Close to the Broken Hearted

by Michael Hiebert

  My mother picked up a picture of a young man in a T-shirt. He had blond hair and did sort of look a bit like me, so I figured it must be my pa. “Yeah,” she said, sounding very far away. “Me too.”

  Grandpa Jeremiah came up behind her. He looked over the top of his glasses at the photograph. “Billy’d have been ’bout, oh, fifteen or so when that was taken, I reckon,” he said. “Always wanted to be a rock star.”

  Grandma Sara laughed. “A singer!” she said. “Can you believe it? That boy couldn’t carry a tune if he had it in a bucket with a lid on it! But oh, he tried.”

  “Did he ever sing for you, Mom?” Carry asked.

  “He tried.”

  I wished I could have heard him sing.

  My mother picked up another picture of my pa. This time it was one of him and a girl. The girl didn’t look like my mother. Grandpa Jeremiah lifted his glasses above his eyes and got a better look at it. “Oh, I remember her. Girl was a few crayons short of a complete rainbow, if you ask me.” He laughed. When he laughed his voice broke up and he sounded much older than when he spoke.

  “Better go check on the coffee, dear,” Grandma Sara said.

  Grandpa Jeremiah left and she added, “Good thing that man has me. He couldn’t find his own ass with both hands stuck inside his pockets.” Her eyes cut to me and she quickly covered her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I should’ve said rear end.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I know the word ass.”

  “Hey,” my mother said. “Language.”

  “I was just pointin’ somethin’ out.”

  “I don’t care.”

  Grandpa Jeremiah returned with the coffee. By the time he’d poured five mugs and we’d started drinking it, everyone seemed much more relaxed, even my mother. She’d stopped curiously looking at pictures and taken a seat in one of the chairs. I discovered my grandpa Jeremiah had a fondness for talking about his son, and, in the next hour, I learned more about my pa then I ever knew the entire time I’d been alive. I was even getting used to the funny way both my grandparents talked.

  We found out that my pa used to like to sneak out and then make up stories to cover his tracks, but my grandpa always found out the truth. “I’d tell him, ‘That dog don’t hunt,’ ” he said. “But he’d try it again and again, thinkin’ each time he could pull the wool down over my eyes.” He turned to me. “Back then his elevator was stuck on the second floor.”

  “Yeah,” my grandmother said, “but he had a knack for fallin’ into a barrel full of crap and comin’ out smellin’ just like a rose.”

  “That’s only on account of you let him get away with so much.”

  “I most certainly did not,” my grandma said. “He would get into one of his angry moods and I’d tell him, ‘Well, you can just go and get glad the same way you got mad or you can just die.’ ”

  When she said that, the room went silent. She brought her hand to her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry... ,” she said, trailing off. “I didn’t mean . . .”

  Everyone looked at my mother, who seemed to not even notice what had been said. Then she realized everyone was looking at her. “Oh, hey, it’s fine. Seriously.” She laughed. “It’s just a figure of speech, right?”

  My grandpa pointed at her. “See? This is why I’ve always liked you. You were always best for my Billy. You kept him out of trouble. You were the one who’d say, ‘My cow died last night, mister, so I don’t need your bull.’ ”

  There was a pocket of silence, finally broken by my mother.

  “How do you know what I would say?”

  “What’s that?” Grandpa Jeremiah asked.

  “How do you know what I would say? Billy never saw you after him and me started goin’ out.”

  Grandma Sara laughed. “Of course he did. He kept dropping by right up until a few weeks before your weddin’. Then Jeremiah and him had that fight. We should’ve seen it comin’. After Billy met you, it was like he was a new man. He used to fight with us constantly. Wasn’t a week went by that Billy and his daddy didn’t almost come to fisticuffs. I think once they actually did, but Jeremiah refuses to tell me the truth.”

  “I’ve told you the truth,” Jeremiah mumbled. “You just refuse to believe it.”

  “But then you came along and everythin’ seemed to change.” She paused and then asked my mother quietly, “Didn’t you know this?”

  My mother shook her head. “Until Addison met my boy in the street, I didn’t really know y’all existed. Billy hardly ever talked ’bout you.”

  Both my new grandparents just shook their heads slowly and sipped their coffee. “Ain’t that just like Billy,” my grandpa Jeremiah finally said.

  “What do you mean?” my mother asked.

  “Ain’t nobody gonna mess all over him and call it apple butter,” my grandma answered.

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “Billy blamed me,” my grandpa said. “For the way he was. On account of he could get violent. In fact, it’s amazing he never had no run-ins with the police, but he got lucky.”

  “I never knew Billy to be violent,” my mother said.

  “That’s probably why you never heard ’bout his family. In Billy’s mind, his family was the cause of his violent tendencies. If he don’t tell you ’bout them and leaves ’em out of your relationship, the violence stays away, too.”

  My mother looked like she was a deer caught in a trucker’s headlamps. “But—if that’s true . . . then . . . it worked.”

  “The mind is a funny thing,” my grandpa said.

  “And a tragic one,” my grandma added. She kept studying me and Carry sitting on the davenport. I realized Carry hadn’t spoken much at all, even though I hadn’t really either. “And we’ve missed so much.”

