When Never Comes

by Barbara Davis

  “Thank you. You’re a lifesaver. But only a single shot in the latte.”

  She was tidying napkin stacks and coffee stirrers, waiting for Tamara to finish brewing her latte, when she spotted Wade standing in the order line. It was the first time she’d seen him since the fireworks in the boat. God, that sounded bad. Maybe she’d just wait in the back room.

  “Christy-Lynn.”

  Too late.

  “Oh, hey!” Christy-Lynn pasted on a smile, scrambling for something to say. “I didn’t see you there. Sorry. It’s been a crazy day—well, a crazy couple of weeks actually.” She paused to throw in a laugh. It came out sounding forced and slightly deranged. “I’m still trying to get the book club organized and line up events for the fall. I feel like all I do is work. It’s crazy, crazy.”

  Wade nodded knowingly. “I know what you mean. I’ve been crazy busy myself. I just popped in to grab coffee, and then I’m on my way to Harmon’s for some two-by-fours. I’ve been working on the deck, replacing some rotted wood. Then I’ll have to restain it all. Hopefully the weather holds.”

  Christy-Lynn was still nodding when Wade’s words ran out. There was a gaping moment of quiet, the awkward abyss that descends when two people run out of small talk. So much for it not getting weird.

  “Here ya go, boss,” Tamara said mischievously as she pushed an oversize mug across the counter. “Steamy and hot . . . just the way you like it.”

  Christy-Lynn shot Tamara her best scary boss face, but Tamara wasn’t finished making mischief. Smiling sweetly, she set a mug of freshly brewed Sumatra on the counter.

  “And here’s your coffee, Wade. One sugar already in.”

  “I believe Wade wanted his coffee to go, Tamara,” Christy-Lynn pointed out tightly, though she was sure Tamara already knew this.

  Wade stepped in, grabbing the mug before Tamara could retrieve it. “No, it’s okay. I can hang out a minute if you’re going to sit.”

  Christy-Lynn had no choice but to follow Wade to his usual table. To make an excuse and slink away wouldn’t just be rude; it would be glaringly transparent. She just hoped he didn’t ask about the manuscript. She didn’t want to tell him she hadn’t even picked it up—or to lie about why.

  “So . . . you’re going out of town,” he said as soon as they were seated. “I couldn’t help overhearing you talking to Tamara. Anywhere fun?”

  Christy-Lynn narrowed her gaze at him, certain he knew exactly where she was going and why. “I have an appointment to see Rhetta. The paperwork isn’t finalized yet, but I thought I’d drive over on Saturday and see what she thinks.”

  Wade lowered his mug, brows raised. “Sounds like you’re pretty optimistic if the lawyer’s already drawing up the papers. Have you considered that there could be some pushback from the family?”

  “It’s Rhetta I’m worried about convincing, not the family. And why should they push back? I’m giving money away, not asking for it.”

  “People are funny when it comes to money. Not everyone’s keen on taking a handout.”

  “Except that’s not what this is. The money already belongs to Iris. I’m just making it legal.”

  “You don’t have to convince me. I’m just asking the question. I’m curious about where the grandson will stand on all this.”

  At the mention of Ray Rawlings, Christy-Lynn felt her face go hot. “I don’t care where he stands. Iris is the one I care about—and Rhetta. As soon as the documents are drawn up, the lawyer will send her a copy to look over. When I’m sure she understands everything, we’ll sign the papers. After that, the funds will be released. I know she hasn’t said yes yet, but she will. I’m determined to make her see that this is the best thing for everyone.”

  “Does that include you?”

  The question seemed to come out of left field. Not just the words, but the way he’d said them, as if he knew something she didn’t. “I don’t really have anything to do with it.”

  “I think we both know that’s not true. From the moment you laid eyes on that girl, you’ve been consumed. It’s like you think by fixing this you can fix all the other stuff.”

  Christy-Lynn felt her hackles rise. “What other stuff?”

  “Stephen cheating on you. Stephen lying to you. This crazy idea that it’s all your fault. Or maybe it’s something else. I just know this isn’t some casual cause for you. Something’s going on, and I’m not even sure you know what it is.”

