Lizbeth gave Beebe a satisfied smile.
“But Arnett can’t be held responsible,” Beebe said. “She was unaware—”
“That’s the point. She was unaware because she was the cause.” Lizbeth snapped her head toward Arnett. “He had to intercede and do whatever would keep you at low tide.”
“That’s enough, Lizbeth.” Beebe’s voice was stern. “Move on.”
Lizbeth’s mouth opened, primed to respond, when Arnett sprang to life, working her way forward on the sofa. “It wasn’t right that these things were kept from me. I should have been told. Damn John. Damn him. Most of this is his fault. He’s to blame.”
“There’s enough blame to go around,” Lizbeth returned. “You’ll be shocked to know that I blame you for Dan’s death.”
Arnett’s eyes flew wide. She sucked in a long, deep breath. “How can that be true?”
“If you hadn’t played on Dan’s sensitive nature, he wouldn’t have taken the job at Oldstone Manufacturing and we’d have spent our lives in Florida. Then Dan wouldn’t have been sitting under that tree, carving out time on a Saturday to paint. We’d have been in business with Uncle Ralph, using Dan’s artistic talent to make a living. We made all the arrangements that June after college. On the way back, we were married, then we had to wait for mother’s privilege and a second wedding we didn’t need.”
“I am not to blame. You cannot blame me for Dan’s death. It’s not true. It’s not!”
Quickly, the grief counselor lay her tablet on the coffee table and went to Arnett, whose eyes still blazed. “I think this is enough for one day,” Beebe said, patting Arnett’s hands, clenched in her lap.
Thoroughly satisfied with the impact her revelations had on Arnett, Lizbeth offered no objection.
Beebe rose, got Arnett on her feet, and walked her out to the porch. As the two women disappeared from the narrow view Lizbeth had through the screen door, Lizbeth processed an odd, indescribable sensation. During its short life, Lizbeth saw herself in Florida. Ruse became reality.
Face in the Window
Beebe lay in bed, staring into the darkness. Her bedroom window was open. The crickets chirred. They couldn’t sleep, either. Her mind spun ever since Lucius laid the folded pages of the faxed employment agreement across her palm. Not until then had she fully embraced the reality of going home. Every moment since was either shot through with euphoria or trembling fear. Above it all, she felt a strong, sudden kinship with Jack Sebring. She thought God inserted her among these three grieving women to glean a useful message from their experiences. She listened intently, took copious notes, dissected every discussion, and yet, it was Jack who rose up in her mind, bearing inescapable parallels.
Her brain couldn’t seem to shut down replay of a film clip. The scene began each time with Jack loading a scanty supply of personal belongings into a car trunk. Jack stepped out of the framed portrait on the cabin’s entryway table. He accomplished his work in a white shirt and Santa tie.
The trunk lid closed, and the story jumped ahead. The road to Callie’s house was not paved with unbridled elation. Beebe had omniscience enough to appreciate Jack’s post-surgical movements in the garage as protective against weakness and pain. She also clearly understood his worries. He became a wanderer in his own life, jostled between two women, between home and apartment, now to reside in his lover’s house. Beebe was little more than a vagabond herself, going from church pastor to grief counselor to community center spiritual assistant, her newest and longest title.
Aside from their pillar-to-post existence, Jack and Beebe also shared the fellowship of rejection by family. Surely that wound gouged Jack more than the lengthy incision or the invasive disease. His sons rejected him openly, while Beebe was never sure her father understood that his attitude, more than his actions, built the barrier between them. For both Jack and Beebe, another woman was involved. Perhaps more from Gary than Dan, his sons’ rejection of him was tied to their loathing for Callie. Beebe’s father’s rejection of her was tied to her absent mother.
Beebe’s facial features favored her mother’s and fueled her father’s behavior. Cliff Walker couldn’t bear to look at his daughter. Every time, he saw his wife, and he hurt. He hurt, Beebe thought, because he still loved Abigail Walker. According to Vincent Bostick, Abigail’s personal possessions remained closeted in Cliff’s Larkspur house.
