The Truth About Love and Lightning

by Susan McBride

  “I’ll believe it when I see it for myself,” Gretchen replied.

  “Would I lie to you?” Abby said with a laugh, and she squeezed between Gretchen and the Man Who Might Be Sam to wash up before breakfast. Then she caught her mom around the waist and bent toward the stove. “Careful or you’re going to burn our grub!”

  “Out of my way, child,” Gretchen teased and nudged the girl aside. She took a spatula to the skillet, pushing the eggs around and, every now and then, glancing out the window. Something had happened to the farm since the twister yesterday, that she couldn’t deny. Exactly what, she wasn’t sure, but there was nothing logical about it.

  “Can I pour you a cold one?” Abby was asking the man as she lifted the pitcher of juice from the counter.

  “Make it a double,” he said.

  Chairs scraped and old wooden joints creaked as Abby took two glasses of juice to the table, and she and the Man Who Might Be Sam sat down alongside Bennie and Trudy.

  “Did you show him around?” Gretchen asked, forcing a calm she didn’t feel as she slipped bread into the old toaster.

  “Yes, ma’am, I sure did,” Abby said, a brightness to her voice that made her sound like a kid, one without the weight of the world on her shoulders. “We went to the very spot in the grove where you found him. I think Matilda was out there, or at least I hope it was her. Something brushed against my leg and ran off.”

  “Matilda can come and go like a vapor sometimes,” Trudy quipped.

  “Oh, I found something out there, beneath the tree where I was struck down,” the man said and got up from his chair, plucking an object from his shirt pocket. He brought it round to Gretchen at the stove and held it up so she could see. “The stones feel so warm, as though the sun’s been shining on them.”

  But it was foggy outside, Gretchen mused, taking the beads from him. She felt the warmth he described only for an instant before the turquoise turned cool in her hand.

  “Does it belong to him, or is it something you lost?” Abby asked as Gretchen stared at the necklace.

  No, it wasn’t hers, Gretchen knew, looking at the pale blue beads in the light of the kitchen window. A knot tied itself up tight in her belly as she recalled the last time she’d seen the necklace. Sam had been wearing it around his throat. “Do you mind if I keep these for now?” she got out, never answering Abby’s question.

  “Of course you can,” the man told her. “I found them in your grove.”

  Gretchen nodded and quickly pressed them into her jeans pocket, wiping her hands on the dish towel, feeling even more discombobulated than before, if that was possible.

  “Oh, and don’t freak out,” Abby piped up, “but I told him the truth.”

  “The truth about what?” The skillet clattered against the burner as Gretchen dropped it along with the serving spoon, a smattering of scrambled eggs showering the stovetop.

  “That he reminds us of the man whose family owned this farm,” Abby said, giving her a pointed look. “A long-ago friend of yours named Sam Winston.”

  “You told him about Sam?” Gretchen’s tongue seemed to stick to the roof of her mouth. “How much?”

  “Enough,” the man said, and he wrinkled his bruised brow. “It explains why you were so quick to take me in.” He shook his head. “Maybe it would be easier if I were this fellow Sam instead of having no clue who I am or why I’m here. Why can’t I remember such a simple thing as my own name?” He hit the table with his palm, rattling his glass so it slopped orange juice onto the table.

  Gretchen jumped as the toast took that moment to pop out of the toaster.

  “Give yourself a chance,” she heard Abby saying to him. “Even Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

  “And it took the town nearly six months to get up a new bridge over the river,” Bennie added in her crisp voice, and Trudy’s knitting needles stopping clicking long enough for her to add, “Though I think the Walmart in the next county went up in about two weeks. They don’t mess around, do they?”

  Heaven help us, Gretchen thought, drawing in a deep breath.

  She managed to keep her composure long enough to fix two heaping plates of eggs and toast, taking them over to the table and plunking them down before her daughter and the Man Who Might Be Sam. Then she took a seat across from them both, watching as they dug in. It was like viewing her life the way it should have been if Sam Winston had never left Walnut Ridge. If she’d asked him to stay. If she had known then that she truly loved him. If he had actually fathered Abigail.

