by Mary Campisi
She knocked on the screen door and waited. The drive had taken six hours and she’d spent the time torn between fear the town would gulp her up the second she drove into it and spit her out in a rage of hate, or ignore her as though she were dead. And then there was her mother. In all the years Arianna had been gone, why hadn’t her mother tried to contact her? Had her father demanded she make a choice between him and their daughter? And if so, had she chosen him?
Ash had expected her to open up and confess why she’d been so upset yesterday. How could he possibly understand? He hadn’t had a father who disowned him, a mother who remained silent, and a sibling who detested him. He had no idea.
When no one responded to her knock, she tried again. Please don’t let them be out. If she got back in her car without seeing her mother, Arianna knew she’d head away from the horrible memories and wouldn’t stop until she was back in Philly. Another two minutes and still no response. She turned and headed down the chipped cement steps. I tried. I really tried. Maybe it was better this way; maybe she should start out with a letter and build up to a face-to-face.
“Hello? May I help you?”
Arianna paused, slowing turning. She hadn’t heard her mother’s voice in thirteen years. “Hi, Mom.”
“Good Lord, is that really you?” The woman peering from the screen door was an older, faded version of Lorna Sorensen, wife, mother, three-time Miss Corn Festival Princess of Endicotte.
“Hi, Mom.” Arianna moved closer. She had not let herself think of this moment for two years—that was the last time her father returned a check she’d sent. It had been obvious from the scrawled Void on the check that he’d meant to negate more than just a check. He’d intended to eliminate any relationship with her—past or future.
Her mother eased down the steps as though she feared Arianna might bolt if there was a sudden movement. “Oh, baby, it’s been so long.” She held out her arms and Arianna fell into them. “I forgot how tall you were. Almost as tall as your—” She stopped before she said the word, but it hung between them.
Father. Almost as tall as your father.
“Let’s go inside.” She cupped Arianna’s face with her work-worn hands and said, “It’s so good to have you home. Come on—” she held out a hand “—I just put a pot of coffee on and there’s beef stew in the fridge. I remember how you and Vanessa used to fight over the baby carrots.” She laughed and opened the screen door. “I never could make enough.”
“We used to count them out between us.” Arianna stepped inside and looked around. The living room was still crowded and covered in brown and gold plaid and cream, from the couch to the recliner. Her mother’s crocheted handiwork rested on the back of the couch, a gold and blue afghan that Arianna didn’t recognize. Magazines were scattered on the coffee table and poked from wooden racks. A 42-inch flat screen television was mounted on the far wall beside the oak shelf her father had made one summer. It was the shelf that drew her attention; it was covered with pictures of her—from baby, to christening, first grade, first prom, and the last, her senior picture. She traced the frame of the first-grade picture. She’d worn pigtails, a blue jumper, and a big smile—wide, trusting, happy.
“I always loved that picture.” Her mother placed a hand on Arianna’s shoulder, squeezed. “You had a new outfit and you couldn’t wait to have your picture taken.” Her voice fell. “I just put them up last week.” Pause. “I had them packed under the bed, but I pulled them out every month and went through them—” her voice wobbled “—for the last thirteen years.”
“Mom.” Arianna turned and clasped her mother’s hands. “Why didn’t you try to call me?” The pain spilled from her voice, slipped into her words.
Lorna sniffed and swiped a hand across her eyes. “Oh, but I wanted to. I even wrote you a few letters.” She shook her head, her blue eyes bright with tears. “I’ll never forgive myself for listening to your father. I should have stood up to him when he tossed you out like yesterday’s garbage.” She sniffed again. “As though you weren’t the very heart of me. And him, too. He was such a proud man but he could only see black and white. He was so hurt when he found out you were pregnant. You were always his princess. And then—” she swiped at her eyes again “—when you and that Wickstam boy took off with our car and the money, well, that was another thing altogether.”
“I lost the baby.”
“I know. Jeremy’s mother told me.” Her lips quivered. “He reconciled with them. They visit him in Australia or wherever he is. I heard he has a baby, not sure if he’s married or not.”
“That’s good. I’m glad for him.”
