Scott was playing with little wooden blocks, adjusting the line into precise order. He hadn’t shown interest in any toy except his pirate boat for weeks. He wasn’t allowed to bring the boat to school, but he’d never filled his time there with other toys.
Maybe this was a phase, as Jill insisted, and Scott was finding his way through it. Eric’s heart grabbed on to that hope.
With a knot of emotion in his throat, he knelt in front of his son. “Scott.”
Scott continued to straighten the blocks.
Mrs. Parks said cheerily, “I think it’s a good sign. He’s finally using some of our toys. And he hasn’t cried once all morning.”
Eric smiled as he picked up his son. “Tell Mrs. Parks good-bye,” he prompted, irrationally hoping that some recently closed door in Scott’s mind had reopened, and he’d smile and speak.
Scott laid his head on Eric’s shoulder and clung tightly.
“Good-bye, Scott. See you next week,” Mrs. Parks responded, as if Scott had actually told her good-bye.
When Eric buckled Scott in his car seat, he kissed his forehead and asked, “You hungry?” The kids had lunch at eleven-thirty as part of their social activities, but Eric always asked the question, hoping for some spark of response in his son’s eyes. And this time, there was one. Scott looked directly at him and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.
A giddy laugh bubbled from Eric’s chest. “Already had lunch, did you?” He ruffled Scott’s fine blond hair.
As he drove to Tula’s he thought just maybe the dark cloud had passed. Scott showed signs of improvement. Jill was cooperative. And Glory . . . ah, Glory. He wanted to leave the past in the past and look to the future.
He was whistling when he entered Tula’s kitchen.
“My, my, ain’t we in a chipper mood?” Tula teased with a smile.
He kissed her playfully on the cheek. “It’s a good day.”
“Ev’r day the good Lord gives us is a good day.” She shook a bony finger at him.
“How’s your eye today? What did the doctor say?”
“Said it don’t have nothin’ to do with the macular degeneration. Was just one of those fluky things. Clearin’ up nice now—he calls it ‘quiet’; my eye’s ‘quiet.’”
“So you can see all right?”
“Saw fine by bedtime last night. Glory makes too much of things. I’m old. Got to expect some wear and tear.”
He couldn’t help but wrap his free arm around her. “We should all grow old like you.”
Tula shrugged away. “Stop talkin’ nonsense.” She put her hands out toward Scott. “Give me my boy.”
Scott shifted to Tula’s arms without complaint. Eric watched him with a careful eye for any other outward signs of improvement, but Scott behaved as always with Tula—compliant but not interactive.
“Guess I’d better get back to the station.” Then he said, as if he’d just had the thought, “Maybe I’ll say hi to Glory before I go.”
Tula was settling Scott on his blanket. She straightened and looked at him. There was something that sparked in her eye, and Eric shifted uncomfortably.
“She ain’t here. Went into town.”
“Oh. Well, tell her I said hello.”
“Sure.” Her tone bordered on suspicious. The old gal didn’t miss a trick. He’d wanted to ask what Glory was doing in town, but Tula’s antennae were already picking up more than he thought was prudent at this point in time.
Movement behind Tula caught Eric’s eye. He was surprised to see Scott getting up from his pirate boat, moving toward Lady standing in the doorway. His little face was more animated than Eric had seen it for months. He put a hand on the dog’s back.
Eric whispered, “Look at that.”
Tula put a hand over her heart. “Land’s sake. I never seen him do that before.”
When Lady turned around and walked out of the kitchen, Scott followed.
Tula and Eric inched along behind. In a low voice, Eric said, “He had a good day at school. And he shook his head no when I asked if he was hungry. Maybe he’s coming out of his shell.”
Tula’s green eyes, eyes so much like Glory’s, looked up at him. They sparkled with gathered tears. “I pray to Jesus ever’ night. Maybe He sees it’s time.”
The thought of Tula praying faithfully for his son squeezed his heart with love. He could barely get the words out to agree, “Maybe so.”
