Tiny Twist of Truth
Arnett and Beebe raced into the yard. Cold rain streamed their faces and plastered nightgowns to their bodies.
Beebe took charge. “Get up, Lizbeth,” she yelled, “Go back to the porch.”
Barefoot, Arnett went to her. Her slippers were sucked off several steps back. Lizbeth appeared unharmed. The treetop barely grazed her. She threw her arms up to shield her face. Arnett pulled her up and nearly chased her back to the porch. Behind Arnett, Beebe called Callie’s name. Above Arnett, the storm continued its rant.
Beebe peeled back branches in the area where they last saw Callie. Arnett didn’t know what they’d do if she were severely injured. She made it to Beebe’s side just as she exposed the tail of Callie’s pajamas.
“Callie!” she screamed over the storm.
Callie moaned. “I can’t get up. Help me!”
The weight of the prickly branches, Beebe’s and Arnett’s awkward stance, and the lack of light made rescue difficult. Beebe made a herculean effort to lift an armful of branches. Callie struggled, but managed to get to her knees. She crawled out. Sticky needles caught her nightclothes and scratched her face and arms.
Arnett helped her up. “Are you hurt?”
Beebe didn’t give Callie the opportunity to answer. Supporting Callie, Arnett and Beebe whisked her to the porch where they all faced a hysterical Lizbeth.
“Dan,” she cried, wild-eyed. “Go back for Dan.”
Arnett grabbed Lizbeth’s forearms and moved her back. “Dan’s not out there. Dan is not out there.” The suffering widow’s eyes remained glazed. Arnett gave her a shake. “It was Callie. Not Dan.”
“No,” she argued.
“Yes.” Arnett shook her again. Her heart thumped several anxious beats before reality surfaced in Lizbeth.
“Oh,” Lizbeth said, still dazed. “Oh no. Callie.” Lizbeth seemed to allow the woman to come into focus. A watery stream of blood ran from a small gash at Callie’s temple. Reaching out with a trembling hand, Lizbeth said, “It’s all my fault. I’m so sorry.”
Beebe cut in. “Arnett, get her inside and into a warm tub.”
Although Lizbeth moved under her own power, Arnett would not relinquish hold on her arm. She was aware of Beebe and Callie filing in behind, of Beebe asking, “Do you hurt anywhere?” Their voices dwindled out of range. Beebe ushered Callie into her room, and soon water ran into both tubs.
Arnett could not quell her anxiety even after she changed into dry clothes and Lizbeth was wrapped in a robe with her hair rubbed dry. She hovered and cooed a continual reassurance, while marveling at Callie’s heroism. In fact, she tried to linger in that vein. For if she didn’t, she fought the tormenting visualization of Dan’s death. She blinked back tears. No wonder Lizbeth nearly lost hold of reality.
Arnett bent over Lizbeth, now between the sheets. She moved an unruly strand of hair off Lizbeth’s face as Beebe eased up to the bed. She too donned her robe. Her hair was combed straight back, and she held a glass of water. “How is she?”
The two women smiled down at Lizbeth, paler than usual, but calm, and strangely in a world of her own. If there was ever a time for Arnett to abandon her honesty pledge, this was it. “She’s much, much better,” she said.
“I think she should take one of her sleeping pills,” Beebe said. “Sleep will cure the worst of this.”
Lizbeth nodded when asked her opinion, raised up on an elbow, and downed the pill.
Beebe set the glass on the nightstand, then tipped her head sideways at Lizbeth who lay motionless in the bed. “Talk to me,” she said, grinning. “Say something.”
Lizbeth’s eyes sparked, which Arnett took as a good sign. “Thank you,” she said. “I’m fine.”
“Are you cold?”
“No. I’m feeling better.” Then her chocolate eyes melted and her voice retreated. “It was my nightmare.”
Those words lowered Beebe to a seat on the edge of the mattress. “Yes, I know. Callie told me.”
Arnett listened. It seemed she was the last to learn of Lizbeth’s repetitive nightmares. A mild case of irritation and jealousy flexed their muscles. Not that mother- and daughter-in-law ever grew close, but Arnett would be happier not knowing Callie starred as Lizbeth’s first confident. To her credit, she stamped those old impulses into immediate submission and searched Beebe’s manner for guidance. Roiling inside Arnett was an urge to confess an awful truth.
