by Jodi Thomas
Luke tugged a picture from his vest pocket and handed it to Walker. The edges of the picture were worn and stained slightly from years of handling. “I found this, along with others, in Jefferson’s office.”
With Walker and my mother, I stared down at a picture of me in the third grade. I hadn’t seen it since the year it was taken. Nana had made me a plaid dress the week I had school pictures made. We thought I looked grand, but Henry saw no need for wasting money on pictures. This had to be the one that came free, clipped to the outside of the envelope.
“The pictures show that he kept up with her all through her childhood. He must have lost track of Nana and her when Allie’s grandfather died. I’ve a dozen people from the lake who remember hearing Jefferson talk about Allie.” Luke turned and stared at my mother. “You only filled him in on how they were. When you didn’t know where to locate them, he was finished talking to you.”
“You’re making this up,” Carla started, but Walker put his hand on her arm.
“I don’t think I’m prepared to call Agent Morgan a liar.” He straightened and picked up his case. “You’ll need to seek other counsel if you plan to continue.”
Carla wasn’t used to losing. If she couldn’t win, she could hurt. “Well, fine, take my property, but you’ll spend it all taking care of Nana. Something is wrong with her, real wrong.” She followed Walker out the door and slammed it hard for good measure.
I closed my eyes and said good-bye to the woman who’d never wanted to be my mother.
Luke’s arms circled me from behind and held me. He didn’t say anything. He just held tight.
Finally, I turned to face him. “Did you really find years of pictures of me?”
“I may not tell all I know sometimes, Allie, but I never lie. After the nine o’clock visit with Nana, come back to your place and I’ll show you.”
“Aren’t you going to stay around and go home with me?”
He shook his head. “No. I’m going home to clean up. Then we’ll talk.”
He kissed me gently and set me away from him. “I’ll be in Jefferson’s office waiting for you when you get home.”
I knew he was right. We had to wait. My first concern had to be Nana right now.
Luke walked me to the doors going into ICU. Without a word, I went inside. When I looked back, he was gone.
I checked with the nurse, then went into Nana’s room. She looked so weak, almost held captive by machines. The nurse told me she’d had a good night and was scheduled for tests all morning. She also said that by evening, if all went well, she might be in a regular room.
I wrapped my fingers around her arm just below the bandages and watched her sleep. “I need you so much,” I said, wondering if she could hear me.
Without opening her eyes, she covered my hand with hers and patted three times.
I smiled as tears ran. “I love you, too.”
Chapter 43
0945 hours
Jefferson’s Crossing
Luke spread the pictures of Allie out on the old Hunter desk in Jefferson’s office. Twelve pictures, each dated, looked back at him. He also found a few letters, notes really, telling about how grand Allie was.
He read each carefully, feeling like he was trespassing on someone else’s memories. Nana had signed each note “forever, e.” Nothing more. Carla had said the postcards were signed with the same word. Maybe that was all either of them needed to say. Maybe they both knew. This was no wild affair. This was simply a shared memory, never forgotten, always cherished.
He heard Allie open the door, but he didn’t turn around. The rainy-day air blew in around him, but he could feel her warmth before she brushed her hand along his shoulder. Luke smiled, knowing he’d never tire of her touch.
“I still don’t understand,” she said as she moved around him and stared at the pictures.
“It took me awhile to put it all together,” Luke whispered, as if invading Jefferson’s privacy by discussing it. “I think it was Willie mentioning that my grandfather used to call Jefferson ‘Red’ that made the pieces finally fit together. I’d heard Nana tell her story of her week at a lake with a boy named Red. She told me over breakfast about how they’d talked until sunrise. She couldn’t remember exactly where the lake had been located. They’d met that summer and kept in touch by one note and one postcard a year.”
“Odd. Nana never mentioned anything about keeping in touch with anyone from her past. If she did, I don’t think Henry even knew about it. The postcards were just there once in a while.”
“It’s more than that.” Luke closed his fingers gently over her shoulder. “I think they lived a lifetime together in their hearts.”
“No.” Allie stopped, then whispered, “Maybe.”
“Jokingly she told me once that she couldn’t marry me because she was sleeping with a memory.” Luke pulled Allie against him. “I think they fell in love that week but life kept them apart. She wouldn’t leave your grandfather or maybe Jefferson wouldn’t ask. First she had to raise Carla, and then you. Or maybe they were both happy with the way it was. For them, they had sixty years of being sixteen in their memories.”
