by Jackie Lynn
“Don’t worry about it, Mary,” Rhonda responded. “I wanted to see Mama anyway,” she added.
“Did the doctor say everything was okay?” she asked Rose.
Rose nodded, remembering her early trip to the doctor’s office. It seemed like days ago to her, given everything else that had happened. “She was released from his care this morning. However, she did request another month with her physical therapist.”
“Leonard,” both Lucas and Rhonda said at the same time. They knew Ms. Lou Ellen’s appreciation for the young man who had been working with her for more than six months. They exchanged glances and Lucas winked at his wife.
“Well, bless the Lord,” Ms. Lou Ellen’s son-in-law added. “She does have a taste for men.”
“Yeah, apparently even the reincarnated ones,” Rose added.
Rhonda and Lucas seemed puzzled.
Mary made a hissing noise, understanding that Rose was referring to the dog. She waved her hand across her face.
Rhonda started to ask for an explanation but then proceeded to question them about the murder and what had happened that day at Shady Grove.
Rose reported everything to the couple. She told them about finding the man earlier in the day, how he had apparently been strangled, the destruction in his trailer, and how he had traveled alone with the three-legged dog that was now staying in the cabin next door. After she gave them all the information she had that she was willing to share, she paused.
She knew upon hearing such sad news that Lucas would want to pray. They all bowed their heads while he uttered a short prayer for the dead man and his family and for those affected by his death. He ended with words of gratitude for the safe journey he and his wife had enjoyed and for the good news about his mother-in-law.
“Amen,” he said, nodding as he did so. He seemed pleased with the blessings bestowed on them.
“Well,” Rose said, breaking the silence after the prayer. She glanced up at Lucas and Rhonda, their faces aglow with goodness.
Rose remembered how surprised she’d been when she first met them, how she’d thought that to see them with their tattoos and motorcycle regalia, no one would believe Lucas and Rhonda were devoted people of faith.
Their faith wasn’t false. It wasn’t something they tried to use as a means to say they were better than anyone else. Their commitment was based on the fact that they knew all about hitting rock bottom and they recognized they would have never found their way up had they not had a little help from a higher power. It was as simple to them both as taking twelve steps to sobriety.
Once they got out of prison and made a life for themselves, Lucas and Rhonda didn’t become like a lot of folks who hid behind the walls of a church, claiming that they deserved to be there and that they therefore had the right to keep others out.
Rose saw something different in this couple than she remembered seeing in the people she knew from the church pews of her hometown. The Boyds never forgot where it was they’d come from and they never looked at anybody else with the thought that they shouldn’t be welcomed or couldn’t be saved.
Rose said her own quiet prayer, enjoying a moment of clarity, and then continued what she had been about to say to her friends.
“So, I’m tired and I’m going to go to my trailer and fix me some dinner. It’s been a jam-packed day for me,” she said, reaching for the door.
She turned to Lucas and Rhonda. “I’m sorry that you had to leave your work. I know how important that is for you.”
“Little sister,” Lucas said as he jumped up from his seat at the table and held open the door, “you are also very important to this family. Rhonda and I were speaking of it just last evening. Like our dear Mary, you are a gift from God to Shady Grove.” He smiled and his big round face shone.
“He’s right, Rose,” Rhonda added from her seat at the table. “We thank you for taking care of Mama and for just being here.”
“Well, I’m glad you feel that way, since I’m starting to think maybe I brought you bad luck when I came.” She turned and looked out to the area where the murder victim had been found. “Two dead men in less than a year,” she added somberly.
“Sister Rose, did you ever think that maybe God sent you here for us to be better equipped to handle the deaths of those two dead men?” Lucas asked. “Maybe you’re the egg before the chickens,” he added with a wink.
“Dead chickens,” Rose replied. “But thank you, that’s a lovely sentiment just the same. And no, I hadn’t thought of that.”
Lucas touched her on the shoulder.
“Good night, Rose,” Rhonda called out. “Get some rest.”
“See you in the morning,” Mary added.
“Good night,” the nurse replied as she walked out of the office and headed toward her home.
ELEVEN
Rose decided to walk up the path, turning to head along the river before returning to her camper. She wanted to sort through the events of the day, try to think about what she needed to do next.
The bracelet bumped against her leg and she realized that she would not be able to get to bed early like she wanted. Instead, if she followed Ms. Lou Ellen’s advice, she would have to wait a couple of hours until everyone was asleep in their campers. She would then have to walk around to the far side of the campground and drop the jewelry somewhere near the trailer now marked with bright yellow caution tape, keeping people away from the site.
She stared down at her watch to see the time and wondered who would be the one to discover the bracelet and whether or not it would fall into the right hands, the hands of the dead man’s family.
