by Lisa Wingate
Hanna Beth watched me suspiciously as I hung up the phone.
“What Matey say?” Teddy asked.
“She said to tell you hi,” I hedged. If this conversation went on much longer, Teddy would give away the big secret we’d been working all morning to conceal. “Listen, I bet Hanna Beth is getting tired. Why don’t we head on home for now, and we can do our errands later?”
“Hooo-kay,” Teddy replied absently. Our gazes met in the mirror, and he clued in. “Ohhh.” Slapping a hand over his mouth, he hid a conspiratorial grin. “We gone home. See Daddy Ed. Daddy Ed home all-lone. It jus’ Daddy Ed.”
“Right.” Laughter pressed my throat and I pretended to cough. As we sat waiting to make the left turn onto Vista Street, I pointed out the freshly planted flower bed by the new boutiques. “Hey, Teddy, look at those pink flowers, aren’t those beautiful?”
“Di-an-is.” Teddy named the Dianthus very carefully. “Good plant. Lot sun, not too lotsa water.”
“We should buy some of those.” I was glad to have sidetracked the conversation to something safe.
The rest of the way home, we talked about flowers. As we passed the construction sites, Teddy rolled down the window, stuck out his arm, and hollered. From one of the upstairs windows, Rusty waved.
Hanna Beth scoffed and turned her face away from the condominiums. “More connn-dozzz,” she observed sadly.
“I know,” I commiserated. “I miss the old houses, especially the blue one with the gingerbread. When I was little, I always knew we were almost home when I saw the blue house.”
Hanna Beth smiled. “Me, too.”
We rounded the corner onto Blue Sky Hill Court, and I pointed out how well the big pecan trees were doing. The party guests had parked up the street by the garage house where the guy with the art portfolio lived. I didn’t want Hanna Beth to notice the cars and get suspicious. Fortunately, she was too busy taking in the house. The trim in front was freshly painted, thanks to Sy and our construction crew, and Teddy had meticulously groomed the bushes. Compared to the way it had looked when I first arrived, the house was a showplace.
Resting a hand on the dashboard, Hanna Beth leaned closer to the car window, the light falling softly on her face, reflecting against the sparkle in her eyes. “Oh … hhhome,” she breathed.
“Don’t cry.” I handed her a Sonic napkin from the stack of leftovers stuffed in the console. “You’ll make your mascara run.”
Hanna Beth sniffled and laughed, then tried to dab her eyes.
Popping the trunk latch, I asked Teddy to lift out the wheelchair, then I took the napkin from Hanna Beth. “Here,” I whispered, leaning over to wipe away the tears. “The birthday girl should make her grand entrance looking beautiful, right?”
Hanna Beth nodded. “Hap-eee teee-rs.”
“I know,” I said, and then I hugged her. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. “Let’s go in. There’s someone waiting to see you.” Outside the door, Teddy was struggling to unfold the wheelchair. I hurried around to help him, and, together, we lifted Hanna Beth out of the car. She was stronger than I’d anticipated, able to support herself partially, but, even so, it was a clumsy process. By the time we’d accomplished it, all three of us were laughing.
“Su-pi-ise!” Teddy exclaimed as the garage door opened. For a moment, I thought he’d grown overzealous about the party, but actually, he was doing a big reveal on the wheelchair ramp, which the crew had painted only yesterday. “Sy make the steps gone way, see?” Teddy added the sound of a motor and screeching brakes as he steered Hanna Beth through the garage, then hung a one-eighty and pushed her up the ramp.
“Weeee!” Hanna Beth threw her hands in the air, her head snapping backward as they topped the ramp and bounced into the cloakroom.
“We’re home!” I called as we motored up the hallway. My chest fluttered with the unfettered anticipation I always felt when I heard Macey running down the stairs on Christmas morning.
When Teddy turned the corner into the living room, my father was standing in the long stream of sunlight from the windows. The sight of him took me aback. In contrast to his usual rumpled polyester pants and undershirt, he was dressed in a light gray suit. His thick silver hair, normally askew, was neatly combed, his face clean-shaven, his eyes bright and alive.
He looked like the father I remembered—a tall, strong, straight man, larger than life.
