by Edie Claire
"All of a sudden," she continued. "I felt like the walls were closing in on me, and I had to get out of there. I’m sorry if I upset you. I don’t usually get so out of sorts."
"Don’t apologize," he said softly. "You had any number of reasons to be out of sorts. You still do."
She stiffened slightly. "It was a long time ago."
"That doesn’t matter," he insisted. "You feel what you feel. The kind of pain you suffered doesn’t go away just because you want it to. Don’t be so hard on yourself."
The effect of his last six words, so unexpected, so abrupt, engraved itself in his mind. Her expression clouded, and her muscles tensed. Her unspoken response was plain.
But I deserve it.
She stood up with a jerk and began collecting her trash from the table. "Let’s go," she said without enthusiasm. "It’s a long drive, and I want to make sure you have plenty of time in Atlanta."
Adam remained sitting, mired in disbelief. Seeing fear in Sarah was bad enough, but what he had just seen was worse.
He rose. Sarah was good at pretending. But not good enough. Deep in her beautiful, tortured eyes, he could see a woman drowning.
And he was in way over his head.
Chapter 15
Sarah’s grandmother’s frail chest rose beneath the thin pink blanket, then fell again. Sarah realized that she had been regulating her own breathing to match. She wasn’t surprised. There was little else to do.
Elayna Bird hadn’t recognized her granddaughter in years; now she didn’t recognize anyone. She wasn’t able to speak. She rarely made eye contact. Alzheimer’s disease had claimed her brain many years ago, but cruelly, the disease was taking its time with the rest of her. At seventy-eight, her stubborn heart was still strong.
Sarah held the older woman’s hand beneath the blanket. Her mother’s mother had been another casualty of the family tragedy, though at the time, Elayna’s deterioration had gone largely unnoticed. What seemed a normal grief response had melded slowly into dementia, with no one, including Sarah, ever being certain which had come first. All she had known back then was that her once-strong Grandma was no longer someone she could lean on. Elayna had needed too much help herself.
Today she seemed no different, no better and no worse, than when Sarah had last visited five months ago. Sarah always checked on her at least that often, though Elayna’s son was probably not aware of it. He certainly wasn’t aware that Sarah also called the facility regularly to ask about him—had he been visiting? Did he inquire about his mother’s care?—and that Sarah’s watchdog at the front desk consistently reported in the affirmative.
Sarah’s motives in wanting to know were selfish. She would prefer her grandmother be nearer to her, so that she could avoid driving even this far south. But Elayna had always lived in Georgia, and despite Dwight Bird’s grating personality, she had always been close to her only son. As the granddaughter, Sarah didn’t feel it was her place to separate them, even if she was picking up the tab.
The room was pleasant and bright, the atmosphere of the home, peaceful. It wasn’t an unpleasant place to spend a Sunday morning, yet Sarah found herself feeling antsy. She wondered what Adam was doing.
The last twenty-four hours had been so bizarre, they seemed to have left her in a low grade of shock. The dichotomy between morning and afternoon had been extreme, and in the rational light of a new day, she couldn’t help but wonder if both had actually happened.
She had dreaded the drive from Auburn back to Atlanta, certain that Adam would hound her with unanswerable questions every mile of the way. But after their discussion in the restaurant he seemed to undergo a curious change of heart. He didn’t ask her anything. Instead he had hopped into the car and proposed that neither of them mention the ordeal the rest of the day. The proposal had been an easy one to accept, but whether she talked about the morning or not, Sarah was certain that nothing could remove the pall it had cast over her.
She had been wrong.
Adam had done it, somehow. Perhaps it was because she was too emotionally drained to fight him anymore, or perhaps it was some subconscious act of rebellion. Whatever motivated her, she had done what she had sworn she wouldn’t do. She had let her guard down.
How could she not, when Adam’s enthusiasm for a simple afternoon of sightseeing had been so contagious? All the rest of the day he had been like a kid in a candy store, delighting in every facet of the rich Southern scenery around him, packing as much activity as he could into every sun-baked minute. He had also been downright devious—always claiming he would take her to the motel after just one short side trip, then another. She knew what he was doing, but she didn’t resist. He seemed to genuinely want to make her happy—to see her laugh. And after all she had put him through, she figured that, for one afternoon, she could oblige him.