“Listen to me, Lizbeth,” Beebe said, composed and nurturing. “Arnett is going to sit right here. I want you to talk to her. Just keep talking until you feel sleepy. Okay?”
“I will.” Lizbeth pulled on Beebe’s arm when she started to rise. “Is Callie okay?”
“Miraculously, she’s only got bumps and bruises, a few scratches. I’m going back to her. You’ll see her when you wake up. Now, talk to Arnett and let that pill do its stuff.”
Beebe gave Arnett’s hand a reassuring squeeze before she disappeared toward the hovel of light surrounding Callie’s bedroom door. Arnett stepped forward from the doorway. Alone with Lizbeth, she felt her knees weakening. She replaced Beebe at bedside and hung onto composure.
“I must be part of your nightmare,” she said, by way of introduction. Arnett tried to hold Lizbeth’s eyes, but her gaze slid off to a wrinkle on the pillowslip. “You said the other day you blamed me for Dan’s death. In some respects, that’s true.”
Lizbeth emitted a chortle of skepticism. It faded abruptly. “How is that true?”
Arnett glanced away nervously, then quickly back. “I’m glad Beebe said you should keep talking. I’m going to need you to talk me through this.”
“Please, Arnett,” Lizbeth drilled, impatient. “How is that true?”
Again, relying on the grief counselor’s lead, Arnett took Lizbeth’s hand. “Dan came to see me the morning he died, before he drove out to Mumford County.” Lips parted, Lizbeth gave her a direct stare. “He told me he wanted to resign from Oldstone Manufacturing and move you and Chad to Florida.”
“He told you first?” Lizbeth’s words were strafed with competitiveness and disbelief.
“He was gauging my reaction, trying to see how much work was ahead of him. John used to do that. If John were alive, Dan would have gone to him first, then they’d have teamed up against me. John certainly learned the knack. Well,” she said, her tone shifting, “I wasn’t happy about Florida, and I told him so. But he’d done his research. He promised your new house would have a guest room with my name on it. He wanted me to come for long visits and opportunities to visit Geoff and Chad. He knew you weren’t happy about that separation. We all knew Geoff’s love for marine biology was not going to bring him back to Cassel. He would stay in Florida. Dan said he wanted his family together and didn’t I understand that? Well, of course, I did. He had me there.” She licked her lips. “He learned that kind of approach from his father. It was clear. I was being handled, and quite admirably.”
Arnett took a moment for the peevishness she felt to pass. Thankfully, Lizbeth didn’t fill the breach as Arnett thought she would.
“At that moment, it felt like I was hanging, swinging in the wind without a foot- or handhold in reach.” Her voice felt thick in her throat when she spoke again. “I lived for the times Gary and Dan came to see their father. I didn’t see them as often as I saw you and Marta. You’d come about the kids, one of their ailments, but the boys came to talk to John about house repairs, this car or that, sports, all the things that didn’t involve me. When John left—when I kicked him out,” she amended, “that connection was broken. Those conversations took place elsewhere. Everything was changing.” Arnett surprised herself with the words that came next. “
And it made me feel so very old.”
She gave Lizbeth a weak smile. “So Dan got off late to paint that morning. You were right to blame me. If he hadn’t come to see me, he probably would have finished earlier, before the storm hit. If I’d been a different kind of person—of mother—he wouldn’t have needed…”
Her confession faltered short of full disclosure, and Lizbeth closed her eyes. Her hand went limp in Arnett’s. Arnett’s face grew hot. She didn’t think Lizbeth slept. She wanted escape, a way to punish, of not offering forgiveness or understanding, of even pretending it.
Arnett laid Lizbeth’s hand on the spread and rose. Lizbeth would be sorry to learn that if she asked, Arnett would accept the quilt. She was ready, in her mind, to relate the quilt maker to the woman who saved her daughter-in-law’s life, not the woman who stole her husband. Arnett would sit with Chad and the quilt and tell him the story of the stormy night that reminded her of her father, and would never need to assume responsibility for the loss of his.
