She hadn’t been here since the day of the funeral – not even when the headstone was erected – and she didn’t think either of her children had, either.
Maybe they would after last night’s long, tear-filled but cleansing talk among the three of them.
Meg had finally opened her door, the timing of it making Ellyn suspect she’d watched Grif drive away, then unlocked the door and fell into her mother’s arms in a gale of tears, exclaiming that she’d driven Grif away just as she’d driven her father away – and to his death. Ben emerged from his room, sleepy and rumpled and looking entirely too young and vulnerable to cope with these revelations.
And then she found out Ben had known about Dale leaving all the time, too.
The three of them sat on the landing at the top of the stairs, crying and talking and crying some more, as the secrets came out one by one and turned to dust.
Then they’d talked about Grif. She’d tried to explain what she could of what he faced, hoping they’d understand a little.
Instead they’d given her insights, recounting revelations he’d made to them about his years growing up with a father absent in all ways but the physical.
Closer to midnight than dinnertime, they ate soup in their pajamas around the table, and then they had ice cream with whipped cream on top, and she tucked each of her children in bed as she used to when they were babies.
They all slept in so late that she drove them to school after lunch. And then she came here.
“It’s okay, Dale. I know you cared. Not the way I wanted you to, but you cared the way you could. And I want you to know we’re all okay now. I’m sorry ... I’m sorry we hurt each other. I’m sorry we disappointed each other. I’m sorry you’re not going to have another chance the way I do.”
She touched her fingertips to her lips, then brushed them against the letters of his name carved in the stone.
“I will always love you because we created Meg and Ben together. Thank you for them.”
No tears dropped, though her eyes were full. She felt lighter somehow. And right.
Farther along, she kissed her fingertips and pressed them to the center of another name. “We miss you, Amy.”
She moved away and found the other headstone she’d been seeking, the one in the large grouping of interconnected Suslands, reaching back four generations. She placed a spray of blazing star and long-leaf phlox on the grave, then stepped back, one hand cupping the other.
“I don’t suppose you remember me. I would have been just a baby the last time you were at the ranch. I’m Ellyn. Ellyn Neal Sinclair. I love your son. He needs your help. And I need your help, so I can help him.”
* * *
Marti was waiting for her when she got back to Ridge House. Ellyn poured herself a cup from the fresh pot of coffee Marti had made while she waited, just as Ellyn would have done at the home ranch or at Kendra’s.
“Looks like you can use the caffeine,” Marti commented as Ellyn sat beside her at the table.
“I can. The kids and I were up late – talking.” She’d answered the question behind Marti’s statement, now she answered the question in her eyes. “It was good. We’ll be okay now.”
“And Grif?”
Her eyes teared up so suddenly she had no hope of stopping two from spilling over. “I don’t know.”
“I thought when the boy came home ... You turn away from my people, so your blood will have no home.” Marti covered Ellyn’s hand in the warmth of mutual comfort, and heaved a sorrowful sigh. “The past isn’t always what we think it is.”
Ellyn waited for more, but when Marti spoke again, it was in her usual brisk tone.
“I have something for you, Ellyn.” Marti took an envelope from her sweater pocket. She stared down at it, making no move to hand it over. “Going through all the old family papers for the special section, at the home ranch and in the archives in Sheridan, got me thinking about more recent history.”
She breathed in sharply. “This is my sister Nancy’s last letter to me, before she died. I flew out there. I was with her when she died, but she couldn’t say much. When I came home to Far Hills after the funeral, this letter was waiting for me.”
Now she did hold it out, but Ellyn shook her head wordlessly.
“Go ahead,” Marti urged. “You read it. Then I’ll leave it to you to decide what – if anything – you want to do with it.”
“I can’t. This is private ... personal.”
She’d asked for help, but this ...
“It’s family,” Marti said, placing the envelope in Ellyn’s limp hands, then curling her fingers around it. “You read it.”
Ellyn didn’t know how long after Marti left she sat there, with the aging envelope awkwardly held by fingers that felt nerveless. A shudder passed through her, then she walked down the hallway to her bedroom.
She hesitated in front of the bed, then turned away. The old sliding rocker in the corner was strangely absent of folded clothes waiting to be put away. Taking that as an omen, she sat there and extracted the sheets covered by handwriting in blue ballpoint.
Dearest, littlest sister Marti,
Remember how I used to call you that when you were little and you hated it because you wanted to be so grown up? And now you are grown up. So grown up. And now Amy is the littlest and you’re the older sister.
It’s almost morning, and still sleep won’t come. Or I won’t let it come. Everything is a balancing act now. How much pain I can bear, how much time I will lose by killing the pain. And there is so much still to do. So much I can’t do. Can only ask others to do for me.
Marti, with all you carry and all you’ve given up to raise Amy and to run dear Far Hills, I ask more of you now. Please look after my Johnny as much as you can. Make sure he has Far Hills in his heart wherever he goes. I worry about him. He’s so serious, so good, so grownup. He carries too much weight on his shoulders. I’ve tried not to add to that weight, but I know I have. I hope he finds a love in this life that will help ease that, help him find joy.
