One More Summer

by Liz Flaherty

  “Disclosure? You writer-types just delight in using words the rest of us generally think belong in books, don’t you?” Steven sneered at him before stalking toward the vegetables further down the aisle.

  When Dillon caught up with him, he was holding a head of lettuce, hefting it from hand to hand. “Squeeze it,” Dillon said. “It’s supposed to be kind of hard.”

  “You’re right.” Steven squashed the lettuce hard enough to pulverize it. “About me being selfish, I mean.” He dropped the greens into the cart and moved toward tomatoes. “You son of a bitch.”

  “Don’t squeeze the tomatoes.”

  “Shut up.”

  Dillon stood in the floral section of the market, picking up and discarding arrangements until he finally settled on a rainbow-hued bouquet.

  “For Grace? She’s got a million flowers in the yard nicer than those.” Steven frowned down at the blooms.

  “That she grew herself. Everything comes to her through effort of her own. She didn’t have to do anything for these.”

  “Oh.” Steven opened his mouth as if he were going to comment further. He must have changed his mind, though, because he walked on in silence.

  That was probably just as well.

  Grace undoubtedly had the cleanest attic in Peacock. Every time she came up, she swept the wooden floor and knocked cobwebs out of the exposed rafters. She polished the little windows and propped them open with pieces of a giveaway yardstick someone had left up there. Even though opening the windows aired some of the musty smell out of the attic, it did nothing to dispel the heat that attacked like a predator the minute she ascended the narrow staircase.

  In their younger days, she and Promise had sought out and solved all the mysteries to be found in the past lives of a couple of generations of Elliots and Canfields. They’d tried on Deborah Canfield Elliot’s lace wedding dress, the cobwebby veil that had been her mother’s before her, and the strapless taffeta evening gowns that hung like faded flags in the old wardrobe. They’d pored over the yearbooks from Robert and Debbie’s days at Peacock High School and Tennessee State University and the picture albums that spanned the decades from the twenties.

  They’d read Debbie’s old autograph album, giggling at notes like, “2 good 2 be true,” and “first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Debbie with a baby carriage.”

  On the bookshelf fashioned between studs at one end of the attic, they’d found Debbie’s copies of all of Louisa May Alcott’s and L. M. Montgomery’s books. They’d dusted them off and toted them down to Debbie’s room, begging her to read to them even though they read perfectly well for themselves.

  Debbie had read to them anyway, often joined in the big room by Faith, Steven and Dillon. She’d gotten all the way through Little Women and halfway through Anne of Green Gables before the reading became too much for her. That was when Grace took over most nights, finishing whatever chapter Debbie would start and then adding a Magpie story for her mother’s entertainment. Debbie died before Anne of Green Gables was finished, and although Grace had read all the other books in the series, she had never finished that first one.

  She didn’t know what had made her start reading it aloud at the library. She’d just plucked the worn copy off a stack of books waiting to be discarded. Once she’d started reading, the magic of Anne had drawn her in and she’d loved it all over again.

  Maybe this time, she’d finish. It was time to let Mama go.

  Grace sat in the rocking chair with photograph albums in her lap. These were the ones from her own lifetime, ones she hadn’t pored over because the pictures they held were within the realm of her recall. While a few of the recollections the pictures would incite were happy ones, most were not. She’d never felt the need to flagellate herself with the unhappy memories.

  Today, however, was different.

  Robert and Debbie’s wedding picture was the first in the oldest album. Debbie had been as lovely as Faith grew up to be, although frail even then. Robert, his blond hair a bit long and a smile slashing his handsome face, could have been Steven in his college days.

  There were snapshots of their honeymoon at Niagara Falls, of Debbie when she was hugely pregnant with Steven, then again a year later with Faith.

  Steven and Faith as beautiful babies and as even more appealing toddlers filled most of the rest of the album. She also saw Robert mowing the yard, Debbie taking a cake from the oven, Robert and Debbie together on the rattan settee that was still on the front porch. Her father’s expression reminded Grace of how Steven looked at Promise. The tenderness was almost painful to see.

  That changed over the next few pages. His face hardened somehow, becoming more the way she remembered him, gazing coldly into the camera’s lens.

  Grace looked at the last picture for a long time. Faith sat before a birthday cake with two candles on it, surrounded by a host of other toddlers and a few mothers. Debbie, slim and pale but smiling, was at her side.

  Grace had been born a month later.

  She was perspiring so freely Dillon couldn’t tell if there were tears on her face or not. He hoped there weren’t. Not that he thought her path to discovery wasn’t going to cause an unholy amount of weeping—he was almost certain it was—but he didn’t want her crying alone in the attic.

  “Hey,” he said softly, and when she didn’t respond, again said, “Hey, there’s pizza on the back porch with your name on it.”

  She looked over her shoulder to where he stood near the top of the attic stairs. “Maxie and Jonah?” Her voice sounded rusty.

  “Poker and the union hall.”

  “Does Maxie remember…”

  “Nothing.”

  He came to where she sat, bending his head to clear the rafters even though he didn’t quite need to, and knelt in front of the chair. “Let’s take them down,” he said, lifting the albums from her lap.