  “Thank the Lord Jesus we met your daddy,” Grandpa Jeremiah said to my mother.

  There was more conversation, most of it filled with funny phrases from my new grandparents, and there was a lot of laughs. Even my mother laughed. It had been a long time since I’d heard her laugh, and I was happy to witness it again. We wound up staying for homemade jambalaya that was really good and for dessert Grandma Sara pulled a freshly baked pecan pie out of the oven. Nothing ever tasted as good as that pie.

  When we finally said good night and headed home, it was nearly nighttime. The first stars had begun to peek out of the sky around a full moon that was rising low in the east.

  “We’re awfully glad you came out to see us,” Grandpa Jeremiah said at the porch, after hugging each of us and shaking my hand.

  Grandma Sara hugged us all, too. “Please come by anytime. Or maybe we can make the trip out your way. We’ll see you again, good Lord willin’, and the creek don’t rise.”

  “We’ll have to see, dear,” my grandpa said, and a stillness fell over everyone that I didn’t rightly understand. I caught my mother sharing a knowing look with my grandpa Jeremiah.

  After our good-byes, we got into our car. Of course, Carry took the front seat and I was relegated to the back. It wasn’t so bad; at least I had it all to myself.

  On the way home, Carry wasn’t nearly as annoying as she had been on the way there. She only made us stop twice and both times were for her to use a restroom. One of those times my mother was stopping for gas anyway, so it wasn’t a wasted stop.

  We talked about my new grandparents during the drive home, each of us agreeing we had a very enjoyable time and that they were good people. “It was a nice visit,” my mother said.

  “It certainly was,” I agreed. “I just wish we’d have done it a lot sooner.”

  To this, there was no reply, and my mother seemed to get lost in her thoughts for a long while. In fact, she pretty near stayed silent all the way back to Alvin.

  When we hit the city limits, I decided it was time that silence was broken. “I guess my pa came from good blood.”

  “I guess he did,” my mother agreed.

  “I’m happy that I look like him.”

  “You do look
a lot like him sometimes.”

  “How come you never tell me that?”

  “I will. From now on. I’ll make a point of it.”

  I beamed a great big smile in the darkness.

  “They sure talk funny,” Carry said. “Half the time, I was still tryin’ to figure out what they’d just said while they went on to sayin’ the next thing.”

  When she said this, we all laughed and laughed as the last of the stars popped out of the night sky. Above us, the moon, big, full, and round, shone brightly, reflecting off the hood of our car, and lighting the road for the rest of our way home.

  CHAPTER 36

  It was late by the time Leah and the kids arrived back home in Alvin.

  Leah saw the kids quickly to bed and had a feeling Abe was asleep before she even left his room after tucking him in. The purple light of early evening had darkened to an almost-black through his thick curtains, and his bedroom was cast in shadows.

  In Caroline’s room, Leah’s daughter had some odd points to make about meeting her grandparents earlier. Leah didn’t normally see Caroline to bed. Usually (especially during the summer months) Caroline stayed up well past Leah’s bedtime. But tonight she’d headed straight to her room, something unprecedented. So Leah had just sort of popped in to say good night before going to bed herself.

  It had been a long day, undoubtedly for everyone.

  “Mom?” Caroline asked, getting under the covers. She’d already slipped on her pajamas and brushed her teeth while Leah was tucking Abe in.

  “Yes?”

  “Am I ever as bad as Grandpa Jeremiah and Grandma Sara said Pa was when they were talkin’ ’bout him bein’ so disobedient and all?”

  Leah let out a small laugh. “You have your moments.”

  Frowning, Caroline said, “I don’t mean to be, you know.”

  “I know. And I also know you’ll grow up into a fine young woman.” She paused and said, “You have been makin’ your brother paint your toes every week, though. I’d say that classifies as bein’ a tiny bit mean.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  Leah shook her head.

  “Then how do you know?”

  “Honey, I am a police detective and a mother. We have our ways. Not much gets past us. I reckoned by now you’d have figured that out.”

  Caroline turned and looked out her window. Leah followed her gaze. The drapes were open and a few stars twinkled around the full moon hanging outside.

  “Think maybe it’s time you let him off the hook?” Leah asked.

  Caroline pulled her covers up to her chin. The moon and stars lit up her face as though it had a spotlight on it. “Yeah, I s’pose. Gonna miss havin’ such nice toes, though. He really did do a good job.”

  “That’s your brother. He don’t do nothin’ without puttin’ his heart into it. But you’re doin’ the right thing for lettin’ him off the hook. And as far as me and you go, you’re just a bit tricky when it comes to my part in it all.”

  “How so?”

  “Well . . .” Leah sighed. “I’m realizin’ I need to start spendin’ more time with you. And, as your grandparents would probably say, ‘Sometimes I find myself busier than a cat tryin’ to cover its crap on a marble floor.’ ”

  Caroline laughed.

  Leah kissed her daughter’s forehead.

  “Go to sleep,” Leah said. “Don’t worry ’bout the way you are. You’re perfect. You an’ Abe both are. I wouldn’t change an ounce of you even if I was able to. You’re my perfect daughter.”

