by Misti Murphy
“Sure.” I patted her knee and drove away from the bed and breakfast. “That sounds nice.”
We found potted flowers at the feed store. She took her time examining the selection before picking out a pot of tulips. “She loved these.” Putting her face to the flowers, she crinkled her nose. “I want them to last for her.”
“There’s a trowel in the truck you can use to plant them.” I scraped her hair back from her ear, kissed the shell. “I think she would love them.”
We walked back to the truck in silence, my hand on the small of her back in a show of support.
She held the pot in her lap, her arms curled around it, while we drove out to the edge of town to the small cemetery. Pulling up in front of the gates, we sat for a moment, staring at the rows of headstones we could see from the road. Unclipping her seat belt she leaned over to touch her lips to my cheek. “Thank you for always being there to save me.”
I held her hand, pressed it. “Always.”
***
I trailed her through the cemetery, past the rows of marked and unmarked graves, until she stopped at a small concrete headstone. Her shoulders sagged as she surveyed the final resting place of her mother. “I’m so much like her it scares me. I mean I’m not an alcoholic or anything. But I thought I was like him, you know. I thought I didn’t need anyone. But I’m not like him. I’m stuck in the past, like she was. Look at what I did to us.”
“It wasn’t just you. You should know that by now.” I settled a hand underneath her elbow. “We both played our part.”
“True, but I didn’t make it easy on you to open up, not when you had to worry about whether I would fall apart.”
“We’ve both learned from it. We’re stronger now.”
She nodded. “I don’t want to remember her like this. I don’t want to live my life her way, or my father’s way, anymore.”
Weeds grew through the cracked concrete, and she slumped to her knees, her fingers feverishly yanking at them. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to come back, Mom. I was so angry at you for leaving like that after, after dad took off on us.” She dusted off the concrete with careful sweeps of her hand. “I bought you some tulips. You used to like them. I remember the rows of them along the path to our front door.”
She glanced up at me with overly bright eyes and held her hands out for the pot. “She had a green thumb. Used to spend hours amongst her tulips while Lola and I played in the yard.”
Shifting her focus to the cement grave marker, her voice cracked. “Oh, Mom, Lola came back. You would be so proud of her now. She’s married and has the most beautiful little girl. Runs her own business, too. People come back. I only wish you had stuck around to see it.” She reached up to me, and I crouched behind her, my hand squeezing her shoulder as I passed her the trowel. She dug in the dirt beside the headstone, turning it over until the hole was deep enough. Turning the bottom of the pot over, she tapped it with the trowel and pulled it away from the flowers. Her hands covered in dirt, she tickled the roots before slipping it into the hole and patting the soil back down around it. “I wish I could have done something to help you.”
She sobbed, placing the back of her hand over her mouth, her head dipped. “I was hurting, too. I was so lost, and you…” My chest aching, I held her tighter while she simply breathed for a while.
“You all left me. But people come back, Mom. And some people…” She took my hand in hers, both of our hands covered in dirt, and squeezed it. “Some of them don’t ever leave, even if you don’t realize it, even if you try to push them away.”
“You’d like Mike. I know you would.” She smiled, and splayed her hand over the concrete in front of her. “It’s been a long time, and I’m sorry I didn’t come back until now, but I wanted to tell you I’m okay now, happy.”
Getting up, she brushed her palms together loosening the dirt before slipping her hand into mine. “I’m happy, Mike, with you. I can leave this behind me for you.”
I cupped the back of her head and pressed my lips to her forehead. “Shall we go home?”
“Yes, let’s go home.”
While I’d been engrossed in her, an old lady had approached the row, hovering close by. She limped closer, nodded at Mellie’s mother’s grave. “Did you know her, dear?”
“She was my mother.” Mellie’s brow furrowed as she stared at the woman. “Do I know you?”
“You probably wouldn’t remember me.” The old lady moved closer. “The name’s Agnes. I used to babysit you and your sister when you were knee high to a grasshopper. It was so sad what happened.” She cocked her head. “What happened to your family was a tragedy.”
“It was something.” Mellie held out her hand to Agnes, who took it between both of hers. “After Lola disappeared and our father left, I guess she couldn’t handle it any longer.”
“Your mother had a hard life. Don’t blame her too much. Stronger people than Jinny have succumbed to giving up.”
Mellie glanced at me over Agnes’s head. “That’s true.”
“Well, dear, come to my house for lunch and tell me what you’ve been up to. It really is good to see you, all grown up and with such a handsome husband.”
She might have been elderly, but her gaze was sharp as she ran it over me. “I bet he’s the romantic type like my Bert used to be.”
“He’s not my husband,” Mellie stuttered.
I cleared my throat, and squeezed Agnes’s hand. “I will be.”
***
I cradled the glass of lemonade in one hand, my other around Mellie’s waist, while I rocked the porch swing we were sitting on. Agnes sat across from us in an old wicker chair, her cocker spaniel resting on her feet. Every now and then he’d lift a droopy eyelid and check out the situation before falling back asleep.
“You do remind me of my Bert, young man. He passed away a few years back, but he was a romantic old fool, bless his heart.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Mellie said, and I squeezed her hip, knowing her own loss hung thick around her.