She had lived in the area for seventeen years, but until yesterday she had never seen Northwest Georgia from the top of Stone Mountain. One idle mention of this fact to Adam had resulted in her being hustled onto the park’s skylift, and as he stared wistfully out at the hikers below she got the impression that if not for her iffy health, he would have coerced her to scale the beast on the walk-up trail.
He had stopped the car at every historical marker and scenic viewpoint he could find—and some he only imagined—and when they had finally reached Atlanta he had begged for a guided tour of the Underground, then topped it off with a Jamaican dinner and some live reggae music. He hadn’t returned her to the motel until after ten o’clock, at which time she had fallen into bed with her sides aching from laughter, feeling as though she had traveled to the Land of Oz, and that in the morning all would be black and white again.
When she awoke, she realized she was right.
"Sarah?"
A familiar male voice, high-pitched and nasally, met her ears. Her chin jerked up. There in the doorway, looking as shocked as she felt, stood her uncle. All five feet, seven inches of him. Portly and bald, except for a wispy, combed-over gray crown.
"I can’t believe it’s you," he said with a polite, yet self-conscious smile. "You should have told me you were coming."
She swallowed. She had gone to great effort to avoid such a confrontation. She had been informed he didn't usually visit on Sundays. "It was a last-minute trip," she explained.
He walked up to the other side of the bed. Sarah turned her eyes toward her grandmother. She could feel his looking at her.
"They tell me you come down every once in a while," he said, his voice stiff. "Guess I was lucky to catch you today. I check in a couple times a week, of course, but usually after work. Weekends are pretty busy for me."
Sarah did not take the bait. Her uncle’s favorite hobby was cruising flea markets for old toy cars and Coke paraphernalia, and he could discuss the topic incessantly.
He cleared his throat. "Your grandma’s holding her own. She’d be healthy as a horse if it weren’t for the Alzheimer’s—at least that’s what the doctors keep saying. But I just try to make sure she’s comfortable."
Sarah nodded. "I think she is."
Another silence descended. Sarah knew the question would come eventually. The fact that it came before a "how are you" or "what have you been doing lately" was entirely in character.
"So," he began, moving to drop his pear-shaped form onto the window seat. "Have you sold that house yet?"
Sarah shifted in her chair. "As a matter of fact," she announced without enthusiasm, "Yes. I sold it to the county."
"The county?" he exclaimed with disdain. His voice was loud and sharp, and Elayna’s hand tensed slightly, as if the sound had startled her. "Why in the devil would you do that? They won’t pay you anything. Was it condemned?"
Sarah lowered her own voice to a whisper. She knew that what was left of her grandmother’s brain couldn’t follow their conversation, but if the woman could be affected by tones of voice, she didn’t want to upset her. "In a manner of speaking. They’re extending the bypass. They took it
by eminent domain."
He swore. "Did you get anything for it?"
Sarah tried to control her ire. Her uncle wasn’t an evil person, but for whatever reason, they had always been like oil and water. She couldn’t be in the same room with the man for more than five minutes without wanting to strangle him. She had felt that way ever since she was a teenager, and the years hadn’t changed a thing.
"The compensation was fair. I hired an attorney to make sure of it."
His eyes widened with surprise. "Well," he said finally. "That’s good. What about the furniture and everything? Last time I drove by, the place was a wreck. I wasn’t sure there’d be anything left."
Sarah cleared her throat. There wasn’t much point in lying to him. Lying took brainpower, and what she had left of that, she needed to save for Adam. "I took some keepsakes, but vandals had already picked the place over pretty thoroughly."
He let out an exasperated sigh. "I told you that would happen, didn’t I? I kept telling Karen we had to push you about selling, but she was as stubborn as you were. ‘It has to be Sarah’s decision,’ she’d say. Now look what's happened."
