Hummingbird Lane

by Brown, Carolyn

  “It seemed strange to me, too. She’d constantly told me that I was too shy to ever marry, and then there she was pushing me toward this guy . . .” Emma gasped.

  “What?” Sophie asked.

  “She just did that to prove that I wasn’t capable of a relationship, didn’t she?” Emma asked.

  “What happened on the date?” Sophie wondered if Emma’s state of mind had more to do with Victoria than anything else. Rebel had been right when she called it Munchausen by proxy, only instead of making her daughter sick, Victoria had done her best to drive Emma crazy. She must hate her daughter a lot to do that to her, or else she was just a manipulative bitch who didn’t want Emma to have the company when Victoria either retired or died.

  “He tried to kiss me good night, and I had a panic attack,” Emma answered. “Then Mother told me that she knew I wouldn’t be able to handle a date, and that I would be seeing the therapist twice a week from then on.”

  Sophie stood up, rounded the small table, and wrapped Emma up in her arms. “I wish you had run away and come to live with me and Mama.”

  “Me too,” Emma said, “but Mother would have found me, and she would have been so mad.”

  Sophie went back to her chair and together they finished off the nachos in comfortable silence.

  “You cooked lunch. I’ll get dessert. I saw some Fudgsicles in the freezer.” Emma picked up the empty plate and carried it inside with her. “Tell me more about your college stuff. Did you ever slash a picture into ribbons?”

  “Nope, not one time.” Sophie giggled. “But I have to admit I thought about it more than once when I couldn’t get the effect I wanted.”

  Emma returned and handed Sophie an ice cream bar. She sat down and took a bite of hers. “Whatever happened is right there at the edge of my mind, but I can’t grasp it. Maybe it wasn’t meant for me to remember. Maybe I’m just supposed to find happiness without the memories.”

  “When it’s time, it will come to you. Your mind is probably waiting until you are strong enough to face it,” Sophie told her. “Did you have a car accident? Maybe that’s why you were in gray scrubs. You had a bad wreck. They had to cut your clothes off at the hospital, and they sent you home in scrubs.”

  “My car was just fine. I drove it home, but Mother traded it in for a new one,” Emma answered.

  “Why would she do that?” Sophie asked.

  “Jeffrey couldn’t get the horrible smell out of it. Mother thought maybe a field rat had gotten inside it and died. I always thought that my soul had bled to death in the back seat.” Emma had been about to take a bite of the ice cream, but her hand stopped midair. “I was at the hospital. I remember a lady nurse helping me remove my clothes and telling me it wasn’t my fault. That was the smell of blood in the car. The seats were black fabric, so it wouldn’t have showed.”

  “What wasn’t your fault?” Sophie asked.

  Emma shook her head. “I don’t know. I can get a flash of myself lying on a hospital bed with curtains around me, and even that much makes me jittery.”

  “Are you sure that you were not ever in an emergency room when you were a kid?” Sophie suggested.

  Emma cut her eyes around at Sophie. “You know I was never allowed to do anything that might get me hurt. The only time I felt free was when Rebel watched us.”

  “Then that rules out the idea that you might be mixing up a trip to the hospital in your youth with the business of slashing the painting.” Sophie blinked back tears and tried to swallow down a lump the size of a grapefruit. Emma’s freedom—her ability to face whatever happened to her—was tied up with the feelings she had when they were together. Sophie sent up a silent prayer that she wouldn’t make a mess of the responsibility.

  Chapter Four

  The warm shower water beat down on Sophie’s back, easing the sore muscles in her shoulders from painting all day. A visual popped into her head of a tiny shower in the bathroom of her dorm back at the beginning of the second semester of her freshman year. That time, she had turned on the water and then slid down the back wall to sit with her knees pulled up against her chest. Her salty tears had blended with the warm water until she couldn’t cry anymore.

  Had Emma gotten pregnant that first semester of college, too? Coming from her background, she would have felt even more guilty than Sophie still did. Sophie had never told anyone about that time in her life, not even Rebel, and she couldn’t imagine Emma having to tell Victoria such a thing.