“Never mind that, dears. He was old.” She placed her glass on the mosaic tabletop. “Losing his hearing and not very good in the sack anymore.”
Mellie darted a glance up at me. I could almost read her thoughts in her eyes. She was a blurter, and I had no doubt she was wondering if she’d be still divulging things like that when she was older. I certainly hoped so.
I winked and brushed my thumb along the inside of her palm. “That’ll be me one day, Mellie. What will you do with me then?”
Agnes chuckled. “You two are young, strong, so in love. You have plenty of time before the weakness of old age creeps up on you.” She sharpened her gaze on me. “You and that sister of yours were like mini tornados. Always finding trouble and competing against one another. I remember one time your sister had worked out how to climb the trellis on the side of the house. Well, you had to go and beat her, didn’t you? Only when you got to the roof, you screamed blue murder, unable to work out how to get down.”
I chuckled at the image she created, and Mellie dipped her head, grinning, no doubt at the memory Agnes conjured, and said, “My niece is a bit like that, now.”
“Oh, I bet she is. All children are like that. It’s a shame we lose that as we get older.” Agnes took a sip of her lemonade. When he rolled over, she rubbed at the spaniel’s exposed belly with her foot.
“Mellie is still very much like that.” I pressed my lips to her hair, my chest swelling as I breathed in the sun soaked cocoa and cinnamon smell of her silken hair. “It’s one of the things I love most about her.”
The old woman’s gaze danced. “So what brought you back to Hollyfields after all this time, Melanie?”
“I’m not really sure,” she stuttered, picking at a loose thread on her top. “I left so quickly, so angrily. I’ve carried her death around with me for years. I thought coming back here, saying goodbye properly, might help.”
“You poor thing. It was devastating, your siste
r disappearing like that, and then what happened with that man and his secretary. What was her name again?” Agnes bent to scratch at the spaniel’s drooping ear. “Delilah, I think if memory serves.”
“It pushed Mom too far,” Mellie said. “She started drinking. It was too much for her to recover from.” She settled into my side, and I smoothed my hand over her elbow, giving her my strength while her acceptance weighed her down.
“Your sister’s disappearance was hard on Jinny, as losing any child would be. She’d be happy to know you and Lola found one another after all these years. But she was a drinker long before that.” Agnes leaned forward, her sun-spotted hand gripping the wicker arms of her chair. “I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but she’d been an alcoholic for as far back as I could remember. Started after you and your sister were born. She was what they like to call a ‘high functioning alcoholic.’ ”
Wide eyed, Mellie shook my head. “That isn’t right. I would have known, wouldn’t I? She only started after Lola left.”
“Oh, you poor dear. You were only a child, and she had some restraint back then. I’m not surprised you didn’t know. When your sister up and disappeared like that it was too much for her to bear and she stopped pretending. Lola’s disappearance ate at her, poor woman.” Agnes adjusted a pleat in her skirt.
“Dad leaving was the icing on the cake, I suppose.” Mellie shrugged, her voice wavering and fading away.
“Oh no, dear. My guess is she would have been glad to see the back of that man. He dragged her name through the mud with his sleeping around. I don’t think they were married six months before he slept with the clerk at the post office. That woman left town awful quick.”
“I don’t understand why she stayed with him. Fifteen years of infidelity? Who would let someone treat them like that?” Mellie asked.
Agnes’s kindly eyes twinkled. “We did wonder for a long time why she put up with him. Didn’t really find out the answer until a couple years back. Turns out the doctor wasn’t your father.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mellie
“What?” My world stopped, spun in reverse. Only Mike’s hand on mine kept me centered. “He wasn’t my father?”
“Oh, no.” Agnes leaned forward, shaking her head. “He isn’t your father. Before your mother married him, she was high school sweethearts with a boy from the next town over. Back then there was a much more defined split between those with money and those without. He was from the wrong side of the tracks, as they say.”
The glass of lemonade I had been holding slipped through my fingers, but Mike whisked it away before it spilled. I felt out of body, the world I knew changing shape before my eyes.
“Anyway.” Agnes smiled, enjoying her storytelling. “Jinny and that boy were inseparable for quite a while there. But her parents weren’t keen on the match, kept them apart, and poor William up and left to join the army. It broke your mother’s heart, but then she married the doctor not long after that and she seemed to get over Will. We all thought it had turned out for the best. Then you girls came along, a little early, I might add. There was some conjecture over that, but we never could confirm it. After that your mother started drinking and the doctor whored himself through every girl who’d give him the time of day.”
The man I had modelled myself after, believing the draw of my genetics meant I would always be a runner, wasn’t even related to me. The blood drained from my face while Agnes continued her story.
“I guess she must have told Will he was your father at some point, because he moved back here a couple years ago, looking for you and your sister. Of course, none of us had any idea where you’d gone.”
My pulse beat erratically. What was I supposed to do now? Should I try to locate him, or leave it in the past? I definitely had to call Lola and tell her that man she’d let into her house wasn’t her father. “Do you know where he is now?”