“When your sister found the write-up about you in the Philadelphia newspaper, she couldn’t keep quiet about it; she just had to show your father. I think he was coming around, maybe working things out in his head. I know he missed you as much as I did. But when he saw what you’d told the reporter about your parents—” the pain in her eyes spread to her cheek, lips, jaw “—well, saying they’re dead when they’re not is a hard thing to get past.”
“I’m so sorry I hurt you and Daddy.”
She nodded. “I know you are, baby. It’s okay, you’re here. I can touch you.” She smoothed a hand over Arianna’s hair, stroked her cheek. “You are so beautiful.” Her lips pulled into a smile. “I knew you’d come, even when Vanessa insisted you wouldn’t.”
“She hates me, doesn’t she?”
“Vanessa hates herself. She blames everybody on her circumstances but the one person who can do anything about them—herself.”
“My leaving made it really hard on her. I can see how she blames me.”
Lorna raised an eyebrow. “Are you to blame for her taking up with that no-good Max Parker? Are you to blame that she got pregnant by him when he was engaged to Molly Spindler? I don’t think so. Or when she started following around the UPS driver, bringing him banana bread and chocolate chip cookies, and not finding out about his wife and twins until after she got pregnant by him? Vanessa is her own enemy and until she accepts that, things are not going to get better for her.”
“Still…she said Daddy wouldn’t let her leave town…”
Her mother actually snorted. “She didn’t want to leave, not when she thought she could be Queen of Sheba here in Endicotte and hook a man, too. You just don’t worry about Vanessa. I’ve heard enough of her complaining to last me another sixty years. And if she loses her job at the credit union, you’ll see how loud I’ll be screaming.” She shook her head. “That girl has a chip on her shoulder as big as a mountain, and until she gets rid of it, life’s going to be awful hard on her. Now let’s heat you up some of that stew.”
Arianna sat at the round kitchen table with the green-apple plastic cloth. Her chair had always been between her mother and father, with Vanessa directly across—easier to make faces at one another and giggle. They’d shared a lot of meals here, shared stories about the town, too. Edgar Sorensen didn’t believe in gossip so the telling of town secrets was limited to times when he was at work or in his garage, fiddling with his truck.
“Here you go, baby.” Lorna slid a bowl of beef stew in front of her. It had been a lot of years since Arianna had eaten comfort food like this. She usually chose heart-healthy, low carb, low-calorie fixes—but nothing tasted like Lorna Sorensen’s beef stew—then or now.
“This smells delicious. Thank you.”
Her mother sat beside her, propped a hand on her chin and watched as Arianna ate. “Oh, how I’ve missed you.” She sniffed, swiped a hand across her eyes, and murmured, “So much.”
Arianna set down her spoon and clasped her mother’s hand. “I’ve missed you, too. It’s been a long time.”
Lorna shook her head, blinked hard. “I should have fought your father on this, from the night he pitched his fit and tossed you out.” Her voice quavered. “Part of me was afraid he’d want to find you and bring you back. There was no future here for you.”
“I know how Dad could be. You tried.”<
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Her mother’s eyes grew brighter, more pained. “Did I? Did I really try or did I give in because that’s what I always did with your father?” She shook her head. “That’s something I have to live with for the rest of my life. I told myself I was setting you free and I could almost believe it.”
“I was so mixed up. And so confused.” Her voice shook, threatened to split open. “I should never have lied about you and Dad. That I regret most.” What kind of person says her parents are dead? A horrible person, no doubt about it. Could she blame her father for not forgiving her?
Her mother squeezed her hand. “We can go on and on about what we did or didn’t do and the regret will eat us alive. I think that’s part of what did your father in, but he’d never admit he’d done wrong by you.” She sighed. “Was it necessary to return your checks with a big old bold Void scrawled on the front in red? And me, doing nothing about it, sitting quiet like a church mouse so as not to upset him or your sister, who by the way, took pleasure in your persecution.”
“Not surprising.” Vanessa had made it very obvious at the shop yesterday that she didn’t want her sister back in the family’s good graces.
