The Bridge Between

by Lindsey Brackett

  He stopped, turned, pulled his girl into his arms. Grace looked away. They deserved this quiet, private moment of reassurance. Patrick had given the same to her, right here under this oak.

  Grace pressed cold fingers to her temples. She might have known back then. Patrick’s choice that day had been as much for her as for himself, the one time he could be both selfless and selfish. He’d gotten what he wanted, but at what cost?

  She’d been left to gather the remnants. Now wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, she trudged back in the house, dutiful and duty-bound.

  “There you are, Grace. I assumed you’d left as rudely as the others.” Charlotte sat at her writing desk, but no work spread before her.

  “I waited in the garden. I thought Tennessee deserved to speak to you alone.”

  Charlotte’s chin dipped, and her strong gaze faltered. “He is much like his father.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that girl …” Her mother-in-law regarded her now. “She is not much like you.”

  Grace looked away, straight into the twinkling eyes of her husband, watching from across the hall. Immortalized as Charlotte had hoped he would be.

  “She told me family and forgiveness were everything to her. That my son’s death was not in vain, not if it reconciled that which is broken.”

  “Has it?” Grace felt the words tighten in her chest. “Reconciled us?”

  Charlotte folded her hands in her lap. “Of course not. Because I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.”

  The words were not what she’d expected. “For turning him away?”

  “No, dear.” Charlotte’s lips tightened. “For failing him. I should have encouraged Louisa. I see that now. Instead, I sentenced them both to a life of sorrow. And Patrick died for it.”

  Grace hadn’t thought Charlotte’s words could still cut her. But once more, she found herself bleeding. Stanching her own wound, she spoke words that should have been said long before. “What about Tennessee? You would trade your sorrow for a life that didn’t have him?”

  Charlotte looked away. “He doesn’t want my life.”

  “No, he wants his own. But he would like to share it with you, and,” Grace sucked in a breath heavy with resolve, “so would I.”

  Her mother-in-law looked her over, as if she were a piece of antique furniture under scrutiny for authenticity. Then, lips pressed tight, Charlotte nodded in a way Grace knew was both a dismissal—and an acquiescence.

  Chapter 32

  Gainesville, Georgia, March 1978

  When his boys took the field, David pressed his fists to his mouth. A silent benediction he hoped the team didn’t notice. His nerves weren’t this bad the day he tried out for college recruiters.

  Could’ve gone almost anywhere after that tryout, but he chose Emory for two reasons. First it was in the center of Atlanta, not stuck in the middle of nowhere like Georgia College. Second, he’d graduated from high school in Cobb County—actually put in two and a half years there—making metro Atlanta the place he’d lived the longest.

  His parents lit out for another new opportunity in Valdosta before the ink on his scholarship was dry. Since then they’d had three different addresses. The latest had brought them just above Gainesville. Close enough for Mom to say they’d come watch him coach his first game, since his C team of eighth graders would be taking on one of the local teams.

  But only Lou waved to him from the stands when he took his stance at third base. He swiped the sweat already beading his forehead, pulled his cap low. Early March was still cold, especially on a clouded afternoon. But David felt hot and prickly all over.

  As if his whole life might change based on this game’s outcome.

  The boys played hard. They followed commands and swung when told—except that cocky shortstop. He swung at whatever he wanted. Worked out, too, which is why David had him batting clean-up. But if the kid didn’t start listening, he would have to bench him out of principle. His own coaches had taught him—the only thing more important than winning is walking off a field with your character still intact.

  Today they walked off with a 7-5 take and more than a little bit of pride.

  Lou met him at the gate. He hooked his arm over her shoulders and announced to the boys, “Y’all want to meet my girl?”

  She rolled her eyes but played the part. He hoped she’d understood when he talked about the coach’s marriages he’d seen. The support they had from their wives at every game. The meals they hosted at their homes. He hadn’t technically been fatherless, but if it hadn’t been for the example of his high school coach, David wasn’t sure he’d know what stability should look like.