  She was silent a moment, sipping her latte. Of course something was going on. Every time she looked at Iris, she saw herself, the child she’d been trying to outrun for years, reflected back in sharp, heartrending fragments. A selfish, emotionally absent mother, the grim sense of uncertainty, a childhood on the brink of collapse.

  “Can’t it just be about doing the right thing?” she asked finally. “About helping because I can?”

  “Yes, it can be. But I don’t think it is. And I don’t think you do either. I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m just saying don’t pretend it’s not a big deal when it obviously is. You’re probably the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met, but this isn’t just kindness.”

  “What is it then?”

  “I don’t know.” His voice was gentle, thoughtful. “Something else. Penance maybe. Or atonement.”

  “Atonement?”

  He let out a sigh. “Okay, maybe that’s not the right word either, but I see you shutting down, keeping everything and everyone at arm’s length. Except this little girl.”

  Christy-Lynn peered over one shoulder, making sure Tamara was out of earshot. “So this is about the other night? About what happened in the boat?”

  “No,” he countered defensively. “Okay, maybe, but not the way you think. I know what it looks like when someone’s pushing the whole world away and how much you can lose while you’re doing it. And yes, I know I sound preachy right now, but this isn’t about me and what I want. It’s about you. Do you even know what you want?”

  The question made Christy-Lynn squirm. Yes, she knew what she wanted. She wanted to go back, to clean it all up, to rewrite her story without all the dark parts, to unknow the things she knew, to unsee the things she’d seen, to live without her memories, her shame, her regret. And maybe that was a kind of atonement, after all. But none of those things were possible.

  “Christy-Lynn?”

  Her head came up sharply. Wade was still staring, still waiting. “Hmmm?”

  “I asked if you knew what you wanted.”

  Christy-Lynn reached for her latte, sipping slowly as she fumbled for an answer. In the end, she decided the best she could hope for was a change of subject. “Well, I could use someone to cat sit while I’m out of town. Interested?”

  Wade’s brows shot up. “Did you say ‘cat sit’?”

  “It’s only two days, but I’ve never left him alone before. I don’t want him to feel abandoned. And the two of you did seem to hit it off.”

  Wade seemed to be holding his breath, as if searching for a way to steer the conversation back to more serious matters. Finally, he let out a resigned sigh. “Sure. I’ll be your cat sitter.”

  His response caught her off guard. “Seriously?”

  “Why not? No diapers. No cooking. How hard can it be?”

  “It’s just Saturday and Sunday, and I’ll leave food down and everything. All he’ll need is someone to check his food and give him a little pet for reassurance.”

  Wade emptied his mug and set it down with a grin. “I told you, animals have a thing for me. It’s the grown-ups I can’t seem to win over.”

  Something caught in her throat, a protest or an admission. She wasn’t sure which. “Wade—”

  “Go to West Virginia,” he said softly, cutting her off.

  “Thank you. I’ll leave a spare key with Tamara.”

  “Do me a favor?”

  She smiled, feeling shy suddenly. Was he flirting? Was she? “Well, you’re watching my cat, so I guess I owe you one.” God, she was flirting. />
  “Come back safe?”

  And now he was flirting back, all scruffy smile and brooding charm, like one of those guys on the Hallmark Channel. This had to stop. This had to stop right now. And yet she was still smiling as she pushed back from the table and stood.

  “All right. I can do that.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Riddlesville, West Virginia

  July 23, 2017

  Rhetta pressed a hand to her lips, papery lids clenched tight. Across the kitchen table, Christy-Lynn waited for the moment to pass, pretending not to notice Iris standing in the doorway clutching her tattered teddy bear for dear life.

  Several moments passed before Rhetta managed to find her composure. “I don’t know what to say. Are you sure about this? It’s . . . so much.”

  Christy-Lynn smiled. It had taken more than two hours to explain the ins and outs of what she was proposing, but Rhetta finally seemed to be warming to the idea. “Yes, I’m sure. Stephen should have taken care of this when Iris was born, but he didn’t, so I’m doing it for him.”

  “But it’s your money now. Legally it belongs to you.”

