by Amy Engel
The blurb Allegra sent me about Cooper was short, only a few sentences. A local-boy-makes-good type of mention, although moving three hours away to work in a body shop wouldn’t be considered an accomplishment anywhere but Osage Flats. Allegra wrote: Cooper Sullivan’s hitting the big time! Hahaha! across the top of the wrinkled page.
Tommy shifts and his handcuffs rattle against the porch swing. “I can’t believe you wound up a cop,” I say. “When I lived here, you broke the law at least once a day.”
Tommy smiles into his upturned beer bottle. “Got it out of my system young.”
“How do you like it?”
Tommy shrugs. “Only thing I’ve ever done, so don’t have much to compare it to. Most of the time I like it fine. Lately it’s been a little rough.”
“Because of Allegra?” I say, not really a question.
“Because of Allegra,” Tommy affirms.
“Did you ever…I guess you gave up on the idea of marrying her?”
Tommy laughs, although there’s not much humor in it. “I must have proposed a thousand times over the years but never could get her to say yes.”
If he’d ever asked my advice, I would have told him to save his breath. Allegra was never going to marry him, no matter how many ways he phrased the question. I glance down at the thick gold band on his ring finger, tap it lightly with my thumbnail. “Got tired of waiting, huh?”
“Yeah.” Tommy rotates the ring on his finger. “I’m the marrying type, I guess.”
“Who is she?”
“Sarah Fincher. She’s about a year younger than you, but I’m pretty sure you met her a time or two when you were living here.”
“I remember,” I say, although I can conjure up only a vague picture of a small, mousy-haired girl who always put a hand up to cover her mouth when she laughed.
“How about you? You married?”
“I was. It didn’t take.” Tommy stays silent, waiting for me to continue. “He’s a pilot. I met him when I worked at LAX.”
Tommy seems impressed, in the way only a small-town boy can be by thoughts of the big city, mistaking noise and bright lights for a more glamorous life. I neglect to mention that I was a waitress at the hospitality bar where Jeff and I met. I wore a uniform so short my ass cheeks peeked out whenever I bent over to deliver a drink. Jeff used to joke that it was love at first sight.
“What happened?”
Exhaustion rises up in a sudden wave, and I fight the urge to lie down on the porch swing and close my eyes. “Who knows? What ever happens when people fall apart?” I drain my beer in one long swallow. There’s no way I’m telling Tommy the truth, that my marriage ended because I was fucking someone else. Let Jeff catch me in bed with the next-door neighbor, our bodies open and exposed. Good, sweet Tommy would never understand, how sometimes you have to hurt people just to prove that you’re alive.
It turned out dinner at Roanoke wasn’t served in the light-filled kitchen at the oak plank table. Roanoke dinners were formal, at least in setting, and served in the dining room, a bizarre space right in the middle of the house with no windows to the outside. At one time it appeared there had been, but an addition had been built on in such a way that now the dining room windows gave a view of a dark hallway instead of land and sky. It was like eating in a cave. Sharon set the various dishes out along the walnut sideboard before retreating back to the kitchen. Four places, complete with crystal goblets, linen napkins, and sterling silver utensils, were laid at the table meant for twelve, and I hung back until after Allegra filled her plate so I’d know where to sit.
“Go ahead,” Gran said, pointing with her fork to my plate filled with limp green beans, a fishy smelling patty of some type, and a lump of gelatinous tartar sauce. “Your granddad always runs late. No need to wait.”
“Yeah, but if she doesn’t wait, she’ll have to eat this,” Allegra said. She mimed puking into her plate.
“Oh, hush,” Gran said, but without any heat.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Salmon patties,” Gran told me.
“Salmon from a can,” Allegra added. “Watch out for the bones.” She pushed back from the table and disappeared through the doorway, returning a minute later with a bottle of ketchup. “It helps if you drown them.”
I watched Allegra shake the ketchup bottle over her plate, her generous breasts threatening to spill out of her sundress. It looked like something that would have fit her two summers ago, so short and tight I’d thought at first maybe she was playing another weird kind of dress-up.