“There are my girls,” he said, crossing the room. Leaning over Hanna Beth’s chair, he kissed me on the cheek, then took Hanna Beth’s hand, bowed forward, and brought it to his lips. “Hello, sweetheart, ” he whispered. “Welcome home.” Still clasping her hand in his, he shared with her the tender kiss of reunion, of a life spent together, of remembrance.
Standing against the glass doors to block the view of the garden, Mary and Ifeoma smiled. Teddy circled me with his arms and crushed me in an exuberant hug. I hung on, and we rocked back and forth, my brother and I.
Something crashed outside on the patio, and Teddy jerked away, his eyes wide.
My father stood upright and moved to the side of Hanna Beth’s chair, offering his elbow like a king about to escort his queen to the ball. “Come outside, my dear. You won’t believe the roses this spring.”
I glanced at Mary by the door, and she nodded. As Teddy pushed the wheelchair forward, Mary and Ifeoma threw open the doors, flooding the room with sunlight, the scents of early summer, the sweet perfume of honeysuckle.
Closing her eyes, Hanna Beth drew a long breath as Teddy pushed her over the threshold.
“Su-pi-ise!” Teddy’s cheer broke the silence, and our small gathering of guests—Pastor Al and his church secretary, Brandon and Brady, Mary and Ifeoma, Dr. Barnhill with Ouita Mae and Claude—joined in the cheer. Kyle stepped from behind the garden house, looking slightly out of place but clapping obligingly, and Macey rushed from inside, soft tendrils of honey-colored hair floating behind her like ribbons as she hop-dashed unevenly across the lawn in her walking cast. In her hands, she carried bouquets of roses in iridescent silver wrappings. Stopping in front of Hanna Beth’s chair she presented the larger bouquet to her. “Happy birthday, Grandma Parker.”
Hanna Beth, still stunned, motioned her close and kissed her on the cheek. “Ma-cee,” she said, smiling up at my daughter. “Hello, Ma-cee.” She paused to smell the roses. “So beauuu-ti-fool.”
Macey beamed.
“My heavens, that can’t be Macey!” my father exclaimed. “That’s too big to be Macey. Macey’s no bigger than this.” He leveled a palm close to his hip.
Macey rolled her eyes playfully and smiled. “I’m nine years old.”
“Nine years old?” my father repeated with exaggerated amazement. “How in heaven’s name did that happen?”
Macey quirked a brow, shrugging her slim shoulders upward. “I grew up.”
My father laughed. “Little girls do that,” he observed. Giving me a long, sideways look, he smiled, then turned back to Macey. “And, look at this, you’ve brought me pink roses.”
Macey’s nose crinkled, and she giggled, then sidestepped and held the roses out to me. “A lady had them two for one at the airport,” she joked, her blue eyes rounding upward, mirroring her smile.
“Come here, you.” Bending low, I lifted her and the roses into my arms, closed my eyes as she draped over my shoulders, the walking cast bumping my thigh. As she nestled her head against my cheek, I breathed in the scent of her hair, felt the warmth of her closeness, felt her sink into me like water, like a part of my body, separated and now returned. There were no words to explain the completeness of holding my daughter in my arms.
My mind opened a door, took in the soft white light of the moment. It will be like this with the new baby, I thought. It’ll be just like this. The baby wasn’t a line on a pregnancy test, an inconvenience, a mistake, an unwanted sea change knocking me off course at forty-something. This baby was Macey, nine years ago, a tiny hint of life, a mysterious combining of body
and soul that would grow within me for only a little while, and then become separate. My son. My daughter. Macey’s brother or sister.
In my arms, Macey started to wiggle. “Mom, let go,” she whispered. “We have to get the cake and the presents.”
Emotion welled in my chest. Swallowing hard, I lowered her to the ground, and waited for her to catch her balance on the cast. “I’ll get the cake,” I said. “Why don’t you help Grandma Parker start opening her gifts?” Taking my bouquet from Macey’s hand, I turned and slipped through the doors into the house. I needed a moment to compose myself before going on with the party.