She thought of a greedy deputy or a curious fisherman and how the bracelet could be lost forever if found by the wrong person. And with that thought, she considered not returning the jewelry to where she had found it, but, rather, waiting until she knew the name of the next of kin and then just sending it straight to them. She moved along the shadows of the descending darkness, unsure of exactly what to do. She stopped at the edge of the water, near one of the small crepe myrtle trees, and sat down.
She reached inside and pulled the now-familiar piece of jewelry out of her pocket. She held it in her hands and then glanced around to see that no one was nearby. When she was sure that she was alone, she clasped the thick cuff-style bracelet around her right wrist. She carefully squeezed the two ends and held up her arm to see how it looked.
In the dimming light of the day, she could make out only the edges of the jewelry. She could not see any of the symbols or even the large turquoise stone. She reached out with her left hand and held the bracelet and her arm against her chest. The dead man’s belonging, she thought, somehow connected her to him, and she leaned her head back so that she completely rested against the trunk.
Rose listened to the waves rolling against the shore and considered a family living somewhere hundreds of miles away that could, just at that moment, be finding out about the death of their loved one. Since hearing the recent phone call between Mary and the FBI agent, she knew that the dead man’s identity was known and that at some time during the day or during that evening, someone was breaking the news.
She thought about how the next of kin would be given the details. She considered a family preparing to gather around a dinner table, expecting to enjoy a meal together, and receiving a knock on the door or the ring of the phone, which would suddenly change everything about the night, their weeks to come, probably even their lives.
She thought of a grandchild’s grief, the littlest one wanting to understand what had happened to the oldest member of the family, the questions about death that a young person so innocently asks. She considered a wife, though she had seen no wedding band on the dead man. Rose thought of how devastating the news would be of a spouse murdered so far away from home. She thought about a son, his anger at some mysterious killer who had so violently stolen away his father.
And then Rose thought of the reaction of a daughter to the news that her father had di
ed. She thought of the sadness, the loss. And then immediately she remembered her own father and the news that she herself had only just received. She recalled how it was, not more than a couple of hours before, to hear a grave report about a family member.
Her father’s condition had worsened and at least one person, a person who had lived many years with her as she struggled with her aging parent, a person whom she felt anger toward but whose opinion also mattered to her, had reported that she needed to go home.
Rose held the bracelet closer against her chest and peered out to Memphis, the lights shining across the river. Once she crossed the bridge from Arkansas into Tennessee, she realized, she would be only one state away from seeing her father. She would be only one state away from the man she had decided almost a year earlier she would never see again.
Now she was being asked to reconsider the choice she had made. She sat at the shore of the river she had come to love and wasn’t sure what she was going to do, whether to return to Rocky Mount and her father or not.
It was true, she knew, that she had made her peace with the man who had treated her with such abuse and contempt. She had made peace with the ghosts of her past. Mostly because of her ex-husband’s kindness and support throughout the years, she had, by the age of thirty, let go of her long-held bitterness at her father. She drove away from Rocky Mount thinking that she had forgiven him. She had also driven away allowing herself the opportunity not to feel responsible for him any longer.
She had been the one to admit him to the nursing home when his condition had worsened. Later, after making all the arrangements, seeing that he received acceptable care, and helping him settle into his new environment, she had felt released from having to be his caregiver, maybe even his daughter.
And now, right out of the clear blue, just like Ms. Lou Ellen’s three-legged dog, her ex-husband had shown up at Shady Grove. Rip had appeared from nowhere and tried to convince her that she was still his caregiver or, at the very least, a daughter who needed to see him. He had tried to say that she had one more responsibility to the man she no longer worried about or fought against.
Rose sat forward, resting her head against her knees, and knew that she wanted to be angry with her ex-husband. She also knew that she had plenty of causes. Aside from his early indiscretions, his affair, now, just after she was starting to heal, starting to make a life for herself, he had come crashing into her new world in his shiny gold Cadillac with his perfect new wife.
He’d rolled into Shady Grove without any forewarning, without any time for Rose to prepare herself, and then he’d just broken the news that her father was sick and that she needed to let him make peace before he died, as if she owed it to both of them.
Rose thought about Rip with Victoria at his side, the way the younger woman kissed him on the cheek, the easy way her thick hair danced in the breeze, her deep summer tan, even though it was well before tanning season, her long legs, her narrow waist.
Rose felt the knot tighten inside her chest as she remembered the likes and the looks of Victoria Griffith and the fact that Rip had decided to make it part of his business and part of his honeymoon to stop by the campground in West Memphis and counsel his ex-wife about his ex-father-in-law.
“He had no right,” she said aloud to herself, and began to see the act as completely selfish on Rip’s part. She began thinking about the nerve he’d had in coming and his complete disregard for where she had arrived in her journey in her relationship with her father.
She thought he was arrogant and inappropriate for searching for her and then just dropping by to see her. She thought all of these things, feeling both vindicated and indignant, when suddenly from her perch of righteous anger, she recalled a night with her husband several years before the divorce, the night her father was admitted to the nursing home.