  “Look at me, Rhetta.” Christy-Lynn waited until Rhetta’s hazy blue eyes lifted to hers. “I want to do it. In fact, I need to.”

  “Why?”

  Christy-Lynn thought back to her conversation with Wade, to his theories about penance and atonement—about her trying to fix the past. But whose past? Hers? Stephen’s? Or was this about Charlene Parker, who, like Honey, had turned her back on her daughter? Perhaps Wade had been closer to the mark than she wanted to admit.

  “My reasons aren’t important, Rhetta. But Iris is. We agree on that, don’t we?”

  Rhetta nodded mutely.

  “Then you’re saying yes? You’ll let me do this for you?”

  Rhetta nodded again, with a little gulp, then buried her face in her hands.

  Iris was instantly at her side, a tiny arm wound about Rhetta’s neck. “Nonny, don’t cry.”

  Rhetta sniffed loudly and managed a smile. “Nonny’s fine, baby. Sometimes grown-ups cry when they’re happy. That’s what I’m doing. I’m crying because I’m happy.”

  Iris shifted her gaze to Christy-Lynn and then back again, clearly perplexed. Rhetta took hold of her shoulders, turning her to face Christy-Lynn squarely. “You remember Miss Christy-Lynn, don’t you? You liked her so much you gave her a fish, and she put it on her icebox.”

  Iris nodded almost dreamily.

  “And now she’s come back to do something nice for you, like an angel sent from heaven. Can you tell her thank you?”

  Christy-Lynn dropped her eyes uncomfortably. She wasn’t an angel; she was merely trying to right a wrong. But Iris had clearly taken her great-grandmother’s words to heart. Hesitant at first, she broke from Rhetta’s side, eyes lowered as she approached. And then, with a shy smile, she laid her teddy bear in Christy-Lynn’s lap.

  She was gone in an instant, scurrying from the kitchen in her stockinged feet. Christy-Lynn met Rhetta’s eyes. They were moist again.

  “She likes you,” Rhetta said softly, her voice full of emotion.

  Christy-Lynn dipped her head. “I like her too. And she deserves a good life. Hopefully this trust will help give her one.”

  Rhetta shook her head, dashing away a tear with the back of her hand. “I don’t know how to thank you for your generosity. After what Honey did, I can’t imagine what would make you want to help her little girl, but I can’t find it in my heart to say no. Things have been so hard, and now . . .”

  “Now they’ll be better.”

  Rhetta looked down at her hands, studying nicotine-stained nails. “Yes,” she said, as if trying to convince herself. “They’ll be better.”

  “You’ll be able to afford a new house. One with lots more room and a yard for Iris to play in. It would be nice to be closer to town, don’t you think, and not be so far away from everything? And I can help you look for a good school when it’s time.”

  “School,” Rhetta said, as if rolling the idea around in her head for the first time. “I’d like her to go to a good school, to make something of herself someday.”

  Christy-Lynn was hesitant to bring up another matter, but at some point, Rhetta’s health—or lack of it—was going to become a factor. “I’d like to help in other ways too, if you’ll let me. I’d like to try to find you a new doctor, a pulmonary specialist who might be able to help you breathe better and feel better.”

  Rhetta abandoned the study of her hands, meeting Christy-Lynn’s gaze head-on. “No need for all that. My doctor’s no specialist, but he knows what’s what. Can’t erase fifty years of cigarettes, any more than you can erase any of my other mistakes. But there is something else you could do for me. For us.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Take us to the cemetery.”

  Christy-Lynn blinked at her uneasily. “The cemetery?”

  “Iris didn’t go when her mama was buried. No one did but me. Ray didn’t want his sister buried at his church. He paid to have her shipped home, and for the box and marker, but there wasn’t a funeral. I just buried her at the cemetery on the edge of town like he told me to. Hardly anyone goes there anymore.”

  “And you want me to take you there now—with Iris?”

  “It’s the dreams,” Rhetta said with a hitch in her voice. “They’re so hard on her. Started right after the accident—Honey calling her name.”

  A cold prickle traced its way down Christy-Lynn’s spine. “She can . . . hear her?”

