A SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE BOXED SET

by Lewis, Laurie

  “Never. I was a dancer when I was young, you know,” she added with a wink.

  Noah saw how charmed the doctor was by Agnes and how frustrated Tayte was becoming by her grandmother’s ability to camouflage her disability. She finally began countering Agnes’s answers.

  “Remember that fall you had the other day, Grandma?”

  Agnes spun angrily on Tayte when the doctor pursued the question.

  “Did you have a fall, Agnes?”

  She scowled. “I may have tripped over my cat. He is always underfoot. He is a bad boy.”

  “What’s the name of your cat, Agnes?”

  Her face went blank, and then panic set in. “His name is . . . he has a French name. I know it as well as I know my own. His name is . . . his name is . . .”

  Agnes looked to Tayte and then to Noah as if pleading for them to supply the answer.

  The doctor placed a calming hand on Agnes’s knee. “It’s fine, Agnes. We’ll come back to that, okay? Now, I’m going to give you three sets of words. I want you to remember them because I’m going to ask you to repeat them to me in a few minutes, okay?”

  Agnes nodded.

  “The words are New York City, baseball bat, Halloween candy. Now repeat them.”

  Noah could feel the strain as Agnes struggled to commit the words to memory. She repeated them and then was given a set of numbers to add, which she did fairly well at the beginning, but her ciphering became more wild and illogical the more numbers she was given.

  “Very good, Agnes.” The doctor jotted down some notes and then turned back to her. “I’d like you to spell the word ‘refrigerator,’ please.” When Agnes was unable to get past the sixth letter the doctor smiled, jotted more notes, and asked her to spell ‘house’ which she was able to do.

  “Now, spell it backward, please.”

  The look of panic crept into Agnes’s face once more. The doctor smiled, praised her efforts, and wrote more notes.

  “Do you recall the three things I asked you to remember?”

  “What things?”

  “I asked you to remember three phrases. Do you recall any of them?”

  Noah felt as if his own heart were being ripped out. He wanted to give her the words and end the game, but the doctor sensed his frustration and raised her hand near him to prevent his interference.

  “One of the words was a city. Does that help?”

  Agnes smiled apologetically and looked at Noah. “I’m very sorry. I don’t remember.”

  “It’s all right, Agnes. You’re doing fine.”

  There were motor tests and balance tests cops used to check drunks’ sobriety. Agnes giggled as she played. At the end of the physical exam the doctor praised her, explaining that her cognitive score was twenty-three out of thirty. She discreetly explained that Agnes’s short-term memory was failing despite the medication she’d been given. Agnes was slipping away.

  Noah wanted to wrap his friend up in his arms and protect her from the disease, but this was another enemy he couldn’t fight. John’s mind was sharp, but his body was failing. Agnes’s body was strong, but her mind was dying, one cell at a time. He wondered which was worse.

  “Did you hear what the doctor said?” crowed Agnes. “I did very well on my test.”

  “Yes you did,” said Noah as he buckled her seat belt. Within minutes she was asleep.

  “It’s happening too fast,” cried Tayte. “I’ve just found her and I’m already losing her.”

  Noah dropped his head against the headrest and stared out the window.

  “I’m sorry.” Tayte looked his way and smiled. “It’s doubly hard for you, isn’t it? Your uncle, and my grandmother.” She bit her lip. “I really wanted this to be a good day.”

  “We should have packed a picnic lunch.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  They picked up some fried chicken and sides at a drive-through. The aromas coaxed Agnes out of her sleep before they pulled back on the road, headed for Hagerstown.

  They took the scenic route that wound through the mountains, along historic Route 40. The sun broke through the clouds, bathing the day in warmth and light. Agnes barely spoke a word, but the contentment on her face spoke volumes as she stared out the window at the scenery.

  After arriving in Hagerstown, the GPS guided the newcomers along narrow city streets lined with old Victorian houses that bordered City Park. The sprawling park was an oasis in a blue-collar city that served as a railroad and trucking hub.