There in the dark, Beebe attested, on Jack’s behalf, that a combination of rejection and change breeds a pesky form of doubt. Jack, through the sheer strength of will she knew the man possessed, fought that uncertainty.
Beebe threw the covers off and switched on the bedside light. Her portfolio rested on the nightstand. The contract was closed inside. Grabbing the portfolio, she used it, her lap, and the pen clipped to the week’s notes to sign the agreement. She pressed firmly, making wide, bold strokes, wishing her signature included an i to dot or a t to cross.
She looked at the clock. At two-sixteen, she slew an attack of emerging doubt. Now there was nothing left, but to anticipate the drive to Michigan. Arrival in her hometown would launch another story.
Dousing the light, she settled back under the sheet. Sleep evaded her, still. Her mind moved on. It conjured up Jack’s arrival at Callie’s house. Callie met him in her driveway. He returned her smile, broad and sincere, but Callie didn’t see his wince of pain when her welcoming hug came too strong for sore ribs.
Replay after replay, trip after trip with Jack, Beebe felt sufficiently girded. She would cross her emotional battle line at the outskirts of Larkspur. Everything beyond that last curve into town remained a blur.
One thing was clear: God called her home to ease truth into the light and into her father’s heart. Her mother’s rightful name should mark the grave in which her earthly shell lay. After the revelation of truth would come the healing. Truth and healing followed Jack into his life with Callie. Truth and healing were two ideals woven into the fabric of the West Virginia summit.
Despite the wakeful night, Beebe rose energized. She dressed and went outside to Heatherwood’s porch. There was nothing else to do with Thursday’s early morning view but inhale its glory. The rising sun shone as a golden outline around the distant treetops. In the foreground, the river was the only measure of haste as it flowed through the pines. She filled her lungs and stored the memory. She pulled the hood of her lightweight sweatshirt up, then headed out to faithful Old County Road A and a downhill walk to Sarah Prosser’s office. There, she’d fax the signed employment contract back to Vincent.
. . .
Callie stared across the Cheat River, tears streamed her cheeks, bare feet dangled in the water beneath Heatherwood’s dock. Her bout with overwhelming sorrow descended quickly. Her shoulders shuddered with her silent sobs.
“What’s wrong?” Lizbeth’s jarring steps vibrated through the wooden planks.
By the time Callie’s two index fingers wiped the wet from her face, Lizbeth was squatted beside her and digging in her purse. Callie took the tissues Lizbeth offered and held them first against one eye, then the other. Not since the night Jack died at home in her arms, had anyone but Beebe, in her counselor personae, witnessed such a meltdown. Callie intended her grief for Jack to be a private matter as her life with him had been.
Lizbeth filled the time Callie needed to gain control by making herself comfortable against the wooden mooring post. She sat angled, her long legs stretched out behind Callie.
“Whoever coined the phrase, broken heart, certainly got it right,” Lizbeth said. “All that is death, loneliness, and grief seems to emanate from right here.” Callie looked over. Lizbeth raised her closed hand to her striped shirt. “I never imagined such an ache was possible.”
Callie decided to tell the story
that brought the tears. Lizbeth would understand. Grief was a changeling that secretly ran their world. One moment, it produced Callie’s tears; the next, it took the form of Lizbeth’s heartache.
An old, old Agatha Christie paperback lay beside Callie on the dock. She found the book earlier in a bedside drawer. Shifting the damp wad of tissues to her left land, she lifted the front cover and withdrew the folded piece of paper she handed to Lizbeth. She carefully opened the four-by-five sheet torn from a page-a-day calendar. An Oscar Wilde quotation had been memorialized on a Wednesday in April four years before.
Callie watched Lizbeth’s eyes skip across the favored quote: “If you are not too long, I will wait here for you all my life.” Lizbeth took a moment to absorb the meaning, then angled the page to read a note added in the corner. There, Jack penned: “This is me loving you.”
