A Gift of Grace

by Cooper, Inglath

  A car drove down the street, the headlights flitting through Sophie’s bedroom window.

  “At first, it felt wrong,” he said. “That I might be happy. And I guess it seemed especially wrong that it might be with you. As if it would take something away from what happened to Laney.”

  He paused and then said, “But she wasn’t like that. She would look for the positive in a situation. Figure out how to make that the end result.”

  Sophie sat up against her pillow.

  “So,” he went on, before she could find anything to say, “I was wondering if I could take you and Grace to dinner tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night,” she said. “That would be nice.”

  “Okay, then. It’s a date.”

  “It’s a date.”

  They were both quiet for a moment, as if absorbing all that had just been said and the implications of it.

  “I’ll pick you up at six,” he said finally.

  “We’ll be ready.”

  THEY WENT OUT THAT NIGHT. And the next.

  They took Grace, and it was scary how quickly it began to feel normal. The three of them.

  Both nights, Caleb helped put Grace to bed, and they came back downstairs, sat outside and talked. About everything. Big stuff. Little stuff. Just talked.

  And then there was the kissing. They did plenty of that. To the point that it was painful not to do more.

  But they didn’t.

  By some unspoken consent, they made out like teenagers, and then he went home.

  They went out every night for a week, twice without Grace. Once to a movie and the other time to a low-key restaurant forty-five minutes outside of Charlottesville that had become a find for gourmets in the know. The food was wonderful, wall sconces throwing soft light across the tables, the scent of garlic and rosemary drifting from the kitchen.

  Sometimes, Sophie felt she might blink and it would all disappear. She was happy with whatever it was they had. She didn’t put a label on it, wouldn’t have known what to call it had she allowed herself to do so.

  But there were a few nights, after all the lights were out, when one question refused to be silenced.

  How long could it last?

  THE ANSWER MADE ITSELF known the following Saturday.

  There was a new place just off Highway 29, home-style cooking in an old renovated log cabin. It had become popular with locals since it had opened in late spring. Caleb had been told they made a great cherry pie, and Grace loved cherry pie.

  They’d finished their dinner and were waiting for dessert. Caleb and Grace were playing tic-tac-toe with crayons on the paper tablecloth when a woman came over to their table, a reluctant-looking man standing behind her.

  “Hello,” Sophie said, smiling under the assumption that Caleb must know her.

  “You truly have no shame, do you?” the woman said.

  Caleb looked up, putting the crayon in his hand on the table. “Mary. This isn’t the place.”

  “But it is a place for you to flaunt your disrespect for my daughter?”

  Caleb stood, the movement quiet and steady. He put one hand on Sophie’s shoulder, the other on Grace’s. “Don’t do this, Mary. You’re about to hurt the wrong people.”

  “You’re the one doing the hurting, Caleb. How could you have anything to do with that child, knowing where she came from? How could you do that to Laney?”

  Sophie gasped, pushed back her chair and stepped behind Caleb to grab Grace up in her arms. She all but ran from the restaurant, not stopping until they had reached Caleb’s truck.

  Grace cried into her shoulder.

  “Shh, honey. It’s okay.” Sophie smoothed the child’s hair. “Everything is okay.”

  “That woman scared me,” Grace said, her voice shaking. “Who is she?”

  “Someone who’s not very happy, baby.”

  Sophie walked Grace across the pavement, rubbing her back until her crying softened to sniffles.

  Caleb came out, stood next to them, his face set in merging lines of pain and anger. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  She looked up at him, wiping her hand across one eye. “Take us home, Caleb,” she said. “Please. Just take us home.”

  GRACE WAS ASLEEP.

  Caleb waited downstairs for Sophie to return. He stood in the middle of the living room feeling like a man who’d just had his world blown apart. The pieces lay all around them and he didn’t even know how to begin to pick them up.

  He heard her come down the stairs. She stopped just inside the doorway.

  “What do I say?” She shook her head. “How do I explain to Grace what that was about?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. And he was. So sorry.

  “Grace is only three. How could she have said those things to her?” Sophie’s voice broke.