  A ring of blossoming willows wrapped completely around a waterfowl-dotted pond teeming with giant koi. A gazebo sat on a small island where ducks, geese, and swans nested, providing space for picnickers as hungry for a splendid view as for food. Several playgrounds, two art museums, a historic frontier fort, and a band shell anchored the grounds through a series of walkways and paths that meandered past woods and wetlands. And tucked in the center of all that beauty was an obscure little grotto.

  Several stone paths converged at stairways that carried visitors down to ledges and farther down to a small pool where the fowl played. Noah easily pictured the Eppleys there, in that secluded place of peace. He imagined young Micah stepping up like a man to wheel his father down the stone steps, and Jenna pointing out the antics of the fish as her mother watched her family play. He understood why they chose this place as the setting to freeze a family moment in time. It must have shown on his face.

  “You’re smiling. What are you thinking?” asked Tayte as she shot another photo.

  Noah looked past the grotto to the playgrounds and picnic tables where parents played with children. “That as long as families come to places like this, there is hope in this world.”

  They moved to the gazebo and ate their lunch. Someone called Tayte’s phone three times in quick succession. Noah noticed that she checked the caller ID and canceled each call without answering.

  Agnes took Noah’s arm, inviting him to stroll with her under the willows. Each tree was pregnant with catkins whose petals fell like snow in the breeze. She spread her free arm and attempted a turn. Noah obliged by leading her in a series of twirls that stirred the petals piled along the path. When they reached the snack bar, Noah bought a bag of cracked corn, and they all fed the ducks and fish. Agnes wandered down to the shoreline while he and Tayte stood on the arched bridge looking on.

  “I think she has a crush on you.”

  He dipped his head shyly. “I’d be honored to be loved by her.”

  The comment seemed to disarm Tayte. “Was your family just like the Andersons?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Noooo.” He didn’t even try to stave the sarcasm.

  “I bet your parents were strict.”

  Noah’s head popped up in surprise over the question. “Why would you say that?”

  “You just seem like someone who was taught to color within the lines.”

  He laughed again and tossed a few kernels into the water. “I’m flattered you’d think so.”

  “Oohhh, now I’m intrigued. Don’t tell me you were a bad boy.”

  “Why?” Noah wondered if she noticed the nervous catch in his laugh. “Do you prefer bad boys?” She turned and pressed her back against the rail, facing away from him, and he asked, “Was he a bad boy?” He nodded at the phone. “You canceled three calls. I assume it was a guy.”

  “He’s okay. It was me.” She turned back around and took some corn from Noah’s bag. “My childhood was a mess. I’m kind of a control freak now. You may have noticed.”

  They both laughed, and Tayte gave Noah a playful punch in her defense. The laughter drifted to silence, but Noah didn’t want the conversation to end. “Tell me about your childhood.”

  “No, no, no,” she teased. “It’s your turn to offer some personal revelations.”

  “My turn, eh?” He rubbed his fingers deep into his eyes as he decided what he would, and how much he should, share. “I was an awkward kid, born with bum feet. My father never got over the disappoint
ment that his boy wasn’t going to be a big football star.”

  “You don’t limp. I never would have known.”

  “I owe that to my mother. ‘Fixing’ me became her mission. I don’t think my father ever noticed that my legs healed. I probably still limped whenever he was around.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Only to me.”

  He needed some distance, so he took a few steps as if interested in something in the water on the other side of the bridge. When he returned to stand by Tayte, her hand brushed his arm sending a burn that flushed up his neck to his cheeks.

  “Your father must have really hurt you, and yet you don’t seem angry. My parents never hurt me physically, but I had no rules, no structure, no expectations. They’re dead and I’m still angry.” She began toying with her fingers.

