“You don’t think this style’s too young for me?” she asked Robbie.
“Mom…you’re getting the dress.”
Maggie had packed a pair of shoes that would look cute with it.
25
One day you find yourself dancing in the kitchen and you know you’re going to be alright. Every day won’t be for dancing, but those few that are? Those few are all you need.
“Here’s why I like him.” Robbie propped her feet on the dash as Maggie drove them back to the cabin after having burgers and hand cut fries at Pete’s. “He’s not bad-looking…for a middle-aged guy.”
No, he wasn’t.
“And it looks like he might not go bald.”
Maggie cut her eyes sarcastically over at her daughter. “The most important thing to consider in a man, after all.”
“But he could use someone to cook healthier meals for him than that grease pit we just ate in.”
“You acted like you enjoyed your burger!”
“All for you, Mom.”
Robbie grew serious again. “No, you know my real favorite thing? Besides the idea of a guy who keeps the flowers going that his deceased wife of thirty years planted? Who has waited that long to ask someone of his own volition to the Cherry Blossom Festival?”
“He makes signs, too,” said Maggie. “Those cute signs you kept seeing around town? Canon made those.”
Robbie’s brows raised. “He’s not short on admirable features.”
“But admirable features alone are not enough reason to give your heart to someone. You want to believe it’s the right person for you.” Maggie felt the need to say this. It was her job, as mother, to be sensible.
Robbie gave her a look. “Which is the whole reason I’m here in Marston County with you this weekend.”
“Mark is right for you, Sweetheart.” Maggie felt the need to say this, too. Because it was also her job, as mother, to point out blind spots her daughter might be having—gently, of course.
“And I saw how that man back there in the burger joint was looking at you, Mom. He’s scared to death of you. Do you know that?”
Maggie scrunched a doubting nose at Robbie. “Canon? He’s not scared of anything.” She decided not to tell Robbie she’d seen Canon whip three younger men into acting nicer.
“He’s scared of you. He’s scared you’re going to break his heart. But he seems willing to take the chance.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“I know.”
Robbie moved her feet from the dash and hugged her knees up to her on the seat. “But I didn’t get cold feet because I’m scared Mark will break my heart. I’m scared I might break his.” Robbie’s voice dropped to barely audible. “I don’t want to have an unfaithful gene in me, and do him wrong. He doesn’t deserve that.”
Maggie saw a tear slide down Robbie’s cheek.
“Nobody has a crystal ball, Robbie. None of us get guaranteed outcomes for our lives.”
“I know. You have to be willing to be vulnerable. Thank you, Brene Brown. But back to the sheriff. I like the way everybody in this town talks about him, and acts around him. You can hear the respect in their voices.” Robbie looked out the window at the passing farmlands. “He doesn’t strike me as a guy who would ever do a woman wrong.”
Neither did your father, Maggie started to say, but decided to keep it to herself. Robbie was being protective and Maggie couldn’t fault her for that. She felt every bit as protective of Robbie, too, and knew as well as anyone she could promise no absolutes about her daughter’s future with Mark. Or any other man.
“Dad’s going bald,” Robbie mumbled, after a bit. Maggie didn’t say anything. Robbie moved her feet back up to the dash. “They’re having a girl. Did you know that? Bethany’s a week past her due date.”
“No, I didn’t know it was a girl.”
“Cal and I are going to have a sister—half sister. How weird is that?”
Maggie’s mind traveled back to the day the twins were born. “I hope it goes okay for them.”
Robbie turned to her, her eyes glistening. “I’m proud of you, Mom.”
“Where did that come from?”
“You saying that—being able to say that.”
“I’m not mad at her or your father anymore, Robbie. I’m really not. I realized that my first week in the cabin. And I don’t want you or Cal to be. We should all want the best for them. Yes, it hurts to feel betrayed. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. You know better. But, I don’t know… This journey I’ve been on, as bumpy as it started, it’s a good journey. I’m grateful for it.”