  “No,” she said. “This is my journey. I think I should take it by myself.”

  “Bullshit,” he said pleasantly. “Come on. Pizza’s getting cold and beer’s getting warm.”

  “Do you have enough beer to maybe get me drunk? Transport me somewhere I don’t have to think about anything for a little while?”

  He shook his head. “We would, except you start throwing up after two.”

  “That’s not me,” she said indignantly, recalling the occasion to which he referred, “that’s Promise.”

  “That’s you,” he corrected. “Promise lied to cover your butt. Your father ended up feeling sorry for her because there she was, seventeen years old with a drinking problem.”

  “Oh.” She got up, stretching. “Let’s go, then. If Faith’s still here, she’ll eat all the pepperoni.”

  He straightened, tucking the albums under one arm and pulling her into the other one. “You are Grace,” he said quietly, and kissed her until his mind was mush and he no longer gave a damn about pizza and beer.

  “Hey.” Steven’s voice bellowed from two floors below. “Grace, Faith’s already taken all your pepperoni and she’s getting ready to take Promise’s. Get down here.”

  “Mine and Promise’s?” she yelled back, starting down the steps. “What about yours?”

  “I spit on mine and Dillon’s. We men have to take care of ourselves, you know.”

  “You’re a real pal,” Dillon said.

  Steven beamed at him when they reached the bottom of the steps, reaching to take half the photograph albums. “Think nothing of it.”

  The first thing Grace saw when she stepped onto the porch was Promise’s concerned face. The second thing, after she gave Promise a reassuring hug, was the wistful expression Faith wore. Grace didn’t understand the look— Faith had never had to long for anything in her life—but she hugged her sister anyway.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” she said, sitting between the two women. “Not that I wish Grant to be gone a lot or anything. It’s just nice to have you here by yourself.”

  “It’s nice to be here. I adore
my family, but sometimes I need my other family. I need—” Faith stopped with a self-deprecating laugh. “I don’t know exactly what it is, but you four seem to give it to me.”

  “My pepperoni,” Grace griped, “that’s what it is.”

  “She tried for mine, but I was sick and frail so she left it alone.” Promise smirked. “She’s such a sucker.”

  “Speaking of suckers,” Dillon said, “remember the time Steven had you write him an excuse for missing school because he ‘forgot’ to get one from your dad?”

  “You mean when you and Steven drove clear to Knoxville to get tattoos and then chickened out?” Promise asked, arching a brow. “I knew it all the time.”

  “We didn’t chicken out,” Steven protested. “We just thought better of it, is all.”

  “I didn’t,” Faith said.

  Grace, her mouth open, stared at her sister. “Didn’t what?”

  “Didn’t chicken out. I have a rosebud on my backside.”

  “You do not.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I’ve seen your backside. You do not.”

  Faith got to her feet and made circling motions to Steven and Dillon. When they obligingly turned their backs, she dropped her designer shorts.

  “You passed out like a light when I pierced your ears,” Grace said. “How were you able to stand getting a tattoo?”

  “The tattoo artist was a little better with a needle than you were, sister dear.” Faith pulled her shorts up and resumed her seat. “And I passed out like a light then too. Woke up with my butt on fire. You guys can turn around now.”

  Steven leered. “I’ll bet Grant liked that.”

  “He learned to.” She grinned, and Grace was amazed at the wickedness of the expression.

  Promise opened the first album.

  They all crowded to one side of the table to examine the pictures together. Dillon pulled Grace up and sat in her chair with her between his straddled legs. Steven did the same thing with Promise, and though her cheeks stained pink, she didn’t protest. Grace and Promise tugged Faith into a chair between them. Dillon whined about cooties and Faith slapped him.

  At the end of the first album, they looked in silence at the final picture, the irrefutable proof that Steven and Faith’s mother had not been Grace’s.

  Faith lifted a hand to Grace’s face. “How she must have loved you,” she said softly.

  Grace sat still, thinking. They were all touching. Steven and Dillon’s knees bumped Faith’s and her shoulders were pressed between Promise and Grace’s. Grace felt the intimacy of the connection to the other four and was embarrassingly grateful for it. Faith’s statement had made Debbie a part of the connection, her love transcending the separation of death.

  Earlier in the summer, Grace had told Promise everything deserved a name. Everything deserved to be loved.

  Tonight, Grace Elliot knew she was loved.

  She would worry about the name later.

  Chapter 18

  “Now you need to furnish it.” Dillon stood in the middle of the suite of rooms that had once been Robert Elliot’s. The papering was done, the floors waxed and buffed within an inch of their parquet lives. The windows shone brightly in the late August sun.

  Grace nodded. “I’m going to an auction this afternoon. Want to come?”

  The invitation surprised Dillon. She’d been subdued since the night almost two weeks ago when they’d all eaten pizza on the porch, even quieter after Steven’s departure the following Sunday. An argument over her window-washing techniques had been the only sign of animation he’d seen her display outside the library.

