The Scent of Lilacs

by Ann H. Gabhart

  Her father stopped at the bottom of the steps as if they were the visitors and the person on the porch the homebody. “Can we help you some way?” he asked.

  The person on the porch stepped closer to the edge of the porch above them. The woman’s voice was timid, almost afraid. “Hi, Daddy. I’m home.”

  Jocie’s breath exploded out of her. “It is her. It’s Tabitha!” she shouted. She pushed past her father and Aunt Love to run up the steps and grab her sister.

  “You can’t be Jocie,” Tabitha said as she held Jocie out away from her. It was still too dark to see faces. “You’re so tall.”

  Together they turned to look at their father, who was still standing in the same spot. Beside him, Aunt Love was clutching her chest and quoting Scripture. “O give thanks unto the LORD; for he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.”

  “Say something, Daddy,” they both said at practically the same instant. And then Tabitha went on, “You are glad to see me, aren’t you, Daddy?”

  David stared at the two girls, his two girls, looking down at him from the porch and felt as if someone had sucker punched him. One as familiar as his own hand, the other strange and unknown. He struggled for breath to answer Tabitha. How could it be possible that this tall, slim young woman peering through the dark at him could be Tabitha? He had carried the thirteen-year-old Tabitha in his heart all these years without letting her grow, as if he could stop time and not miss any of her life. Now here she was in front of him, years of her life totally lost to him, and he couldn’t say a word.

  “He can’t talk. I’ve never seen Daddy not able to talk.” Jocie tugged Tabitha down the porch steps toward David.

  “Praise God,” David finally said as he put his arms around Jocie and Tabitha and fought back the tears that threatened to render him speechless again. “I can’t believe you’re actually here. Welcome home, sweetheart.” He gently touched his lips to her forehead.

  Aunt Love was still quoting Scripture beside them, and Jocie’s stray dog had deserted his bone to dance around them, his thunderous barks at full volume.

  Tabitha suddenly started laughing. “This is crazier than anything in California.” She peered at Aunt Love and said, “Who are you?”

  Aunt Love quit quoting Scripture and stepped up to Tabitha. “I’m your Aunt Love.”

  “Oh yeah. Mama Mae’s sister. I remember Dad writing that you were living here now, but I forgot. Sorry,” Tabitha said. “What is that you were saying? A hymn or something.”

  “No, dear. It was Scripture. Psalms mostly,” Aunt Love said.

  “Oh. Well, I haven’t been to church much lately.” Tabitha glanced at her father and then at the ground. “Well, any lately.”

  “Don’t worry. Now that you’re home, you’ll get plenty of chances to make it up,” Jocie said. “Every Sunday and then some.”

  “Let’s go inside,” David said. “I want to see how you’ve grown up.” It was still too dark to see more than a shadow of her face, but in that shadow was Adrienne. “You are alone?”

  Tabitha let David turn her toward the porch steps and the front door. “Sort of.”

  He heard echoes of the child’s voice he remembered, but it was strange and new at the same time.

  “Mother’s not here?” Jocie’s words sounded tight.

  “Oh, no,” Tabitha said. “DeeDee will never leave California. She belongs there. Says she should have been born there.”

  “But how did you get here?”

  “On the bus. Man, it’s a long ride from California.”

  “We don’t have a bus stop in Hollyhill,” David said.

  “Tell me about it. I had to get off in Grundy and catch a ride with this truck driver,” Tabitha said. “He was delivering potato chips to the restaurant where I was trying to call you from, and I guess he thought I looked lost or something, so he gave me a ride over here. Don’t worry, Dad. He was nice. Said he had a granddaughter my age. I was beginning to think I was going to have to sleep in the park or something since I couldn’t hang out in the bus station, seeing as how there wasn’t one. The bus driver just fished my stuff out of the bottom of the bus and let me off at the corner by the courthouse and went on. I mean, that’s what I asked him to do, but I never expected the town to be so dead. Nobody anywhere. I was lucky to find a restaurant open so I could try to call you.”

  “You should have let me know you were coming, and I would have met you in Williamsburg, where there is a bus station.” David didn’t like to think about her alone, at the mercy of whoever came along.