Maggie took her right hand off the steering wheel so she could set it on Robbie’s. Robbie latched on and gripped Maggie’s hand tight.
“I want to get where you are, Mom. I don’t want to be afraid of the future. I don’t want to be afraid to love Mark. In fact,” Robbie was openly crying now, “I like this cabin of yours and this quaint little town so much, what would you think if we had our wedding here?”
Robbie had taken on a tougher exterior since Tom’s betrayal. She must have felt the need, as oldest, to protect her mother. It was nice to see her soft again…tender…willing to be vulnerable.
“In Marston County?” asked Maggie.
“Yes!” Robbie’s eyes were lit up now. “The more I think about it, the more I love the idea. At first I thought we could get married at the cabin. Ever since I pulled into the yard and parked, I’ve been imagining the place decorated with flowers in my mind. But I’d rather save it for the honeymoon getaway. Today, seeing the way all those cherry trees are about to pop on Main Street…that quaint little library down Maple. What if we got married at the courthouse and had our reception at the library? I don’t want a big wedding. I’d like to keep it small. And I think Mark would love the idea. Don’t you?”
Maggie smiled over at her. “I was hoping some of the clarity I’d gotten out here would rub off on you.”
“I don’t understand how in less than a day, but it has.”
Robbie let go of her mother’s hand and blew her nose. “To think I didn’t want you to come out here. I really pooed on it back in December. But there’s something special about this place, Mom.”
“You hear all those stories Dot Jenkins was telling at the library?”
“I know, right? Writer’s dream-talk. Do you think she wears polka-dots because her name is Dot?”
“You think?”
Robbie nodded at her. “I predict that’s her thing. You pay attention at the festival. I want to know what Dot Jenkins was wearing.”
“How can you not love a woman like that? I should have taken you by to meet Brad Bybee, he’s the editor of the newspaper. And you didn’t get to meet Amos. That’s the other deputy. He has a shock of red hair and Opie freckles.” Maggie soaked up the view rolling past. “I can’t believe I’m so drawn to this place. You know I picked the Marston County cabin because of the online story about the man who built it for his bride in the 1850s. It seemed like a place that would generate stories. And it has all those amazing windows, but at night it can be a little creepy. I’m learning to be grateful for the hard things, though…the on-the-surface frightening things…and embrace the promise of the light that comes over the hills the next morning.”
“That sunrise is magical,” agreed Robbie.
Maggie had been tempted to let Robbie sleep in that morning in the bed beside her. Watching her children sleep was something she treasured now that she didn’t get to experience it often. But she had nudged Robbie awake so she could watch with her as the sun rose and sent the shafts of light down through the branches of the oak tree.
When Maggie parked the Subaru back at the cabin and they got out, she put her arm through Robbie’s. “Let’s walk down to Mr. Thompson’s. I want you to hear about Zeke before you go.”
* * *
Robbie stared down at the old photograph. “Your son was handsome, Mr. Thompson.”
Ollie reached for the fr
ame and put it back on the television console where it regularly gathered dust. “He was a good boy. I hate he married that girl, but…we’ve all got our crosses to bear.”
After Maggie and Robbie said good-bye to Mr. Thompson and walked with their arms linked back down the dirt road to the cabin, Robbie pumped Maggie with questions.
“So how did you learn about his son? Did he tell you about him when you rented the cabin?”
Maggie cast around for the right response, not wanting to lie to Robbie. “It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment.” Not really. Third night. “Canon was the one who showed me his gravesite, behind Mr. Thompson’s cottage, when he came to search the property. Then Mr. Thompson told me his son froze to death on the steps of the cabin. That’s the moment I knew I wanted to tell his story.”
“It’s so tragic, to think he was right outside of Mr. Thompson’s house and Mr. Thompson didn’t know it. How are you going to balance fact and fiction on it? I mean, you’re a fiction writer.”