  All those ifs had haunted Gretchen for years and years, especially as Abby had grown up, asking so many questions. Until Gretchen had finally packed up all those ifs and stored them away, like the boxes of Lily and Cooper Winston’s old clothes up in the attic. But clearly residual emotions couldn’t be so easily contained by plastic bins filled with lavender and mothballs.

  “Mom? Did you hear me?” Abby asked, and Gretchen shook aside her thoughts to listen. “You really need to give him a haircut. He’s definitely looking better without that horrid beard, but he’s got a mullet straight out of the eighties.”

  “A mullet?” the Man Who Might Be Sam repeated and picked up the butter knife, trying to catch his reflection in the blade. “What’s that? It doesn’t sound good, whatever it is.”

  “It’s when your hair’s all business in front and a party in the back,” Abby told him matter-of-factly. “It’s very old-school Billy Ray Cyrus.”

  “And that’s not acceptable?” the man asked, eyebrows arched against his bruised forehead.

  “Nope,” Abby got out as she swallowed a piece of toast.

  Gretchen sat like a spectator at a badminton match, surprised by the rapport between Abby and the Man Who Might Be Sam. He even seemed more relaxed since the walk, less unsettled. Abby, too, appeared to have let go of her worry. They were good for each other, Gretchen mused, but found herself thinking nonetheless, Please don’t break Abigail’s heart. What if this stranger who’d fallen from the clouds left their lives just as suddenly? Gretchen worried about Abby. It was so early in the pregnancy, and she was already under so much stress with Nathan walking out two weeks before. She couldn’t fathom the kind of pain Abby would feel if she were deserted by another man, equally important. To Gretchen, this baby was Abby’s miracle, just as Abby had been for her all those years ago, even if she’d been too young to know it at the time.

  “So will you do it?” her daughter said and got up, rounding the table to hug Gretchen from behind, pressing her cheek in Gretchen’s hair. “Will you give him a trim? I’d offer to do it, but the last time I cut my own hair I had bangs that were insanely cockeyed. Took two years to grow them out.”

  “I’d be happy to volunteer,” Trudy cheerfully offered, “except that he might not appreciate that Bennie and I use the mixing bowl for guidance when we give each other a snip.”

  The man repeated, “You use a mixing bowl?”

  Abby laughed. “He’d look like one of the Beatles.”

  “So?” Bennie sniffed, feigning offense as she shook a finger in her niece’s direction. “What’s wrong with the Beatles? Particularly since you were named after Abbey Road.”

  “I was?” Abby drew away from Gretchen, loosely shaking her shoulders. “You never told me that.”

  “That’s because I didn’t—” Gretchen started to protest, but Bennie talked right over her.

  “It’s a well-known fact,” the older twin announced, “that Sam Winston couldn’t go anywhere without whistling a tune from the Beatles’ last album. Whenever he came by to fetch Gretchen from our house in town, it was ‘Here Comes the Sun.’ Dear Lord.” Milky-blue eyes rolled heavenward. “I could hear him from two blocks away, sometimes three. It used to drive me batty.”

  “No wonder you played Beatles songs so often when I was a kid.” Abby crouched beside Gretchen’s chair, giving her a look. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “The truth is I just liked the name Abigail,” Gretchen said, whi
ch was only half right. Yes, Sam had been a Beatles fan from early on. Lily Winston frequently had their LPs playing when Gretchen would visit. She would sit with Sam on the back porch, the music flowing through the opened windows, while Sam perched on the top step with a sharp-bladed knife, carving tiny shapes out of errant blocks of walnut. “I think I like Paul best,” Gretchen had said once to make conversation. “Or even Ringo. He’s kind of like a big puppy.” But if Sam had a favorite, it was George Harrison, which made sense as George was the quiet one, the contemplative one, much like Sam himself. Abbey Road had come out the year before Sam left with the church mission, and every time Gretchen heard those songs she thought of him. But that had nothing to do with her naming Abby, she reminded herself, at least not consciously. It was simply a rather neat coincidence.

  The Man Who Might Be Sam sat quietly, hands in his lap, watching Gretchen with those familiar eyes and listening.

