by Grace Greene
I returned her hug, whispering, “Don’t you worry about me. I’ll be fine. I stayed in town for convenience, but it isn’t where I belong.” I smoothed her long, shiny hair. “Besides, it’s not that far out. Certainly not like when you were little, and absolutely not like it was when I was a child. There’s building going on all around the area, and you know what I’m planning for myself.”
She stepped back but didn’t break our hug. “You mean setting up your pottery studio in the cabin? I know. I can hardly wait to see it.”
“And to try it, I’ll bet. You have a lot of talent with clay.”
Instead of her usual response, her dark eyes filled with tears, and she bit her lower lip.
I pulled her back into another tight hug, then eased away so I could stare into her eyes. I touched her chin. “Are you worried about my being on my own? Or more worried about going away yourself?”
Ellen laughed as she dashed the back of her hand across her eyes to catch a few errant tears. “Both.”
“But you wouldn’t change it if you could, would you?”
She shook her head.
“I’m glad. I never left home. There were good reasons for why I didn’t, but still, I never did. I don’t want that for you.”
She smiled. “I was one of those reasons. Don’t take this wrong—you are the best mom in the world—but one day I hope I’ll find out more about my father. I want to learn about the kind of person he was and what we might have in common.”
I stepped away and turned back to the sink to finish rinsing the dishes. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I know he doesn’t feel real to you. I understand. I wish I could tell you more.”
“You might not know a lot, but his family does.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d asked. I’d made up the stories about how he and I met, how we’d hardly known each other, and that he’d died before we knew I was pregnant. It didn’t speak well for me, or my character, to have been intimate with someone I hardly knew. Nor, for that matter, did it flatter me to be able to lie so well in the present. The old stories worked because I had avoided details as much as possible. The story I’d told her of her father’s death on vacation with his parents—caused by a misstep while hiking in the Rockies—was designed to be hard to research. I didn’t like lying, but when the questions started in earnest several years ago, I was glad I’d thought it out ahead of time. More recently, she’d done some searching online. I knew because she’d left the computer browser up with the name William Smith typed in the search bar. Someday, Ellen might seek info more aggressively, but as long as I kept the details vague, what would she have to work with? Not much. Heaven forbid I should ever have to untangle the truth of her early life for her. I shivered. She wrapped her arms around me again, tighter.
“Mom, don’t worry about me. I’ll be in Blacksburg, not that far away, and with lots of my friends.”
I nodded. Time to change the subject. “You’ll need a way to get there.”
“Bonnie’s driving us to school today.”
“I mean a way to get to Blacksburg.”
She tilted her head, her eyes widening as realization set in. Then she waited, her breath held.
“Go check the garage. It’s time to put your driver’s license to good use.”
She shrieked with joy and flew out of the room, her feet hardly skimming the floor.
I followed. “You can’t drive it to school this morning. You have to get used to it and the controls and dashboard and everything. We’ll go out together after school.”
Ellen draped her body across the shiny blue hood of the car. “It’s smooth, Mom. Sleek. She’s beautiful.”
“A note of reality here? Teens are high-risk drivers. You lost a classmate earlier this year in an accident. This is a huge responsibility.”
“Yes, Mom, yes, I know. Your parents died in a crash—I haven’t forgotten. You’ll see—I’ll be the safest driver there ever was.” She turned her face toward me but somehow still managed to keep her arms draped across the car. “Please can I drive it this morning?”
“I have an idea. You drive us to school. I’ll drive the car home and then pick you up after, and you can drive us home.”
“Mom.” She groaned. “I can drive by myself.”
“Not with this car, you can’t. Not until you’re familiar with it.”
“I’ll have Bonnie with me. She’s an experienced driver.”
“No riders. Not yet. Not until I’m sure you can handle it. Promise?”
Suddenly her frown was eclipsed by a huge smile. “Deal, Mom.”