The kitchen was quiet, save for the muffled hum of voices outside. An occasional outbreak of raucous laughter rose above the white noise, and I stood listening, enjoying the sounds of the celebration, the high-pitched giggles of Macey and the boys, the deep resonance of my father’s laugh, the gravelly voice of Claude Fisher calling out to the boys, telling them which gift to give to Hanna Beth. The gifts weren’t much—all of them having been purchased hastily that morning—but it wouldn’t matter. The point was that this was a real birthday party, a day to remember, a day to begin a new year.
Many happy returns.
Would there be many happy returns?
What changes would this coming year bring? Would we come back here for holidays, birthdays, family celebrations?
Just focus on today, I told myself. Just focus on this moment.
The door opened, and I reached for the box of candles. “I’ll be ready in a minute. I just need to finish the cake.”
“Don’t rush. The little boys made a mud pie in their sandbox for Hanna Beth. They’ve all gone on a tour to see it.” Kyle’s voice caused the air to solidify in my lungs. I wasn’t ready to face him yet. After weeks of drifting, of supposition and uncertainty, of hope and then hopelessness, the idea of bringing everything into the open was still terrifying. It could be the end of everything. It was so much easier to let things continue in limbo.
My hands felt stiff and unresponsive as I pulled the box top. The cardboard ripped, and birthday candles spilled onto the counter, tiny slashes of color rolling across the jade green tile, then falling toward the floor.
Kyle caught a blue one in midair, picked up several from the floor. “They don’t make boxes like they used to.”
Another candle rolled to the edge of the counter and toppled off as he stood up. I watched it fall, hit the floor, and break into three pieces. “No, they don’t,” I muttered absently.
Kyle pushed the rest of the candles away from the drop-off. I didn’t look at him, but at his hand. His wedding ring caught the sunlight, glinted. I remembered the day we picked out our rings. We had so many plans, so many things we wanted to see, and do, and experience together. Every time he walked into a room, my heart sped up. When we were apart during the day while he went to his job clerking at a law firm and I went to class, I thought of him. I couldn’t wait for the moment we would be together again. What had happened? When had we lost sight of each other and become focused, instead, on houses, cars, career goals, schedules, Macey’s activities, and every commitment except our commitment to each other? How had we become just two people who kept their stuff in the same house?
His ring caught the sunlight again. Did he ever take it off? Did he slip it from his finger under the table and tuck it in his pocket like an actor in some made-for-TV movie about a marriage gone wrong?
“Rebecca?”
I was suddenly aware that he’d been talking. I picked up a candle, robotically stuck it in the cake. “Hmmm?”
“I said, I had Dan Canter do some research about the sale of the house.”
“The house?” Focus, Rebecca. Focus. The house. The reason you asked Kyle to come here. Dan Canter, Kyle’s favorite private investigator— the man who can track down delinquent property owners, prior judgments, and wild deeds, anytime, anywhere. It occurred to me that, in Kyle’s mind, the house was the only ongoing issue. “Did Dan find anything?”
“Kenita Kendal has an employment history with various nursing centers and home health agencies in Florida, usually only for a few months here and a few months there before moving on. In Florida, she was Kenita Kendal-Dawson, but Dan did a little digging and found out she dropped the married name after pleading out of a charge of illegal sale of prescription drugs in Florida. Her LVN was pulled after that, which was probably why she moved to another state. She was working for an agency here, so your parents most likely felt that they could trust her. If the agency performed a basic background check on Kenita Kendal, they wouldn’t have found anything. LMK Limited, the company that’s been taking automatic drafts from your father’s accounts, is hers. No telling, really, how she convinced him to allow the drafts. It may have been as simple as getting his online passwords, or as complicated as convincing him that the money was needed to pay bills, or was being transferred into investments, but it’s been going on for over a year, and there’s quite a bit of money involved—at least seventy thousand dollars that Dan could track.”
“My God,” I whispered. “How could that happen here?”
Kyle’s eyes narrowed, as in, Don’t be naive, Rebecca. “Your father and Hanna Beth probably looked like prime targets. Hanna Beth was in a desperate situation with your father’s medical problems, he was in a state of mental decline, they own a big house in a location that’s hot with developers who would jump at the opportunity to snap up this house. No doubt this Kenita Kendal-slash-Dawson thought she’d hit the jackpot when Hanna Beth had the stroke. With Hanna Beth out of the way, she could get your father to sign over the house, then she could turn a quick sale to a development company and be gone before anyone questioned it. According to Dan, Kenita Kendal has a deed, signed by your father and notarized three weeks before you got here. I informed the Constable’s Office of the situation with the house, and they’ve agreed to stand down on the eviction order until we can get to court on Monday.”