  “So what else don’t I know about my roots?” her daughter asked, rising to her feet and walking back around the table. She gripped the back of her empty chair with one hand, waving the other as she spoke. “I came home to figure out what’s best for me, but how can I decide if I don’t know everything about who I am?”

  “Who we were once doesn’t always define who we’ve become,” Trudy said and stopped knitting for long enough to count stitches with her fingers. “Don’t you agree, Gretch?”

  “I do.” Gretchen had spent way too much time ruminating over the choices she’d made. It had taken years before she’d finally accepted that Sam wasn’t coming back, that Annika had flown the coop, and she was on her own, caring for a child, a farm, and her sisters, too. Must we live our lives in hindsight? she wanted to ask. Wasn’t it enough to be right where they were, to accept their lot and move forward? Or was she lying to herself, believing she could ever forget the mistakes she’d made and never ever dwell on the past?

  “Why do I feel like you’re being evasive?” Abby asked, staring solemnly at her.

  “I’m not,” Gretchen insisted, her mouth tasting sour. “I just don’t seem to have the answers you want to hear. There’s a difference.”

  Her daughter sighed petulantly and, for an instant, Gretchen saw a twelve-year-old Abigail, pouting in pigtails, not a thirty-nine-year-old woman who ran an art gallery in the big city. Why did it always seem that when her daughter came home, she turned into a kid, all tangled hair and endless questions?

  “Can we talk about this later?” Gretchen murmured as she got up and began to collect empty plates. “Let me clean up first,” she said and wished her heart would stop beating so wildly, “then I need to find my sewing scissors so I can cut our guest’s hair. That is, if he’s willing—”

  “I am,” the man said, although he didn’t sound as sure as he looked.

  “We’ll take care of the dishes,” Bennie suggested, pushing back her chair. Trudy set down her knitting on the table and quickly followed suit. “You take care of Billy Ray Cyrus.”

  So while the twins cleared the table—with a bit of help from Abby—Gretchen left the room to fetch her sharpest sewing shears, a comb, and a towel. She took a deep breath before reentering the kitchen and instructing the Man Who Might Be Sam to drag a chair to the middle of the floor.

  While her sisters and daughter busied themselves at the sink, scraping plates and washing dishes—and pretending not to pay attention—Gretchen sat the man down and draped the towel around his shoulders.

  “Be still,” she told him, hoping he couldn’t see her fingers tremble as she combed out his salt-and-pepper hair, snipping a bit here and a little more there. Hadn’t she done this once before with Sam years ago, when he’d asked her to chop off the ponytail he’d grown before he’d left for Africa? He’d told her there might be times he couldn’t wash for weeks, and he wasn’t game for dreadlocks. Gretchen had gone whole hog, nearly giving him the buzz cut of a marine. When she’d finished, he’d blinked, looking dazed for a full five minutes before he’d started laughing. “If Hank Littlefoot could see me now,” he’d said, staring in the mirror and touching the back of his newly naked neck. “I just hope I don’t lose my superpowers,” he’d joked, “like poor old Samson.”

  “Hey.” Strong fingers grasped her trembling hand to still it. “Are you all right?” the man asked. “You’re shaking.”

  “I’m sorry.” Gretchen realized she’d been holding the scissors awfully near his earlobe. “I promise I won’t cut off your ear.”

  “Just don’t take it too close,” he remarked, his gray gaze following her as she began to snip at the nape of his neck. “I’m not sure I’d recognize myself scalped.”

  “You don’t even recognize yourself now,” Gretchen said, trying to joke, but he didn’t laugh.

  “You’re right.” He tugged at the towel around his neck, clearly uncomfortable. “Until I can remember my past, all I’ve got is the present. Kind of like you were talking about with Abby earlier.”

  Gretchen put a hand on his shoulder. “When it comes down to it, that’s really all any of us have got, isn’t it?”

  He gave a quick nod. “Yes, I guess it is.”

  Trudy was wrong, she decided. He didn’t smell like sorrow and lemongrass. He smelled like a man—one scrubbed clean with Ivory soap—but a man nonetheless, all woodsy and warm. And he was solid and real, not a vaporous specter.