“Of course, dear.” She patted my knee. “He and his wife Becky settled in town. They run the garage and the café. I think Will hoped if he stayed here, you’d come back one day.”
“I have to go,” I stammered, jumping to my feet, Mike right behind me. “I have to…”
“I’m sure he’d love to meet you.” Agnes rose.
Mike took her hand. “Thanks, Agnes. For everything. I hope we see you again.”
***
I paced the length of the truck, while Mike leaned against it, all casual like, as though I hadn’t received the most crazy news possible. The doctor wasn’t my father. The man inside the garage behind me was my father. A man I had never met.
“Are you going to go in?”
“I don’t know.” I changed direction and ratted several strands of my hair. “Bloody hell, this is weird. It’s weird, isn’t it?”
“A little.” Mike caught my elbow, pulled me into his chest. “Calm down, Hurricane. You get to decide here. Either we can go in and meet the man, or we can leave. We can always come back again when you’re ready.”
“Holy mother of fluffy bunnies, and I thought the biggest surprise was your cancer.” I plucked nervously at his shirt. “What if he’s horrible? What if he’s worse than the doctor?” Mike chuckled, and I glared up at him. “What? It could happen.”
“I doubt it. But how about we get back in the truck and drive for a while until you make a decision?”
“No.” I settled, his calm rationality washing over me. I took a deep breath and expelled it before turning on my heel. “I’m going in.”
Mike squeezed my fingers as we entered the garage. We headed toward the sound of banging I could hear over the hard rock blasting from an old radio on a shelf. Tattered steel cap boots and legs clad in blue overalls peeked out from under one of the cars. The man underneath muttered a curse.
I cleared my throat, my pulse rocketing up. “Excuse me.”
The man slid out from under the car, his white-gray hair peppered with spots of grease. Getting up, he wiped his hands off on a rag. His weather-beaten face creased while he stared at me, his movements slowing. “Hello folks, what can I help you with?”
“Are you William?” So this was where my sister and I had gotten our eyes. That ever changing blue-green. Staring into them was like looking in a mirror, or my twin’s face. “Agnes said we might find you here.”
“You can call me Will.” He drew his brow down as he studied my face.
“I’m, I’m…” my name seemed to have deserted me.
“This is Melanie,” Mike said, offering his hand over my shoulder. “I’m Mike.”
“Melanie?” His eyes widened, and my heart literally skipped a beat.
“My mother was Jinny. Agnes said you knew her?”
“I did a long time ago. We were only kids. You look so much like she did back then.” He took my hand between both of his large ones. “I guess Agnes told you I’m your father, then?”
“Uh-huh.” I understood now how Mike had felt that day he’d gotten his diagnosis. That numb, drowning in quicksand feeling he’d described. “So it’s true?”
“I’ve brought your lunch, Will. Soup and fresh rolls.” A female voice interrupted us as she crossed the garage.
Will looked up, his eyes crinkling as he took in the woman. “Becky, love, this is Melanie.” He glanced at me and cleared his throat. “My daughter.”
His daughter. It had taken him five seconds to claim me as his child when he’d never met me before. It surprised me, but I couldn’t help the small smile that twitched over my lips.
“Oh.” Becky put the bag she’d been carrying down on a workbench and brushed her palms together as she approached us. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” I was pretty sure this was the strangest thing that had ever happened in my life. The man who might actually be my father still held my hand. Mike hovered behind me. I could feel the heat of him right behind me, his strength holding me up.
“This is Mike. Her…” Will stuttered to a stop. “I’m sorry. I do
n’t…”
“Boyfriend.” I threaded my arm through Mike’s and pulled him closer.
“Well, Mike.” Becky extended her hand. “This must be a big shock. How about you and I take a walk down to the café for more coffee and let these two get acquainted?”
“Are you okay with that?” He gazed at me, those warm chocolate eyes filled with concern.
“Yes.” I darted a glance from him to Will. “Yes, I am.”
After he and Becky left, Will ushered me into his office. “So you only found out today then?”
“That’s right.” I sunk into the only other chair besides the one he took. “Mom never told me or Lola anything about you.”
He winced. “I wish I had of had the opportunity to meet your sister, too. It’s a real shame what happened to her.”
“Actually, we found her a while ago.”
“Really?” He perked up. “That’s great news.” Tapping his fingers on the desk, he was quiet for a while. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when your mom died. I didn’t find out until a couple years later. It took a while for my mail to get redirected while I was stationed overseas. If she had told me at the start I never would have left you girls.”
“I understand. From what Agnes said, my grandparents had a lot to do with what happened between you two. They died when we were little. I didn’t really know them.”
“Yeah. They weren’t overly happy about her and me. In the end it was easier to leave than to fight it. If I’d known, I would have fought harder.”
“You didn’t know. Don’t blame yourself.”
“Well tell me all about yourself. I want to hear about everything I’ve missed out on.”
We ate the soup and rolls while I filled him in on my life, and listened while he talked about his. There was so much to learn about each other, we barely dented the surface before we heard the others on the main floor.
“Are you staying in Hollyfields for long? You’re quite an amazing woman. I’m so proud I can say I’m related to you,” Will said as we went to join the others.