A throat cleared, and all our heads turned to the man standing in the doorway. One glance and there was no mistaking my grandfather, Yates Roanoke. Unlike the few details my mother had given me about my grandmother, she never spoke of her father. I’m not sure what I’d been expecting, but he didn’t look like any grandfather I’d seen before. He was fiercely handsome. Dark hair with the barest feathering of gray at the temples, skin tan from the sun, tall and broad-shouldered, the Roanoke eyes. The kind of man it wasn’t hard to imagine walking into a room and owning every soul inside—all the men would stop talking, while all the women would cease to breathe. I felt a strange burst of pride looking at him, at knowing I was his descendant. If charisma was power, my grandfather was king.
He eyed Allegra and amusement chased its way across his face, never quite settling in a single spot. “That the dress code for dinner now?” he asked, voice mild. “We all gonna start eating half-naked?” He pulled a plate from the stack on the sideboard and began piling it with food. “Go get something decent on.”
Allegra stuck out her bottom lip in a pantomime of childish pouting even though his back was turned. “But, Granddad—”
“Girl,” he said, still concentrating on the food, “you best do what I tell you.”
Allegra slammed the ketchup bottle down on the table, sending a spray of red droplets across the white tablecloth.
“Oh, Allegra.” Gran sighed. “Look at the mess!”
But Allegra was already flouncing out of the dining room. I could hear her feet stomping away down the hall. My grandfather set his full plate at the head of the table nearest the doorway and crossed over to where I sat.
“You’re Camilla’s girl,” he said, looking down at me.
“Yeah.”
He took my chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifted my face up gently. “You’re the spitting image of your mama.” We stared at each other, and I would have sworn I’d known him all my life. He felt more like family in five seconds than my mother had in fifteen years. “Glad you’re here,” he said, let go of my chin, and gave a lock of my hair a quick tweak as he dropped his hand.
“Happy now?” Allegra asked, stomping back into the room. She wore the same tank top and shorts from earlier, still revealing but no longer ridiculous.
“Much better,” Granddad said with a small smile that seemed to melt her anger away.
“Sorry about the tablecloth,” she said, eyes sliding to Gran. “Do you think Sharon can get it out?”
“I’m sure she can,” Gran said. “If not, we’ll get a new one.”
We ate in relative silence, Allegra and I sending each other pained looks over our plates. I moved my salmon around and around with my fork and barely took a bite. No one asked about my mother or my childhood, and I welcomed not having to speak of her.
“Have you lived at Roanoke your whole life?” I asked my granddad once our dinner plates were cleared and Gran was serving up slices of peach pie.
“Born right here in this house,” he said. “Of course, some of the additions came later.” He winked at Gran, and she smiled at him, her cheeks blooming little roses of pink. “Having babies always put your gran in a renovating mood.”
“I showed Lane the pictures in the hall,” Allegra said. “Of all the Roanoke girls.”
Granddad smiled at me, his teeth slightly crooked on the bottom. “We need to get a picture of you in there. You fit right in. Look like all the res
t.”
“Except for Emmeline,” Allegra said, and Gran’s hand stuttered in the midst of cutting my slice of pie. “Since she was a baby when she died, we don’t know what she would’ve looked like grown.”
Granddad glanced at Gran, who kept her eyes on her task, before shifting his gaze to Allegra. “I’m sure she would’ve been beautiful. Just like all of you.”
Allegra leaned forward, resting most of her upper body on the table as she stretched toward me, her red nails skittering across the edge of my plate. “I found parts of my mom’s diary. She said when Emmeline died all the sisters had to kiss her at the funeral. Right on the mouth.” She lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “She tasted like breast milk and formaldehyde.” Allegra wiggled her eyebrows at me. She reached forward and snagged a slice of peach from my pie, sucked it between her lips with a slurping sound. A bead of juice slid down her chin.
“Allegra!” Gran said, her eyes wide. She pressed one hand against her breastbone. “Hush now. That’s a horrible story!”
Granddad shook his head, took a giant bite of pie. “Don’t know what’s gotten into you, girl.”