  Once he’d seen it, security was all he’d wanted.

  Lou followed the bus back in her little VW. The boys chanted and cheered, thrilled with their first win. David let them have their moment. Tomorrow, they’d have to address the mistakes that nearly cost them that two-run lead.

  Thinking about that meant he couldn’t think about his parents and their broken promises.

  The bus stopped for a line of traffic snaking around a tangle of an accident. One vehicle overturned in a ditch. Another, a small blue pickup, crushed against the forest of pines.

  David’s stomach lurched.

  “Stop.” He stood, swaying with the bus’s motion.

  The driver eased to the side. “Not a good place to get sick, Coach.”

  He stumbled down the bus steps, sure he was wrong. A cop held up his hand. “Y’all need to move on, please. We’re trying to get this cleared.”

  He worked his jaw but no sound came out.

  “David?” Lou. She slipped behind him, put her hands on his shoulders. Turned him to face her. “What is it?”

  He jerked his chin toward the blue pickup a tow truck now attempted to extricate. She sucked in a breath. From here, they could read the bumper stickers, peace signs and “Good Day Sunshine.” His mom’s favorite phrase—how she’d tell him goodbye.

  “Sir?” Lou called the policeman back over. He came, wariness in his eyes, as if realizing what he was about to have to admit. “Two adults in that truck? Man and woman?”

  The cop licked his lips. “They’re en route to Grady.” He looked from Lou back to David. “If you’re kin, I’d say get on down there. Might not have much time.”

  “Thank you.” She pulled David’s arm. “Come with me. I’ll drive you.”

  “My team …” His voice strangled.

  She pushed him toward her car. “You have an assistant.”

  Lou mounted the bus steps, spoke briefly, and emerged with his bag over her shoulder. He sat, catatonic, for the entire trip into downtown Atlanta. And he still made no sound when the ER doctor, in a pristine white coat, came and beckoned him to the small room off the waiting area. Lou sat beside him, took his hand, and when the words were said, he gripped her fingers as tight as he could.

  Never, ever wanting to let go.

  Chapter 33

  Rain started Friday evening, a pitter-patter on the tin roof Lou found comforting. By dawn, sheets of water cascaded down her windows. She rose in the thin light and sat in her mama’s old recliner watching the water pool in the yard.

  Just a spring rain, her daddy would’ve said. Soak that ground good. Make it soft. Pliable. Ready for the turning and the planting.

  She’d walked behind him all those years. Tarried along in the wake of his hoe, dropping tomato seeds and whispering words of encouragement to that soft foamy earth.

  Then he’d given up the tomatoes in favor of the trees. The little baby saplings bent with a wisp of breath and were sure to be torn from the ground when a hurricane struck. So her mama had said.

  But Mama had been wrong. Daddy had walked those tree fields so long and so often, Lou gave up and stayed at the house playing school with Carolina, teasing baby Jimmy. When frost threatened, he’d come in, knees of his overalls mud-stained, his hands chapped red, raw from the salty winds, to tell Mama how many he’d saved.<
br />
  Never did he talk about the ones he lost.

  Lou pushed her bare toes, cold, against the smooth oak floor. Over the mantel, a clipping from Southern Living hung framed and matted, paired with a portrait of her daddy in his overalls, looking out over his lines of straight tall pines. He’d made good on a gamble and a risk. Let go of the expected and the certain, reaping a harvest greater than they’d ever seen.

  Out of nothing but skinny little long leaf pines that grew a dime a dozen all over this island.

  What would he tell her, if he were here?

  She rocked herself out of the chair, feeling like an old woman with a bad back as she shuffled across the cool floor to the room where her mama had died. With Cora Anne and David’s help, she’d taken out the bedstead and dresser, moving them back upstairs to the little room under the eaves. Boxed the quilts but left the photographs—and the afghan draped over the swaying antique rocker.

