by Meg Muldoon
She nodded, smiling slightly, keeping her eyes on the old donkey.
The years had taken their toll on Elise Orcutt, the way they would on anybody.
But time could rarely change the look in a person’s eyes.
They said eyes were the windows to the soul.
And though she’d been hiding who she was for all these years, when I looked in Elise Orcutt’s eyes, I now could see who she really was.
“Those flowers you left for Vicky at the hospital were really beautiful,” I said. “Gardenias, right?”
I nodded to the basket in her arms.
Elise’s eyes grew wide for a moment, and I watched as she struggled with words.
She looked over my shoulder, into the woods beyond.
Then something drifted across her face.
Something like relief.
“Come on up to the house,” she finally said.
I nodded, then climbed over the fence, following her.
Chapter 71
Amelia Delgado handed me a mug of coffee and took a seat at the large, rough-hewn farm table. Huckleberry and Chadwick were in the corner of the kitchen, chowing down on some dog food she’d set out for them.
I cupped my hands around the mug, enjoying its warmth. But I didn’t drink it.
My insides were too tied up to ingest anything.
“How long have you known?” she finally asked.
“Since the other day at the hospital,” I said. “The flowers that Vicky had in her room. They were gardenias. A flower that’s hard to find around here, even in florist shops. And I remembered that you had that greenhouse where you grew all sorts of flowers. It got me thinking. And then I put it together.”
I bit my lip, staring at her – now I could see past the gray hair, the extra weight in her face, and the wrinkles around her eyes to see commonalities with that old photo of Amelia at the bar. I could see the same narrow chin. The high cheekbones. And the thin lips.
Her nose was different, though and I wondered if she’d had it altered at some point to help hide who she really was.
Amelia caught me staring at her. She smiled sadly.
“I’ve avoided this for a very, very long time, Cinnamon.”
She closed her eyes for a long moment. Almost like she hoped when she opened them again, I would no longer be here to confront her with the truth.
“Where did you go?” I asked finally when she didn’t say anything. “After Marty Higgins gave you a ride up to Madras?”
She let out a staggered breath.
“I got a on a bus, and after that, I hitchhiked,” she said. “Up to Canada. I kept running until I got far up north in Saskatchewan. I paid for someone else’s identity – using the money I stole from Jimmy and my mom. Elise Browne. I used that name – and that’s the last name I gave to my daughter when she was born, too. When I got married a couple of years later, I took my husband’s name and was Elise Orcutt after that.
“My husband was a good man who never asked me questions about my past. And my daughter doesn’t know the story either. I never told her about her real father. I wanted to protect her. To give a shot at something good.”
She studied my face briefly, as if trying to figure out what I thought of her and what she had done.
“I built a nice happy life for myself up in Canada,” she said. “We lived on a ranch, and I kept a greenhouse. And I forgot. I forgot who I’d been. I forgot about Jimmy or that I was ever stupid enough to get involved with him. I forgot the things he’d done – the terrible, evil acts of violence I’d seen him commit. I laid low and kept quiet. I raised my child in the country and built something for myself up there.”
She bit her lip, her teeth digging into the soft flesh.
“But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget Vicky. I had trouble forgetting our ma, too. I tried sending them a note once, after I left. But I know it wasn’t enough. It’s been eating me up inside for years and years. I never meant for any of this to happen. But I couldn’t endanger them. If they knew I was alive – if they knew where I was – Jimmy might have found out. The only thing that kept them alive was that they didn’t know anything.”
Her eyes were glassy as she told her story.
She stood up and went over to the window, leaning on the sill and watching old Crabtree meander around the corral.
“Last year, I heard about Jimmy dying in prison. My daughter’s at university in Vancouver now, and with my husband passed on, I had this idea that I’d… that I’d come back and buy this farm. I’d move here and when I worked up the courage, I’d go find Vicky and tell her. Tell her what happened to me and why I had to…”
Amelia drew in a staggered breath.
“Why I had to run away. I dreamed that Vicky would forgive me for what I’d done. So I came out here.”
She glanced back at me.
“But I couldn’t summon the courage to go visit her in Portland. I know I ruined her life, Cinnamon. How could she ever forgive me?”
I gulped hard, seeing the look of shame on her face.
“Then I heard that Vicky moved here to Christmas River back in the fall. And I knew that sooner or later, this day would come.
“The day when I’d have to face my sins and come to terms with the hurt and devastation I caused.”
She fell silent again. Old Crabtree was walking back to his barn, and her eyes followed him.
“This wasn’t how my life was supposed to have gone,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper. “This wasn’t how her life was supposed to go, either.”
Her words lingered in the dusty house air for a while, and the only sound was the dogs slopping at their food.
I bit my lip, thinking about poor Vicky. All these years, trying to find her little sister. Thinking she was most likely dead.
It was a harsh thing to do to somebody.