John was here. First, sending Johnny in during visiting hours, then later, when he slipped past the nurses again as he does most nights. I’ve let him think I was sleeping the other nights. He cries. Tonight I touched him, and he held my hand. And we both cried. Oh, Marti, I regret so much, but mostly I regret that I could not have been a better wife, a better love to John. He has so much to give, and he doesn’t believe it. And I didn’t know enough then to teach him how to believe, I didn’t know enough to overcome what his father did to him. If you could see the scars, Marti, you’d start to understand. And to my shame, in my frustration and anger and hurt I’ve even thrown that monster up to him, as if he were somehow responsible for what that vile man did.
I made it so much harder for him to give, when I should have been making it easier. I didn’t know any of that until this disease became part of my life. It finally made me grow up. Maybe now, if I had the time ... But there is no time, and I must accept that. I wish he could. I am grateful we can touch again.
I don’t ask you to look out for John, because I know he won’t let anyone do that. That’s the worst of this dying – fearing what it will do to John, and Johnny. But I’ve complained of John so much – too often, I fear from my own selfishness and insecurity – that I wanted you to remember this, too, when I’m gone. To know I love him.
I love you, Marti – always my dearest, littlest sister. I drift so much these hours, not awake, not yet gone, and in that time always I’m home with everyone at Far Hills.
Love, Nancy
Ellyn rocked as the tears came, wrapping her arms around herself and feeling the pain. The pain of Nancy Susland Griffin. But even more, feeling the pain of those who suffered when she died. For Marti, who’d lost a dear sister. For Grif, who’d lost a beloved mother. For John Griffin Senior, who’d lost his love and his chance at living.
The tears and the rocking motion slowed to a stop.
She carefully ordered the sheets
and folded the letter along the old creases, then returned it to its envelope.
...I’ll leave it to you to decide what – if anything – you want to do with it...
She’d asked Nancy Griffin to help her help Grif. And the letter had arrived. A letter that told of opportunities lost. Of a woman who wished she’d been stronger, a woman who wished she hadn’t squandered her chance to love a difficult but good man.
Maybe Grif was like his father. He certainly needed to learn how to believe that he had much to give.
If she showed the letter to Grif would he see that the burden of blame between his parents was not so one-sided, that the should-haves and shouldn’t-haves were not so clearly divided, that the story wasn’t entirely as he’d believed it, and the outcome had never been preordained?
Would he see that their story wasn’t preordained?
Would he see that even if he was exactly like his father, that things could be different for them? Because they would have time. Because she was a different woman from Nancy. She’d already grown up, matured not by disease, but by troubles and time.
* * *
A figure burst through the door of Colonel John Griffin Junior’s office, with the sergeant who was supposed to prevent such interruptions trailing behind making sounds like a fish.
“What the hell is this?”
For a fraction of a second, Grif’s own words brought the memory of General Pulaski using very similar words when he’d entered another office not so long ago, But this figure had no papers, and looked nothing like the barrel-chested, crewcut officer.
It was Ellyn, hair wisping around her face, cheeks flushed and eyes bright with challenge and something else.
He didn’t try to squirm out from under her look, but returned it as he dismissed the sergeant in a tone that reminded him of his failure yet suspended retribution.
“I know you’re a busy man, Colonel Griffin – ” She slapped her palms on the desk and leaned forward. The scoop neck of her top gaped, revealing the ivory silk curves of the tops of her breasts as well as a fragment of lace. She couldn’t know the view her position gave him ... could she? “ – especially with that community meeting about the closing of Piney tomorrow night – which you didn’t bother to tell me about when you and Luke were hijacking my old dryer, and exercising your strategy.”
He’d intended to tell her until things went so wrong so fast. “Ellyn – ”
“But that’s not why I’m here today.”
Why was she here? Here, where he never would have envisioned her. He’d kept the special segment of his life where Ellyn, Meg and Ben, and a few others resided so rigorously separated from the military existence that took up most of his life, that he could barely accept this reality. She was here, at an army base, in the commanding officer’s office – his office – with him in uniform and doing his military duty.
“I have something to say to you. Something I need to say.” Her voice made a remarkable transformation during those two sentences, going from chastising to tender. “I understand your being scared, Grif. I’m scared, too. But you know what they say about heroes? They’re the ones who go ahead and do something even when they’re scared. So I’m about to be a hero.”
She drew in a breath, and he wanted nothing more than to put his mouth over hers and capture that breath when it came out, take it deep inside him, as if to capture some part of her in him.
“I love you, Grif. I love John Griffin Junior. I have loved you most of my life, but the way I love you now ... It’s not the way I loved you as a girl. It’s not the way I loved you as a friend, though both of those are part of what I feel now.”
“Ellyn, I’ve told you – ”
“I know what you’ve told me, and I know it’s crap.”
She couldn’t have thrown him more off-balance if she’d landed a punch to his solar plexus.
“You say you’re not suited to dealing with a family. You say you are like your father. I say look at the facts. I say look at how you’ve acted with Meg and Ben – all their lives you’ve been honest with them, kept your promises and cared. That’s what a father – a good father does. And me?” Her voice dropped. “You’ve been my friend, you’ve been my lover. I could never ask for more than that you continue to be both of those all my life.”