  The box of letters she’d tucked in the closet, but she pulled it out now, knowing how curious it had made her daughter. But there were some missives in this accounting of her life she didn’t want Cora Anne to see.

  Didn’t want her daughter to doubt, as she did, that she’d never given David the whole heart he deserved.

  She tapped one envelope against her palm, the post date reminding her how she’d stood on the sidewalk corner in downtown Atlanta, hovering over the mailbox. Writing these words to her father had relinquished her guard—not something she often did. She’d learned at his knee to keep her emotions close.

  August 1976

  Dear Daddy,

  I’m writing you, though I know you’ll likely show this to Mama, too.

  That’s all right, so long as you know I’m seeking your advice. The practical, not the romantic, because we both know which one Mama is.

  Do you like David? Really? Because I know he’s not what you expected. A city boy planning to coach.

  Truth is, he’s not what I expected either.

  Maybe I’m still hung up on Pat, I don’t know. But I wondered this— you sure weren’t what Mama expected and it’s all worked out somehow, right? You never worried she might’ve kept a bit of her heart for that other fiancée, that other life? Because David says that’s the only thing that scares him. That a part of me may always love Patrick Watson.

  Lou folded the letter and tucked it back in its envelope. The creases of the paper were nearly worn through, proving it had been read—and prayed over, knowing her parents—numerous times. She stuck the box back in the closet and tucked herself into the rocker, the afghan draped around her shoulders. Years before, she’d tossed out several boxes of memorabilia from graduate school in a fit of cleaning frenzy after David left. No doubt her daddy’s reply had been in one. Now she couldn’t remember all he’d said, only the one line she’d quoted once to her daughter.

  Life’s a fight for joy, Louisa. You just gotta decide who you want in that ring with you.