Lorna patted her hand. “You don’t worry about that girl. Like I said, she’s always been her own worst enemy.” Her voice slipped. “God might punish me for saying this, but the second after your father drew his last breath, I told Vanessa I wanted to see you.”
“I’m sure she wasn’t happy about that.” The thought that her mother had wanted to see her lifted Arianna’s soul. She hadn’t been forgotten. She’d even been loved. Maybe by her father, too, despite his actions.
Lorna smiled. “Indeed, she wasn’t. Pouted and fussed for a week until I told her if she refused, I’d hire someone to drive me there and then see if I’d offer to sit for the girls while she went off gallivanting after one thing or another.”
Arianna kissed her mother’s rough hand. “Thank you for never giving up on me.”
“We’ve got a lot of time to make up.” And then, “I’m sorry your father never came around.”
Arianna nodded, pushed the next words out. “Do you have any recent pictures of him?” Had his dark hair grayed or maybe turned white like his own father? And what about the mustache he’d trimmed for as many years as she could remember?
Her mother’s face brightened and she half-sprang from the chair. “I have the perfect one.” She rushed to the sink and snatched a framed picture from the window ledge. “It was taken last July and he’s even smiling.”
Obviously, smiling had become a rarity for him.
Lorna handed her the picture and let out a long, sorrowful breath. “He looks almost happy, doesn’t he?”
Arianna studied the tallish man in the white T-shirt and blue work pants. He still had the tanned skin she remembered, the broad shoulders, thin nose. His hair was salt-and-pepper gray, his eyes the same blue as hers. Sad eyes, filled with loss and an empty heart. Had she made him this way, caused such grief and disappointment he could not find a way past it? If this was “almost happy,” what did “not happy” look like?
Her mother touched the edges of the frame, a gentle brushing of fingers, like a caress. “I love this picture.” The truth lay in those words, seeping onto the print of Edgar Sorensen in one giant bleed of revelation. Lorna may have loved Arianna but she could not bring herself to go against her husband—her one true love. And that was what grieved her so, smothered her with guilt and remorse that she had not fought for her daughter.
“I’m surprised he agreed to let you take it.” He’d never been much for flash or fashion. Simple. Hard-working. Straight up.
“Oh, I didn’t take it.” The smile spread, the fingers eased over his face. “It was that nice young man who talked him into it. He was good for your father. Didn’t matter they only saw each other a few times, they hit it off real well, spent evenings in the garage, sipping beer and talking cars. Or motorcycles.” She glanced at Arianna and added, “He had a motorcycle.”
“Oh.” How many people came riding into Endicotte on a motorcycle? No. Please no. Arianna sipped air and pushed out the next words. “What was his name?”
“Ash. Ash Lancaster.”
Ash Lancaster. He’d even used his real name. How dare he show up in her town as though by coincidence and not strategic calculation? He’d walked out on her and then gone digging into her past. And how much of that past did he know? She clutched the edge of the tablecloth as the oxygen spun from the room, trapping her in her own lies. “He must have been something if he could get Daddy to talk.”
A giddy laugh slipped from her mother’s lips. “Oh, he was a looker. Tall, lean, with eyes the color of whiskey. Your sister had a bead on him but he couldn’t see her. One look told you he’d been hurt and hurt bad, by a woman, no doubt, but he tried to hide it behind the smile and the good manners.” She paused, studied the picture. “I think that’s why your daddy took to him so fast. They both had a pain they couldn’t talk about, buried so deep it would never come out.”
Arianna stared at her father’s picture. She was the woman behind Ash’s hurt. And her father’s. “Daddy hated motorcycles, said they were owned by nomads, hippies, and derelicts.”
“Now that’s true, he did say that, believed it, too. Right up until this young man came riding into town with his good manners and quiet style. Even in jeans and one of those motorcycle T-shirts, he had class. Everybody noticed him the first time he rode into town—the men because of that fancy bike, and the woman because of the man on the bike.” She sighed and set the picture on the table. “Haven’t seen him in months, but one of these days he’ll ride back into town and then I’ll have to tell him the sad news about your daddy.”
Oh, he’d know soon enough. In vivid detail. “He left no way for you to get in touch with him?”
