“So what?”
“We could have had all that, too. But no. Ya go off and get married in a department store dress in a courthouse. I have no photographs to show my friends. Not that I could anyway, I suppose, but still.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I always dreamt of your weddin’ when ya were a little girl. Doin’ what ya did, ya robbed me of all my plans.”
“I robbed ya?”
She opened her mouth to argue more, but before she could utter a word, Rachel began screamin’ from her bedroom upstairs. The infant’s shrill shrieks silenced Mama, and she returned to her seat on the couch with her eyes locked on the floor.
I turned to trot up the stairs, pausin’ with my hand on the railin’. “I’m sorry ya think I robbed ya of some grand party for all your friends to envy. Forgive me if I thought it was about the bride and groom startin’ their lives with one another. I suppose I was wrong. While I will apologize for that, Mama, I won’t apologize for fallin’ in love with the best man on this earth. Now, if ya will excuse me, I must see to my daughter.”
By the time Daddy got back, Rachel had been changed, fed, and was happily playin’ on her blanket on the floor of the livin’ room. Mama had stayed in her spot on the couch the entire time. Although she watched the baby roll from side to side and coo over different stuffed animals as my baby grabbed them and tried to stuff them in her mouth, Mama didn’t make any move to touch or hold the baby. Nothin’ but a scandal lay at her feet and she didn’t want any part of it.
Daddy wasn’t much warmer. He did say hello to his squirmin’ granddaughter, but instead of payin’ her much attention, he busied himself with settin’ up the tree and bringin’ in the decorations he’d purchased.
While he unpacked and Mama sulked, I stuck mostly to the kitchen, ignorin’ them while I fumbled around with the chicken for dinner. A tiny part of my mind begged me to call Doris. Although, I’d cooked this recipe twice already this week to practice, my gut twisted at the thought I could mess it up.
Of all the dinners in all of the nights of my life, I couldn’t mess this one up.
My skin flushed with heat and sweat beaded along my forehead. Along with the heat, a chill washed over me and I sat down at the table, inhalin’ and exhalin’ deep breaths. I needed to calm down. Needed to settle this awful pit in my stomach.
“When did ya—” Mama skidded to a stop, her shoes chirped against the linoleum floor. “Are ya all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“Are ya not sleepin’ well?”
“No, Mama. I’m not. Rachel still doesn’t sleep much, and my husband is thousands of miles away, fightin’ in a war where his brothers in arms are dyin’.” I rose to my feet and scurried back over to the bowl of raw chicken.
Lord, how I hate touchin raw chichen.
“I came in to see when ya wanted to decorate the tree.” She held out the box of neatly wrapped ornaments with the price tag slapped across the front.
“I will do it after I make dinner.”
She glanced around the kitchen, bitin’ her lip as though she was thinkin’ about whether she really wanted to say the words she was about to say. “I didn’t know ya knew so much about cookin’.”
I didn’t.
“I’ve learned a lot since I left South Carolina.”
“Can I have some help, please?” Daddy called from the livin’ room. A slight scream left his lips and Mama and I glanced at each other for a moment before dartin’ into the room.
He struggled in the corner as the strand of lights he’d taken out of the box had wrapped themselves around his legs, threatenin’ to trip him. We both rushed over, unwrappin’ him.
“Ya don’t have to do all of this, Daddy,” I said, drapin’ the strands of color over my couch.
“It’s fine. It’s fine,” he said. “Happy to do it.” He chuckled slightly. “I can’t remember when the last time was I trimmed a tree.”
“It had to have been when Maggie was little, dear.” Mama skirted around me as she made her way toward the bags from the store and bent down to place the ornaments on the ground. The sound of the box tappin’ on the floor startled Rachel and she jerked her legs up. Her face scrunched and within seconds, she cried. Mama just stared at her and Daddy ignored her, continuin’ to unwrap the lights around the room as he looked for the source of the tangle.
“I just opened them. How can they already have a knot?” he asked.
“Let me help ya, dear.”
A knock rapped at my front door and then the doorbell rang. The sound, along with her being ignored by everyone around her, made Rachel cry even harder.
The doorbell rang again.
“Mama, can ya get Rachel?”
“Get her? Why?”
“Just please pick her up. Hold her. Talk to her.” I shuffled over to the door and the doorbell rang a third time. “I’ll be right there!”
I flung the door open but glanced over my shoulder to check if Mama had Rachel in her arms. She didn’t. “Mama—“
“Maggie,” a voice said from the other side of the doorframe.
I turned to find Doris standin’ on my porch with two men dressed in Army uniforms and the Reverend Peterson dressed as though he was about to give a sermon.
“Doris? What are y’all doin’ here?”
She stepped inside, clutchin’ my shoulders. “We need to talk to you.”
Rachel let out several more squawks and Doris darted over to my daughter, scoopin’ her up the way her gran’momma should have done.
I faced the gentlemen to invite them in and they nodded, obligin’ me.
“Can I help ya, gentlemen?” I asked, bitin’ my lip to distract myself from the gnawin’ feelin’ they were just visitin’ for a simple reason.