  The rain’s cascade had eased, and now the drops slid off the roof and puddled softly, soaking into the ground, preparing it for spring.

  ~~~

  This time she brought chicken pot pie, mashed potatoes and a jar of her sister-in-law’s canned green beans. Lou practiced her words as she drove. How easily she told her boys to say sorry.

  How much more difficult when one wanted to mean it.

  When David had picked them up the past two mornings for school, they’d gone backward in time. Back to the first year after the divorce, when the boys waved goodbye but David and she didn’t even exchange looks across the yard.

  Despite the consistent drizzle, the boys were in the townhome’s tiny yard tossing pop flies to one another.

  “Hey, Mom,” J.D. opened her door. “What are you doing here?”

  Cole was more direct. “We know you and Dad are mad again.”

  “Y’all shut up and stay out of it.” Mac pitched the baseball so high he squinted at the weak sun as it came back down.

  She handed J.D. the basket with potatoes and beans, hefting the casserole herself. “I’m here to apologize to your father.”

  Cole cocked an eyebrow at her—an exact image of David. She ignored him and followed J.D. inside.

  “Hey, Dad, Mom’s here.” J.D.’s chortle sounded through the quiet house. They came to the end of the hall that opened into the living space, where David sat on the couch, grading papers.

  He raked his eyes over her, and she looked away.

  “We’ll be outside if you need us.” Their son made a hasty exit. For a moment, seeing how David’s lips tightened into a thin line, Lou considered following him right back out the door.

  She stepped into the tiny kitchen and set the casserole on the counter, putting the granite between them. “I brought you all some dinner.” Feeble words. And not what she’d come to say.

  David stood and faced her but didn’t come closer. He crossed his arms and glared, and Lou realized the emotion swirling inside her she’d never named.

  Shame.

  “I …” The carefully rehearsed words died in her throat. Never, not even when they’d bent over the paperwork in the lawyer’s office, had he looked at her with such fury.

  She swallowed, tried again. “I’m sorry.” It was all she had, and she hung her head and turned to leave.

  “Sorry for what, Lou? For leaving me in Charleston? For severing our marriage? For loving Patrick Watson?”

  Her frustration flared then, and she spun back to face him. “All of it, David.” Shock deflated his stance, but she wasn’t finished. Words bubbled up. “But are you sorry for making me feel like no matter how hard I tried, I’d never be enough? Never be what you really wanted—the cheerleader wife on the sidelines?”

  She’d advanced with each charge. He rounded the couch to meet her, the tendons in his neck stretched tight. “I never asked you to be something you weren’t.”

  “Not with words.”

  His eyes widened then and some of the mad sloughed off his shoulders. “I wanted to make things easier.”

  “For you, maybe.” She clasped her arms across her chest, chilled despite her sweater, unnerved by the way his lips softened and a small, sad smile offered her his simple surrender.

  “I’m sorry.” He spoke the words without intonation, without asking for reassurance. David always meant his apology. She only wished he hadn’t needed to utter it so often.

  Pressing her knuckles against her mouth, she forced the ache back down, into her heart where she’d learned to live with the battering of choices made. To him, she gave a small nod, a weak smile. “That’s my line.”

  He stepped closer and the ache spread throughout her chest when he slid his hands around her waist. Her mind scrambled and tingles spread into the fingertips she lightly set on his biceps, arms every bit as strong as they had been that day in the creek when she taught him to cast a shrimp net.

  Bending his head to hers, his lips grazed her jaw as he whispered, “I like it when you apologize first.”

  She’d lost the ability to speak, to think, to do anything but stay in this safe circle of his arms—

  “David?”

  Grace’s call reverberated in her humming ears. Lou stepped back, knowing this last chance might erode and wash away, leaving them nothing but the sediment of might-have-been.

  Chapter 34

  Lou, a blush blooming across her cheeks, slid from his arms and down the hall, sidestepping Grace. David stood still, arms akimbo, feeling he’d just dropped something but was afraid to check and see if it had broken.

  “Lou, wait …” His voice tripped over the words.

  “I’ve got to be going.” She paused in the doorway, though, and brushed a hand across her face before striding out.

  “I brought you a pound cake.” Hastily, Grace set the Tupperware on the counter and looked at him, her own cheeks scarlet. “Go after her, David. My car’s got hers blocked in.”

  The slow-motion replay halted, and time started again. Yes. This ti
me he wouldn’t let her leave.

  Outside, Lou stood next to her minivan, head hung and hands pressed against the door. Whatever they’d been exploring had definitely broken her.

  He said her name and stepped closer, hoping to say more.

  She pushed off the vehicle, tightening her sweater across her chest as a wind picked up and blew a chill between them. “I’m going to walk. Clear my head.”

  “I’ll walk with you.” Thank goodness the boys had followed Grace’s cake inside.

  She shrugged and set off toward Jungle Road. Head bent, arms tucked into herself, her grey sweater and dark jeans made her nearly blend in with this stretch of gnarled trees and spiky yuccas.

  Like she belonged.

  By the time they reached the beach access, he had to ask. Had to stop the wondering. “Would you have been happy if we’d come back here?”

  “You didn’t want to.” Her words landed in that space between them, that chasm of the past as cracked and broken as the worn old road they’d just traversed.

  “That’s not completely true.”

  She quickened her stride up the sandy path toward the ocean. “Don’t fling about words you might not mean, David.”

  He upped his own steps to a near sprint, catching her and slipping his hand under her elbow, propelling her to a stop.

  She pulled back and wrapped her arms across her chest. The ocean’s breeze made her hair dance around her cheekbones. A strand caught in the dampness of her lashes and she hastily brushed it aside.

  “I want to try again, Lou, please.” The words gushed from him, and he’d been helpless to hold them back—the way the beach gave way to great surges of storm.

  Her throat worked. He could see the shimmer of swallows as she tried to gain composure. Both hands dashed at her cheeks as she turned away. “I can’t do this. Not now. Maybe not ever.”

  “Why not?”

  She turned back to him. He’d hoped she would.

  Fisting her hands on his sweatshirt, she shook her head. “Why would you even want to be with me again? I’m selfish and difficult and—”