  “Abuse and neglect both leave scars. The pain of one is just more immediate.” He dropped a few more kernels into the water. “And for the record, I’m still plenty angry. So much it scares me sometimes.” Noah emptied the rest of his corn into the water below, creating a manic stir among the animals. It reminded Noah of what was happening inside him. He turned around and placed his back to the rail to match Tayte’s stance, both of them forgetting about Agnes. Another question popped into his mind. He wondered if he dared ask it, and whether she’d even answer. “Do you love him?”

  “I’m not very good at loving people.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “He didn’t have to.” She turned her face away from him as if she were interested in something off in the distance.

  Noah wanted to pull her back around to face him, but instead he stared at the ground. “It’s not true. I’ve seen what you’ve sacrificed for Agnes.”

  “And as you’ve so rightly pointed out, I’ve made a mess of things.”

  “No.” His head swung her way. “I never said that.”

  “Yes, you did, and you were right. I’ve messed up everything I’ve done.”

  “You try too hard. You don’t need to push.”

  “You mean with Agnes?”

  “With anybody.” He felt his throat tighten and worried whether his words and voice had revealed the crazy thoughts being near her raised in him. He tried to diffuse the tension he felt. He looked at her phone again. “Even with him.”

  Tayte looked at him as if she were actually looking into him. He wondered what she would find there, if she could tell how difficult it had been to say those last words.

  She shook her head softly as if expressing a choice she was just realizing. “We weren’t right for each other. He’s handsome and funny and smart, but he’s also irresponsible and impulsive, everything I’ve been running away from for sixteen years, since that summer on Grandma’s farm. Agnes is all I have time for right now, but if I do ever choose to love somebody it’ll be someone steady.” She kicked at the wooden decking. “Probably someone dull and boring.” She began to laugh.

  Someone who colors within the lines?

  “How about you? Have you ever been in love, Noah?”

  Immersed in his own reverie, he almost missed the question.

  “Only once. A long time ago. ”Noah’s heart thundered so loudly he feared she could see it pounding through his shirt. Their eyes met and held, and for a moment Noah dared imagine what it would feel like to be loved again, perhaps to be loved by this woman. Sweat moistened his palms and neck as he sought to segue from discussions of his past. He wanted to move forward, and Agnes provided a timely, albeit most awkward, transition.

  They had lost track of her for those few moments, but as soon as the splash sounded they both knew it was her.

  “Help! The old lady fell in the pond!” shouted the mother of two small children. Her cry sent people scrambling from across the park to their location.

  Noah and Tayte raced to the edge of the pond where Agnes was thrashing about in the shallow, muddy water. Geese and ducks were flapping their wings and honking wildly while the carp pecked at her wig as it floated away. Noah ran into the murky pond and felt his shoes sink into the muck but not before he was able to get ahold of Agnes’s arm and pull her out.

  An aged park employee drove his garden tractor to the edge and started questioning the assembly. “Who does she belong to?”

  “To them,” said one young father as he pointed to Noah and then to Tayte. His children had also been feeding the ducks.

  “She must be crazy,” said one woman.

  “Wasn’t someone watching her?” asked an older woman whose words hit like a hammer.

  “She could have drowned, poor thing,” added her companion.

  Noah caught Tayte’s reaction to the chaos. Her expression changed from panic to guilt to humiliation and back to panic once Noah had Agnes on the shore where Tayte saw her grandmother’s condition. Noah wrapped his damp jacket around Agnes before Tayte grabbed her arm and began pulling her toward the car, grilling her with every step.

  “How did this happen?”

  “I lost my balance.”

  “You shouldn’t have been so close to the edge. You could have drowned!”

  “I was trying to feed the little duck in the back. He couldn’t get any corn.”

  “You nearly drowned worrying about a stupid duck? You’re filthy and soaking wet. Who knows what kind of bacteria you’ve swallowed. You probably need an antibiotic or something.”

  Noah watched Agnes shrink. “That’s enough,” he whispered sternly to Tayte.

  Tayte pressed her hands to her head. “Fine. Let’s just go. Let’s please just go.”

  The park employee approached Noah. “The city will want to file a report about this.”