  Caleb crossed the floor and pulled her into his arms. “I never intended for either of you to be hurt like this. Even at the beginning of the custody stuff when I didn’t know you, I didn’t want to cause anyone pain. But now…I can’t do this to you. To Grace.”

  He dropped his hands to his sides even as he wanted to pull her into his arms.

  Tears ran down Sophie’s face, her eyes a well of misery.

  With that image searing his heart, he walked out the front door and forced himself not to look back.

  SHE STOOD AT THE WINDOW, watching Caleb pull away.

  She thought about the walk back from the creek the night they’d made love, the moment they’d come in sight of his house and he’d let go of her hand. Maybe he’d known all along that it would never work.

  She climbed the stairs and went into Grace’s room. She stood there for a few moments, taking in the child’s sweet innocence. She carried Grace into her own room and got into bed. Grace stirred in her arms, made a soft snuffling noise and curled closer.

  Sophie lay there, wide awake, holding her daughter until the sun rose.

  CALEB COULDN’T SLEEP.

  He sat up in one of the living-room chairs, replaying everything that had happened in that restaurant. Regret settled like acid in his stomach for the pain he had caused Sophie and Grace.

  He wished for some way to rewind things, stop Mary from having said those awful things in front of them.

  But it would remain in their memory like a permanent fingerprint. And he was responsible.

  He had once been willing to let himself settle into the mire of what might have been. But he knew now there was nothing down that road but bitterness and anger. This was the road Laney’s mother had chosen, and he felt sorry for her.

  Not so long ago, Caleb had felt what Mary felt. He knew the power of that kind of anger, its ability to eat a hole inside every effort he’d made to move on with his life.

  And that was exactly what he wanted to do now.

  Move on with his life.

  But first, there was something he had to do.

  IT WAS EARLY MORNING when Caleb pulled into the Scotts’ driveway.

  Leo, the family’s ancient beagle, lay on the front porch. He got to his feet at Caleb’s arrival, gave a token rusty bark, then lay back down, dropping his head on his paws. He watched Caleb get out of the truck, thumping his tail in recognition.

  Caleb climbed the steps, rubbed the old dog under the chin, then knocked on the door.

  Emmitt Scott answered. “Come on in, Caleb,” he said, as if he’d been expecting him. They shook hands and Caleb felt apology in the other man’s grip.

  Caleb followed Emmitt through the foyer and into the living room. Pictures of Laney were everywhere, like a shrine, and Caleb thought how this was not what she would have wanted for her mother and father.

  Heels sounded on the hardwood floor of the hallway, and Mary came into the living room, an apron tied around her waist. Her face was set, her voice clipped when she said, “What are you doing here, Caleb?”

  “I think we need to talk, Mary. That maybe we’ve needed to talk for a long time.”

  Emmitt left the room, m
aking it clear that this was between Caleb and Mary.

  Once he’d gone, Caleb said quietly, “I lost my wife. And I’ve grieved for her in my own way, Mary. My way. Not yours. You think because our ways are different that mine hasn’t been as sincere or as respectful.”

  Mary’s face reddened. “I never said—”

  “You didn’t have to say,” he interrupted. “It’s pretty clear. I would do anything to change what happened to Laney. Anything. But I can’t go back and redo that day. All I can do is go on from here.”

  Mary held his gaze for several long moments, then glanced down at her hands.

  “I believe I was wrong to give her child away,” Caleb went on. “What I did was selfish. For me, not her. I can’t change that, either. Grace has a wonderful, generous mother who is willing to let me have a place in her daughter’s life. I’m grateful for that because it’s what I think Laney would have wanted. There’s so much of Laney in her, Mary. And that’s what I see when I look at her. If you would let yourself, you might see it, too.”

  Mary stared at him. “And the child’s mother? What is she going to be to you?”

  The questions were blunt, and Caleb could see the hurt in Mary’s eyes. She’d had more than enough pain in her life and he didn’t want to add more. But he also needed to be honest. “Whatever she wants to be,” he said softly.

  Caleb left the house then and drove back down the gravel road. He had done what he could. Mary could change. Let go of all the anger that held her prisoner. Or not. And if she didn’t, it would be her loss.