“Mrs. Wilson, is it? Mrs. Private Charlie Wilson?”
“Yes, I’m Mrs. Wilson.”
I glanced between the two officers and then at the Reverend. He nodded at me as he shifted around and with one hand on my shoulder; he lifted his Bible to his chest and closed his eyes.
“What is goin’ on?” I asked.
Without sayin’ a word, one of the men stuck his hand out, handin’ me an envelope as he slipped off his hat with his other. “The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you your husband has been killed in action.”
Mama gasped behind me and Daddy dropped the string of lights he’d been holdin’.
“I’m sorry, what did ya say?” I asked.
“We are here from the War Department to inform you your husband was killed in action.”
I stepped away from them and clutched my throat, shakin’ my head. “No. That can’t be. Ya have to have the wrong man. I just got a letter from him a week ago.”
Doris skirted around the couch, wrappin’ her arm around me while she still held Rachel. Her hand rubbed up and down my arm as she squeezed.
“But they have the wrong man.” I met her gaze. Her eyes, brimmed with tears, spoke of a truth I didn’t want to face. I looked back at the men. “Is it possible there is another Charlie Wilson?”
They both shook their heads.
My breath hitched in my chest and quickened as my blood ran cold.
This wasn’t happenin’. This couldn’t be happenin’. He was supposed to come home. He was supposed to raise Rachel and the other children we were supposed to have. Five, six, however many he wanted I didn’t even care. I’d have a dozen if he asked. We were supposed to grow old together, rockin’ on a porch swing while we watched our grandchildren.
I flipped over the envelope in my hand and tore it open, yankin’ the piece of paper from it, fully convinced these men made a mistake and it didn’t list Charlie’s name. It couldn’t. It just couldn’t. I unfolded it, and the black words popped from the white paper. I read them aloud.
“The Secretary of . . . regrets to inform . . .” My fingers let go of the paper and it floated to the ground, sliding across the floor. “It’s true. It’s true. Doris! It’s true!”
Sh
e moved around me, squeezin’ me tighter. My knees buckled and hit the ground. My whole body shook while I started screamin’ at the top of my lungs.
“He’s dead. He’s dead! Doris, he’s dead!”
THIRTY-THREE
Rachel
August 1996
I shut the journal. My mother’s pain could be felt from the pages and my eyes misted with tears. I never knew she went through such heartbreak. Never knew about the sorrow she endured in her life. She hid it well, and yet, thinking back, I could see how it shaped her in ways that while I was growing up and dealing with how she would act or what she would say, I didn’t understand. But I did now. She lived through something no one should have to face. She was a widow at just nineteen years old, and with a five-month-old daughter on her hip.
“Why couldn’t you just be honest with me?” I glanced up at the ceiling, wishing for an answer I would never get. “I would have understood you so much better.”
I let out a groan as I lay back, letting my head hit the pillow.
“But she really wasn’t a widow.”
I sat up again.
What had happened to Charlie? Why did the army tell her he was dead? And where, since he obviously wasn’t deceased, was he all these years? Did he know where she was? Did he know where I was? And if he did, how long did he, and why did he wait until she passed away to show up?
My eyebrows furrowed as I tossed the journal aside, sliding from under the covers as I bent down and fetched my clothes. I had to get to the inn. I had to talk to Charlie. It didn’t matter if I was ready and it didn’t matter if a small part of me questioned if I even knew what I was doing.
I just had to do it.
Rip off that band-aid, Rachel. Rip it off.
Doubt and fear always have a way of sneaking in, but it’s what we do with it that allows it to either lay claim to our lives or to fade away with the sunset, and I wasn’t about to let it take control over me.
By the time I pulled into the parking lot of the inn, my heart raced. While I had repeated the questions in my head over and over, I didn’t know how many of them I would remember or what I would even say.
As I made my way up the path toward the front door, it opened, and Luke stepped outside.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, fine.”
“What are you doing here?”
I exhaled a deep breath. “I need to talk to him.”
“I was just about to come home, but I can stay, get some things done before tomorrow. I’ll wait for you.” Luke glanced over his shoulder, pointing behind him with his thumb. “He’s out on the back porch enjoying the sunset.”
With a wink, he left me standing at the opened front door. For the first time in I didn’t know how long, the thought of walking into the place set my nerves on edge. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach and my palms grew clammy to the touch. I tiptoed through the dining room, through the kitchen, and out onto the back porch where Charlie sat in the swing, rocking back and forth while he watched the sun inching closer and closer to the sea.
“I didn’t think I’d see you for a few more days,” he said, noticing me.
“I didn’t think you would either.”
He tapped the seat next to him. “Care to sit for a while?”
“Sure.”
He slowed the swing for me to climb on then he pushed off again, rocking it. The crashing waves and the squeak of the swing’s chains were the only sounds around us. Something that should have been peaceful, and yet, it wasn’t. At least not fully.
“Did you read through my letters to your mother?”