  Noah barreled past him with one arm around Agnes and the other wrapped protectively around Tayte. “No reports.”

  In a moment every new possibility that had seemed within reach suddenly shattered.

  Chapter 18

  Tayte cranked the heater up in the car, aggravating the already intolerable fishy smell percolating through Agnes’s clothes and into Tayte’s upholstery. Barely a word was spoken on the way home. Noah knew Tayte’s fears, that someone would call her incapable of caring for Agnes, or that she would come to that conclusion herself.

  She busied herself by calling Dr. Nash to report Agnes’s unintentional swim in the duck pond. He called a preemptive prescription in to the pharmacy, and when she went inside to pick it up Agnes finally spoke.

  “I don’t need her to take care of me. I can take care of myself. And I don’t need her permission to do anything!” Her hand swept the air, underscoring her point.

  “Don’t be angry, Agnes. Tayte’s just afraid. She loves you. You’re all she has.”

  Her mouth pressed until it wrinkled like a prune. “Why do I have to always be nice? ‘Be nice, Agnes.’ That’s what you always say to me.” She sounded like a petulant five-year-old.

  “Because I know you are nice. You love your family. That’s perhaps your best gift. You are good at loving, and Tayte needs to be loved.”

  A silent moment passed. “Angeline was Tony’s girl. She would not allow me to love her after her father died.”

  “Tayte needs you now. I don’t think Angeline was a very good mother to her.”

  Reason returned, and Agnes became reflective. “I was afraid of that. I would have kept that child if her mother would have let me, but she took her, to spite me.”

  “Why was she so angry at you?”

  She stalled and stared out the window. “She found out about the candle, and Sharlz.”

  Noah held his breath when he saw Tayte exit the pharmacy. This was not the time for possibly indiscreet disclosures about Charles Briscoe, evidently the cause of the rift between herself and Tayte’s mother. Fortunately, none came, though snippets of Agnes’s conversation occupied his thoughts all the way to the farm. When they arrived, Agnes noticed his bags in the back of the truck.

  “What is this?”

  “John and Sarah’s family is arriving to s
pend these last few weeks together.”

  Tayte took Agnes’s arm and tried to draw her to the house.

  “Poor Sarah,” said Agnes. “Watching someone you love die is worse than death itself. Where will you go? Why don’t you stay here? I have many empty rooms upstairs.”

  Noah noticed that Tayte didn’t second the offer. “Thanks, but I know a nice place in town that’s cheap.”

  Agnes broke free of Tayte’s grasp. “Nonsense! Why waste money to sleep somewhere else when you will just end up here in the morning anyway?”

  “I . . . I wouldn’t mind bunking in the barn,” he checked Tayte’s response to the suggestion, “if that would be all right.”

  “That is absurd when we have all this—”

  “I think that’s what Noah would prefer, Grandma, wouldn’t you, Noah?” Tayte’s arched eyebrow told him it was the requested answer.

  “Absolutely. In fact, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to move some of my tools over here as well. Then I could work late into the evening.”

  The deal was struck, and the three shared a tense dinner of leftover chicken. When Noah offered to help clean up, Tayte curtly declined his offer, giving Noah the cue to retire.

  “Will you not stay and watch a show with us?” coaxed Agnes.

  He glanced at Tayte. “Thank you, but I’ve got work to do tonight. Maybe another time.”

  The women sent him off to the barn with pillows and quilts. He was actually grateful for the solitude. The grotto had inspired him with a myriad of ideas for the Eppleys’ deck, and he was anxious to put them on paper. He unbridled his creativity and sketched for beauty without regard for cost or labor needs. Sometime around one a.m. he laid his pencil down and stared at his design. It was completely unrealistic. It would cost a fortune. It was magnificent.

  Suddenly, the thought of building a traditional structure seemed distasteful and unsatisfying. He needed to find a compromise, by tomorrow.

  A cramp in his back forced him to stand and stretch before bedding down. He glanced out a small window that revealed light shining in the attic of Agnes’s house.