Gift of Grace

by Inglath Cooper

  Sophie sighed, dropped her head onto the palm of her hand. “Okay,” she said.

  “If he’s serious about this, you’ll be getting a call from his attorney. Let’s just wait and see what happens. You’ve played by the rules, and the rules are on your side.”

  It was true. From any standpoint of logic, Sophie knew it.

  Why then did the words feel like a threadbare sweater in a winter wind, bringing absolutely no comfort at all?

  FROM SOPHIE OWENS’S office, Caleb drove straight to his parents’ house. He found his dad out back working on the lawn mower. “Mom here?” he asked.

  “She’s inside making some soup.”

  “Could you come in for a minute, Dad?”

  Jeb put down the rag in his hand and followed Caleb into the house.

  Catherine turned from the stove when they walked in the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “Caleb,” she said. “I didn’t hear you pull up.”

  “Maybe you two better sit down.”

  Catherine’s face lost its color. “What is it, son?”

  “Please,” Caleb said.

  Catherine sat. Jeb took the chair across the table from her. Caleb stood behind one of the ladder-backs, his hands gripping the top rung, his knuckles white.

  “I went to see the woman who adopted Laney’s baby today,” he said. “I’ve spoken to a lawyer who’s willing to help me try to get her back.”

  Both his parents sat as still as stone for several moments. Finally, Catherine slid back her chair, sudden tears streaming down her face. “Excuse me,” she said and left the room.

  Jeb’s concerned gaze followed her, then returned to Caleb, his eyes weighted with sadness. “Don’t do this, son,” he said, his voice low. “You made a decision for what seemed best for that child, and not a person in this world could blame you for it.”

  “I blame myself.”

  “That’s just it,” he said. “You blame yourself for what happened to Laney. I learned a long time ago that we can’t go around thinking we have a whole lot to do with what goes on in this world. Sometimes bad things just happen. To good people who’ve never done a thing to deserve it. Some people get to be movie stars, and some people work in coal mines their whole lives. I have to believe it all gets evened out in the end.”

  Caleb looked away and said, “I gave that baby away because I couldn’t stand to look at her. I did that for me, not because I was thinking of what was best for her.”

  “It was for the best,” Jeb said. “Everyone understood.”

  “Everyone except Laney.”

  His father stared at him for a moment, as if unsure where to go with this.

  “Have you thought about all the people you’re going to hurt?” Jeb asked. “The people who are parents to that child? Who’ve made her part of their family? Not to mention the child herself?”

  Caleb glanced down, then met his father’s gaze. “I keep having these dreams. About Laney. For a long time after she died, I prayed for that. To close my eyes and see her the way she was. Happy. Beautiful. But I couldn’t even have her that way. And then a few weeks ago, I started dreaming about her. She’s crying. Asking me why I gave away the baby. Why I didn’t take care of the baby.”

  Tears rolled down Jeb’s face and dropped onto the kitchen table. Caleb had only seen his father cry once in his life. And that was on the day of Laney’s funeral.

  “Then one day this woman and child walk into the store, and it’s as if I’ve been given another chance to do the right thing. As if Laney put them there in my path so I could see.”

  Jeb’s jaw worked, as if he were searching for words and couldn’t latch on to a single one. “I don’t see how anything but pain can come from this, Caleb,” he finally said, his voice rough with emotion.

  “I have to make peace with what I did, Dad. For Laney. And right now, there is no other way.”

  CATHERINE STOOD AT THE CORNER of the house, watching her son drive away, her heart breaking.

  Jess, her old Australian shepherd, leaned his shoulder against her in quiet sympathy.

  “Catherine?”

  She walked around to the front yard where Jeb stood on the porch, his expression grim.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  She nodded once and sat down on the step. Jess sat next to her, his head on her lap.

  “It’s never going to end, is it?” Jeb said, wrinkles of defeat lining his forehead.

  She looked out across the yard, set her gaze on the mailbox, biting her lip to keep from crying. “We have to be there for him, Jeb.”