But I also couldn’t help sympathize with Amelia. She’d found herself in a bad situation.
A situation where she had to think of more than just herself, her sister, or her mom.
She had to think about her daughter.
I stood up, then, leaving my coffee steaming on the table. I went over and stood next to her.
“It’s not too late, Amelia,” I said. “Your life doesn’t have to be like this anymore.”
A single tear dripped over the rim of her eye when I said her real name, slowly sliding down her face.
“Vicky’s doesn’t either.”
She nodded again, more tears spilling down her cheeks.
She gazed out the window in silence for a minute.
Then she cleared her throat.
“Is… is Vicky still at the hospital?” she asked.
“They released her yesterday,” I said. “She’s back home now.”
Amelia nodded.
“I can drive you to her house if you want,” I said.
She looked over at me, wiping the tears from her face.
“No, it’s okay,” she said.
“I know the way.”
***
Amelia said she didn’t need a ride, but I followed her car over to Vicky’s house anyway.
I had to see it through.
I sat there across the street from Vicky’s rental house in the Escape, watching as Amelia slowly walked up the small pebble path and paused on the porch for a long moment.
Then, I watched as she raised her arm and slowly pushed the doorbell.
It took a little while for Vicky to answer.
When she did, there was some banter. I could see that Vicky didn’t realize who was standing there.
But then, something in Vicky’s face suddenly changed.
It broke. As if all those years of worrying, all that agony of not knowing, all that fear and loss was suddenly released in one rushing flood of emotion.
I couldn’t hear the words they spoke to each other.
But I didn’t need to.
The desperate embrace and happy sobbing there on the por
ch said everything.
After 25 years, Amelia Delgado had finally found her way home.
Chapter 72
I gazed out the window, pressing the phone to my ear and listening to the succession of dull rings.
Outside, the pink fingers of dawn were just beginning to tickle the sky and the dark winter’s night was fading fast.
It was early, and I was alone in the pie shop.
I’d come in early for a reason.
I had one last piece of business to take care of before our trip to Ireland.
The ringing came to an abrupt halt.
“Hello?”
The woman’s voice cracked over the speaker, and I could tell that I had woken her.
I hadn’t rehearsed what I was going to say. I was hoping that inspiration would strike me in the moment.
But now, I was regretting not having a script to go by.
This wasn’t an easy call to make.
“Is this… is this Brenda Coe?” I asked.
“Brenda Denmon,” she said, a sharpness in her tone. “Nobody’s called me by my maiden name for some time.”
I swallowed hard, looking at my reflection in the pane of glass.
“Oh… um, I’m sorry to call at such an early hour. My name is Cinnamon Peters. I don’t know if you remember me, but I was—”
“I remember you,” she said in a low voice. “You’re the one my father… my father tried to...”
Her voice grew wobbly and she trailed off into nothing.
I drew in a deep breath.
“I know this is going to sound strange coming from me,” I said. “But Sully… he wanted me to ask you to read the latest letter he sent.”
There was nothing but dead silence on the other side of the line after I said that.
I knew this was probably the last thing Brenda Coe had expected this morning. A call from the woman her father had held at gunpoint and nearly killed, now advocating for him.
“I don’t have a father anymore, Ms. Peters,” she said after a long while. “He died a long time ago.”
Her voice was small and shaky.
“I have to go now—”
“Wait, Brenda.”
I bit my lip, keeping my eyes on my reflection.
“Your dad isn’t a good man,” I said. “Sully is a corrupt liar who hurt a lot of people, including me and my grandfather. And you have every right to feel the way you feel. Maybe he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, but...”
My voice started going hoarse.
“It’s probably not my place to say it. But this really isn’t about you pardoning your dad, Brenda. It’s about pardoning yourself. It’s about giving yourself peace so that you can move on. So the anger and pain doesn’t fester inside. So it doesn’t…
I paused, searching for what I meant.
“So it doesn’t continue to poison your life.”
Maybe I was overstepping my boundaries. Maybe I really had no right to tell Brenda Coe these things.
But I didn’t regret saying any of it.
There was no response. And as I waited for her to say something, I realized that there probably wasn’t going to be.
I let out a breath.
“Anyway, he wants you to know he loves you. That’s the message he wanted me to give you. I’ve done what I promised.
“You decide the rest, Brenda.”
I hung up, my cheeks wet with tears.
Chapter 73
The sky that day was bluer than I had ever seen it before. A rich, jewel-toned, sapphire blue, washed clean by the rain.
“They say the bluest skies you’ll ever see are in Seattle, kiddo,” he said, grasping my hand. “Only problem is, you hardly see them with all those gray clouds.”
He turned back to look at me for a moment.
He was happy. Smiling big with a child-like gleam in his eye.
He stopped walking up the steps to study the two ticket stubs in his hand. I gazed up into the open-air stadium – taken by the immensity of the place. They’d opened the roof because the day was so clear and bright.
