth her one-eye-closed-care-to-comment-on-that expression. Lizbeth shrugged haplessly.
The two of them spent some time with their heads together quietly romanticizing the scene Callie described at her grandmother’s funeral. In the end, they decided it felt a little weird to think that Jack’s twenty-six-year old heart was truly smitten by a four-year old Callie, which in turn discounted the theory that Arnett was merely filling in while Callie grew to womanhood.
Lizbeth and Beebe talked on, but Callie nor Arnett ventured forth from their self-imposed exile. Beebe made a joke about cabin fever and needing a walk. Lizbeth assured her she’d manage the home front. She brought ingredients for a tuna casserole from home and thought she’d throw that together. In a couple of hours, she’d force everyone to the table.
Beebe grabbed an apple out of the fridge, then leaned into the uphill walk. Head down, pink rounded-toe clogs entered her field of vision at regular intervals. Curtains of scented, green foliage lined the faded-tar road out front of Heatherwood. She gave the apple core an arching toss into the woods. It slapped through a thicket to be further enjoyed by any variety of God’s forest creatures. Old County Road A seemed endless, a perfect match for Beebe’s reflections.
Arnett must have become complacent in her life with Jack, she thought. She didn’t know the joy Callie described. Callie sacrificed her professional golf career. She adjusted her lifestyle. A light burned in Callie’s and Jack’s hearts, one for the other. Now she was split apart with longing for him.
Beebe considered the path through the woods Callie forged as a child, heading to Chesterfield Park for lessons and practice. Years later, the beaten-dirt lane doubled as Jack’s hidden tunnel to his lover. Beebe couldn’t apply an inkling of Robert Frost to Callie’s and Jack’s wooded tale. No, Robert Frost and his two roads diverging in a yellow wood was a parable for Beebe’s life. She was several stanzas short of learning if the outcome of her travels would have equivalent results to those of Robert Frost’s.
It was just when she needed a place of solace to escape into her past, that she came upon a cemetery. She stopped and stared. Memories of glorious days spent in her father’s company rushed at her so quickly, she feared they would run her down.
The quaint and ancient cemetery was spread out behind an archway of fancy ironworks. She pushed on the gate. It squeaked its welcome. On either side of the gate, lengths of iron fence were anchored into the good earth. She followed a cement walk that widened, then petered out after cracks gave way to concrete chips. In all other respects, the cemetery was painstakingly maintained. It was someone’s passion.
The sod was worn by walking paths. She took one, observing the icons rising out of the cemetery’s trisections. At the back, higher than the others, stood a marble angel. The right-hand section was marked by an open Bible on a stone podium. To her left, a cannon confirmed the presence of honored soldiers. A perfect tranquility circulated beneath the leafy canopies overhanging the perimeter.
She heard the gate creak and looked back. She saw Lucius’s smiling face. Only the tailgate of his truck was visible behind him. The rest was completely camouflaged by a wild and ever-present wilderness. The truck was headed down the mountain, away from Sarah’s handyman jobs, no doubt completed.
“Looks like you busted out of the joint,” he called.
“Hi, Lucius. I’m out for a stroll. This cemetery is a real find.”
“It’s quiet here. Peaceful. But I guess that’s the idea. You know, I’ve never stopped before. It’s a nice little graveyard.”
“It is nice. Who’s the sexton?”
Lucius stopped short and gave her a comical look. “Beg your pardon?”
She laughed.
“Are you coming on to me, Beebe?”
“Oh, Lucius, not in your wildest dreams, but it’s good to laugh. A sexton is the caretaker. My father’s the sexton for a cemetery back home in Michigan. We lived on the grounds.”
“Cool. Did all the kids come to your house for Halloween parties?”
“No. No parties. We didn’t grow many brave young souls in Larkspur.”
“Too bad. Did you go into the cemetery at night?”
“I’d go with my father. But mostly, they were daytime visits. I learned a lot from him, a lot about respect for the graves themselves, for the dead, especially for those who mourned.”
Lucius snatched a pencil from his shirt pocket and held it like a microphone. “Here with us today is Cassel’s finest grief counselor. A round of applause, please.”
Beebe felt a weight drop on her heart. She put up a hand and looked away, toward a weathered tombstone. “No, please don’t. Don’t say that.”
Lucius took a step. “Beebe? What’s wrong?”
Her wispy hair dragged her collar with the infinitesimal shake of her head. She smiled a sad smile. It was reflected in his eyes.
“Come on, tell Lucius.”
The fact was, she could not tell Lucius. “You and Callie are too close. I guess I realized how close at the depot. I was out in the parking lot with Arnett and Lizbeth. Inside, I saw you hold Callie so very gently. She was crying, for Jack, no doubt. So, I can’t ask you to bear my burden. It’s not fair.”