  “With what, Catherine? How much more can you take?” He hesitated a moment, and then said, “I hear you crying in the bathroom with the shower on, Cath. I know what this has done to you, what it’s doing to you. You won’t let me help, and I don’t see how you can be a part of something that is bound to bring even more heartbreak to everyone involved.”

  Catherine pressed her lips together, unable to deny anything he had said. How could she explain that she felt their son’s pain as if it were part of her own skin? It had been that way since the day he’d been born, every cry, every hurtful thing that had happened to him had echoed within her as if the pain were her own. But that was what being a mother was all about. Her heart felt as bruised and battered now as it had the day they’d been called to the hospital and found their daughter-in-law in a coma.

  Life had been so smooth, so good until then. She and Jeb both had loved Laney like their own daughter. Laney and Caleb had been trying to have a baby, and Catherine had looked forward to having a grandchild, her joy deepened by her own desire to hear little feet on the hardwood floors of their house.

  After Caleb, she and Jeb had tried to have more children. Four miscarriages later, her doctor had warned them not to try again. She didn’t think it possible to love more than she loved Caleb, but she often wished there had been brothers and sisters for him. Someone else to buffer the pain of what he’d endured these past three years. Give him the support and understanding only family can give.

  He was so alone now. So unreachable. As if he’d dropped himself in the middle of the ocean, and no matter what kind of boat they used to try and rescue him, the waves around him were simply too high. She saw him drowning a little more each day, and there was nothing she could do to save him.

  She rested her chin in her hand. “I’ll do whatever I can to be there for him,” she said softly.

  Jeb stood quiet for a long time. “I wish I could say,” he said finally, “that I know we’ll survive this. But I don’t know it. And I don’t think I can stand around and watch the rest of what we once had dissolve into dust. My heart can’t take it, Cath.”

  She looked up at him. “What are you saying, Jeb?”

  He looked down, scuffed the toe of his boot against the grass. “Maybe I ought to move out for a while.”

  Catherine shook her head to clear the fog that seemed to have settled over her brain. “You can’t mean that,” she said. “We can get through this—”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling myself for three years now. But we’re not getting through it, Cath. We’re drowning in it.” And with that, he turned and walked back into the house.

  SOPHIE LEFT HER OFFICE as soon as she finished talking with Irene. She couldn’t wait to get home and put her arms around her daughter.

  Darcy had left the university early that day for a doctor’s appointment and had offered to pick up Grace from preschool along with Will, her youngest.

  When Sophie walked into her kitchen, Darcy and the two children were covered in flour, the counter dotted with cookie dough.

  “We decided to do some baking,” Darcy said, smiling. “Or my version of it, rather.”

  Sophie went straight to Grace, picked her up from the stool where she sat with dough-covered hands. She held her daughter tight, tucking her face against Grace’s sweet-smelling neck.

  Grace giggled and pulled back. “Hi, Mommy.”

  “Hi, sweetie
,” Sophie said, her voice uneven, forcing herself to loosen her hold. “How was your day?”

  “Good. We’re making peanut-butter cookies.”

  “They smell good,” Sophie said.

  “Wanna help?”

  “I’d love to.”

  Darcy put a hand on Sophie’s shoulder. “Is everything all right?” she asked carefully.

  Sophie looked up, saw the worry on her friend’s face, and wished she could spill the entire story of what had happened earlier. “I just really missed my little girl today.”

  “Mommy, can Lily have a cookie when we’re done?”

  The dog was stretched out on the floor by Grace’s stool, as usual no more than a few inches away. “I don’t see why one would hurt.”

  “You’ll like these, Lily,” Grace said, wiggling out of Sophie’s embrace. “Come on, Mama. You can make your own pan.”

  Once they had the last of the cookies in the oven, Grace, Lily and Will went out in the backyard to play.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Sophie?” Darcy asked once they were alone, concern in her voice.