“I’ll get my purse. You get your backpack. Call Bonnie and tell her you’ll meet her at school.”
She ran inside. Many of her friends already had cars. I’d held off for so long, but she’d earned this. Such a good student, perfect attendance, and full of dreams . . . I had to learn to let go, but not all at once. A little bit at a time, and maybe by the time she graduated from college and was truly an adult, I’d be able to trust her to live a good life and come home again on her own.
“Mom? Are you crying?”
I brushed the wet from my cheeks. “Not much.” I laughed a little. “I’m fine, honey.”
“Here’s your purse. I’ve got my pack.” She put her pack in the backseat and tossed my purse over to the passenger side as she settled in behind the wheel and ran her hands around the circle of the steering wheel. “My own car. Oh, Mom, thank you very much.”
There was a box on the dashboard, wrapped with a bow on top.
I nodded toward it. “You’re going to need that.”
She grabbed the box and tore past the decoration. She held up the key on its fancy fob. She kissed it, squealed softly, and plunged it into the ignition.
“Seat belt,” I said.
As with everything she’d ever undertaken, Ellen managed driving like a pro—at least, once she was past the giggles and had managed to back out of the garage and down the driveway without taking out the mailbox. What had I been thinking when I parked it nose in, in the garage? But she did it, and I did my level best to keep my advice to myself all the way to the high school. For one thing, I didn’t want to be the distraction that caused the problem. If she had an emergency, in a moment needing a quick decision, I didn’t want her to hear my voice in her head causing her to second-guess herself.
Even better, from Ellen’s perspective, was that two of her friends, Bonnie and Heather, were out in front of the school when she arrived. Her grin was a thing of beauty. It reached right up into her eyes as the girls ran up and exclaimed over the new car.
I got out and walked around to the driver’s side. “Don’t be thinking about this car. School’s not done yet.”
“Sure, Mom.”
“Hi, Ms. Cooper.” The other girl said, “Bye, Ms. Cooper.” Ellen said, “Wait a minute.” She handed her phone to Bonnie. “Take our picture.”
Ellen pulled me over to stand beside the car.
“Relax, Mom.”
So we leaned back against the car. Ellen put her arm around my shoulders, and I reciprocated. Our heads were together, our faces smiling, as Bonnie held up Ellen’s phone and snapped our picture.
Before releasing her, I snagged a quick peck on her cheek. She ran off with the other girls and disappeared into the building. I drove home.
I was proud of my girl. It broke my heart to know I was losing her. None of the platitudes like “she’ll be back; she’s only going to college,” or “she’s earned your trust,” eased the ache in my chest. Still subdued when I arrived home, I parked the car in the garage and went inside to prepare for the rest of my day. The best part, I suspected, had already happened.
I drove my SUV out to the old place. It was a sub-SUV, small enough that I could handle it, yet it sat a little higher than a regular car, plus it was good for hauling stuff around. Roger had a full-size SUV, and as I pulled up behind his vehicle, I realized it wasn’t only a matter of grading the dirt driveway, but where would the wo
rkers park? How would the large equipment move safely around the work site?
Some of these trees would need to go, yet each one felt like a friend. This was going to be a day of hard decisions. I stiffened my posture. Sometimes tough decisions were what it took to move forward.
“Hi, Roger.” I waved. He walked toward me, dressed in jeans but also in a collared, button-down shirt. Today’s shirt was a soft blue. He always dressed neatly, and I imagined it was a hangover from his days in uniform. I liked it. We met beside his SUV.
He motioned toward the yard. “We have to talk about clearing some trees.”
“I see the problem.”
“The easiest way would be to knock down these trees here in the front, and a couple of those over there will definitely have to go—and should go because they don’t look sound to me—and that will clear the way for parking. Frankly, you’ll probably enjoy having access to an open grassy area after all the work is done.”
“You’ll grind the stumps?” I asked.
“Sure.”
“I could use the area as a garden, maybe.”