She shook her head, a wistful expression crossing her tired face. “No, he didn’t. Your daddy talked about him for weeks after he left and then out of the blue, Ash would show up again.” She laughed. “Kind of like a Christmas present in June.”
“Hmm. Except Daddy was never big on presents or Christmas.” Edgar Sorensen thought holidays were too commercialized, especially Christmas, and to that end he’d permitted no more than two presents per family member and those must be purchased with a twenty-dollar bill.
Her mother’s eyes lit up, sparkled. “There was just something about Ash that made your father warm up. Now, I’m not saying he pulled out his jar of wheat pennies and showed those, that didn’t come until the third visit. But your daddy wasn’t as guarded as he is around most folks, especially strangers.”
Just how many times had Ash been to Endicotte? “Did he spend a lot of time here?”
“He came three times. The last one was in July when he took this picture of your dad. That’s when he brought his fancy camera with him, said he wanted to make memories.”
***
Ash studied the photos he’d laid out on the boardroom table. He’d been at it all afternoon and could barely make out a scrap of cherry wood on the table. Overkill? Probably. But he wanted just the right feel for the pictures that would hang in the lobby of the new office building. Pete had entrusted him with this job and he was not going to screw up. He wished Arianna were here to give him a thumbs up or down, but that was another story. She hadn’t answered her cell for the last two days and for all he knew, she could have changed her number.
He’d really believed they had a chance and for a second, he could have sworn she believed it, too. And now, to disappear? Why? To show him what it felt like? Something had happened the other day to upset her and it had to do with her sister’s visit—he’d bet his bike on it. And that “something” was what she didn’t want him to know.
He eased a print of a an old farmhouse from the table and studied it. What he really wanted to do was toss the pictures of Endicotte on the table and pick from those. There were blood-red sunsets and tractors, fields of corn and wheat. Miles of split-rail fe
nce. But he couldn’t add them to the selection until he fessed up his relationship with the folks in Endicotte—and he’d hoped he wouldn’t have to do that until she spilled the truth—the whole truth about her past.
Except it didn’t look like that was going to happen. As a matter of fact, the past two days were pretty indicative of where they were headed in the relationship—nowhere. He could fight it a while longer, pretend she’d show up and proclaim not only her love for him but her ever-loving commitment to him, but that was a crock of nothing. Sometimes you lost, no matter how hard you tried. He was contemplating the truth behind this when Arianna stormed into the boardroom and slammed the door closed behind her.
“How dare you.”
She stood before him, flushed, angry, and so damn beautiful it stole his breath. Obviously, he was the object of her anger. “What have I done now?”
“You know what you’ve done.” She advanced on him, eyes sparking, mouth pinched, a dragon queen breathing fire. “You know exactly what you’d done.” She pointed a finger at him. “And you’ve known all along, so don’t even try to pretend.”
Ash set the photo on the table, not certain if he should opt for humor or seriousness. Until he knew what the hell she was talking about, he’d take the humorous approach. “I’m very good at a lot of things, but mind reading is not one of them.” The dragon queen’s eyes narrowed on him. Okay, humor had been a mistake. She wanted serious? He had plenty of that. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, and we can either stand here and continue this lunacy, or you can tell me. Straight out.”
“Fine. I’ll tell you—” her upper lip curled “—straight out. You visited my hometown. You met my parents, sat at their kitchen table. You drank beer with my father.”
Ah. So that was it. He had planned to tell her the second she confessed the truth about her past. Except that hadn’t happened. “I did. Great people. I really hit it off with your dad.”
“My father died two weeks ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” He was, too. There’d been something about Edgar Sorensen that Ash respected and liked, and it had nothing to do with Arianna. The man hadn’t been full of words or fancy phrases; he’d never been on a plane or eaten caviar, but there had been a genuineness about the man that spoke of integrity and honor. Sadly, it appeared the high standards the man lived by had not allowed him to forgive his daughter of her youthful indiscretions, which made for a pained and lonely existence. Ash recognized that pain, knew it well because it had lived in his soul for too long and it began and ended with Arianna.