Allie smiled up at him. “I wish such a thing could be true. It would have made my Nana’s life so much richer. But it can’t be, and these few pictures prove only that she knew him and wrote him once in a while.”
“They might not have written hot love letters, but she wrote him of what she loved-you. They shared that.” Luke knew he was sounding like a poet, but he saw the truth. “In a way, she gave him a little part of what she loved most. She gave him you.”
Allie shook her head. “I can’t believe that. Maybe he knew Nana. Maybe he was the boy who took her to the fireworks and the fair when she was sixteen, but that was all. He had no other relatives. I was just a name to fill in on the will.”
Luke took her hand and tugged her over to the old potbellied stove. He knelt down by the safe everyone used as a stool. “What’s your birthday, Allie?”
She told him.
He entered the numbers and twisted the dial. The safe clicked open.
Allie dropped to her knees beside him and looked inside. A wind chime exactly like the one her grandmother had lay inside.
“Still think you were someone he just wrote down?”
Allie pulled the wind chime out. “But why me?”
“Maybe he knew that you’d bring Nana back here where she’d always been in her dreams.”
Luke left her staring at the wind chime and walked to the door. He locked it, then flipped off the lights. Without asking, he lifted her in his arms and carried her up to her bed. There, he lay down beside her, and pulled the covers over them both.
She was silent for a long time, then she began to talk, piecing the story of Edna and Red together as if it belonged in a love story. The wind chime and the postcards were all Nana had of him, yet she’d tossed the cards away when Henry said they were clutter. Maybe she didn’t need them as a reminder. Maybe she just knew he was still thinking of her.
Allie talked of how hard it must have been on her to slip one letter a year to him. Henry never talked much, but Allie said she had a feeling he wouldn’t have stood for it. He was older than Nana and always treated her as if she were his child when he talked to her.
Finally, Allie talked herself to sleep and Luke drifted off beside her. His last thought was that maybe he understood about the way Jefferson felt about Nana because he knew he felt the same about Allie. It wouldn’t matter if they were separated tomorrow, she’d still remain in his memory.
Chapter 44
I awoke to an afternoon of rain tapping on the window. Glancing at the clock, I counted down two hours before I could go back into ICU and check on Nana.
Suddenly, I smiled. I’d always thought of Nana as being alone, even when Henry was still alive, but now-now that I knew about Jefferson-she didn’t seem so alone. The thousand times she’d brushed the wind chime in her kitchen window she must have been thinking of him. Maybe
even living a parallel life in her mind with the boy she’d met the first summer after Pearl Harbor. A boy who’d taken her to a fair and won two wind chimes so they’d have the same music in both their worlds.
I straightened, stretching. The feel of the man next to me was all too real. I shifted so that I could see his sleeping face. I had a hundred questions I wanted to ask him about what had happened last night, but I couldn’t bring myself to wake him. Deep down I knew I’d sleep with this man and make wild, passionate love to him for years to come, so right now it was enough just to know he was near.
I cuddled closer. He laid his arm over me, keeping me safe even while he slept.
A tapping sounded from below. I didn’t move, hoping whoever it was would go away.
The tapping came again.
Luke groaned. “Tell them to go away,” he muttered.
I giggled when the tapping turned to a rap.
“I’m not moving,” he said, sounding more awake even though his body hadn’t shifted an inch.
I slipped away. “Good, you stay here. I’ll see who it is and be right back.”
He tried to snag me with his arm, but I jumped out of bed and hurried downstairs. I knew if I looked back I’d forget about who kept rapping.
When I opened the door, Mrs. Deals stood before me. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” I said as I ushered her in. “I forgot today is your cookie day.”
She folded up her umbrella. “I didn’t come to shop. You got a call from the hospital and I came to deliver the message.”
I held my breath and waited.
She took a moment to snap the strap around the umbrella, then continued, “I’m to tell you that your grandmother is being moved to a private room and you can bring up a few of her things if you like.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Deals, for coming all this way to tell me.”
“You’re welcome,” she said without a smile. Then she added in a yell as if I’d gone suddenly deaf, “I also have a message to deliver to Luke if you see him. Tell him they have Sheriff Fletcher in custody.”
I turned to see Luke at the top of the stairs. His hair stuck up on one side and his shirt was unbuttoned. He looked exactly like what he was-a man who’d just crawled out of bed. My bed.