  Like mother, like daughter, the voice in her head taunted. You were the product of an affair, and then you turned around and did the same thing as your mother.

  “Maybe so,” Sophie agreed. “But neither of us knew those sorry bastards were married.”

  She didn’t have to close her eyes to see the dark-haired artist in her freshman class, or to feel the excitement when he flirted so blatantly with her. He had been brought in as a substitute professor for the six weeks that the regular teacher was on maternity leave. His name was Lucas Deville, and he was from Chicago. Sophie’s affair with him lasted the last three weeks he was at the college, and then he was gone. When the teacher returned, she told them that Lucas had gone back to Illinois and had gotten there in time to be present as his wife gave birth to their third child. That was the first that Sophie had heard about the man being married. Standing there under the spray of the water that evening in the trailer, she felt the same guilt that she had felt that day.

  She turned off the water and threw back the curtain. She wrapped a towel around her body and another around her hair. Unlike Emma, Sophie could remember every single memory of that time clearly. They were etched into her mind like they had been branded there. Lucas had courted her, seduced her, and then left without ever mentioning a wife or children. Not that she could lay all the blame on him. God only knew how flattered she had been when he paid so much attention to her. She could have said no that night he asked her to go to his apartment for a drink. He had been her teacher, after all.

  At Christmastime, Sophie had gone home for the month and thought she had the flu. Rebel fed her noodle soup and lots of hot tea. When it was time to go back to college, Sophie had kicked the rotten bug and could keep food on her stomach. A week after classes started, she realized that she’d missed a period. She bought a pregnancy test but refused to believe the results when it showed her the positive sign. She went back to the store and bought three more—all turned out positive.

  She didn’t want to be a single mother. She had a career ahead of her, and yet, she couldn’t live with herself if she gave a child away. Her mother had kept her and sacrificed her pride by working for wealthy women who looked down on her and even accused her of affairs like Victoria had. Sophie had woken up every day worrying about what to do, and then, six weeks later, she lost the baby.

  She had cried for three days after the trip to the emergency room. In her mind, she had killed her own baby with negative thoughts because she didn’t want it to ruin her career. Now, she was thirty-five and her biological clock was ticking louder and louder. Teddy wanted children, but Sophie wasn’t sure she deserved to be a mother again.

  “Did Emma lose a baby, too?” she muttered as she padded down the hall and into her bedroom.

  She dressed in a pair of shorts and an orange tank top, brushed her still-damp hair up into a ponytail and headed out to have supper with Josh, Arty, and Filly. When she reached the living room, she noticed the sliding doors to the back porch were open. Emma was sitting with her bare feet propped up on the railing, and Coco was curled up in her lap.

  “Are you coming out for supper?” Sophie eyed Emma closely. Had she had a baby and given it away, then repressed all that pain?

  “Is it all right if I stay right here?” Emma looked nervous, but her hands remained still.

  “That’s perfectly fine. I’ll bring you a plate,” Sophie told her. “Did you remember anything else today?”

  “No, and I don’t deserve food brought in for me. I should be s
trong enough to go out there and eat,” Emma said. “I’ll get myself a bowl of cereal.”

  Victoria wouldn’t have let Emma have a child. She would have made her have an abortion, and that would have set Emma on an even bigger guilt trip.

  “Nonsense,” Sophie scolded. “We all understand. You’ve come a long way in only one day, and if you want to stay in, that’s fine. You’ll lose Coco in about ten minutes, though. When she hears Arty say grace, she comes running from wherever she is.”

  “Thank you,” Emma said. “This has been the best time of my life, Sophie, and I mean that.”

  “Good. Maybe I can talk you into doing some paintings pretty soon.” Sophie visualized days when she and Emma had lain under the shade trees in the backyard and colored in their books or sketched. Emma was always whistling or humming in those days. Sophie wanted Emma to have those kinds of moments in her life again.