“Remember we’re setting up garden beds for you in the backyard when we get to the landscaping. Let’s walk around back. I put in some stakes to mark the layout of the house.”
He put his hand on my elbow as if I might need assistance with finding my safe footing through this wilderness. I almost laughed.
“It’s not exact, but only close.”
Room here, room there, view, and so on—he gave me a tour. “After we’ve cleared the outbuildings—”
I moved abruptly; it startled him. He stopped speaking midsentence.
“Not the pottery cabin. Remember? You can clear out the old chicken coops and the shed. I’ll need a new shed in whatever location you think best. Take the old outhouse, too, please. But I’m keeping the cabin. It needs some fixing up, and I know it’s close to where the house will be, but I like that. It’s convenient for my studio. It needs electric and water—”
“Hannah. Hold on. Relax. You already told me to keep the log cabin. As much as I’d like to incorporate those logs in the house, I understand why you want to keep it, and we’ll work it into the overall landscaping layout.”
“Did you know this was the original cabin? My grandfather did some work on it through the years, especially when he fixed it up for me, but it’s still sound.”
“Hard to imagine whole families living in a one-room, one-loft structure today.”
“But it was perfect for my pottery and still can be.”
“We’ll rerun the electric and the propane lines. Water, too.”
When I’d set up the shop in town, I’d had the old kiln moved there. Would I move it back? Or buy new? Maybe I’d want to go a little more basic, with a hand-built, hand-fired kiln. So much to consider. I touched his sleeve. “Thanks, Roger.”
The remains of twelve autumns past had fallen here, the cold wet of an equal number of winters, and the perennial birth of spring and the lushness of summers, had all layered and mixed over and into the rich mineral soil. It created life within the dirt, and I’d felt that richness, almost like ground breathing beneath my bare feet, back when I’d gone barefooted, had grown up barefooted. When I’d followed the old paths and walked in the shallow parts of Cub Creek, and when I’d held a younger Ellen and had dangled her small feet in the creek and she’d squealed in delight.
My heart warmed. Life wasn’t just about genetics and birth and loss. But that’s where my ability to express it ran out. Verbalizing the connectedness I felt, of molecules intermixing and creating something new and beautiful, was beyond my ability to explain even all these years later.
“Hannah?”
I jumped.
“Sorry I startled you.”
I smiled at him, perhaps too fondly because his lips smiled in return.
“I’m reminiscing. Remembering how it felt years ago.”
We walked to the small bridge over the creek. I stood there at the rail, the water flowing under my feet, and looked back at the site, at the last vestiges of where I’d grown up. But the land—both Grand and Gran always said—the land remained regardless of whatever else occurred.
“It was a pretty bare existence from what I’ve seen,” Roger said.
“Bare? No. Basic maybe. Yet very rich. People don’t know how that works anymore. They live in their houses and put up glass and screens and yell if the door doesn’t get closed all the way because the AC is getting out or the bugs are getting in. They have their yards and lakes and whatnot, but it’s nothing more than a pretty picture seen through their windows. They don’t live in it. I lived in it. The outside was my home, too. My living didn’t stop at the boundaries of our four walls. It was virtually limitless.” I added, “And loved. I was so loved, Roger. Sometimes it still overwhelms me. My grandparents were my people. Everything I am or will be is thanks to them. I don’t remember my parents. It hurt my grandparents to speak of them. They loved their only daughter so very greatly that they took all their grief and multiplied it with their love and gave every ounce of it to me. Never failing.”
“I hope you weren’t hurt by any of the things I’ve said about the house and about this property.”
“No. What you’ve said is reality. I’d be a fool to be offended. But what I do know is that the accumulated history of living hereabouts, including past generations, is the truth. And that can’t be denied, either.”