This quarrel, Beebe knew, was also for God’s benefit. She wasn’t really on speaking terms with Him yet, but perhaps He was with her. Had He caused her to witness the scene at the depot, to feel an instant fellowship for a man so filled with tender compassion for her friend? Was God telling her to confide in Lucius because of his closeness with Callie?
“So, your burden somehow gets in the way of Callie.” Lucius turned her reasoning around. “Now I have to know. I can help. Let me.”
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“You don’t know what I’ve done, what I’m about to do.” Beebe wondered what Lucius would think of her when the decision she made and its resulting action reached out and hurt Callie.
“I won’t judge you,” he argued. “I’ve been judged my whole life. I’m neutral. I’m Switzerland. And I can’t believe you would do anything purposely malicious. Tell me the circumstances? What’s happened?”
“Don’t get serious on me, Lucius. That’s not you, I can’t take it.”
“Ah, my precious angel.” Grinning, he rocked back on his heels, his shoulders relaxed. “Lucius can make this all better in the twinkling of any eye.”
Great! A biblical reference, Beebe thought. What was God telling Lucius?
Lucius took her hand and guided her toward a concrete bench that acted as the cemetery’s hub. They sat. “Now, confide all.”
Beebe’s stomach fluttered with a mix of relief and anticipation. Lucius seemed to corral all his concentration to hear her first words: “I need to go home.”
Although she stated her initial plea simply, Lucius seemed prepared to hear an involved story that required some backtracking at times. He didn’t interrupt, not for the longest time.
She began with the explanation Clifford Walker gave his sixteen-year old daughter Beebe after her mother abandoned them. The story had actually gotten its legs when Beebe was fourteen. Her mother, Abigail, was involved in a serious car accident. In the twelve months complete recovery required, she became addicted to Percocet. Her father fully shouldered the blame. He saw the signs, but wouldn’t let them register with enough force to intercede.
Eventually, Abigail returned to her nursing job at Lakeview General where she had access to medication that fed her addiction. Seasons passed. She slipped up one day and didn’t cover her tracks. She got wind of a hospital investigation and panicked. She raced home to fill a suitcase. After school that day, Beebe found her parents’ bedroom a wreck. The new Impala her father scrimped to buy wasn’t parked in the driveway. Hospital and law enforcement authorities pieced together Abigail’s downhill slide out of town to Clifford the evening of Abigail’s departure. After that, nothing was ever the same. Clifford’s grief turned him bitter, then numb. Beebe admitted to Lucius that her father never recovered.
“How did you do?” Kindness permeated Lucius’s tone.
“It was tough. I was in high school and the whole town knew. You know how kids are. Thank goodness they jump from one disaster to the next at warp speed. Pretty soon, Kimmie Stokes got pregnant, and that bumped me to the side of the road. But then they were reminded when my father shopped with me for a prom dress.”
“The worst.” Lucius shook his head, then eyed her curiously. “Who’d you go with to prom?”
Despite the years, a smile burst onto her face. “Vincent Bostick.”
“Did Daddy approve?” he teased.
“Actually, Vincent became a fixture at our house and a buffer between Dad and me. When I was with Vincent, I was Daddy’s little girl growing up, dating, ready for college. When it was just the two of us, I was the ghost of his missing wife. That’s why he can’t look at me. I could be her twin,” she said, feeling the haunt simply by forming the words.
“Did that fool Vincent let you get away?”
“Our parting was amicable, painful, but amicable. My life would be at the beck and call of the church. Vincent didn’t want to leave Larkspur. He married. No kids. Lost his wife to a brain tumor. And remained my father’s best friend.” She looked down at the hands in her lap. “My visits back are hard and have slipped to infrequent.”
“So why go home now?”
“There’s a place for me now. I’ve come full circle. And several months back, Vincent came personally to ask.”
“The inextinguishable flame,” he said, nudging his shoulder to hers.
“No, not really. That wasn’t the heart of it. You see, he was keeping a secret and it was eating him up.”
His eyes widened. “Lucius loves secrets.”
“I guess my mother never conquered her addiction. She contracted AIDS and came home to die under an assumed name. Instead of Abigail Walker, she used Terri Miller. Vincent’s a lifelong social worker. He manages an unwieldy center in Larkspur. One of the wings is a small hospice. She swore Vincent to secrecy. She didn’t want my father to know.”
“She’s gone?” Lucius asked.
“Somewhere in my father’s cemetery, he’s tending to Terri Miller’s grave like all the rest. He doesn’t know.”
“Vincent wants to tell him,” Lucius guessed accurately.
“He wants me to be there.” Beebe drew in a long breath. “I wasn’t ready when he sprung it on me. I needed time to absorb everything. I left the church and was unsettled. Why go back to Larkspur for a double dose of upset? Then several weeks ago, Vincent and I started communicating. I’m ready now. I’m ready to live and work in my hometown, for my hometown, for the people.”