  Sophie pulled a Brillo pad from beneath the sink and began scrubbing the cookie sheets. She yearned to confide in Darcy, but she couldn’t talk about it yet. She was afraid that if she did, it might make it more real. “I’m fine,” she said. “Thanks for picking Grace up today. That was a treat for her.”

  “You’re welcome,” Darcy said, clearly not convinced. “Neal has a business thing tonight. I’m supposed to go with him, but I can hang around a while if you’d like the company.”

  “No. You go. Really.”

  Darcy hesitated and then said, “Okay. I’ll talk to you tomorrow?”

  Sophie nodded.

  She stood at the sink for a long time after Darcy and Will had left, staring at the half-washed baking sheet. From the yard came the sounds of Lily’s playful barking and Grace’s resultant giggles. The soundtrack of her life now. How could she possibly live without it?

  Before Grace, her life had been one of predictability. She loved her work. Enjoyed coming home at night to the classical music to which she cooked dinner and read in the double chair by the fireplace.

  For someone who had grown up in a household of constant anger and yelling, this was a life to appreciate.

  Since the adoption, there were those who said what a lucky child Grace was to have been given a home with Sophie. But on this, she had never agreed. She knew the truth. She had been the lucky one. She had been the lucky one.

  CATHERINE MADE BREAD every Friday afternoon.

  She’d done so for enough years that the ritual was as automatic to her as the other chores she’d made a part of her weekly schedule. Pay bills on Monday morning; laundry on Tuesdays and Thursdays; Wednesday for gardening.

  Routine helped keep the heavy darkness inside her at bay. On some level, she rationalized that if she kept moving, it couldn’t catch up with her. If she kept moving, she wouldn’t have time to think about the growing distance between Jeb and her.

  The phone rang just as she placed the first two pans in the oven. She closed the door, then picked up the phone with the hand not covered in dough.

  “Catherine, it’s Mary.”

  She immediately stiffened. Where she had once felt the deepest pity for her son’s mother-in-law, Catherine could summon nothing more now than disappointment. Mary Scott blamed Caleb for everything, including the fact that he hadn’t shown his grief publicly. That he refused to be interviewed by the press about what kind of person his wife had been. That he didn’t visit her grave. “Hello, Mary,” she said, attempting to keep her disapproval from her voice.

  A heavily burdened sigh echoed across the line now. “I’ve heard something I cannot begin to imagine could be true.”

  Catherine pushed a flour-dusted hand through her hair. This phone call had been as inevitable as the end of the day; nonetheless, its arrival made her weary. “Yes, Mary?”

  “I’ve been told that Caleb has located the child.”

  Catherine kept silent for a few moments, wishing there were some way to exclude Mary, to keep her from learning about this search for redemption Caleb had undertaken. “He wasn’t looking for her, but yes, he has seen her.”

  “I can’t believe that I would have to learn something like this through gossip.”

  “What gossip, Mary?”

  “Your husband talking to the pastor about it. His secretary told my sister, and that’s how I have to find out about this? What did we ever do to Caleb that he would even think of putting us through this kind of hell?”

  “Mary, this doesn’t have anything to do with you,” she said, surprised that Jeb would have talked to the pastor.

  “Nothing to do with me!” The words came out as one long shriek.

  “No. It doesn’t,” Catherine said, keeping her voice low and measured. “This is about Caleb’s guilt over giving Laney’s child away.”

  “Laney’s child! That child was not Laney’s. She did not choose to become pregnant with it.”

  “I understand your grief, Mary,” she said, a sudden flash of anger slicing through her for a little girl she had never seen. “But you have let it turn you into someone you did not used to be.”

  “That’s easy for you to say. You still have your son.”

  “Yes. Would it make you feel better if he were dead, too?”

  Mary hesitated long enough that Catherine thought it would have given her comfort, indeed.

  “How many years have we known each other, Catherine? I thought you were our friend. How can you allow him to do this?”

  “You’ve pushed all your friends away,” Catherine said softly. “People who genuinely wanted to help. As for my son, he is responsible for his own decisions. I have to go now. Goodbye.”