  Josh waved when Sophie stepped out onto the porch. “Arty made pot roast tonight, and Filly has apple dumplings with caramel sauce,” he yelled across the courtyard.

  “Sounds wonderful,” Sophie said as she made her way over to the picnic table and took her usual place.

  “Is Emma coming out tonight?” Filly asked.

  “Not tonight. She’s had a big day,” Sophie answered. “She’s been through a lot, and she’s”—she struggled for the right word—“she’s really, really shy right now.”

  Arty said his quick grace and handed a big spoon to Filly. “You can dip the food up.”

  “Do you think she’ll ever feel like joining us?” Josh asked. “Is Coco helping her a little?”

  “She’s working her way through a lot of problems right now. Whatever they are, she’s buried them down deep since she was eighteen years old, and it’s real hard for them to surface, and, yes, Josh, I believe Coco is helping her a lot. I just hope that living here among all of us will also help her get over whatever it is that’s holding her back from having a real life.”

  Somedays, Sophie wished that she could bury her own guilt over the relief she’d felt when she had lost her baby. The child would have been a teenager now. That was hard to even imagine.

  “Earth to Sophie.” Josh chuckled.

  “I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “I was woolgathering. What did you say?”

  “It was me talking to you,” Filly answered. “I asked if you’d pass your plate.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Sophie picked up the disposable plastic plate and handed it to her. “This all looks delicious. I’m starving.”

  “What do you think happened to Emma?” Arty asked.

  “I don’t know, but it had to be traumatic enough for her to just let her mother take over her entire life, and that is not a good thing,” Sophie answered. “Victoria has controlled Emma her whole life. She was never allowed to make any decisions on her own—clothes, meals, extracurriculars, nothing. When Victoria was away from the house, and Mama and I were in the house, she could be more herself. All she ever got from her mother was criticism, and her dad just went along with whatever Victoria said. I feel so guilty that I didn’t make a bigger effort to see her before now.”

  Josh nodded several times. “I can so relate to that. My parents are still disappointed in me. I was a genius, so I was supposed to force myself to use my brain for something other than drawing pictures with pen and ink.”

  Sophie thought of Rebel, who never told her that her dream of being an artist was stupid. “I’m finding out that I had the best mother in the world,” she said and then tried to change the subject. “Arty, how have you outrun the women all these years? Any man that can cook like you do should have been dragged to the altar years ago.”

  “He can cook, but he’s not got a romantic bone in his body,” Filly answered.

  “Well, neither do you,” Arty snapped back at her. “If you couldn’t bake, and I didn’t have a sweet tooth, I would have strangled you years ago.”

  “Oh, hush,” Filly shot across the table at him. “Now, back to Emma. Could she have been molested or maybe seen some horrendous crime that scared the bejesus right out of her?”

  Sophie hoped that neither one of those things had happened. But Emma had mentioned going into a panic when her date tried to kiss her good night, so maybe Filly had hit on something important.

  “You’ve been watching too many of them cop shows,” Arty fussed at Filly.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Probably so, but I know at least forty ways to kill you and bury you out there in the cactus field with no one the wiser, so maybe I’ve seen just enough of them to get away with a crime.” She turned back to Sophie. “Whatever it might be, she needs our help. You should take her some good hot supper before it gets cold.”

  “Much as I hate to admit it, she’s right. We’ll do whatever it takes to help Emma.” Arty dipped up a plate of food. “You’ll need to carry that with both hands. I’ll take the dumpling up to the door for you.”

  Sophie took the plate from him. “Thank you, and thank all of you for understanding.”

  Arty reached for the dessert, but Josh beat him to it.

  “I’ll take it.” Josh stood up. “You’re still eating, and I’m finished, except for dessert.”

  “Thanks.” Arty nodded. “If this old woman wouldn’t argue with me, I’d be done already.”

  “Humph.” Filly almost snorted, but her eyes twinkled.