  THE CAR HAD BEEN PACKED since eight. Sophie couldn’t spend the day wondering if and when she would ever see or hear from Caleb again. And so she had decided to take Grace out to Carson Lake. Grace was so excited, she’d barely eaten her breakfast.

  The doorbell rang and Grace jumped down from the kitchen chair. “I’ll get it, Mama.”

  She ran to the foyer, calling back, “It’s Caleb!”

  Sophie walked into the foyer, forcing calm into her composure and step.

  Caleb stood framed in the doorway, holding a smiling Grace.

  “Looks like I’ve come at a bad time.”

  There was something different in his voice, in the way he held Grace with a natural affection that twisted Sophie’s heart. “We were going to the lake,” she said.

  “That sounds fun,” he said.

  “Mama, Caleb can go with us!” Grace said, clapping her hands together.

  “I’d like to go,” Caleb said. “Could we please talk first, Sophie?”

  She could manage to say nothing more than, “Of course.”

  “Let’s go out back.”

  Outside, he set Grace up in her sandbox, Lily supervising from the nearby grass. He walked over to where Sophie stood on the stone patio, taking her hand and leading her to the teak bench, where they both sat down.

  “I’m not sure where I should start,” he said, meeting her gaze full-on. “I feel like I’ve lived the last three years of my life in a fog, and I couldn’t see an inch past what was right in front of my face. But I didn’t care, because I didn’t want to know what was out there. You and Grace changed that for me. And I don’t want to go back to that place again.”

  The words pulled at something painful inside her, something she’d been holding tightly like a clenched fist, but now it began to loosen and unravel. She couldn’t look at him.

  He reached out to turn her face to him. “I’m sorry for everything Mary said, sorrier than I can ever say that you and Grace were hurt by that.”

  “We can’t change what other people think, Caleb,” she said. “I learned that a long time ago from my aunt. She always saw the glass as half empty. Refused to look for the good in anything. That’s who she was. She resented having to take care of me after my parents died. And there were times when her bitterness made me feel there was something wrong with me. After a lifetime of feeling guilty, I’ve finally realized I did nothing wrong. I was just a child who needed a family. And the same is true for Grace. I won’t let her grow up feeling there’s something wrong with her. I won’t.”

  Caleb was silent for a moment. “Terrible things happen in this world. Things we never see coming, things that change us forever. I have to believe, though, that there is good to be found. Grace is proof of that. That sometimes good can come from the worst times in our lives.”

  The conviction in his voice threaded its way through her heart. She was filled with the sudden knowledge that she and Caleb understood one another. Had traveled these last three years to arrive at the same place. Forever changed by a little girl whose existence they both chose to see as a blessing.

  “And us.” He stroked her hair. “This is good, too, Sophie. This is good.”

  She looked up at him, the words like a balm, soothing the pain of what had happened last night. Sophie thought of Laney, of the awful thing that had happened to her. That tragedy had brought Grace into this world. She thought, too, of her own fear of losing Grace and of how their lives had become inextricably entwined with Caleb’s. Of how full her life felt with him in it. To be sure, there would be hard things to explain to Grace someday. Painful things. Sophie could only trust that when her daughter’s questions came, as they surely would, God would provide her with the answers to give Grace peace.

  “Sophie, I want you and Grace in my life,” Caleb said now. “In whatever way I can have you.”

  There was good to be found. As Caleb had said, even in the cruelest of life’s blows. Maybe a person could let the bad things be the final outcome. Or maybe they could choose to see the good. This was the choice he had made. It was going to be her choice, as well.

  “Caleb,” she said, everything she felt coming through in that single utterance of his name.

  He reached for her then. She let herself be folded into his embrace, pressed her face to his chest and knew that this was where she was supposed to be. This had been the destination at the end of the long, curving road that had brought the two of them together.

  It was a beginning. Or maybe a middle. Either way, a gift.

  ISBN: 978-1-4592-1848-2

  A GIFT OF GRACE

  Copyright © 2006 by Inglath Cooper.

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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