  Catherine hung up the phone hard enough to jar her arm, crossed the kitchen floor to stand in front of the flour-covered countertop. She stood there for a moment, her hands shaking. She plunged them into the dough and began to knead with a ferocity that had the job done in a couple of minutes.

  She lifted the mound, dropped it into the greased bread pan, reshaped it a little, then set it on the stovetop to rise.

  She went to the window that looked across one of the hay fields and saw Jeb on the tractor at the far end. There had been a time when the first thing she would have done was to run out and tell him about the call from Mary. It hit her with a fresh jab now that she couldn’t talk to him about it. And she felt the dividing line between them widen yet again.

  SOPHIE WAS IN HER OFFICE on Monday morning when the phone rang. She knew before answering what the call would be about. It was as if all her internal radar had been attuned to danger, and the warning signals pulsed through her.

  The attorney was a woman. She spoke in a low, calming voice, requested a meeting at Sophie’s earliest convenience. Sophie referred the woman to her own attorney and hung up, breathing deeply.

  She stared at her reflection in the mirror on the wall across from the desk. The wide, fear-stricken eyes were her own. The disbelief, as well. She felt as if she’d been ambushed, a war waged against her when she hadn’t even known to be afraid.

  It was Sophie’s nature to know the why of things. She needed to know the why of Caleb Tucker. Only then would she know which direction to take from here.

  SHE BOOTED UP HER LAPTOP and logged on to her Internet connection service.

  She typed in Google.com, waited for the search line, then keyed in Laney Tucker. 490 hits. Sophie clicked on the first, an article in the Charlottesville Observer.

  The paper’s logo appeared in the left-hand corner of the screen followed by a headline.

  Local Woman Raped, In Coma

  CHARLOTTESVILLE—A woman was abducted from the parking lot of the University Mall Tuesday night. A passerby spotted her vehicle with the driver’s-side door open and a set of keys on the nearby pavement. The woman was found just after midnight Wednesday, unconscious, near a rest stop off I-64 whe
re she had allegedly been dumped. Authorities say she appeared to have been raped and beaten.

  The victim, identified as Laney Tucker, 30, of Charlottesville, is reported to be in a vegetative state and is listed in critical condition.

  This is the third abduction and rape to occur within the Charlottesville city limits since January. Police would not comment as to whether the incidents are related.

  Sophie stared at the words, then read through them once more, a sick feeling sweeping over her. She put her hand to her stomach, blinked hard.

  Caleb’s wife. Raped. In a coma.

  A dozen questions raced through her mind. Among them, had she lived? And where did Grace fit into all of this?

  She clicked back a screen, chose the second Google item listed. Another article from the Observer, this dated several weeks later that same year.

  Man Killed in Police Chase

  WINCHESTER—A Charlottesville man, identified as Larry Chilinger, 38, was shot and killed after an hour-long car chase leading from Fauquier County into Winchester, Virginia, Sunday. The chase followed an attempt by police to question Chilinger regarding the rape and abduction of a Charlottesville woman, Laney Tucker, 30, last month.

  Chilinger is suspected in the rape and abduction of two other women earlier this year, both from the Charlottesville area.

  According to family members, Tucker has been in a persistent vegetative state since she was found unconscious outside a rest stop off I-64.

  Doctors would not comment on her prognosis.

  Again, Sophie read through the article a second time, a knot of disbelief sitting tight and hard in her throat.

  Grace’s mother. This had happened to Grace’s mother. Frantic now, she clicked back to the list of articles, chose the third listing.

  An obituary flashed on the screen. Sophie sat back in her chair, put a hand to her mouth.

  Laney Ashworth Tucker.

  Age thirty-one. Survived by husband Caleb, parents Emmitt and Mary Scott.

  Thirty-one years old.

  Sophie put her hands over her face, closed her eyes as a torrent of emotion roared through her, as deafening as a spring river out of its banks.