I noticed no one denied it was true.
—
I thought I would have trouble sleeping in a new state, a new house, a new bed. But even with heat sticking the sheets to my legs and the constant whir of the fan in the window, I fell asleep fast, slept deep and heavy. I awoke early though and was lying in bed watching the sun creep up over the horizon, when someone tapped on my door.
“Yeah?” I called, rolling over onto my stomach and propping myself up on my elbows.
My granddad poked his head into the room, gave me a quick grin. “Hey, Lane,” he said. “Thought you might want to come with me out to the barn. See the animals?”
I’d never really been an animal person. We’d never owned so much as a goldfish back in New York, but since I was already awake I figured I might as well join him. “Okay. Give me five minutes.”
“Meet you in the kitchen,” he said, closing the door softly behind him.
I pulled on a pair of shorts and debated a tank top before finally deciding screw it. It was hot as hell already, and if Allegra and her big boobs could get away with it, I could, too. My granddad chuckled when I walked into the kitchen, his eyes falling to my flip-flops. “We’re gonna have to get you some boots. Those aren’t farm shoes.”
He handed me a giant cinnamon roll wrapped in a paper towel and grabbed a mug of coffee from the counter. “She makes better breakfasts than dinners,” he said with a wink when he caught me sniffing experimentally at the roll.
The air outside was just as thick at dawn as it was in the middle of the day, the only slight relief the lack of direct sun. Granddad slid open the big barn door, and we passed into the gloom of the barn, the air hazy with dust motes. A horse whinnied from a far stall in greeting, and a tangle of kittens rolled over my feet.
“Watch where you step,” Granddad said, one hand loose on my elbow. “Got these damn cats all over the place.” He pointed out each animal by name, three horses, one cow, too many cats to count. “There’s a half dozen dogs around, but they don’t usually come into the barn unless it’s snowing. Goats out back and a chicken coop down the way.”
I looked around, the horse in the stall behind me bumping his muzzle against my shoulder. “Is this enough animals for a farm? I guess I always pictured more.”
Granddad laughed. “Oh hell, girl, these are all Allegra’s pets. Things she got her heart set on and I’m too much a fool to say no.” He grabbed an apple from a bucket on the floor and held it, palm out, to the horse behind me, who took it in his big yellow teeth. “This ain’t been a real working farm in years.”
“What about the wheat?”
“That’s just for fun. I like having something to do, still like getting my hands dirty. But oil is what we actually harvest around here.”
“Oil?” I pictured that old television show, where the family struck oil in the backyard and ended up rich. It didn’t sound as far-fetched now.
“Sure. My dad inherited this land, added to it over the years. More than two thousand acres now, almost all of it fallow. He struck oil when I was young, and that’s pretty much all she wrote.” The horse chomped down on my ponytail, and Granddad swatted him away. “Your mama never told you any of this?”
“No. She didn’t talk about you all much.”
Granddad sighed. His face sagged a little, like he’d taken a blow. “Still miss that girl every day. Wish she hadn’t taken off.”
“Why did she?”
“Scared, I think. Of having you when she was so young, not even seventeen when she lit out of here. But your gran and I would never have made her give you up or kicked her out. Hell, life is complicated. We know that. It wasn’t anything to run away over.” He smiled. “You better eat that cinnamon roll, then you can help me take care of these animals.”
It didn’t take long to feed all the animals in the barn, not with both of us working together. After, Granddad took me down to the chicken coop and showed me how to sneak my hand under the fat hens to grab their eggs. He laughed when I squealed the first time, the drift of feathers and the hot, smooth globe of fresh egg so foreign in my hand.
Charlie took the basket of eggs from me, and Granddad led me back to the barn, where we washed our hands in a cracked sink in the corner. He was already easy with me, acted like this was something we’d done a thousand times before instead of only this once. “My social worker in New York…” I trailed off, not entirely sure what I wanted to say.
“Yeah?” He kept scrubbing his hands, not looking directly at me.
“She said I was lucky. She said you and Gran wanted me, wanted me to come live here.”