  He was in the middle of Chapter Twelve of Heart of the Hero and had just about decided his last fifteen pages were almost good enough to line a birdcage—if you weren’t all that fond of the bird. With a deadline shrieking at him from less than two months away, he shouldn’t take off to go to an auction.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’d like to go. I haven’t been to an auction since I went with my dad and he ended up buying a chair he didn’t want because I waved at some girl across the way.”

  “Some girl?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it was Jenny Sawyer. We were thirteen and she’d just recently acquired boobs. I thought the least I could do was wave. It was the most I could do, too, since I was still at the lying about sex stage.”

  “How long did that last?”

  “Till I was about thirty.”

  “Sad.”

  “I thought it was. I’ve still got the damn chair too. Dad shipped it to me when I bought my condo. He said it was to remind me to pay attention. I think he wanted to get it out of his house.”

  Although she smiled, her eyes had that bruised look they’d had when he first came back to Peacock.

  “I’ll want to leave before eleven,” she said. “Since Steven drove his truck when he came for the weekend, we can use it.”

  “Then we better leave ten minutes early. The truck won’t have any gas in it. The reason I have such great legs is all those hikes I took when we were kids, chasing down gas when he ran out.” He wanted her to smile again.

  “Well,” she said absently, moving toward the door, “you know how he is. A quarter till then?”

  “Fine.” He watched her go, thinking she’d lost weight right along with Promise this summer, and she didn’t have it to spare.

  He moved to the window. August was almost overdone, he thought, the colors too vibrant, the heat too intense, the days too long. Inevitably, lethargy set in.

  Maxie sat alone on the painted bench inside the rose trellis. She had the lap desk she used for her writing and was scribbling away on a legal pad. There was a new air of fragility about her these days. She’d had no more headaches since that fateful morning, but she hadn’t felt all that well, either.

  As he watched, she paused, her pen stopping in midair. An expression of such agonized longing crossed her face that he felt like a voyeur for having seen it. He wasn’t surprised when Grace stepped into his line of vision. A laundry basket propped on her hip, she sauntered to the rose trellis and spoke to Maxie.

  The older woman’s smile was both hopeful and unspeakably sad. Dillon’s pity for her was matched only by his concern for her companion. The woman in bare feet and baggy jeans whose tension seemed to vibrate from the straight line of her back.

  There was a new reserve in her interaction with Maxie, but then she was more reserved with everyone except Promise. Although Grace never referred to the scene in the kitchen, Dillon knew it was never far from her mind. Its presence was there in her long silences, in her wounded eyes and in the slump of her shoulders when she didn’t realize anyone was watching.

  He’d wanted to make love to her a hundred times since the first experience. Desire had become a constant companion. It woke him in the middle of the night, and he would find himself sitting in front of his computer with no hope of sleeping again. His writing had cured all his ills for so many years—until Iraq—and he expected it to work its healing magic again. All that happened was that frustration and longing filtered into his manuscript. He had even considered, as he sat on his porch in the wee hours of one morning watching her bedroom light burn, re-titling the work Wanting Grace. His agent would think he’d lost it altogether and his editor would be certain he’d gone soft.

  They might both be right.

  Grace drove while Dillon buried himself in his notebook, writing a long passage and then staring fixedly out the windshield for a while before writing another. She glared over at him periodically, offended by his silence.

  He hadn’t even noticed that she was wearing the white shorts he liked. Maybe she should have worn a dress. That would have been cool, climbing in and out of Steven’s tall truck in a dress. She snorted at the thought.

  Dillon looked up. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  Good heavens, she thought crossly, would it be so difficult to carry on a conversation? He wrote all the time,
and Lord knew, he was a genius. Heart of the Hero was certainly testimony to that. Her throat got all clogged up just thinking about it. Her eyes stung as she remembered the scene in the book in which the plane crash took place.

  She’d give the big toe on her right foot to know who the woman in the book—and in Dillon’s life—had been.

  “Dillon?”

  “What?”

  “Who was…” She stopped when he raised an irritated gaze from what he was writing, “Who was who?”

  “Who was…” She lost her nerve, an unaccustomed and unwanted occurrence. “Nothing.”

  “Okay.”

  Well, wasn’t he Mr. Agreeable today? Where was he when she was trying to wash her windows, yelling like a crazy man because she was cleaning the outsides the way she’d been doing since she was too young to know better.

  Of course, it was hard to complain when he’d ended up washing the rest of them. And it was fun arguing with Dillon because he was the only person outside of Prom she’d ever trusted with her very life. She knew when the argument was over, the relationship would be unscathed.

  Relationship. Humph. Not really. He hadn’t so much as kissed her since that time before they came down from the attic. She missed the kisses, the easy affection she’d come to count on so much she’d even returned it. Sometimes. Other times she didn’t return it because she knew as sure as she was sitting here that somewhere down the road he was going to leave. He’d go back to being a handsome face on the back covers of his books and she’d…well, she’d still be plain old Grace Elliot. Damn it all.

  But she wanted to lie with him again. She wanted his heartbeat slamming away right next to hers and his sweat-slicked arms tight around her and his voice telling her to open her eyes to see where they flew. She wanted to fly, to feel that muscle-collapsing release that so far surpassed anything she’d ever read in a library book it wasn’t even funny.