Would Lizbeth consent to this tiny twist of truth? Probably not. She was so righteous.
Arnett paused at the foot of the bed. Lizbeth’s breathing was light and regular. She seemed lost in slumber. A convenience, Arnett grumbled to herself, when I made such a sacrifice.
Walking through the bathroom to her room, she gathered towels and clothes permeated with the sickening smell of wet evergreen and went to the laundry nook.
. . .
The sound of a chainsaw chiseled into Lizbeth’s sleep. She pried her eyelids open. A brilliant sunshine glowed behind the white cotton curtains at the window. Rolling over and throwing off the covers, she found she slept in her bathrobe. A glass with a swallow of water sat on the bed table, her bottle of sleeping pills next to it. All at once, scenes from the night before snapped through her mind like narcotic-induced flashbacks. She dragged her legs over the mattress, then sat there for a moment while her head and stomach settled into a proper synch.
The cabin’s stillness told her it was empty. She padded barefoot to the screen door. All the activity took place in the yard. A small crowd tended to the felled tree. She closed her eyes at the sight, cringing again as she had last night. She was butt-first in the mud, gazing up at a sky cleaved by lighting with an evergreen plunging out of the gash. She pulled her knees up and crossed her arms protectively over her face. The whish went by her. She was left miraculously untouched.
She studied the outdoor scene again. The thirty-foot section of tree lay in Callie’s back yard like a whale belched up from the river. It dwarfed the people, especially small-of-stature Timothy O’Malley, who manned the chainsaw. His wife Eleanor, Sarah Prosser, and Lizbeth’s cabin mates dragged branches sliced off the pine to an established rubble pile at the far side of the drive.
Lizbeth felt as if her actions were somehow the cause for all the intense labor, although she knew she couldn’t be held responsible for the lightning strike. All she did was parade around in the storm like a crazed widow. She had vague recollections of Callie’s cut and bleeding face and Beebe’s comment about bumps and bruises. She pictured Callie’s battered face on the dust jacket covering the many chapters of Lizbeth’s recent and reckless behavior.
She shook her head. First the whale metaphor, then a roundabout way of judging a book by its cover. The senator would fire her the first day if he rehired her. “Perhaps,” she said, crossing back to her room, “I won’t give him the opportunity.”
Twenty minutes later, showered and dressed, she leaned back against the kitchen counter, nursing a glass of orange juice.
For days, she fussed at Arnett about the idea of moving to Florida. She threw some type of reverse, or perverse psychology into the mix: specifically, that Arnett accept the quilt. That was no longer a concern. After hearing Arnett’s midnight confession, Lizbeth had no option but to take the offer off the table. Dan wanted his family to live in Florida. So to Florida, Chad and she would go. Uncle Ralph and Aunt Mildred would take them in. She would join Uncle Ralph at Gibson Promotions, and Geoff would be less than three hours away. When she found her own place, she was quite sure she would renege on the guest-room promise.
Arnett selfishly kept her last conversation with Dan to herself for three months because it represented a scenario she didn’t want to see enacted. Clearly, her happiness superseded everyone else’s.
Lizbeth imagined Dan sitting on his mother’s couch, hands folded between his knees, speaking in his quiet no-nonsense voice. Arnett would know there was no changing his mind about Florida.
She raised the juice glass and toasted her decision. The corners of her mouth curled, imagining Arnett’s shock: First Dan mentioned Florida, then Lizbeth. Arnett must have thought Dan was communicating from the grave. Lizbeth froze. The nightmares. Had he been communicating from the grave?
Her gaze swept over to his photograph on the entryway table. With the glass held high in tribute, she said, “Message sent and received.” She drained the glass’s contents and set it firmly on the countertop. A clear, lucid, and unmistakable understanding infused her: That nightmare would never chase her again. It was ground into the sod beneath the fallen pine.
Lizbeth turned her ear toward the screened window over the sink. Sarah’s voice sifted through. “Wait. We should get these SUVs moved.”