  “It was no big deal. I’d already spent a lot of hours hanging out in bus stations waiting to make the next connection. Another night somewhere wouldn’t have been a problem. As long as somebody didn’t want to share my bench and their life story. I’ve heard more life stories on the way cross country. Yawn city. You’d think that occasionally somebody would have something exciting happen to them, but no. Nothing but ruptured appendixes and long stories about their Einstein grandkids.”

  “I like hearing people’s life stories,” Jocie said as she went in the front door ahead of Tabitha and switched on the light.

  “Well, I wish you’d been there to be my ears, little sister,” Tabitha said as she shielded her eyes from the sudden burst of light. “Then I could’ve snoozed coast to heartland.”

  “You should have come on in and made yourself at home. The door wasn’t locked,” David said.

  “Yeah, I know. I started to, but I got to thinking. What if you didn’t live here anymore? I mean, it’d been a while since we got a letter and there wasn’t a name on the mailbox and this dog was trying to bark us deaf and I didn’t remember anything about a dog. I mean, I knew Stumpy got done in after I left. So I told Grandpop Jack I’d better wait on the porch. He would have waited around with me, but he had to get home and we decided that even if you had moved, nobody would get too excited about me staging a sit-in on their porch. He gave me a couple of bags of chips before he left. I finally got the dog to quit barking by pitching him some of the chips. Then I ate some. Too many, I guess, because I got sick and had to puke. I sure was glad to see your lights coming up the road.”

  The poor girl looked tired. Worse than tired, exhausted. She was too slim and too pale, with dark circles under her eyes. A painted rose adorned her upper left cheek. At least he hoped it was painted on. Her wrinkled, faded red top hung loosely over bright green pants. She had a red and green strip of material tied around her forehead like a farmer’s sweatband. Her long hair, the same honey brown as Adrienne’s, was caught at the nape of her neck in a plain rubber band.

  Even mussed and in desperate need of a shower she looked so much like Adrienne the first time he’d seen her that David lost his breath again for a moment. She’d always been like Adrienne, from the six-month-old baby he’d first met when he got home from the war to the thirteen-year-old who had disappeared in the night with her mother.

  But it was even more than the same color hair and the green eyes with thick dark lashes and the high cheekbones. Adrienne had always had secrets she’d never shared, and now Tabitha had that same shielded look to her eyes, as if there was more than she’d be willing to tell in spite of the way her words were streaming out practically tripping on one another.

  She was looking around the living room. “I can’t believe this. It’s all exactly the same. The old piano in the corner with our school pictures on it and the books. Surely you’ve gotten some new books.” She ran her hands over some of the bookends.

  “Lots of new books,” Jocie said. “And new pictures too. My school pictures.”

  “Well, sure, but it’s still the same.” Tabitha ran over to pick up an embroidered throw pillow off the couch. “Mama Mae made this. She let me pick out the colors of the threads and poke the needle through on some of the stitches.” She hugged the pillow to her. A couple of tears slid out the corners of her eyes. “I keep thinking I’ll see her too.”

  “She died a few years after you le
ft,” Jocie said, the only one of them besides Tabitha who seemed to be able to talk. “Daddy wrote and told you that.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I guess when you’re not here, it’s easier to keep somebody alive in your head. I just kept imagining everybody doing the same things. Mama Mae planting flowers. Daddy at the paper. You playing in the dirt. You were always playing in the dirt. It drove DeeDee crazy. She’d scream at you if you got close to her with your dirty hands.”

  “I don’t play in the dirt now except when I have to help Aunt Love plant the garden.”

  “Well, of course not. You’re all grown-up. What are you now? Eleven? Twelve?”

  Aunt Love plopped her purse down on the table beside the stairs and said, “Thirteen. Your sister is thirteen. And you’d better sit down before you faint. I think there was some ham left over at breakfast. Maybe some applesauce. You need something besides potato chips to eat. And who in heaven’s name is this DeeDee you keep talking about? Surely not your mother,” Aunt Love said.