He was glad this happened surrounded by the accouterments of his army life, where he was used to keeping his responses dispassionate, no matter how passionate the cause. “And if you’re wrong and I’m right? Then what? Meg and Ben get kicked in the teeth again? You’re said it yourself, Ellyn, they can’t take that right now. Neither can you, sweetheart.”
Sweetheart was a tactical error. He saw it in her eyes. Worse, he felt it in his gut.
But she gave no quarter.
She started shaking her head even before she spoke. “You’re a coward. You’re afraid to give it a chance.”
He slowly rose. At least it made her straighten so he was no longer distracted by that gap. “I won’t gamble with the welfare of those two kids – or you. If that makes me a coward, I’m a coward.”
“Okay, Grif.” She looked at him directly, with great calm and a faint glint in her eyes like she knew he needed the desk between them. “But I’m not going anywhere. And you’re not going anywhere. At least for a while. In the meantime, I think you should read this.”
And now she did put something on his desk, placing it gently instead of slapping it down. A single envelope yellowed with age.
“Read it, and consider that maybe you’ve been wrong. That maybe what you’re so afraid of isn’t that the kids and I might get hurt, but that we’ll start feeling about you the way you’ve felt about your father. And that’s why you don’t think you’re suited to being a husband and father, because you’re afraid of being judged the way you’ve judged John Griffin Senior.
“You told me up on Leaping Star’s overlook not to worry about your petty grievances about your father. Something about that kept nagging at me. Finally, I got it. Grievances come from a form of grief. You’re grieving, too, Grif, just like Meg and Ben. Only you’ve been doing it for a long, long time. So read this letter, and then consider that maybe you have to let yourself forgive and even love your father before you can think about taking on his roles as a father and a husband.”
Her voice cracked at the final word. He clenched his fists to keep from reaching for her. He dropped his head to keep her from seeing how much he wanted to reach for her.
The envelope stared up at him, the faded writing legible enough to read the address, the handwriting taunting him with its familiarity.
“How did you get this, Ellyn?”
He looked up, but where she’d been standing was empty. A hammer of loss pounded his heart with two painful blows before he saw her at the door, watching him.
“That doesn’t really matter. You know, you’ve made a couple tactical errors in this battle, Colonel.”
“Yeah, what’re they?” His voice was raw, but he kept it steady.
“You taught me about strategy.” He could almost hear an echo of dirty, underhanded maneuvering in the faintest edge of amusement that touched her voice even as she said words he knew she meant in absolute seriousness. “And you helped me believe in myself. And I believe with all my heart that you’ll come to believe in yourself, too. You’ll be a hero, Grif.”
* * *
Grif sat alone, out of sight in the darkened staff office, watching the people of Far Hills file into the library to hear what he had to say. Looking to him for guidance.
That was a joke. Him giving anybody guidance when all it took was a letter from out of the past to make him wonder if he’d known anything his entire life.
He hadn’t let himself read that letter until he’d finished the day’s work. As it was he hadn’t been his most productive with Ellyn’s words and image haunting his every second. The letter made it worse.
Sometime after midnight, he’d driven to Far Hills Ranch. One light showed in the back o
f Kendra and Daniel’s house, but Ridge House was dark. Everyone there safe and sound in their beds. Ellyn ... in their bed, alone.
He’d forced himself to drive on, parked without paying much heed, then started walking. Sometime after the moon set, he stopped. He sat on a low rise overlooking a creek. It wasn’t until dawn grayed the night skies that he realized he’d found the spot where they used to have summer campfires.
He couldn’t remember a complete, coherent thought from the long night, just flashes of memories and images. He’d certainly reached no conclusions, made no decisions before a quick cold shower and a cup of scalding, strong coffee started him on a work day that hadn’t stopped for a second until now.
Ellyn came in to the library, with the kids behind her. She looked around – for him, he was certain of it. Then she sighed, deep enough to raise and drop her breasts. His hands tingled as if they’d rested on her soft, smooth skin and absorbed that movement.
An echo filtered into his mind, and he recognized it as his own words to Dale about what a fool he’d be to give up this woman and these kids. And now it was all offered to him. The family he loved, the life he’d dreamed about, and never thought could be his. All he had to do was accept it.
But would that be what was best for them?
* * *
“This doesn’t have to be the end,” Grif told the people of Far Hills in concluding his official announcement of the decision to close Fort Piney. “It can be the beginning.”
Ellyn wished he would make eye contact with her so she could make him see that his statement could apply to him as well as to Fort Piney. But he had studiously avoided looking at where she sat, with Meg and Ben beside her.
“Of what? Some big promotion for you?” jeered a voice from somewhere behind her in the audience.
Ellyn shifted in her folding chair. That was so unfair. Almost any assignment Grif could have taken would have been better for his career. And he could have sat in his office and issued reports, met with a delegation, insulated himself from the people and their sense of betrayal. He could have done that – except he couldn’t, because it wouldn’t have been Grif.
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