Waking Savannah

by Terri-Lynne Defino

  “I would love to take the blame.” He kissed her. “With all my heart, but there is another way of looking at it that might appease your logical brain, and you’ve already said it yourself, in a way.”

  “I did?”

  “I was ready to change,” he said. “And so were you. You were able to fall in love with me because you were ready to let go of the past. There have been dozens of men to come and go from your life, corazón. You were not ready for any of them to have an effect on you. When I arrived, you were.”

  Savannah studied him, brow furrowed adorably. “I’m not buying it,” she said. “Not completely.”

  “You can’t say I didn’t try. I, for one, believe in the power of love, and that love doesn’t end when life does. I forgot, for a little while. I remembered because of you.”

  “And because Anita destroyed your life in Boston.”

  Cold water in the face, dripping down his spine, trickling down his legs to pool at his feet. Ade tried not to shudder, but he did. “That too,” he said. “I’d like to think I’d have come to my senses before I was too far gone.”

  “I’m sorry.” Savannah took his face in her hands and kissed him. She smoothed the hair from his face. “I kind of hit you over the head with that, didn’t I?”

  “A little bit, yes.”

  “It’s never far from my mind.” Now a tear did fall. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “It will only be for a few days. I will call.”

  “I don’t want you to call,” she said. “Go to Boston. Do what you need to do and come home. And if you don’t come back...if you don’t come back…”

  “I will be back, Savannah.”

  Tires on gravel. Headlights blinding, the delivery boy pulled up the drive.

  “I’ll get the food,” she said. “You go set the table.”

  “Savannah, I—”

  “No, really. I’m sorry, love. I should not have brought it up. We only have a couple of days left. Let’s not waste them talking about things we can’t resolve, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said as she hurried away.

  In the kitchen, Ade took out plates and cups. He dug chopsticks, still in their paper wrappers, out of the silverware drawer. Love, she had said. Not sugar. Not Ade. Love. Something else to store away in the folds of his brain, to take out when he was old and withered.

  “My mouth is already watering.” She came through the screen door carrying the food. “What did you order that smells so dang good?”

  Ade took the box from her, set it on the table with one hand and pulled her into his arms with the other. He kissed her long and he kissed her hard. He lifted the all-too-easy dress from her body. Carrying her to the couch, he gave her no opportunity to protest, even if she would, which she did not. He made love to her as if it were the first time, the last time, the only time. While the food cooled. While the crickets sang. And another memory embedded itself alongside all the others he would cherish the rest of his life.

  * * * *

  I know I shouldn’t watch. It’s indecent. But they don’t know I’m here. I need something to wash my own experience out of my head, right? Something beautiful and loving and satisfying. I really hate remembering so clearly. I was right, what I thought. The only way to stop now is to move on. It’s pulling me toward…something. Something better than Nowheresville.

  Well, I’ve stuck around this long already, I’ll stick around just a little longer. I want to see how things work out with Savvy and Ricky Ricardo. It’s almost the Hunter’s Moon. That I feel too, like it’s part of me. And maybe, just maybe, I have a bit more mischief up my sleeve.

  Chapter 23

  dazzling shapes

  “You could have been in the delivery room.”

  He’d gotten the call as he was preparing to leave for Boston on the morning of September 19th. Anita was already in the hospital. In labor. The baby, apparently, had a mind of his own, and he wanted to be delivered rather than extricated. Already, a Durst.

  Anita sat upright in bed, beautiful even after delivering a baby. More so, if possible, for the lack of makeup and uncoiffed hair. Summer tanned and always fit, it was hard to believe she’d just pushed the perfectly formed, seven-pound bundle in Ade’s arms into the world.

  “By the time I got here,” he answered, “he was already born.”

  “Four hours, start to finish.” She winked. “Not bad for a first timer. If I’d known how easy it was going to be, I’d never have planned the C-section.”

  “Surgery requires a much longer recovery time. You’re lucky your son had a better idea.”