  Gretchen touched his cheek to angle his head, and a shiver went through her. “Hold still, please,” she said, knowing that, whoever he was, there was something compelling about him, a kind of current emanating from him. She could feel it thrumming from his body and through her hand. Even when she drew her fingers away, she could sense it, buzzing like an insect in her ears.

  “Is there a problem?” he asked as she hesitated.

  “No,” Gretchen lied, “there’s no problem at all.”

  It took little more than fifteen minutes for her to clip his hair to a reasonable length, hardly the flattop she’d given Sam that summer day long ago. When she removed the towel from his neck and brushed the loose hair from his collar, she saw something that stopped her heart again: a dark brown mole low on the back of his neck. It appeared swollen, like a puffy teardrop. A bit dry and scaly. Was it not a birthmark at all but a scab from his bout with the storm? She had glimpsed other scratches on his arms and legs when he’d come out of the bath in his towel. This could be one of them.

  But if it was a birthmark, well, such a thing—such a small thing—would be another piece that fit into the puzzle. Sam Winston had been born with a teardrop-shaped mole at the base of his neck, one that seemed to get darker whenever he was out in the sun. He had hated the thing and had wanted it removed, but Lily had steadfastly refused to let that happen. “It’s a sign of your gift,” his mother had told him. “A connection to your past, to your grandfather and your great-great-grandfather as well.”

  But the older Sam got, the more he’d seemed to resent the burden this legacy had placed on him. “Someday,” he had told her, “I just want to forget it all and be free.”

  So are you free enough now? she had asked in the first letter she’d sent to him in Africa via the church’s care package. Only she had never heard back from him, not a peep.

  “We’re done,” Gretchen said, slipping the scissors into her back pocket.

  “That was painless enough.” The man reached up to touch his newly trimmed head. “I feel ten pounds lighter already.”

  Gretchen opened her mouth, tempted to ask about the mole, to see if he’d had it his whole life, only she never got the words out.

  “Oh, heavens, he’s back,” Bennie said quite plainly, shutting off the tap and cocking her head toward the front of the house. “I can hear his plodding footsteps.”

  Trudy dried her hands on the dishtowel, leaning near the screen of a half-opened window and inhaling deeply. “Pine tar soap,” she said, which was as good as agreement.

  There came a sudden and very loud pounding at the door. “Gretch? It’s Frank T
ilby. I’m back. So c’mon and open up!”

  “The sheriff?” Abby said, turning questioning eyes right on Gretchen. “What’s he doing here again?”

  “I don’t know,” Gretchen said. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she added, though she knew that was about as far from the truth as she could get.

  Fourteen

  Frank Tilby considered himself an honorable man in that, no matter how he screwed up sometimes—well, he was only human—he always kept his word. When he’d told Gretchen he’d return within a few hours, he did exactly that. Setting down the case in his hand, he pushed up his hat, wiping sweat from his brow with his sleeve. He took a deep breath and raised a fist to soundly knock on the door of the farmhouse before hollering through it: “Gretch? It’s Frank Tilby! I’m back. So c’mon and open up!”

  While he waited on the welcome mat, he whistled tunelessly, the noise dying on his lips at the click of the lock and a swift squeal of hinges.

  “You’re here again so soon?” Gretchen said, suddenly standing before him. She was dressed more presentably this time in jeans and a pale linen blouse, her hair neatly drawn back into a ponytail. She wore a nervous frown on her lips.

  “As promised,” he said and, with a soft grunt, picked up his field kit. “I’ve got everything we need right here.”

  A soft “oh” escaped her mouth and her gaze fell to the aluminum briefcase clutched in his right hand. “If I didn’t know better, I’d figure you’d brought a backgammon set.”

  Only they both realized what was inside the case, and it was hardly a game.

  “May I come in?” he asked, plucking off his cap and tucking it beneath his arm. He felt sweat trickle down his face despite the cool morning. He’d walked the half mile from the dirt road again, which had him breathing hard. The overhang of belly atop belt attested to the fact that he wasn’t used to regular exercise, not anymore. Sometimes even he found it hard to believe that he’d been an athlete back in high school. The years may have been kind to Gretchen but they’d definitely sucker punched him.