The Oscar Wilde quote spoke to Jack, and then the two men in tandem to Callie. The quotation underscored Jack’s enduring love and devotion.
Lizbeth looked up. “You used this as a bookmark?”
“Jack put it there so I’d find it. I always had a book around to read when he was working.”
“And just when you were going along, trying to navigate a normal existence.”
“I thought I’d sit here and try to pick up the plot again.”
“Then you found the note, and it all came rushing back.” Lizbeth sent her attention to the distant bank. “Dan bought my birthday present early this year.”
Callie studied the woman who, in a split second, slipped from keenly perceptive to sounding lost. “When’s your birthday?”
“June.”
Callie waited. A blackbird up in a pine tree chattered, then Lizbeth’s focus returned.
“Every year, Dan and I took a weekend trip to celebrate. Of course, that didn’t happen this year. If it had, I’d have found the present where he’d hidden it.” She gave Callie a wan smile. “In my suitcase.”
Callie organized the timetable. With Dan’s death in May, his wife’s birthday in June, that meant— “Oh, Lizbeth…”
“Yes, I found it when I packed for this trip.” She shifted to give Callie a better view of the gold ankle bracelet she wore continually. A charm hung from a delicate chain beneath the hem of linen pants. It was a diamond-studded dolphin.
If Callie and Lizbeth were any other women, the scene would have warranted a polite compliment. Instead, Callie said, “Did you break down?”
“I couldn’t afford to. Chad was playing in the hall.”
Her words rocked Callie with an immediate epiphany. Lizbeth, both widow and mommy, hadn’t Callie’s freedom to indulge grief. By comparison, she pandered wantonly to the emotion while Lizbeth bundled hers inside, compressing it daily for the welfare of the young child she would raise alone. That understanding opened Callie’s ears to the muffled cries from Lizbeth’s broken heart.
“Well,” she said, cutting into Callie’s thoughts. “I’m going into town. You want to come?”
Callie declined Lizbeth’s offer, but picked up the book, rose with her, and slipped her sneakers back on. She suddenly itched for exercise.
Lizbeth handed the folded quote back. “Take care of this.”
Callie slipped the precious keepsake into the paperback. Lizbeth veered off toward the Tahoe while Callie paused to give the cabin an appraising look. Her critical eye gravitated to the overgrown area along the hot-tub side of the cabin. She would need to remind Lucius about the chainsaw.
The cabin had an empty feel when she entered. She called out for Arnett before sticking her head in her bedroom. Arnett had vanished. Visiting the O’Malleys, no doubt. Callie deposited the book in her own room, pulled the porch door closed behind her, and set a quick pace for Sarah Prosser’s office. Sarah mentioned papers Callie needed to sign now that she was Heatherwood’s owner and member of the unique condo association.
The walk energized Callie. She bounded up the office’s outside stairs quietly.
“The good thing about faxing is, you get your originals back.” Sarah’s buoyant voice floated through the screen door.
“Well, it’s done,” Beebe said firmly.
“Good luck in Michigan with the new job.”
That dizzying news stopped Callie in her tracks, her fingers just inches away from the handle pull. Questions stammered around inside her head. She couldn’t face another rip in her universe, and she couldn’t face Beebe. She needed time. She wanted to escape, to hide, but where? Just on the other side of the door, Beebe expressed her gratitude for Sarah’s assistance. The excitement that fringed her tone worked against Callie’s fight to maintain control. Callie turned. She did not want her retreating footsteps heard making a mad dash. The best she could do was appear to just be arriving.
She tiptoed down the steps. Her stomach twisted at the prospect that if Beebe left her, she’d be truly alone. She ran to Beebe as she ran to the golf course as a child, seeking the support she never received at home. Now Beebe was fleeing, just as her parents moved to Macon, chasing their son and grandchildren. Her parents went to their graves while Mark still ranked high, prior to his eventual divorce, his plunge into alcoholism, prior to the cerebral hemorrhage brought on, the doctor said, by his chosen lifestyle. Other than keeping up with her niece and nephew through birthday and Christmas cards, Callie learning of Beebe’s plans, as an outsider looking in, was equal to that long line of family hurt all rolled into one staggering punch.