My granddad turned off the faucet with a wet hand, grabbed the towel I’d slung back on the hook nailed to the wall. “Ah, sweetheart,” he said, “of course we wanted you.” He hugged me, quick but warm, and I wasn’t sure how to respond, my arms stiff at my sides.
“I’m guessing your mama wasn’t much of a hugger,” he said as he released me.
I shrugged. “She wasn’t much of an anything.”
My granddad studied me, and I shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. “Sure sorry to hear that,” he said. “I’d hoped for better, for both of you. Our secret, but your mama was always my favorite.” He tweaked my ponytail. “But Lord Jesus, she gave me trouble. You gonna do the same?” His eyes twinkled under raised brows.
I thought about it for a second. “Maybe.” Paused a beat. “Probably.”
I waited for the fallout, but there wasn’t any, only another chuckle from my granddad. “All right then. Guess that’s fair warning.”
As a little girl I’d tried to please, tried to live by the simple refrain my mother repeated like a desperate prayer in my ear: be good be good be good. But I’d known even then it wouldn’t work, went against something dark inside me. A mean streak that came to the surface more often as I grew. And I thought maybe here, at Roanoke, my being bad wouldn’t break anyone. I remembered Allegra’s words last night at the dinner table about Emmeline, my granddad’s sparkling eyes a moment ago when he spoke of my mother giving him hell. Maybe here it was like a different country, someplace where it was all right to be a little wicked.
In the morning my granddad is sitting on the kitchen table bench, bent over a mug of coffee. I pause in the doorway when I see him, take a second before he notices me. He’s aged more than Gran, the gray at his temples spreading up and out. The hands curled around his coffee mug are knotted at the knuckles. He’s in good shape, though, no bulge of belly or sagging biceps. The first word that springs to mind at the sight of him is still handsome. And when he glances up and sees me, his face folding into a smile, he could pass for a much younger man.
“Ah, Laney-girl,” he says. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.”
It takes me a second to find my voice. “Hi, Granddad.” My heart turns over as I slide into a chair across fro
m him.
“Your gran told me you were home. So glad you came. I’m sorry I didn’t track you down last night.”
“That’s okay.” I take a muffin from the platter in the middle of the table, break off a tiny piece. Blueberry juice stains my fingers. “Tommy Kenning came by. Said they haven’t found anything new on Allegra.”
Granddad nods. He has hollows under his eyes, and he missed a patch of whiskers on his left cheek when he shaved. “Tommy’s doing all right by us. Keeping us informed.”
“What do you think happened?” I ask, eyes on my hands.
He doesn’t answer for so long that I raise my gaze, surprised to see tears hovering on his lashes. “I don’t know,” he says finally. “She seemed fine. Not a thing wrong that I could tell.” He shakes his head. “I’ve gone over the day or two before she disappeared a thousand times. Can’t find anything out of the ordinary. She seemed fine,” he repeats. He’s not an old man, only in his midsixties, but he sounds like one now, lost and confused.
“Well, you’d be the one to know.” I wait a beat, holding his eyes. “I mean, assuming you were still screwing her.”
The house pulses around us, an awful, ticking silence. All the air sucked from my lungs, the room, the entire world. My heart is jackrabbiting in my chest, my palms and underarms slick with sweat. I have broken an unspoken rule; in this house we talk around, not about. But I can’t pretend anymore, at least not with him, not inside these walls.
My granddad cocks his head at me, his face slowly waking up, his gaze curious. Like I’m an intriguing new treasure he’s anxious to get his hands on, crack open, and sift through with eager fingers. “You always did promise to give me hell,” he says, the corners of his mouth curling into a grin.
My own mouth responds in kind before I even know what’s happening, and I bite down on the insides of my cheeks to stop the movement. That’s all it takes, two seconds and the lift of his lips and he’s managed to turn me into his coconspirator. I realize that the distance I’ve put between us, both in miles and in years, matters not at all. Because behind the secrets and the horrible truth, under the shame and anger that beat like a heart, there still lives a terrible kind of love.