  Leah got up and left Caroline’s bedroom, pulling her door closed behind her. She went into her own room and collapsed onto the bed. It had been a long day with a lot of driving, and a lot of emotions had been tossed up inside her from meeting Billy’s parents.

  She couldn’t believe what they’d said about Billy having anger and violence issues. She’d never seen it. Not once. Not even an indication of it.

  Could someone really change that much?

  The lamp on the table beside Leah’s bed was still on and its light caught the edge of something gold on the doily beneath it. It was the wedding band she’d placed there just over a week ago. Leah picked it up.

  Lying on her back with her head against her pillow, she held it up toward the ceiling, examining it in her fingers—a circular band of gold; an unbreakable symbol that went around and around, without a beginning and without an end. A symbol of eternity.

  Only, there had been a beginning, and there had been an end.

  A very abrupt end.

  Billy had been taken from her one morning when Abe was just two years old and Caroline five, and Leah had been left all by herself to raise both their children. And for that, until now, she had never been able to forgive him. And she’d felt guilty about that selfishness ever since. She’s hated herself for hating him. Even when she had pulled this ring out of the shoe box before giving the rest of the contents to Abe, she wasn’t sure why she had done it. The ring only reminded her of what had happened, and that had always made her angry.

  Except tonight, there was no anger. No guilt.

  Nothing but acceptance and relief.

  For the first time since she could remember, she knew her kids were going to be okay.

  She knew she was going to be okay.

  Sometime between placing this ring on her nightstand and this moment right now, something inside Leah had changed, and she’d found something that had been hidden from her for ten long years.

  Forgiveness.

  She wasn’t even sure who, exactly, or even what, she had forgiven.

  But that didn’t matter.

  The important part was that she’d found what she’d been unable to find all these years.

  Slipping the ring onto her finger, she reached up and switched off the lamp. Turning over, she pulled her blankets up over her body, wrapping her hands around them. A tired heaviness sank her deeper into her pillow.

  A soft smile came to her lips. She felt it in the starlit darkness as she closed her eyes and gently fell into a quiet sleep. And, for the first time in ten years, she happily dreamed of being Mrs. Billy Bob Teal once again.

  Tomorrow would be another day.

  Tomorrow, there’d still be lots more time to play detective.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  Close to the Broken Hearted

  Michael Hiebert

  ABOUT THIS GUIDE

  The suggested questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of Michael Hiebert’s Close to the Broken Hearted.

  Discussion Questions

  Do you think Preacher Eli meant to pull the trigger on the gun that killed Caleb Carson? Do you agree with the conviction of manslaughter he was given for the crime?

  The night Sylvie discovers Preacher Eli is being released from prison, Leah goes to visit her. For the first time, she arrives to find Sylvie acting almost normal. Why does this scare Leah so much?

  Abe seems to lack an inherent trust in people, especially strangers. In this book, he immediately sentenced Preacher Eli as guilty in his head as soon as he met the man. In Dream with Little Angels, he does the same thing with Mr. Wyatt Edward Farrow, his new neighbor. How much of this distrust do you think comes from him having spent his life as the son of the only detective in town? How much does Leah’s habit of bringing Abe with her on police matters affect him?

  Why is family so important to Abe? And not just his immediate family either. Why is learning about his ancestry such a huge event for him?

  Why do you think Sylvie chooses to live in one of the most desolate places in town, where there’s nothing but a narrow road lined tightly with a dark forest? Does this behavior seem to go with or against the way she acts toward the rest of the world?

  Why do you think Preacher Eli’s father-in-law was able to purchase the Carson property for such a low price when it was sold at auction? Do you think Eli’s reputation came into play? How much did the fact that three people had died on the property affect the
price, do you think?

  Do you think Leah was right when she immediately jumped at Preacher Eli being the prime suspect when Sylvie came home and found the five shotgun shells lined up neatly on her table?

  Abe’s religious point of view is very much that of a child and yet it seems to be fully functional. Where do you think he acquired such a point of view and, given his upbringing, why do you think it is so important (or maybe better put as unimportant) that his family went to the all-black Full Gospel Church for services?

  What do you think was the true cause of Tom Carson’s suicide, or was it a number of different factors? If the latter, what were they?

  The wooden swords are a major symbol throughout the book. What do they stand for? What is the significance of Abe breaking his sword when he does? What is happening in his life at this point in time?

  Do you think Leah makes the right decision in bringing her children to the crime scene when she finds out Orwin is in the process of breaking down Sylvie’s door? Do you think she tends to put them in needless harm, or is the opposite true and she’s actually overprotective?

  Ultimately, Sylvie having the loaded shotgun in her house turns out to possibly save her life. Do you agree that it was a good idea to keep it loaded and ready all that time?

  Is taking Abe and Carry to see their new grandparents a good idea, given the health of Grandma Sara? Leah hints early on that when Abe lost his grandpa on her side, it devastated him. Isn’t she just setting things up for that to happen again? Do you think they’ll visit again, or will this be a one-time occurrence?

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  Copyright © 2014 by Michael Hiebert

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