“Callie. Hi. Out for a walk?”
From where Callie stood in a haze at the base of the steps, a steadying hand gripped around the banister, she jerked her head up toward Beebe.
“Is that Callie?” Sarah came into view at the screen door behind Beebe. “I had an extra USA Today delivered.”
Again, Callie mounted the steps to the covered porch. Beebe pushed the door open and came out. Sarah caught the door and handed Callie the newspaper.
“That was nice.” Callie forced some cheer. “Thanks.” She tucked the rolled bundle under her arm, careful to avoid Beebe’s watchful eyes. Callie noticed Beebe’s hands were empty. The fax must have gone to a pocket.
“How are things at Heatherwood?” Sarah asked.
Before Callie could answer, before she could separate herself from Beebe’s company with the condo-paperwork excuse, the opportunity was lost. Sarah stepped outside, pulling the door closed and checking the lock.
“You heading out?” Callie said.
“Nadia just called. She’s out on rounds and needs my help.” That meant Sarah’s assistant was tending to housekeeping duties at cabins rented out on time-share.
Ill at ease, Callie moved with Beebe across the porch and down the stairs, following Sarah’s hasty dissent to her car parked alongside the building.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Beebe said after Sarah drove away. “I won’t notice the uphill walk so much with someone to talk to.” They moved in that direction, physically and emotionally, up a hill, their heads bent to the asphalt road. After a dozen or so steps, Beebe said, “You overheard, didn’t you? I was afraid of that.”
Callie’s burden felt immensely heavier. Beebe had always been able to read her. “You’re leaving. Going to Michigan. When?”
“I’ll drive up Monday.”
“Monday!”
“I’m sorry you found out this way. That wasn’t my intention.”
“When were you going to tell me? How can you just leave like this?” Callie’s questions teetered on a panic she wished she could mask.
“I planned to tell all of you tomorrow, maybe Saturday. It depended on our progress with Chad.” In a softer tone, she tacked on, “And the quilt.”
> Beebe made a point of cutting the larger, multi-jointed problem into Callie’s self-centeredness, which made little difference to Callie. Her emotional attachment to Beebe hung in tatters. An empty feeling drove her next statement. “Knowing you’re leaving makes everything associated with this week seem valueless.”
“Valueless? What do you mean?”
“I’m not criticizing you. It’s the circumstances. Lizbeth may yet decide to move to Florida. You’re going to Michigan. And I was offered a job Tuesday. I could stay at Heatherwood and work at Brier Hills. Arnett could be the only one to remain in Maryland.”
“How exciting for you!” Beebe pounced on Callie’s news. “Are you taking it? Are you at least considering it?”
As Beebe neatly steered the conversation away from her impending move, Callie steered her attention to the cracked earth at roadside.
“I know you, Callie,” Beebe said, not bowing to Callie’s avoidance tactic. “You love Jack, still. Your life keeps you in all the places you and Jack shared together. Your home, the club, out on that course. Some women, older women, when their husbands die, won’t leave the old house they spent their marriage in. They don’t want to leave the memories. But you, you can leave Maryland, live in West Virginia, and still have ties—strong ties—to Jack here. Heatherwood. Brier Hills. All the places where you and Jack spent time. I saw the way you looked around the steakhouse. You were remembering evenings spent there with Jack. Memories are important to you. And you’d have those here. You don’t need me, Callie. Not to live in the same city. And it would be fun to visit back and forth. What about a reunion? The four of us every August at Heatherwood?” Beebe asked sarcastically.
“You can’t be serious,” Callie scoffed. “Makes no difference, anyway. I can’t leave Cassel.”
Beebe’s eyes dimmed. “Why not?”
“Petey Sebring.”
“Jack’s stepmother?”
Wild Raspberries Page 23