We’d moved beyond the bridge, and he held out his hand to assist me over the fallen tree. After a brief hesitation, I accepted it. I liked Roger very much. I could certainly do far worse than encourage a closer relationship with him. But not yet. For now, I had to concentrate on the tasks at hand.
First came Ellen and her graduation, and meanwhile my home would be under construction. I didn’t need to be distracted by other decisions. I wanted my house built. After Ellen was safely off at college, I could consider me.
Roger and I had walked up the slope, and here was the cemetery enclosed in its walls. The stacked stones were mostly intact and about thigh high, but with no gate and no opening, as if reinforcing the idea of permanency.
“I should go. The shop needs my attention, especially since I’ll probably be spending time out here at the cabin as the construction progresses.”
“Which begs the question—you have Cub Creek Pottery in Mineral. Why do you want to set up a shop out here, too?”
I leaned against the wall, giving no appearance of wanting to go anywhere despite what I’d said. “I don’t get much traffic at the storefront. I do more business with other businesses and private purchasers. Sometimes I wonder why I bother, frankly.”
“Why? What’s the problem?”
“It’s uninspired, Roger. I’ve been making the same pottery and clay sculptures year after year. Maybe it’s the best I can do. Sometimes I wonder why anyone buys it.” I looked at my hands. There was no answer there.
“They buy it because they like it. Your clay work has always amazed me.”
“Don’t say kind things out of pity or consolation, Roger. I may not keep the shop once I’m back home in the Hollow; I’ll likely let the store go.”
Roger smiled. “Don’t disappear on me. I don’t want to complete this project only to find I’ve lost you to the life of a recluse.”
I patted his arm. “Don’t worry, Roger. You’re important to me. I can’t manage without you.”
“Listen, Hannah. This isn’t the first house I’ve built. For most people, a new home is a big thing for them—signifies big change in their lives—sometimes happy events, sometimes trauma, sometimes recovery—but always big. Even bigger when they’re building from scratch. When faced with those changes, most have trouble letting go. Don’t let a few outbuildings define what you want for your future. Don’t panic or grieve over a pile of charred wood. You have the memories. They are in you, and that’s the safest place for them.”
He had effectively stunned me into silence. I knew exactl
y what he meant. I disagreed that it applied to me—my circumstances were unique—but I’d never known him to be so eloquent about emotional things.
I nodded. “I promise I’ll try to be objective.”
“By Monday we’ll be ready to tackle the site clearing and prep. We’ll clear the debris and put up the erosion control barriers. The barriers, the plastic swale, will also help protect those areas you’re concerned about.” He turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “Now put the worry aside and look forward to this as a new, exciting adventure. Have fun with it.”
On Saturday evening, Ellen looked up from her schoolwork and saw me fretting.
“What’s wrong, Mom?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. What about you? Sorry you didn’t go out with your friends this evening?”
“Nah. Bonnie had to go with her parents to visit family this weekend. Now back to you, and don’t change the subject this time. Are you thinking about the big day?”
I sighed. “Yes. Day after tomorrow. They’re almost done widening the road, and the real show is about to begin. I hope . . .”
“What, Mom?”
“I hope I’m making the right choices.”
“You always do.”
What would she think if she knew about the choices I’d made through the years? Doubt tried to wrap itself around me. I needed to stop this now. I smiled at Ellen and teased, “Even when it comes to tattoos?”
“Please,” she said with a groan.
Ellen was sitting at the island with her books and computer. She had a paper due. It was a big part of her grade, and she was serious about it though she already had college and scholarships all lined up. I smiled to reassure her, then resumed preparing our supper.
She said, “Why don’t we go out there tomorrow after church? I haven’t been to the Hollow in a while.”
“You’re smart to live in the present, not the past.” I waved my spoon. “Totally normal for young people.”
“Mom, to be honest, I don’t feel guilty or anything about not going often. Like, if a huge storm came through tomorrow and wiped out the whole Hollow, I might be sad, but it wouldn’t change anything. We are still who we are. Right?”