  “Our son,” Anita corrected him. “Gideon.”

  “Gideon? That’s his name?”

  “He looks like a Gideon, don’t you think?”

  Ade gazed down at the perfect little boy. His heart swelled. “Gideon is a good name.”

  “His surname is Durst for the time being,” Anita said. “We can have that changed later.”

  “If there is need.”

  “Come on, Ade.” Anita sneered. That, at least, had not changed. “You’re already in love with him. I know I am. Don’t deny it. He’s your son.”

  I want him to be. You have no idea, you treacherous…But even in thought he couldn’t continue. She had been treacherous. Greedy. Self-serving. Cold. Calculating. But Ade wasn’t the only one who love had changed. It wasn’t simply the fact that she naturally delivered her baby after a C-section had been planned, or the lack of primping before he entered the room. There was a depth to Anita he would never have recognized before leaving Boston, before falling in love with Savannah. But he recognized it, was certain of it. And still Ade gazed down upon the infant, wishing for this impossibility to be real. “After the DNA test results come back. Not a moment before.”

  Anita sat higher in the bed, adjusted her non-issue dressing gown. “About that.”

  “You can’t deny me a DNA test. I’ve already been to the lab and given—”

  “Settle down, guapo—”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “You used to like it.” Anita shrugged stiffly. “They already took a swab from Gideon, too. But…”

  “But what? Don’t play games with me, Anita. I’m done with them.”

  “So I see.” She deflated with a deep, slightly artificial sigh. “Listen, you know me, Ade. I’m not going down without a fight. We can make this easy, or we can make this hard. Without a sample of my DNA, which I am not legally bound to give, the test results are harder, take longer. I will give that sample if you stay here in Boston for one week. With me and Gideon. After that, I’ll let them swab me or do whatever it is they do, and you’ll have your results in a couple of days. What’s a week or so in the grand scheme of things?”

  Ade rose to his feet. He placed the baby into the bassinette beside Anita’s bed and went to the window. Her certainty felt less confident than it had the last time he saw her. Had the baby been born with dark hair or even a single feature belonging even marginally to Ade, she might have simply given him the DNA sample. Gideon’s dusting of blond hair and already-dimpled cheeks were all his mother’s. Ade was no fool. She asked for the week in no doubt that he would fall in love with the child, with her, with Boston and his old, prosperous life all over again. Of this, Ade only feared the first. And yet the week she asked for would give him the opportunity to see if he could sacrifice his heart for the child, or the child for his heart, should Gideon turn out to be his son. “All right, Anita. One week.”

  “Thank you, Ade.”

  The catch in her voice turned him to face her. Vulnerable. Truly vulnerable. Anita smiled and pressed the nurse’s station button. “I’m ready to go home,” she said. “Please send someone in to assist me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Do you really think I’m staying here when I have a nursing staff at home waiting for me? I only had Gideon here because I thought he was going to be a C-section. Now help me
up. We’ll be home within the hour.”

  * * * *

  Savannah tapped out of the call, slipped her smartphone into the pocket of her jeans. She would not cry. She would not feel sorry for herself. It was only a week longer than anticipated. Maybe two. He hadn’t even needed to call and let her know. She’d told him not to. But he did, and he apologized, and he assured her he’d be home as soon as the week was up.

  If only his voice had not caught. If only she’d not heard the sorrow in it.

  “Was that Ade?” Benny came up into the kitchen of the old Weller house, a box of tomatoes in her arms.

  Savannah took it and set it onto the counter. “He’s going to be gone longer than anticipated. Anita refused the DNA test.”

  “She didn’t.”

  “Yes, she did.”

  “Then she knows the baby isn’t his. She’s trying to suck him back in.”

  “I’m sure she is, sugar, but that doesn’t mean Ade’s not the father. I can’t really blame her for trying.”

  “I guess, but—”

  “What butt? Chicken butt,” Savannah snapped Auntie Bea’s old southern saw. “Let’s just get the rest of the tomatoes and bring them up to the house. The others will be here any minute.”