Captain Burns was to be released from the hospital after becoming gravely ill due to the damaged condition of his liver. He had spent more than three weeks in the intensive care unit, two more weeks that followed on a medical-surgical unit. Rose, working as a nurse in the same facility, spent a great deal of time checking on him and talking to the doctors about his prognosis, his living situation, and the best-possible scenario for him as a single person with liver disease and someone beginning to demonstrate signs of dementia or even, perhaps, Alzheimer’s.
Before his hospitalization, no one was completely sure about his mental condition. He was forgetful and there was a history of him wandering into unfamiliar places. There were also a few reports from neighbors of him acting in a disorienting or confused manner. He had even wrecked his car and started a small kitchen fire, but these were only occasional incidents.
When confronted, he seemed clear, and he certainly refused to accept that anything was wrong with him. He absolutely dismissed any notion that he was functioning at a diminished capacity. There was never a discussion with him about making any living changes.
After the hospital stay of so many weeks, however, with his physical weakness and his observed mental deficiencies, all of the medical personnel working with Captain Burns agreed that upon release from the hospital he would not be able to live alone.
Rose had spent days, weeks even, in conversations with social workers, doctors, friends, her husband, and her brother. She had tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to talk with her father. Finally, after much deliberation and a decision that she would not let him live with her, she found a place where she believed he would receive the best care. With much agonizing and trepidation, she signed the papers committing her father to a nursing home.
It had been an extremely difficult time for her. Without her brother’s input or assistance, she was forced to make the decision by herself, and when her father discovered that it was she who had committed him, he was enraged.
He was so upset with her, in fact, that the day he was to be transferred to the long-term-care facility, he had to be placed in restraints. He had made it very clear not only that he was not going to go to the nursing home without a fight and would escape if taken there but that he was also going to kill the person who had signed the papers admitting him.
When her father, heavily sedated, was taken by ambulance to his new home, it was strongly suggested to his daughter that she not visit for a few days. The director of the facility had called her personally and said that it would be most helpful to have a little while to allow the new patient, her father, to become acquainted with his surroundings, that they have some time to find more effective means to support Captain Burns with this difficult transition, and that it would just simply be best for her to wait a couple of weeks before making her first visit.
Receiving such advice brought lots of emotion to the surface for Rose. In spite of the troubled relationship she had endured, she was still her father’s only caregiver and she remained concerned about the man she had hated for so many years. She was, however, also relieved not to have to deal with him in this new setting, relieved to have some time to rest after the long and exhausting period she had endured while his mental condition and physical illness had worsened and since he had been hospitalized. She was facing so many complicated emotions that she didn’t know how to feel about anything.
The day her father had been admitted to the nursing home, Rose returned to her house from work, worn thin from worry and fatigue, to find that Rip had been home all day and had prepared the only meal she had ever known him to fix.
This night, this dinner—this was the memory she thought of as the day of her ex-husband’s sudden visitation, the day of the discovery of a murdered man, drifted into the darkness there by the Mississippi River.
On the night of her father’s admissions, Rip met Rose at the door with a glass of wine and one long-stem red rose. He then led her straight to the table, guiding her into her seat. He fed her baked chicken, which she remembered was kept in the oven much too long, mashed potatoes that were so dry and lumpy that she had choked on her first spoonful, and a salad made with too
much dressing. The dessert, she recalled with a smile, had been perfect, however. He had bought two pieces of cake from a local bakery and had added a big helping of ice cream on the side.
He didn’t say much about the day, about what he understood his wife had been wrestling with. However, after explaining his methods of cooking, about everything he had learned and done, how he’d actually enjoyed being in the kitchen, he did finally say something about the decision his wife had made.
Rose still remembered how his simple way of summing things up, his firm gesture of empathy, had melted away so much of her sorrow. “Rose, you’ve done the right thing,” he said as she finished the dessert. “Your father needs the care of somebody else, somebody who doesn’t have all the history that you have.”
She’d swallowed and listened.
“Those nurses there will be able to make him take his medicine, eat his meals, and they won’t allow him to hurt anybody. You can’t do that. He has had power over you your whole life and he knows that; as long as he knows that, you can’t take care of him. You just can’t. And it’s really okay that somebody else does.”
She recalled how the words felt that night so long ago, the kindness in them, the generosity and wisdom behind them. On that complicated and difficult night, she loved her husband for knowing the right thing to say at a time when she felt so empty of pardon for herself. And as Rose rested against a river tree at the end of the day he had come to her new home on the arm of a new wife, she knew that in spite of everything else Rip had done to her, done to the marriage, because of that one pure evening, she could not hate him or demonize him.
With a plate of dry chicken and lumpy potatoes, with a slice of chocolate cake and the words she was desperate to hear, he had freed her from the bondage of old chains. He had given her permission to unbind herself from her father’s heavy hand. Although there were lots of reasons to despise him, Rose knew, because of that night, she could not dismiss the man who had only months later chosen someone else to love.