“You’re going to stay permanently?” he exclaimed, stunned.
“You see my problem.”
He gave his head a shake. “There’s a couple of really nice ladies here who are going to fall apart.”
“I realize that. I can’t start a new life until I finish the old one.”
His eyes narrowed. “What’s the timeline on that?”
Beebe laid a cushioning hand over his. “At week’s end.”
They sat there for another few minutes. Beebe explained that when Sarah Prosser showed up at the cabin earlier, it was in response to a note she pinned to the office door the evening before. Sarah confirmed that the office had a fax machine and gave Beebe the number. In the next day or two, Vincent would transmit Beebe’s employment contract. Sarah would receive it, fold it into an envelope, and deliver it to the cabin. After Beebe read and signed the contract, Sarah would fax the return document.
Beebe and Lucius ambled along the cemetery’s walkways while she continued her story. She was fifteen days into negotiations for the new job when Lizbeth grappled with Arnett, then Callie and West Virginia entered the picture. Lucius swung the creaky gate open. His truck waited on a bare patch at roadside. Beside it, Beebe laid out plans to push the peace summit to conclusion by Thursday, so she could have Friday—Saturday at the latest—to get the ladies on firm ground before she made her announcement.
“Lizbeth thinks she’ll have me for ancillary consultation, but I won’t be there. In the last two-plus weeks, I haven’t found the words to tell Callie. She’s needed me. She’s needed my counsel. I think she’ll do fine, but this will be a blow. I hope not a major setback.” Beebe chewed her lip.
Lucius flung an arm around her shoulders. “In your business, there’s never a good time to make a move like this. If it wasn’t Lizbeth and Callie, it’d be someone else. That’s just the nature of things for a woman such as you.”
His closing remark sounded like high praise. He pried open the passenger door. It was an awkward climb for a pudgy woman to gain a perch inside his truck. When she was there, he shut her in and came around to take his place behind the wheel. Back at the cabin, Beebe felt she needed a commitment. She didn’t want to impose on him further if he was disinclined to remain her confidant. She asked him in so many words.
His answer came with a kiss for her cheek and relief for her heart. “Beebe, you are a lady to join forces with.”
They jumped down from the truck to the crushed-gravel drive. When they cleared the corner of the cabin, they saw Lizbeth and Callie standing on the dock, on either side of a folding lawn chair, looking out into a rapidly coursing river.
Beebe pushed herself into a speed walk. “What’s wrong?” she asked as she pounded the le
ngth of the dock. Lizbeth and Callie turned to face Beebe and Lucius.
“Arnett,” Lizbeth replied, anxiously.
“She’s missing,” Callie added.
Immediately, Lucius crossed to the dock’s edge to look downstream. “You think she fell in?”
“We can’t find her anywhere.” Lizbeth pointed into the chair. “This is her magazine.”
Beebe pictured the scene as it must have appeared to Arnett when she walked up behind them. A group of Norman Rockwell kids grown tall, their backsides painted on canvas with Beebe on the far right, the hand at her brow blocking the sun, peering into the distance.
Arnett’s voice startled them. Beebe spun so quickly, she nearly knocked Callie into the river. Lucius made a saving catch. Arnett, all innocent-eyed, claimed she’d simply taken herself off for a walk.
. . .
Lizbeth woke and rolled onto her back. Her left arm automatically reached out, but the mattress beside her was cold. Her head came around on the pillow. By then, reality had shaken itself awake to send its daily reminder to new widows. In the darkness, a tear followed.
She correctly placed herself in Callie’s cabin. The next oddity to overcome was the sound of a man’s voice emanating from the living room. The bedside clock read 1:17. She crept to the door and opened it a crack. Peering through, she saw Callie on the couch. The room was dimly lit, but enough light existed to see that her knees were pulled up to her chest. Dan’s quilt was draped around her legs. Lizbeth recognized the baritone voice, then an infectious laugh. Both belonged to Dan’s father. She opened the door further to see John Sebring’s face on the TV screen.
Callie looked up when Lizbeth padded into view. “I woke you. I’m sorry.” Using the remote, Callie paused the TV’s image. John Sebring’s face and torso, in bright sunshine, filled the screen. The Grand Canyon in its magnificent splendor was the backdrop.
Lizbeth heard about John’s and Callie’s vacation trip to the southwest in a screaming fit from Arnett, no matter that John moved out months before. They made the trip during the healthy eighteen months he enjoyed after surgery. Hospice and lingering decline waited. For the girl who didn’t believe she could love, the woman she grew into gave him uncompromising devotion. She had time to accept the eventualities of his illness. Lizbeth, on the other hand, was in no way prepared to have her husband’s heart cleaved from hers by one slashing strike of lightning.
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