  They made several trips back and forth from Savannah’s old pickup, carrying bushel baskets of tomatoes. Before they finished, Johanna arrived with Nina and Tabitha in tow, as well as Finn and Valentine.

  “Where are the twins?” Benny asked as they greeted one another.

  “Charlie and Gunner will bring Tony and Millie along later,” she answered. “They’re all working in the bakery with Caleb today.”

  “Caleb will be crazy person before he closes the store.” Tabitha chuckled. “I tell you this. Is true. He is terrorist of his bakery.”

  “Terror—oh.” Johanna laughed. “Territorial, I think you mean.”

  Tabitha shrugged. “What it is, I don’t know. But he is it. They make him crazy. Especially the twins. They fight, aye!”

  “Not going to argue with you on that one.” Johanna handed a sleeping Finn to Savannah. “Take him, will you? I have to pee.”

  Bouncing the baby in her arms, Savannah watched Benny, Nina and Tabitha hand bushel-baskets and boxes up the steps. Emmaline arrived with Julietta, Emma joining the haul line. The job was done before Johanna came back from the bathroom.

  “Alrighty then,” Emma called over the noise. “Tabitha, take the kids to the playroom. Your ten bucks an hour starts now.”

  “You said fifteen.”

  “Did I? Jules? Benny? Johanna?”

  “For watching all these babies, she should get twenty.” Julietta handed over baby Julian who was, for the first time Savannah could remember, awake.

  “Deal.” Tabitha beamed. She spit in her hand and held it out to Julietta, who did the same and took it without wincing.

  “Come, Valentini.” Tabitha held her hand out to the toddler. “You be my helper-girl.”

  “Audrey’s sleeping, Benny called after her. “I’ll bring her up when she wakes.”

  Johanna was already busy washing tomatoes, so Savannah followed Tabitha to the playroom with Finn in her arms. She put him gently onto the blanket on the floor without waking him. “How are you going to watch all of them?”

  “Is a room already baby-safe, no? I have watched more for less, in an overgrown parking lot they called a park in Greece. Only Americans would have such a room in their house.”

  “Not all Americans. I didn’t have one. This used to be Dan’s apartment, before he and Benny got married. They just converted it. I think they plan on having a few more.”

  “You have children?”

  Savannah’s heart pinched just a little. “I did. Two little girls. Twins. They died a long time ago.”

  “I am very sorry, Savvy. That must have been very sad for you.”

  “It was.” She squeezed the girl’s shoulder, tried to smile reassuringly. “If you need anything, sugar, just shout.”

  Starting back to the kitchen where the noise was already more laughter than cooking, her stitching heart eased. It would never not hurt, but it was getting easier to talk about them, getting easier to open up in general. She’d even told Benny about Ade and Anita on the day he left, after her friend found her crying at her desk. By the end of the workday, Johanna had shown up and the three of them had tea and a good cry over life events they’d endured. No one was without their tragedy, Savannah was learning. It was what one did after that mattered most.

  Johanna and Emmaline, Julietta and Nina and Benny, all stood with their backs to her as she entered the kitchen. They already had an assembly line going. Washing, coring, slicing tomatoes, putting them into the pot to blanch before skinning them and putting them into jars. Later, Emma was going to teach them all how to make fresh tomato sauce. By the time the men got there, the house would smell like D’Angelo’s. Better, because they’d done it all themselves.

  Wrapping her arms about herself, Savannah stayed in the doorway and watched, just for a moment. These women. These friends. Their husbands and children. She thought she loved them before, when secrets kept her at arm’s length. What she felt now bubbled up like pop-candy in soda, left her feeling light and giddy inside. She’d lost her parents, her daughters, her home, watched the man she loved become a monster. She lost Auntie Bea. She could well lose Ade too.