  Tabitha looked at Aunt Love as if she’d shaken her out of a dream. “You’re not the same. I don’t remember you at all. Should I?”

  Aunt Love stopped in front of her on the way to the kitchen. “I saw you a few times when you were a child. Nothing you’d have any reason to remember. I was never anybody’s favorite aunt.”

  “Aunt Love. I knew a girl in California who wanted everybody to call her Love, but her name was actually Edith. Is that really your name—Love?”

  “Lovella. I don’t know where my mother came up with it. It’s not a respectable Bible name like yours. Tabitha also called Dorcas.” Aunt Love gently pushed Tabitha toward the couch. “Now sit. You’ve had a long trip, and you can’t tell us everything tonight. You’ll be staying awhile, I’m guessing.”

  “Awhile, and I am zonked. From my head bone to my big toe bones.” Tabitha sank down on the couch and kicked off her sandals. The straps had made deep marks across the tops of her feet. She stretched her legs out in front of her and wiggled toes with bright red toenails. She didn’t bother trying to hide a yawn. “Does the rest of the house look the same too? I mean, is the same rose-covered bedspread on the bed? I used to think I could smell those roses when I lay on it.”

  “No, somebody gave us a log cabin patch quilt I use as a bedspread. I sleep there now,” Jocie said. “But your stuff’s still in the closet. The rose bedspread is probably in there somewhere too.”

  “What about your old bedroom?”

  “Dad’s now,” Jocie said. “Aunt Love’s in the bedroom down here.”

  “Oh, of course,” Tabitha said, but she looked disappointed. “Not a problem. I’m used to sleeping on the couch. Most of our apartments only had one bedroom. That’s all DeeDee could afford.”

  “There you go with the DeeDee again,” Aunt Love said as she handed Tabitha a plate of ham and biscuits and applesauce. She sat a glass of lemonade on the glass-covered coffee table in front of the couch. “Is that some modern name for mothers in California?”

  Tabitha laughed. “You’re funny.”

  “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” Aunt Love said.

  “The Bible again, I presume,” Tabitha said.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Jocie said. “But do kids call their mothers DeeDee in California?”

  “No, no. That doesn’t have anything to do with California. That happened in Chicago right after we left. DeeDee told everybody we were sisters, so I couldn’t very well keep calling her Mama. She threatened to send me back a hundred times before I got used to it, but I can’t imagine calling DeeDee Mama now.”

  “I prayed she’d send you back. Every day. A dozen times a day,” David said.

  “Well, I guess your prayers finally got answered.” Tabitha took a sip of lemonade and pinched a crumb off the biscuit as if testing the food to be sure it was safe.

  “Mine too,” Jocie said. “I’ve been saying the sister prayer for years. That and the dog prayer, and now I’ve got Zeb and you both in two days.”

  “The sister prayer?” Tabitha laughed again. “You guys are hilarious. DeeDee said I’d need to pack my sense of humor along with me if I was going to survive around here.” She took another nibble of the biscuit and then sat the plate down on the coffee table. “I’m really not very hungry. Too many chips I guess, but the lemonade is delicious. Thank you, Aunt Love.”

  “She must have remembered to put sugar in it,” Jocie muttered. David frowned at her, but she was saved by the phone ringing. “That’ll be the church.”

  The phone rang again before David stood up to answer it. Maybe it would be better to just let it ring and wait until the next morning to find out the verdict. He didn’t want anything ruining Tabitha’s homecoming, but the rings kept on, demanding he answer it. As he moved slowly toward the phone on the little table by the door, he heard Jocie explaining to Tabitha about the church and the vote for him to be interim pastor.

  “You mean Daddy’s actually still preaching?” Tabitha said. “DeeDee didn’t think he’d still be preaching, you know, because of the divorce and all. She said people in Hollyhill aren’t very tolerant. Not like they are in California. Nobody cares how many times you’ve been married or even if you’re married or not out there. Of course, I don’t know about preachers. I’m not sure they even have preachers.”

  “Of course they have preachers in California,” Aunt Love said shortly.