  Sophie loved the easy banter between Arty and Filly. And, of course, she loved the communal meal every night—which reminded her, she needed to give Josh her share of the grocery bill as well as her personal grocery list by the next morning.

  “Come on inside,” she said as she and Josh reached the porch. “You and Arty will be going to the store tomorrow. I’ve got my list ready.”

  Josh followed her into the trailer and set the bowl on the counter, but he looked as nervous as the only one-legged rooster at a coyote convention. Just thinking about one of her mother’s sayings put a smile on Sophie’s face.

  “Hey, Emma,” she yelled out to the back porch. “Is there anything food-wise that you want for next week? Josh goes to the store for us on Saturday.”

  “Chocolate cookies,” Emma said.

  Sophie added that to her list and handed it to Josh, plus an envelope with cash in it. “Thanks again for doing this for us.”

  Josh cocked his head to one side and weighed the envelope of cash in his hand. “This feels a little heavy.”

  “There’s two of us eating, so it should be,” Sophie told him.

  “That’s not necessary,” Josh said.

  “Yep, it is. Now, get on out of here and go eat your dessert. I’ll be back out there in a few minutes for mine.” Sophie motioned toward the door.

  “Yes, ma’am.” He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up on his nose and closed the door behind him.

  “Supper is served,” Sophie called out. “Might be easier to eat if you come inside and sit on a barstool. Coco will try to share it with you if you stay out there.”

  “I still don’t feel like I deserve this,” Emma said as she made her way to the bar and slid onto a stool. “Oh, but it does look good. Is that an apple dumpling? I haven’t had one of those in years.” She picked up the plastic fork and dug into it.

  “I’m going back outside to have my dessert with the folks. Enjoy the dinner.”

  “Tell the cooks thank you for me. This is amazing,” Emma muttered around the food in her mouth.

  Chapter Five

  Emma ate. She slept. She and Sophie talked about paintings, colors, and their childhood, but she didn’t even venture beyond the chairs on the back porch. Just the thought of sitting down to supper with people still terrified her. As she was getting ready for bed on Friday evening, she noticed a framed quote above the light switch in her tiny bedroom. She stopped and read it, then went back and read it another time. The last two lines really appealed to her: Surrender to the beauty of revealing yourself to yourself, and to the ones who saw you before you saw you.<
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  “Sophie says I’m strong, so I’m going to do my best to believe her and surrender to that,” Emma whispered as she pulled back the covers and crawled into bed. “Can I really reveal myself to others? I feel antsy tonight, but I haven’t had a sleeping pill since we got here. I don’t need one now.” She closed her eyes, but her mind kept replaying that dream about the satin sheets. Her mother always had satin sheets on her bed, so maybe she was thinking about something that happened when she was just a little girl. Had she walked in on them when they were making love? No, that couldn’t be right. Her mother and father had slept in separate rooms. Maybe her mother had yelled at her when she’d tried to crawl into bed with her during a storm.

  She shook her head. Neither of those could be right. They locked their bedroom doors at night, and it was Viola, her nanny, who took care of her, right up until she was in the sixth grade. That was the year Victoria announced that Emma had outgrown the need for a babysitter. Emma had been glad to see Viola leave, because at the end of every day, the woman tattled to Victoria if Emma did one thing or ate anything that would upset her mother.

  She finally slung back the sheet, turned on the bedside lamp, and got out of bed. She hadn’t finished the apple dumpling that Sophie had brought her for supper, so she started to the kitchen for a midnight snack and noticed the framed piece on the wall again. She stopped and read the whole thing: Love will put you face-to-face with endless obstacles. It will ask you to reveal the parts of yourself you tirelessly work at hiding. It will ask you to find compassion for yourself and receive what it is you are convinced you are not worthy of. Love will always demand more. Surrender to being seen and being loved. Surrender to the beauty of revealing yourself to yourself, and to the ones who saw you before you saw you.

  It was signed Vienna Pharaon. Emma made a mental note to look that person up on the internet. She either had gone through something traumatic herself or else she had an amazing understanding of folks like Emma.