  But you’ll be just fine, sugarbeet. Auntie Bea’s voice came as clear as if she were sitting upon Savannah’s shoulder, as she always would. Auntie Bea, and all her beloved dead. “Move over.” She hip-checked Benny and picked up a knife. “Show me what to do.”

  “Quarters for the small ones,” Benny said. “For the big ones, eighths.”

  She was better than fine. Savannah was truly happy. She had always said she was in charge of her own destiny. Now she believed it. Her future would be what she made it, and Savannah Callowell was going to make it a good one.

  * * * *

  September ended. After that first call, Savannah didn’t answer her phone when she saw Ade’s number come up, instead listening to his voice-mail messages in bed at night, when missing him was the worst. The phone calls came fewer and farther between, his messages shorter. He told her he loved her, that he understood why she wasn’t answering his calls, and that he loved her even more for it. After a week in Boston, Anita had consented to the DNA test, the results of which were due back on October 3rd at the latest.

  It was October 2nd. He had not called in four days. Savannah picked up her phone countless times, her finger poised to tap in his number, but she always slid it back into her pocket. She had set him free, with all the love in her heart. He had to come back on his own, or not at all.

  Out in the pumpkin field with Edgardo and Raul, inspecting the damage done by squash-bugs, Savannah barely heard what either of them were saying. Something about boards between the rows and dusting the plants with fossils. Savannah okayed their plan, hoping it was something Ade would approve of, and then teared up at the thought that maybe it wouldn’t matter at all if he would object or not.

  “Is okay, Savvy.” Edgardo patted her shoulder. “Ade come back. He love you.”

  “Don’t mind me.” She sniffed. “Now, tell me about more about the fossils you want to dust the pumpkins with.”

  “Not fossils.” Raul laughed. “Di-o-tom-a-ceous earth. You know this word?”

  “Oh, diatomaceous earth. Yes. I do. And how’s that going to help?”

  “Bugs no like it. Bad.” Raul stuck out his tongue. “Make them run away.”

  “But it won’t hurt the plants or anything.”

  “Only the bugs. We try, yes?”

  “Yes. Let’s do it. Can you get the stuff you need at—”

  The familiar sound of the coot chugging along took the words from Savannah’s mouth. Aside from herself, Edgardo and Raul, there was only one person who knew how to drive it. She saw the dust it kicked up before
she saw the vehicle itself, or the man driving it.

  Savannah wouldn’t run, but she couldn’t keep her feet from moving toward him. Her heart pounded painfully. Joyfully. Ade waved, cut the engine and hopped out, still dressed in clothes meant for a Boston museum, not her farm. He didn’t come toward her. Savannah stopped in her tracks.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said first.

  “I missed you too.” She took a step closer. “Just tell me, Ade. Just tell me and get it over with.”

  Ade crossed his arms over his chest. Leaning against the coot, he squinted in the sunlight. “There is so much to tell. I’m not sure where to start. I discovered many things in Boston.”

  “Like?”

  “Like even Anita Durst is capable of change. I always admired her mind, her beauty, even her cunning. I suppose I should not say having a child actually changed her, but it did…alter her.”

  “That’s…good?”

  “It is good. For Gideon’s sake.”

  “Gideon? That’s the baby’s name?”

  “Gideon Durst, yes.” Ade pushed off the coot, closed the ground between them. He took her hands in his and kissed them. “Before I say anything more, I must tell you the most important thing I learned, and the only reason I agreed to stay in Boston to begin with.”

  “All right. I’m listening.”

  “I had to see if I could, Savannah. Forgive me, but I did not know if I could sacrifice my child for my heart. I had to find out, before any results came back, and I came to the conclusion that no, I could not.”

  “I…I see.”

  “No, corazón, you don’t. I could not sacrifice my child for my heart, but neither could I sacrifice my heart for him.” He pulled her into his arms. “What sort of example would that be to set? To teach him that love was not worth fighting for. That it was ever all right to sacrifice it. I told this to Anita, before she provided her DNA. I made sure she understood, no matter the results, I would not stay.”