  “You think so? I never met one if they do,” Tabitha said. “And you’d think I would have. I mean, don’t preachers go around advertising what they do? You know, saying things like ‘Come to my church,’ ‘Believe in God or else,’ ‘Stop doing anything fun,’ that sort of thing.”

  “My heavens, child. What a thing to say,” Aunt Love said.

  “Oh dear, I’ve shocked you,” Tabitha said. “DeeDee said I’d have to be careful about that too. That my mouth would get me in trouble double-quick in Hollyhill.”

  David wanted to let the phone ring, turn around, and get Tabitha out of hot water, but if it was Matt McDermott, he’d think something was wrong if David didn’t answer the phone and like as not would make the trip over here to be sure they hadn’t had car trouble on the way home. Just today he’d told David that prayer was surely all that was keeping the wheels on David’s car rolling. The old car had been making funny noises lately. Even Wes had been on him to get a new car, had told him he needed a dating car now that Leigh Jacobson was giving him the eye.

  David pushed that thought away. He didn’t have time to worry about new modes of transportation tonight. Or Leigh Jacobson. It was enough that Adrienne’s memory had walked back into the house along with Tabitha, as sharp and piercing as the day she’d left. What he really needed was to go sit on the rock fence out back, look up at the stars until their sparkle calmed his soul, and let God help him make some sense of what was happening. But the phone kept ringing, surely on the twentieth ring by now. Tabitha was still talking. Aunt Love had started quoting Scripture. And he couldn’t even whisper a prayer before he said, “Hello.”

  “Oh, good, you’re there,” Matt McDermott said. “I called earlier without an answer and was about to get afeared you were broke down somewhere.”

  David couldn’t read anything in his voice. Matt was such a steady man that good and bad news would probably sound the same, something to be dealt with either way. “We were outside for a while.” He thought about telling him Tabitha had come home, but that would mean too much explaining. Better to just find out the vote and get it over with.

  “I guess the girl had to see to her dog. If I’d known she wanted a dog, I could have rounded one up for her. Somebody’s always trying to get rid of pups.”

  “I think she’s happy with the mutt that showed up here. But what about the vote? Am I preaching at Mt. Pleasant next Sunday?”

  Matt hesitated before he said, “I’m thinking that might be up to you, Brother David.”

  “So I didn’t get the vote.” David tried to keep the disap
pointment out of his voice. How could he be disappointed about anything tonight with the daughter he had feared he might never see again sitting on the couch behind him?

  “Well, you the same as did. It turned out eighty-eight point six percent, which is near the same as ninety, and would have been ninety if Stella Hoskins hadn’t got the bug this afternoon. She’s been telling everybody that you’re God’s answer to our prayers here at Mt. Pleasant. Somebody who’d know how to minister to the young and old alike. She called me a little bit ago and asked if she couldn’t register her vote over the phone, but I figured it was too late for it to officially count, you know. Maybe if she’d called before church, but she said she was too busy losing her dinner to call then. Still, unofficially, I think you can be sure you got ninety percent.”

  “That’s reaching a little,” David said.

  “Maybe, but it’s a reach I hope—that ninety percent of the people at Mt. Pleasant hope—you’ll make.” Matt McDermott emphasized the ninety percent.

  “Eighty-eight point six,” David said.

  It was suddenly quiet on the couch behind him. And then Jocie was at his elbow, whispering, “That rounds off to ninety.”

  He pointed her back to the couch. He couldn’t decide now. But he wouldn’t say no yet either. “I’ll pray about it and let you know tomorrow,” he told Matt.

  “Well, I’d rather you just went ahead and said yes now, but a deacon can’t argue with a preacher who wants to pray. Fact of the matter is, we shouldn’t even have voted on this now. The pulpit committee could’ve just appointed you interim.”

  “I requested a vote.”

  “I know, and I understood where you were coming from on it. No need arguing that now.” Matt let out a deep breath that whooshed over the phone lines. “So you pray about it, Brother David, and I’ll be praying you decide to let the vote be near enough. It isn’t but a baby step away. But if the good Lord leads you in another direction, you know I won’t cancel my subscription to the Hollyhill Banner or anything. And you can still bring your girl out to go fishing in my pond whenever you want.”