"Nothing's happened," Sarah returned coldly. Keeping her temper was tougher when he started in on her aunt. She hated that. "I don’t need the furniture, and money isn’t an issue, so you don’t have to worry about it."
He sighed again. "I just thank God your parents had good life insurance."
Her teeth gritted. For her uncle, "thank God" was an empty expression. None of her mother’s relatives knew a mass from a bar mitzvah, but they all claimed to be Catholic when it was convenient.
"So," he continued, his tone brightening, "You moved to Pittsburgh, eh? How do you like it up there?"
She tried to calm her nerves. He was asking about her life. That was something new. When she had sent him the token change-of-address card, she wasn’t sure he would read it. "I’m still settling in," she answered, "but so far I like it. The job is working out well. I’m a manager now—for older adult services."
He nodded, seemingly impressed. She realized she hadn’t asked anything about his life, either. "Are you still working with the same firm?" she inquired. He was a CPA, and as far as she knew, he had had the same job since the eighties.
He nodded again. "Oh yeah. But I’m getting ready to retire in a couple years."
She smiled a little. "And be free to hit the flea markets seven days a week? Are you sure that’s wise?"
He grinned back. "I’ll take Wednesdays off. Got to do some fishing, too, you know."
She breathed a little easier. There was something she had wanted to ask him for a long time, and the moment seemed right. "Do you," she began tentatively, "ever hear from Karen?"
His puffy cheeks reddened. "No," he said with an artificial cough, hiding his face behind his hand. "Not directly. But I did run into a friend of hers a couple months ago. I thought she was getting married again, but apparently she didn’t. The friend said she’d gotten a new job over in Charlotte."
"You don’t have her address?"
He shook his head, then looked at Sarah suspiciously. "Why? You want to look her up?"
Sarah’s eyes met his. "She was a good friend to me."
He didn’t answer for a moment. He looked disgusted. "Karen didn’t do you any favors, honey, catering to your teenaged whims. She handled things wrong from the start. If it had been up to me, I would never have let you girls stay alone in that house in the first place."
Red heat flashed behind Sarah’s eyes. She felt the urge to fly up out of her chair, but she didn’t want to let go of her grandmother’s hand. It was the only thing keeping her calm.
Her parents had died in the spring of her senior year; her aunt and uncle had lived over two hours away. All she had wanted was to stay in Auburn long enough to graduate from high school, to be with her classmates, to feel normal. Dee was nineteen and had a full-time job. There was no reason to uproot them.
Her aunt had understood that. Right after it happened, Karen and Dwight had taken a week of vacation, moved into the house, and stayed with their nieces through the funeral. But afterward, the couple had had to return to Georgia. Karen had been concerned about leaving the girls alone, but Dee seemed to be taking everything as well as could be expected, and after much discussion they had agreed that Karen would come and stay with them on the weekends for a while. But Sarah’s uncle had staunchly objected. He didn’t want to spend his weekends alone, and he certainly didn’t want to spend them in Auburn. He was adamant that the girls sell the house and move in with them.
Sarah’s aunt had prevailed. But before the next weekend rolled around, Dee was dead.
"It was not Karen’s fault," Sarah hissed. "She did what she thought was best. She cared about both of us."
He threw her the sort of look one normally reserved for an uppity child. "She did care, but the woman had no backbone. She just did whatever you asked her to. I kept telling her you were just a kid—you didn’t know what was best for yourself. If it had been up to me, you never would have gone to college so far away, either, I’ll tell you that. I thought you should have stayed right here and been forced to deal with it all, but Karen let you run, and look what good it did you."
Sarah’s muscles tensed. She tried to focus on her grandmother’s hand. "Would you like to rephrase that?"
Her uncle had the decency to seem embarrassed. "I didn’t mean to insult you. But for God’s sake, Sarah, you weren’t right for years. You’d come back from college and people would try to talk to you, and every time you’d go pale as a ghost. People were always asking me if you were in some kind of therapy. How the hell would I know, when you were all the way up in Illinois? If you’d stayed down here, we could have at least kept an eye on you."