When I had gotten called out of class and asked to report to the school office that morning, I thought I’d gotten into trouble somehow. But instead of the stern vice principal waiting for me, it had been him, sitting there, grinning like a joker
He’d taken the day off from work – something he hardly ever did – and told me we were going on a trip.
“Just you and me, kiddo.”
I couldn’t remember ever having been so excited for something in all my short life.
The drive had been long and rainy, but we filled it up by singing along to Bob Seger songs and eating hamburgers and fries. When we got to Seattle, we stopped in a store near the stadium. He bought me a brand new Seattle Mariners baseball cap. It was too big on me and slumped down on my forehead, but I didn’t care.
I loved it, and I vowed never to take it off except for church on Sundays.
Now we climbed the steps, up and up and up, until we found our row. We were so high up, I thought if I could just reach a little further, I’d be able to touch that sapphire blue sky.
We sat in the hard plastic seats. He took a sip from the beer that he’d bought at the concession stand and pulled out a bag of peanuts. We shared the nuts, the papery shells falling to the concrete ground beneath us.
When I came across one that my small hands couldn’t crack open, he’d take it and break it open for me.
“When I was a boy, there was nothing I wanted more than to go to a Seattle Pilots game,” he said as the seats around us filled with people. “That’s the franchise the city had back then – before they moved to Milwaukee and became the Brewers. Anyway, I asked and asked, but your grandma wouldn’t take me. She always said Seattle was too far.”
“What about Grandpa?” I’d said. “Why didn’t he take you?”
He’d never talked about my grandfather – his dad.
He stared off into the distance then, squinting at all that shimmering blue.
“Him? Well, he wasn’t ever around to ask,” he’d said in a quiet voice
My dad fell silent for a long while then, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong.
But then after a few minutes, he looked over at me, smiling again.
“But this – Cinnamon? This, you’re going to remember for the rest of your life. The time your old man took you to your first baseball game.”
He rubbed the oversized hat on my head, laughing when it slid down over my eyes.
“You’re going to love it. Just you wait and see.”
A little while later, the players took the field in their teal greens and whites.
And by the third inning, the clouds had rolled in over that blue sky and it began to rain.
Chapter 74
“You’ve got your guidebook?”
“Check.”
“Your passport holder?”
“Check.”
“Your passport?”
“Double-check.”
“Cash to change at the airport?”
I smiled.
Warren had already gone through all of this with me an hour earlier. Being the world traveler that he was, he’d taken it upon himself to personally grill me on the items I had packed in my suitcase for Ireland.
I propped my feet up on the legs of the barstool, then took a sip from the pint glass of fresh beer he’d just handed me. It was an apricot lavender beer that Warren had been experimenting with for some time, and this version was utter perfection. It tasted of everything that we had to look forward to here in Christmas River in the spring and summer – days of sunshine and cool mountain breezes and lazy days spent tossing a line into the placid waters of a cold lake.
“What about a good rain jacket?” he asked. “You know, it’s cold in that part of the world this time of year. Rainy as heck, too. A good rain jacket is imperative—”
“Yep, got that, too,” I said. “I think I’m pretty well covered.”
He grinned at me from behind the bar.
“Glad to hear. Now what about an old man who likes to chew the fat? You got room for one of those in your suitcase?”
I laughed.
“Sure, but who’s going to watch the dogs if you come along?”
“Oh, Aileen can handle it. She’s got a way with the beasts of the world. She’s had lots of practice with me.”
I smiled, reaching across and squeezing his hand.
“Seriously, though, thanks for watching the poochies for us,” I said. “It means a lot.”
“Our pleasure,” Warren said. “Say – when’s the last time you’ve been away from Christmas River for so long?”
“It’s been a while, all right.”
“Well, good for you, Cinny Bee. We all need some adventure in our lives from time to time.”
I nodded and took a long sip of my beer.
He was right – it was a fundamental requirement of a healthy life that a person had an adventure every now and then.
“But I won’t lie,” Warren continued, looking down at the bar. “I am gonna miss you something awful, Cinny.”
“I’ll miss you, too. But we’ll be back before you know it – we’ll be just in time to see your segment air on the Travel Now Channel. Which is going to be a nice reward after that long plane ride home.”
He smiled a little bashfully at that.
The conversation fell into a rare pocket of silence.
I set the beer down, taking in a deep breath.
Another fundamental requirement of a healthy life was being honest with your loved ones and telling them things, even when those things were hard to speak about.
I’d put it off for a long time now, thinking that I was saving Warren from some worry. But I saw now that it wasn’t right.
This was about family, and Warren deserved to know.
“Grandpa?”
“Yeah, Cinny Bee?”
“There’s something… something I want to tell you before we leave.”
He raised his old white eyebrows studying me for a long minute.