When Lady lay down next to the box with her puppies, Scott plopped down next to her and put a chubby fist on her back again. They both seemed content.
Eric said, “I’ll call later and see how it’s going. It’s Jill’s weekend, so she’ll be picking him up.”
“All right.”
He started down the hall toward the kitchen.
Tula stopped him by saying, “Been forgettin’ to tell you, we’re havin’ a family reunion of sorts on Sunday—Glory bein’ back and all. There’ll be lots of young’uns. Might be good for Scott.”
In his mind, Eric could see Scott playing in Tula’s yard with a group of children. He was running and laughing, interacting like a healthy little boy. Oh, how Eric wanted that picture to come to life.
“It is Jill’s weekend.” He rubbed his chin, thinking of the tiny markers of progress he’d seen today. “But it probably would be good for him. I’ll see if Jill will let me steal him away for a few hours,” he said as he left.
Just as he reached his Explorer, Glory’s cousin Charlie pulled up in his gray-and-red Suburban.
“Hey, Eric.” Charlie stepped around his truck to shake Eric’s hand. “How’s she doing today?” He gestured with a lift of his chin toward the kitchen.
Eric didn’t know which surprised him more, that Charlie was in tune with a problem that didn’t sit at the end of his own nose or by the fact he was here without his five kids to dump on Tula. Eric was amazed that such a lazy-ass could have a single one of Tula Baker’s genes floating in his blood.
“She says she’s better; she saw her eye doctor again this morning.” He added, with just a hint of sarcasm, “Nice of you to stop by to see how she’s faring.”
The sarcasm was lost on Charlie. He grinned affably and shrugged. “Ran into Glory in town. She said she might be gone a long while and asked if I’d check in.”
“Must take a burden off your shoulders with Glory here now to keep a watch on Tula.”
Charlie laughed, the ridicule in Eric’s tone again whizzing right past his head. “Gran don’t need anyone to ‘keep watch.’” He shook his head. “Better hope she doesn’t hear you say such a thing.”
Eric waved as Charlie headed toward the house. Then he called, “Did Glory happen to say what she was doing in town?”
“Said she was going to the cemetery. She had flowers. Reckon they were for Andrew.”
“Oh. Thanks.” Eric got in his Explorer.
With his optimistic mood now dampened slightly, he turned around and drove back toward the road. Even though there was no traffic, he sat at the end of the lane for a long moment before he pulled out. Glory visiting her husband’s grave the day after she and Eric had sex for the first time didn’t bode well, not well at all.
When he returned to town, he cruised past the cemetery. The Harrisons had a special section near the entrance that was surrounded by an antique wrought-iron fence, the Harrison Garden. Eric saw Glory’s Volvo parked there. Then he saw her, on her knees with her head bowed.
With a stomach that ratcheted another notch tighter, he made himself drive on past and not intrude upon her privacy.
It had taken nearly an hour to gather her courage before she entered the cemetery. As Glory placed a bouquet of white daisies bound together with a pink satin ribbon beside the small marker on her daughter’s grave, her hands trembled and her chest felt too tight to draw a breath. This was the first time she’d seen the engraved stone; she had been too cowardly to return here after the day of the funeral. It shamed her that almost two years had passed, and she had not l
aid a single flower as an offering to the spirit of her child.
There was a harsh cruelty in the very smallness of the grave that Glory hadn’t been able to bring herself to face. Now it had been long enough that the outline of disturbed earth and mismatched new grass wasn’t a glaring indication of just how tiny that casket had been. She didn’t think she could have stood that, even today.
But there was something beyond her cowardice for not coming here. She never really felt her child was contained in this earth, but was still somehow bound to her heart, following wherever she went.
For a long time she just stared at the headstone. She and Andrew hadn’t settled on a name, so Glory had named her stillborn child alone; Clarice Ovella Harrison. It seemed only right that the child who was never held in the loving arms of either one of her grandmothers had something of theirs.