“I’m still grappling with that. Do you know who Truman Capote was?”
“Wasn’t there a movie about him?”
“With Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Capote wrote a book called In Cold Blood based on this crime spree two men went on in the late ’50s where they killed a family in Kansas. It went unsolved for a few months. Long story short, it created a new genre, which I find fascinating on this topic of fact and fiction.
“At the time, Capote claimed the book was all true—that he’d been accurate in giving a true story the flair of fiction. But in the final analysis…this is me talking, you know I don’t have a Ph.D. on this topic…it’s not possible to even report the news journalistically without bias and spin.
“A writer cannot separate who she is, at her core, from the story she is telling. I’m only beginning to try to tell Zeke’s story, but almost from the first moment I could feel that it was a story about me as much as about him.”
“How so?”
“I guess it comes down to this balance I told you about before, between crafting the story and listening for it. Michelangelo said he simply released the statue in the marble. He chiseled until he set it free—the image that begged to live all along.
“In thinking about why this particular story might beg to be set free, I keep going back to something Canon said about the difference in murder, killing and shooting. What constituted the definition of each.
“After reading the court reports and the police files, I think Zeke did kill his wife. But I don’t think he made that choice in hate, like he had every right to. I think he made it in love—a displaced love, maybe. But love all the same.”
Before Robbie could say anything, Maggie continued. “Or maybe that’s just what I want to believe. But that is one of the great lessons of my experience at this cabin—what I believe matters, Robbie. It matters for me, if nobody else.
“When your father told me about Bethany, I had a choice. We always have a choice when someone hurts us. Most of us choose to lash out in an effort to protect ourselves. And I guess the more hurt we are—the more backed into a corner we feel—the more we lash out.
“I was so mad at your father that day I could have killed him. I thought about it. I imagined taking my hands and reaching for his throat and making him stop talking because he was shattering my heart, threatening everything that felt secure to me. But what if your father’s choices, that look on the surface like he was being selfish, were ultimately an act of love that set me free? Maybe he didn’t deliver his actions out of love for me, but why can’t I chose to accept them as such?
“Glass shards falling all around me, threatening to make me bleed out…but when it was over, the door on a cage I didn’t even know I was in was open, and I was free to walk out. Into a new life of my own making.
“And Robbie! It’s the life I wanted all along. But I never had the courage to pursue it before. I lost writing along the way. I hid behind your father’s money and your and Cal’s schedules.”
Whether he had intended to or not, Tom had given Maggie the hard gifts of freedom and self-sufficiency.
“Zeke made a choice of love and was thrown into prison for it, and yet…I wonder if he didn’t finally feel free once he got there.”
Zeke said as much.
“Then why would he escape?” asked Robbie.
“That’s a piece I’m still working on.” What Maggie wouldn’t give to have Zeke back for an hour so she could ask him!
“Maybe he wanted to see his father,” said Robbie. “Didn’t you say his mother had just died?”
“And Zeke wasn’t there for the funeral. I’m sure he felt guilty about that.”
“So he came to the cottage and Mr. Thompson was drinking,” continued Robbie.
Maggie took her daughter’s interest as a great sign. If she could hook Robbie, the hard-to-convince accountant, on the value and merits of Zeke Thompson’s story, there was hope she might hook readers, too.
Robbie continued through her audit of facts. “So Mr. Thompson didn’t hear him. Zeke got the key to the cabin from the shed and came down here.” Maggie and Robbie were back to the cabin now. “And he what…dropped the key?”
“Mr. Thompson said he looked everywhere for the key. It was gone from the shed, but never put in the lock.”
“You could say he had a hole in his pocket,” suggested Robbie.
“That’s one idea.”
“So he falls on the porch and dies. Mr. Thompson finds him.”