I shook my head. “Just the one. But I did read a few of her journals.”
“Which ones?”
“One was about the night you two met.”
He smiled and nodded as his eyes glazed over with a far-off look to them as though he suddenly found himself lost in a distant memory. “That was a great night. Her first concert ever and the Beatles, we had lots of fun that night.”
“Yeah,” I laughed. “I had to skip a couple of pages just so I didn’t have to read all about it.”
A grin spread across his face. “Your mom was quite the little . . . adventurous woman.”
“Adventurous is definitely a way to put it.” I paused for a moment, trying to forget about the pages of details regarding their escapades in his car. “Then there was one about a conversation with my grandma.”
“About me, I presume?” He snorted. “Her parents and all her friends used to give her so much grief about me. I could tell it really bothered her. Although, she never admitted it.”
“Why?”
“Too stubborn.”
I laughed. “Yeah, that was Mom.” I dropped my gaze to the porch, studying a couple of knots in the wooden boards with their circle patterns and different colors. “But it was also the night I think she realized I was in the picture.”
“Ah yes, she got sick when she smelled the pizza I brought over. I took her to the doctor the next day and that’s when we found out about you.” He glanced at me, exhaling a deep breath. “We were happy. I want you to know that.” He waved his hand. “Oh, sure we were scared. I mean, who wouldn’t be at eighteen and nineteen? And we had only known each other for about a month, if that. But we were happy, and we loved each other so much, we knew we would be the best little family—no matter what.”
“I read a few more, like when you came home with your orders and the morning you left. She talked about all the things you said to me while I slept. Things I don’t even remember.” I paused, fighting tears. “And then the last was when . . . why did the army tell her you died?”
“Because they thought I did.”
“So, where were you?”
He inhaled a deep breath and stopped the swing from rocking. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his elbows. “I was captured in Vietnam and stuck in a prison camp.”
“You were a POW? For how long?”
“I was rescued two years after they took me to the camp.” His body began to tremble, and he closed his eyes for a moment as though he was trying not to relive the painful memories. “By the time I got home, you and your mom had left Washington. No one knew where she’d gone to and, well, I have since found out, she also got married so she changed both her last name and yours.”
“But my grandparents knew where we were. At least I think they did. I’m not sure when she told them, actually. But we went to visit them when I was ten years old, so they at least knew then.”
“I called them a couple of times when I first got back to the United States, but after a few years of them telling me they hadn’t heard from her, I gave up. This would have been when you were around three or four years old.”
“But why did you give up?”
“Because I figured by then she probably was happily married again. I wouldn’t have wanted to mess that up. To cause her to have to choose between her new husband or me or go through a divorce or rip you from a man, who you had probably grown to love like a father.”
I opened my mouth but stopped myself before uttering a word. While for a moment, I thought such was a ridiculous notion, I suddenly realized what that would have meant for my mom and James, and in the end me. She would have faced the very same things that Charlie feared the most for her. And I would have too.
“She never told me about you.”
He sat up and shifted his butt along the swing, so he faced me. “What?”
“She never told me about you. I grew up thinking James was my dad.”
“When did you find out he wasn’t?”
“The day I came across your letters.”
Charlie lifted his hand, rubbing his forehead as he let out a soft groan. “He didn’t tell me that part. I thought you were just finding out it was me and you already knew he was your step-dad.”
“So, how did you find me?”
“My parents were watching a television show about finding lost loved ones and they told me I s
hould try again. A lot has changed since 1970 and 1971. So, I hired a private investigator who shockingly came across her obituary.” His eyes misted with tears as he looked back at me. “I can’t believe I finally found her, and she is gone.”
I lifted my hand to put it on his back but stopped myself. While it had moved upon instinct, only thinking about comforting a person in need, I couldn’t do it. He was still a stranger to me.
“I’m happy I found you though,” he whispered.
“Me too.”
“So, what do we do now?”
I stared at him for a moment then smiled and stuck my hand out to shake his. “Hi. I’m Rachel Grey . . . Wilson.”
He chuckled. “Wow. Two last names.”
“Well, I’m in the process of adding the Wilson. But I’m used to two last names since I hyphened Levine when I was married.”
“You know that Paul . . . he’s kind of a jerk.”
“Not just kind of. He is one.”
“Did you really find him in bed with another woman?”
“Another woman who he may or may not have married, I’m not quite sure, but I know she had a baby that turned out not to be his.”
We both laughed.
“Talk about karma,” Charlie said through breaths.
It had been the first time I’d forgotten about everything that happened in the last several days and laughed, and while I wanted to stop, feeling the weight of guilt sitting on my chest, I also wanted to enjoy the moment. Laughing brought a sense of calm to my mind. As though no matter what happened and what will happen in the future, I will be okay. I will laugh again. I will love again.
“You two seem to be having fun.”
I glanced up as Luke shut the door from the kitchen behind him.
“We were just talking about Paul,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, that guy. Anyway, I came out here to tell you there are some people in the foyer asking for you, Rachel.”
Another Yesterday Page 34