“I can hear you just fine, Mrs. Deals. You don’t have to yell.”
She crossed her hands over her chest and looked quite satisfied.
“How’d you know he was here?” I asked without thinking.
“I just guessed.” Mrs. Deals smiled. “I knew if he had any sense he’d be here. And if there is one thing Luke Morgan has always had it’s sense.”
Luke walked down the stairs. “Thanks.” He nodded once. “Is that all you know about Fletcher?”
Mrs. Deals shrugged. “Willie told me you and he guessed the sheriff might be behind the drug trafficking on the lake after you found out he always made personal deliveries of Jefferson’s medicine. You didn’t know it for a fact until he showed up at the jail demanding to talk to the three snakes you caught last night.”
“The sheriff was connected with the drugs?” No one seemed to hear me. “He delivered Jefferson’s medicine?”
Mrs. Deals’s gaze never left Luke. “He picked up the medicine, but didn’t bother delivering it until after Jefferson was dead. Everyone knew the old man was forgetful about taking it, but if it wasn’t there to remind him, Jefferson probably didn’t notice the months passing without it.”
Luke shrugged. “We’ll never be able to prove that the sheriff hung on to Jefferson’s medicine, but I bet he knew the old man sometimes lost his balance when he didn’t take it. I don’t guess it matters now. We’ve got enough to put Fletcher away for the rest of his life. Two of the three guys we rounded up last night have already turned on him.”
Mrs. Deals stared at Luke. “Good work, Agent Morgan.”
“Thank you,” Luke said. “I was trained by the best.”
She smiled. “That you were.”
Something silent and deep passed between them. An understanding. A forgiveness.
Finally, she turned to me and said, “Since I’m here, I think I’d like a box of Milano cookies, if you have any?”
“It just happens I do.” I grinned.
She walked out without another word. Willie and the Landry brothers rushed in before the door closed. While they drank coffee and talked about every detail that had happened the night before, I walked around the store trying to think what I could take to the hospital to make Nana feel more at home.
In the end, I packed two things.
An hour later I sat on the edge of her bed and used a razor to cut out the sketches in my ledger.
Luke hung the wind chime by the window, then we taped up each picture. The lake at night. The clouds reflecting over the water. Luke by the fire. The Landrys waiting for their breakfast by the end of the dock. Timothy sitting all alone in the middle of his boat. Mary Lynn and Paul having tea. Nana making bread. Willie and Nana snapping peas on the porch. The first night’s dinner with the tables set for one. The Nesters circling Dillon as he huddled near the stove.
Our life on the lake covered her walls.
About the time the doctor asked me if he could talk to me in the hallway, the Nesters started pouring in. Nana told them all she was fine, but they fussed over her anyway. They all brought gifts. Mary Lynn and Paul brought flowers. Mrs. Deals brought a book of poetry. Timothy brought a CD player for her and the Landry brothers brought rocks from the shoreline so she could still feel close to the water.
I stepped out and listened to the doctor tell me the details of patching her up in words I didn’t understand. In the end, he added, “We’ll need more tests, but I think you know that your grandmother is slipping into dementia.”
I’d known. As slow as one grain of sand falling at a time in an hourglass, her memory had been slipping. “How long?”
The doctor shook his head. “I can prescribe medicine that will slow the progression, but it will still come. What would you like to do? I can suggest some care facilities.”
I smiled. “I’d like to take her home. We’ll care for her there for as long as we can.”
He nodded as if he felt sorry for me. We talked on until his pager went off and he had to go. I went back into Nana’s room and sat on the bed next to her, listening to everyone talk about all the excitement on the lake.
When visiting hours were over, Luke stepped out to walk everyone to their cars and suddenly I was alone with Nana.
I hugged her. “I have to go, too. Will you be all right here tonight?”
She smiled at the drawings. “You’re a great artist, Allie. I’ll feel right at home.”
I kissed her cheek as she curled down into the covers. “Good night,” I whispered thinking I’d never have a more important showing of my work than right here.
“Good night, Flo,” she answered, and I knew she was slipping again into another time and another place.
I smiled down at her, brushing her hair lightly with my fingers. “I’m here, Nana. You’re home. We’re all home.”
It crossed my mind that maybe all of life isn’t lived in the present. Maybe a tiny part of it is lived in the heart.
JODI THOMAS
***
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