I imagined my father’s home embroiled in a long legal battle, one that could spoil these final years, when my father and Hanna Beth should be enjoying their lives in peace. “Could this woman really end up with the house?”
Kyle shook his head. “The good news is that your father’s a smart man. He must have had some concern when his original diagnosis was made, because he set up a Blue Sky Real Estate Trust and transferred the bulk of his assets, as well as the house, into the trust—hence his reason for putting the name of his lawyer in the safe-deposit box he left for you. He knew they would have all the paperwork. The trust was never filed with the courthouse, but it’s all in safekeeping with the firm—Elliston, Hatch, and Williams, here in Dallas. I talked with Elliston this morning—he’s a Pepperdine man, by the way. Good lawyer. Blue Sky Trust is solid, and it predates Kenita Kendal’s deed. Nothing can come out of Blue Sky Trust without the approval of Hanna Beth, and in the event Hanna Beth is incapacitated, the trust reverts in equal shares to you and Teddy, with Elliston seeing to Teddy’s interests. Any sale of properties in the trust would have to be approved both by you and by your father’s lawyer.”
I was momentarily stunned. “My father left an equal share of the trust to me?” The idea touched me like a fresh breeze. My father had been thinking of me all along. Even after all the years that had passed, all the times I’d refused contact with him, he’d believed that Blue Sky Hill was still my home.
Kyle gave a confident smile. In Kyle’s world, things always worked out the way he wanted them to. “Monday morning, I’m set to meet with Elliston. We’ll be filing a motion in J.P. Court for a declaratory judgment that the Kenita Kendal claim constitutes a wild deed, and legal ownership of the house rests with the Blue Sky Trust. If Kenita Kendal does show up to contest it, or makes contact about the eviction over the weekend, there will be an arrest warrant waiting for her. Aside from the fraudulent claim to the house, there’s the issue of the money she’s bilked from your father’s checking accounts, so the police are involved now. But the tr
uth is, given her history and the cash missing from his bank account, my guess is that she’ll take what she’s got and run. Whether we’ll ever recover any of the seventy thousand is anybody’s guess, but the bulk of your father’s estate is safe.”
The knots that had been tightening in my spine since yesterday began to loosen. Letting my head roll forward, I rubbed the back of my neck. “Thanks for doing this, Kyle. Thanks for coming.”
He frowned, seeming confused. “Did you think I wouldn’t?” He reached for me, and I jerked away without meaning to.
The distance separating us was suddenly, painfully clear. A few feet, yet miles. “I wasn’t sure.” How can I be sure of anything? “I thought you might have … other plans.” The words took on a sharp edge, a dark color, spilled hot and squalid onto the floor. I wanted to mop them up, reabsorb the animosity, hide the mess until later. Now wasn’t the time for it.
Jerking his chin up, he appraised me narrowly. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Clutching a hand over the racing pulse in my throat, I shook my head. “Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m just stressed. It’s been a busy day.”
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered.
“We’d better take the cake outside.”
“They’re walking around the yard, remember?” He stiffened, his cheek going tight, twitching slightly. “I hate it when you’re like this.”
“Like what, Kyle?” The corrosive mixture of supposition and unspoken accusations boiled higher inside me, hissed like a pressure cooker coming up to steam. “What am I like?” How am I different from Susan Sewell?
“Like your mother,” he ground out. “She’s still right here, even though she’s gone.” Kyle’s dislike for my mother, and my mother’s dislike for Kyle, had always been a thinly veiled secret. In his view, she interfered consistently and purposefully in our marriage. In her view, he was a man, after all. She’d always made known her opinion that he was a little too smooth, too friendly, too quick to strike up conversations with other women.
“This has nothing to do with my mother,” I hissed, trying to control the volume of my voice, to keep it from pressing through the walls and entering the garden.