Glory recalled how oddly Andrew’s mother had reacted when Glory had told her—with cold eyes and mouth sourly drawn. But then, Glory asked herself, how should one behave when your only child had died tragically and your grandchild had been born dead? It had been an impossible time; no one had had the slightest control of their emotions.
She reached out and touched a shaky hand to the small granite stone. Closing her eyes, she traced the letters as a blind woman would read Braille. Then she waited for the calm, the rush of warmth and connection that Granny said she always experienced at Pap’s grave. But the only thing Glory felt was alone and cold to her core. Maybe Granny had such a positive reaction because she had shared most of a lifetime with Pap; Glory hadn’t even had a moment to see the color of her daughter’s eyes.
After a while she gave up hoping for a shift in her emotional state and opened her eyes. The bouquet blurred; summer-grass green smearing deeply into the pure white of the delicate petals, round yellow centers now irregular smudges of color, ribbon an indistinct slash of pink. She felt as if she’d tried to swallow a watermelon whole and it was stuck halfway down. Only when she let herself sob did the pressure begin to lessen. And when she began to cry, it was as if a dam had burst.
The movement of the sun registered as its heat traveled from the back of Glory’s neck to the side of her face. She cried until she was as wrung out as an old sponge, with no hint of resiliency left, ready to shred into brittle chunks.
Only then, when her grief for her daughter had turned her inside out and left nothing, did she turn to her husband’s grave.
In contrast to the small marker Glory had chosen for Clarice’s grave, Andrew’s seemed almost garish in its pretension. Glory had been appalled when Ovella had selected it from the brochure and insisted nothing else would do. But Glory hadn’t had the heart to deny a grieving mother what she felt was a fitting tribute to her son. Glory had left town before it had been erected; it was even gaudier in person than it had appeared in the photograph.
The marker had two large built-in urns that were filled with fresh-cut flowers. She wondered who would have left such lavish arrangements. It couldn’t have been Ovella; she would have left flowers on her grandchild’s grave too.
Glory brushed insignificant things like flowers and monuments away and tried to focus on what Granny had said was important: Make peace, let go. Glory couldn’t deny the soul-cleansing effect of crying over her daughter’s grave.
She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Granny says you and I have unfinished business.” Glancing around, Glory made sure she was alone. She felt a little nuts talking to a grave. But that was how Granny did it, and she was Glory’s only guide in this. “I suppose she’s right.”
She cast about in her mind for a place to begin and realized how difficult it had been for her to speak freely to her husband in life.
“I’ve been away from here for nearly two years. And for all of that time, I ignored the truth of our relationship. But I’m remembering things clearly now. Maybe it was my shame at failing in this marriage that made me mourn for things that never were—or at least hadn’t been for a very long time. Our marriage was rotting deep inside. If I had stayed in Dawson, I might have faced the truth sooner. But that’s neither here nor there now.”
Taking a moment to fortify herself, she plunged into the heart of the matter. “I can never forgive you for telling me to abort our baby. Never. It makes me physically ill to think what might have happened if I hadn’t already told your mother. I want to believe you couldn’t have forced me to have an abortion—but then, I know I allowed you to manipulate me into lots of things that I never thought possible.
“We were still together in the end, but I can’t for the life of me understand how. There must have been a turning point, an understanding; I remember you helping get ready for the baby’s birth . . .”
Her words trailed into the past, she remembered what they had been doing prior to the fire—painting and decorating the baby’s room. They had been nearly finished. The project had dragged on because the smell of the paint had made Glory queasy.
On the day of the fire, she’d hung the curtains—soft moss green with tiny ivory dots. She could remember how rich the fabric felt in her fingers. Andrew had refused any infantile patterns in the décor. Glory hadn’t fought over it, it didn’t matter to her. What mattered was there was a bright, sunny room with a comfortable rocking chair where she could hold her baby, sing to her, to show her how it felt to be loved. She remembered thinking, This is why I’m here in this world, to love this child.