“Two days later. I read about what happens to a body when it freezes to death. It doesn’t take as long as you might think—scary, actually. First the extremities go numb as your heartbeat goes up. Then your heart and other organs begin to slow. You get as disoriented as if you’d been drinking. Near the end it starts to feel like you’re burning up. Some people pull their clothes off. A lot of them burrow down into the snow in the body’s last-ditch effort to protect itself.”
This part of Maggie’s research was difficult, like first reading through the case files in Canon’s office. But if Maggie wanted readers to feel transported, she had to go there first. She didn’t like watching Zeke die on the porch, knowing the sun rose and set twice before his father found him, or hearing Mr. Thompson’s wail when he rolled the stiff, curled bundle over and saw that it was his son…his only son.
Robbie took a deep breath, perhaps seeing it also. “So Mr. Thompson takes Zeke back to the cottage…”
“And tries to bury him, but he can’t dig the hole because the ground is frozen so hard. Canon comes and discovers the body in the shed. When the ground is thawed a week later, he comes back and helps Ollie dig the hole. And he tries to keep the secret. I guess that explains their bond.”
Robbie shook her head. “I don’t think that’s all of it.”
“Then what?”
“They both lost a wife.”
26
Anne Lamott said first drafts are excrement. (She used a different word.) The trick is editing—trying to shape the pile into something more pleasing.
Maggie sat in Canon’s squeaky chair on Tuesday afternoon behind the large desk reading the reports again about the night Tandy Wilkins died. Canon was out on calls, but Shirley told her she was welcome to sit at his desk to read the reports as many times as she wanted. The muffins seemed to have softened her a bit.
Maggie read, stopped to scribble notes on her pad, read some more, wiped tears from her eyes, then scribbled more notes. Her heart kept breaking for Zeke as she sought to crawl into his mind—have his thoughts—feel his pain.
She had spent two hours at the library earlier that morning getting an earful from Dot Jenkins about all she knew about Zeke, his rocky marriage with Tandy, and the fateful night that led to him being behind bars—same night Maggie theorized his chains were finally broken. And yes, Dot was wearing polka-dots again—white on a navy cardigan.
Facts and visuals filled Maggie’s head.
Zeke drove a green ’78 Camaro. It was picture
d in the yard in a photograph taken the day after the murders. Canon didn’t mind her seeing that one.
The house on Mill Creek was a humble brick ranch, no shrubs in the yard.
The files included reports and statements from his supervisor and co-workers at the Levi factory. High marks on his performance reviews. Everybody liked him. Supervisor Frank said he wished there were two of him…co-workers liked working with him…he was reliable…covered other people’s shifts when they ran late…volunteered for overtime to make extra money.
When the ladies from the education committee had started coming into the library at 11:30 for their regular Tuesday luncheon, Dot waved a regal black woman over. “Maggie, this is the principal at the high school, June Hargrove. She had Zeke in class.” Dot latched onto June’s arm, and June took it in stride, looking like she’d had her arm latched by Dot many times before. “Tell Maggie what a good boy Zeke Thompson was, June, while I go get the pimento cheese sandwiches.”
Then June Hargrove, tall, with salt and pepper hair and a warm smile, proceeded to tell Maggie what a good student Zeke had been. “He was put in my homeroom class when the Thompsons came here. Middle of the school year. Zeke was shy. But what a good writer! I remember. A good reader, too. The best students always are.”
“Did you ever have Tandy Wilkins in class, Mrs. Hargrove? What kind of student was she?”
“Tandy was in that same class—sophomores. Oh, you knew it if Tandy was in the room. She had a way of drawing attention. And she was older, of course. Held back her freshman year. She lorded her street smarts over the other students. Most of them looked up to her, but for all the wrong reasons. She was worldly from a young age, if you know what I mean.
“Zeke, on the other hand, was quiet. Other students hardly knew he was there at all. I knew, of course, when I started seeing the kind of work he was capable of. I told his parents he could qualify for some nice scholarships, and he seemed interested his junior year. But by the time he and Tandy were seniors, he said he wasn’t going to college and wouldn’t apply for them.”
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