Outside, Lucius’s truck, tailgate headed in, was lined up to pass the Tahoe and Santa Fe on the outside. His head hung out the window. “I think I can get around.” On the truck’s back panel, white lights were steady, red lights tapped out caution.
Timothy stepped into view. Belatedly, Lizbeth noted the chainsaw whined no more. Callie followed him. Together, they lifted a thick, rectangular piece of plywood from the truck bed and positioned it on the ground where the truck’s back wheels rolled over it and stopped. From the screen door, Lizbeth silently applauded this exercise in forethought. The wooden base prevented the truck’s back wheels from sinking into the saturated earth.
Reaching over the side wall, Timothy got his hands on another chainsaw while Lucius climbed down from the cab. His expression was devoid of its usual animation. He called to Callie, and she came back. Callie needed only one look at him to know, as Lizbeth had, that something was wrong. Her pace quickened. Her lips moved, but Lizbeth couldn’t hear her words. He draped an arm around Callie’s shoulders and walked her a few steps closer to Lizbeth’s vantage point. Neither seemed to notice her presence behind the mesh.
Lizbeth chewed her cheek with worry: Lucius was the bearer of bad news. She watched their faces in profile, their gazes locked on each other. Finally, Lucius began. With each phrase spoken, Callie’s chin dropped by increments to her chest. When her shoulders drooped, he pulled her to him and, more tenderly than Lizbeth could have imagined, kissed the top of her head. A moment later, they separated, and he led her to the planked porch and eased her down.
“Do you want me to sit a minute, button nose?” he asked.
Swiping at a tear, she shook her bowed head. He departed, eyes tipped to his boots.
Lizbeth’s heart ached with sympathy. She wanted desperately to learn the news, but Callie shooed Lucius away, so she respectfully held her position. Her hand flexed repeatedly against the door while Callie wept. Suddenly, Callie stopped crying. Strong, stoic Callie tilted her head back and drew in a long choppy breath. She slapped her hands resignedly against the faded knees of her Levis and rose. Instead of climbing the steps, Callie set a course through the yard to Sarah. Beebe, nearby, caught their conversation and joined them. Beebe said something, then lifted Callie’s chin with her fingertips and spoke again. Of course, Beebe would drill home whatever words of encouragement were needed. Having given the perfunctory nod, Callie turned and trudged toward the cabin.
When she cleared the top porch step, Lizbeth pushed th
e door open, her anxiety at full billow. “What happened, Callie? What’s wrong?”
Eyes red-rimmed, Callie heaved a belabored sigh. “Petey died last night.”
Even after the long buildup, Lizbeth was not prepared. “Oh, Callie, I’m so sorry.” Callie came inside, and Lizbeth wrapped her in a tight hug.
“She went peacefully, in her sleep. I need to get in touch with Nora. I left Petey Sarah’s number, just in case. Nora found it and called.”
Callie went to the kitchen sink. She pulled the long sleeves of her T-shirt away from her wrists and washed her hands. Lizbeth spent very little time with Dan’s step-grandmother, Petey Sebring, but she recognized Callie’s reference to her granddaughter, Nora Dobbs. Lizbeth knew neither of them well.
Turning off the water, Callie said, “It just so happened Nora called when Lucius was down at the office.”
“Did you tell Arnett?” Lizbeth asked. Petey Sebring was Arnett’s mother-in-law.
Callie spun around, the terry towel still in her hands. “I didn’t even think to tell Arnett.”
“Don’t worry about it. There’d be no display of sympathy. No love loss either. Hey, I was thinking of going into town. Your car’s blocked. I’ll drive you.” She turned on her heel and strode into the bedroom for her purse.
Callie trailed behind. “Thanks, Lizbeth, but with all that’s going on, I don’t want to go that far. Sarah said I could use her office phone.”
“Then I’ll drive you there and back, first.” The full-sized bed stood between them. Callie waited in the swath of light shining through the parted curtains at the bedroom window. It placed a long, bruised scratch and the chunk out of her cheek on display. “I’m sorry about last night, Callie. It all seems pretty hazy, but I know you probably saved my life while risking your own. Thank you doesn’t seem quite adequate.” She felt herself deflate. “I just don’t know why I went running out there.”
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