That day, Andrew had come home just as she was arranging the folds of the new curtains:
“What do you think?” she had asked without stopping her work when she heard him enter the room behind her.
Andrew didn’t answer, so she turned around ready to repeat the question. That was when she saw the thunderous expression on his face. Her stomach dropped to her toes.
“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
He stayed in the doorway, his hands fisted at his sides. “I saw you.”
There was no sense in acting like she didn’t understand what he meant. “What did you see me doing this time?” She quickly reran her day in her mind, trying to remember when she’d been in the company of a man Andrew might consider capable of having an affair with a woman nearly seven months pregnant.
“You were getting in your car in front of Cam Wilkes’s house. Cam was all over you.”
“His wife made these curtains. I was picking them up. As for his being all over me, I can’t imagine what you think you saw.” She spoke dispassionately; she’d learned early on that the more emotional she appeared, the stronger Andrew’s suspicions became. She was tired to her core of these scenes. She supposed she’d find her car keys missing again tomorrow.
“His wife wasn’t home,” he said in a tone that indicated he’d caught her in a lie.
“How do you know that?” Glory’s skin turned clammy. Had he followed her around all day?
“Because I saw her going into the hair salon on the square.”
“Then you drove all the way out to River Road to see what was going on at her house? Or were you following me?” She was losing her battle to keep the emotion out of her voice.
“What was Cam doing home in the middle of the morning?”
“Honestly, Andrew! How do you jump to such conclusions?” She was tempted not to explain, but for some reason she didn’t think this was the time to push him. He’d been irrational before, but there was something in his eyes this evening that frightened her. So she told him the truth that he most likely would not believe. “Cam is on vacation this week. I needed to pick up the curtains. Sandy said she had an appointment but that he’d be home all morning, so I could stop by anytime.”
“So you chose the time when you knew she was going to be gone.”
“For God’s sake, I didn’t know what time her appointment was!” It took everything in her not to shake her fist at him. “I don’t know why I put up with these ridiculous accusations! I’m as big as a cow, what makes you think any man would even think of me in tha
t way?”
“Certain men would.”
She furrowed her brow and gave her head a slight shake. “What are you talking about?”
His aggressive stance relaxed slightly, but she could see the tension still humming in his muscles. “Never mind.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Just watch yourself. You’ve got no business being in a house alone with a man. People will talk. Or do you want to make a fool out of me?”
“Most people wouldn’t give it a second thought! As for being made a fool, you’re doing a fine job of that yourself.”
He stepped toward her, and for the briefest moment she braced herself for a blow. He’d never hit her. But he was getting much more volatile.
Instead of hitting her, he loomed over her and shook a finger in her face. “One of these days, you’re going to push me too far.”
She made herself look him in the eye. No more would she back down for the sake of peace. “I honestly don’t know how much longer I can take this, Andrew.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She looked squarely at him and said the words she’d been contemplating for months. “I’m seriously thinking about leaving you. I can’t live like this. I don’t want my child to grow up in this kind of environment.”
That dangerous look was back in his eye. But his words were far from what she expected. “Why did you call it your child?”
“Andrew, I’m exhausted. I cannot go another argument over semantics. I’m tired of watching every word that comes out of my mouth. I’ve been faithful to you since our first date, but you obviously want something I can’t give you.”
“You’re not leaving me.”
And just like that it became blindingly clear. She’d been ignoring the obvious for too long. She had to leave him. For her sake—for her child’s. “I’m sorry, Andrew. We need some time apart. Maybe in a few months . . .”
He reached for her with a swiftness that made her flinch. But the violence she anticipated did not come. He wrapped her in his arms and said, “You’re my wife. You promised yourself to me. You can’t break that promise.”
“People break promises all the time. Sometimes it’s for the best.”
On Blue Falls Pond Page 23