"I was a financially independent, legal adult," she reminded. "It wasn’t your decision."
He sighed with a groan, but said nothing more.
Sarah gave herself a moment to cool down. "For your information, I’m doing splendidly now. I have a successful career that I enjoy, and I’ve even bought a house of my own. I flew down for the weekend just to settle things in Auburn—I visited the cemetery and made sure the graves were being tended, and the house has been sold now. So everything’s fine."
His eyes widened. "You flew down?"
She allowed herself a smidgen of pride. "That’s what I said."
He pursed his lips. "Well, that’s progress, I’d say. You have a boyfriend or anything?"
She stiffened again. The man seemed programmed to irritate her. She toyed with the idea of claiming to be a lesbian, just to watch the ensuing apoplexy. But she had listened to enough criticism already. "Not at the moment."
"That’s too bad," he responded, seemingly genuinely disappointed. "Mother would want great-grandchildren, and there’s no hope left for me." He surveyed her critically. "A pretty girl like you wouldn’t have any trouble snagging a man if you’d lift your nose out of the books once in a while. Why would you want to work with older adults, anyway?"
She stole a glance at her watch. Adam was supposed to pick her up at noon. She hated to shorten her visit with her grandmother, but her patience was at its end. If she couldn’t kick her uncle out of the room, she would be better off waiting in the lobby.
"I enjoy working with older people for a lot of reasons," she answered. She gave her grandmother’s hand a squeeze and rose. "I should be going now, but I’ll be back in a few months. If she needs anything in the meantime, let me know."
He bristled. "I’ll take care of whatever she needs. I always do."
Sarah looked back at him. The care issue would forever be a thorn between them. He had wanted his mother’s own money to support her. He was willing to chip in if her reserves gave out before she did, but only if the facility selected was a "reasonably priced" one. Sarah had wanted her grandmother to have the best, she could afford to provide it, and she had insisted on doing so. But in his mind, his niece’s largesse was emasculating.
> "I know you will," she responded. She bent down and kissed her grandmother on the forehead, then turned to leave. "Well, it was good to run into you again. I suppose I’ll see you later."
"Sarah?" he said pointedly.
His tone stopped her. She whirled to face him.
He stammered, seeming uncomfortable. "I haven’t talked to Karen in years, you know, but the last time I did, she asked about you. I was thinking maybe—well, if you wanted to give her a call sometime, I’m sure she’d be happy to hear from you. I don’t have her number, but it’s probably listed in Charlotte. She took back her maiden name. It’s Karen Beaver."
An unexpected warmth pulsed through Sarah.
The man really did care.
"Thank you," she answered. "I would like to talk to her sometime. I’d like that very much."
He smiled. "Well, I hope you do. Goodbye, then."
She smiled back. "Goodbye."
She turned again and walked out the door, puzzling. For all her uncle’s blame-casting, he did seem to understand how much his ex-wife had meant to her. Perhaps his defensiveness was born of the fact that he, too, felt partly to blame for Dee’s suicide. Everyone involved back then seemed to, except for the one person who deserved it.
He had never felt a twinge.
Chapter 16
"There you are. Are you ready to head out?"
Sarah looked up, and her heart skipped a beat. Adam was standing beside her, and she hadn’t even noticed his approach. She had been staring into the leaves of the ficus tree in the corner of the lobby, reminiscing about Stone Mountain’s nature trail. Everything that had happened yesterday afternoon still felt surreal to her, and she felt strangely awkward being caught in the midst of pondering it.
"Yes," she answered, rising. He offered a friendly smile, and as she returned it, her discomfort eased. Their trip was almost over. She was actually looking forward to the flight home, and she owed that to him. She owed him for a lot of things.
She felt stronger today than she had felt in a long time, and she was sure that laughter had been her medicine. A few hours of sightseeing and general frivolity might be an ordinary occurrence for someone like him, but for her, the afternoon had been a rare treat. She wasn’t the sort of person who traveled for fun. She wasn’t the sort of person who did anything for fun. She didn’t feel she deserved it, so she didn’t seek it out. But he hadn’t given her any choice.