  Rhetta nodded ruefully. “Claims to. Poor thing wakes up in a panic, and then she’s looking all over the house, trying to find her mama. I’ve tried explaining that she’s with the angels, but she doesn’t understand that—or that Honey’s never coming back. I thought if she saw the grave . . .”

  Christy-Lynn’s loathing for Ray Rawlings ticked up a notch when she pulled through the sagging chain link gates and saw the sign for Green Meadows. It was a stunning misrepresentation of what lay before them. Perhaps there had been grass once, to make it green and meadowlike, but at the moment, it was nothing but a treeless patch of dun-colored ground studded with listing headstones and an assortment of dead leaves and blown trash. What kind of man would bury a dog in such a place, let alone a sister?

  Rhetta pointed to the northeast corner of the cemetery. “She’s at the back, out of the way.”

  Christy-Lynn followed the pocked ribbon of pavement until it ran out, then parked the Rover and went around to help Rhetta unfasten her seat belt and climb down. By the time her feet touched the ground she was wheezing openly, her lips faintly blue.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” Christy-Lynn said, eyeing her dubiously.

  “Maybe not, but it needs doing.”

  In the back seat, Iris sat clutching her teddy, her tiny brow knitted in confusion. Rhetta pulled open the door and held out a hand. “Come on, baby girl. There’s something Nonny needs to show you.”

  Iris scrambled from her car seat and took Rhetta’s hand. Christy-Lynn felt awkward suddenly and hung back, content to watch from a distance. But Iris had other ideas, thrusting a tiny hand at her.

  “Come too.”

  Christy-Lynn swallowed her protest. When a three-year-old held out her hand, you took it.

  They walked about twenty yards, over crackling dead leaves and sun-bleached weeds, to a small marker tucked back near the corner of the fence. The headstone was a plain one, the simple slab of granite glaringly new beside its dingy neighbors. The inscription was plain, conspicuous in its lack of endearments.

  HONEY ROSE RAWLINGS

  11/19/91–11/19/16

  Christy-Lynn stared at the dates with a pang of realization. “She died on her birthday.”

  Rhetta nodded, her weathered face somber. “Twenty-five.” She reached out then, grasping the top of the headstone, though whether out of grief or a need for support Christy-Lynn couldn’t say. “I saw her a few days before. She said Stephen
was taking her somewhere special. Foolish girl.”

  The heartache behind the words was unmistakable, but her eyes were surprisingly dry as she turned to Iris. “Come here, baby. I want to talk to you about your mama.”

  Christy-Lynn took several steps back as Iris moved to Rhetta’s side, giving them some space. It was hard to imagine feeling more out of place than she did at that moment. She had never considered where Stephen’s lover might be buried or what her funeral might have been like, that somewhere in the world family and friends might have mourned her.

  Except no one really had.

  Her thoughts drifted to Stephen’s memorial, to the call she had received about how to proceed in light of the fact that almost no one had shown up—including her. Apparently, both Honey and Stephen had departed the world uncelebrated and unmourned.

  A bit of movement suddenly caught her eye. She glanced up to find Rhetta back at her side, her cheeks blanched of color and slick with tears.

  “She understands now, I think,” Rhetta said hoarsely. “She knows her mama isn’t coming back.”

  Christy-Lynn nodded, not sure how to respond. She turned to look at Iris, still standing in front of Honey’s grave, her blonde head lowered. The sight made her throat go tight. “Is she going to be all right?”

  Rhetta sighed, a rattling, phlegmy sound. “I hope so. I told her she could talk to Honey anytime she wanted, that all she had to do was talk to the angels, and they’d make sure her mama could hear her. That’s what she’s doing now—talking to the angels. Would you stay with her? I said she could stay as long as she needs to, but I’m afraid this trip has taken it out of me.”

  “Can you make it back to the car on your own?”

  “I’ll be fine. Just . . . stay with her.”

  She watched as Rhetta picked her way through the weeds on her way back to the Rover, already fumbling in her dress pocket for the pack of cigarettes she kept there. Christy-Lynn didn’t realize Iris was approaching until she felt the air stir behind her.