A State of Grace

by Traci DePree

  Both brothers agreed and signed documents to that effect. Then the group took the bouncing dog outside. Susan stood with the How Now Dog Chow men in a line near the house while Paul and the brothers moved to the obstacle course.

  Paul flipped a coin, and Jack called heads. When the coin landed on heads, Paul asked the younger brother, “Are you going first or last?”

  “I’ll go first.” He gave his brother a withering look, then took ahold of the dog’s red leash and led her to the center of the course. Unhooking her, he gave the first command. “Scout,” he said. Scout looked at him and tilted her head. “Sit, girl.”

  She tilted her head the other way, then turned in a circle and lay down. Jack squatted down beside her and pressed her bottom to the ground, forcing her to sit up. She licked his hand. “Argh,” Jack said under his breath, though Paul could hear him plainly. “I said, sit!” This time she stayed in place.

  Next he gave the command to roll over. Scout moved to standing and came alongside him. “I didn’t say heel, you dumb mutt. I said roll over!” He plopped the dog onto her side and attempted to roll her over, but she struggled to get back onto her feet and growled at him, revealing her sharp white teeth. Paul was afraid she’d actually bite him, but she calmed down, and Jack went on.

  Jack put his hands on his hips.

  “Doing good there,” Carl commented, chuckling to himself.

  Jack turned on him and said, “Don’t you even start!”

  Seeing a break in the action, Scout bounded over to Aunt Susan for a head patting.

  “Get back here!” Jack shouted. To his credit, the dog did obey that command, albeit with her tail between her legs.

  “Let’s do the course,” Jack said, ignoring Paul’s instruction to also demonstrate the “stay” command.

  Leaving the dog at one end of the beam, Jack moved to the other end and called, “Come here, Scout.”

  The dog bypassed the beam and panted up to his side. So Jack grabbed her collar and dragged her back to the other end of the beam, attempting to get her to stand on the thin, long piece of wood. She put her front paws on the wood and barked at Jack.

  “Get up!” he grimaced as he lifted her rear end. He had her back paws on the beam for a moment before she plopped back down on the brown grass.

  “Up!” He lifted her again, but at that moment a squirrel darted across the yard and into the woods. As soon as she spotted it, Scout was off and running. She barked at the furry creature and tore after it around the house, down the driveway and into the woods.

  Everyone in the group exchanged disbelieving looks for a moment, and then they all took off after the dog, each calling her name, including the men in suits. Carl was in the lead.

  Paul worried that they’d have another skunk incident. Yet within minutes, she was back, panting and slightly muddier.

  Carl had her in his arms and handed her to Jack, who attempted to finish the course with her. But by that time, she was too distracted to pay any attention to him at all. She kept jumping up on him and barking. In turn, Jack muttered under his breath and at one point smacked the dog on the bottom. She made a tiny yelping sound, which caused Aunt Susan to gasp. Then he snapped the leash back onto her collar and brought her to Carl.

  “Okay,” Jack said. “Show me that you can do any better with this...this mongrel.”

  Carl took the leash, then bent down to look Scout in the eyes. She smiled her best doggie grin, and Carl patted her head. “Okay, girl,” he said.

  He walked with her to the center of the course, then took off the leash and gave the panting pooch a small doggie treat. She smiled up at him as if ready to do his bidding. “All right, girl,” he said in a quiet voice. “Let’s show ’em what you’ve got, okay?” She barked once, happily.

  Then Carl straightened up and held out his hand. Scout stood, all her attention on him, even though she looked eager to head off for another run.

  “Okay, Scout. Sit.” He pointed a finger toward the ground.

  The dog looked at him for a few long moments, tilting her head this way and that before finally obeying. Carl leaned down, patted her head, and gave her another small treat.

  Next he gave the command to roll over, using a hand signal that demonstrated the action. Scout laid down, and Carl gave her a little help with the rest of the motion—though to her credit, the dog did actually roll.

  Finally Carl told her to sit again and then added, “Stay, Scout, stay” as he walked to the far end of the course. She squirmed a bit, her impatience obvious, but she didn’t move from her spot. When Carl turned back to her, he paused and then said, “All right, girl! Good dog!” She bounded to him for another treat and some loving.

  When he moved to the obstacle course, Scout seemed to have figured out what it was Carl wanted from her. Her gaze was locked on him, and the elder brother managed to get her to obey, not perfectly, but she did do the basics.

  On the balance beam, he set her gently at the start, then walked just ahead of her as she traversed its length. She hopped through the tire swing when Carl poked his head through and held out a doggie treat on the other side. Finally came the cones. Carl simply walked ahead of her, weaving in and out of the orange markers, and she followed him. He snapped her leash back on and returned to the observers at the side. Susan and Paul applauded as the dog-food representatives whispered between themselves. Jack stood at the back of the group with his arms crossed over his chest.

  After a few moments, the dark-haired suit stepped forward and said, “It seems obvious to us that the dog belongs to the last participant.” He pointed to Carl. “She obeys you better than your brother and seems to have a great deal of affection for you. So it’s our decision that you should get the dog and therefore the prize from How Now Dog Chow.”

  There was a sudden rustling noise from Jack’s direction, and everyone turned to see what was going on. The younger brother had swooped the dog into his arms. She gave a yelp, but by then Jack was running down the driveway toward his car at the front of the house.

  When he was almost there, he turned and shouted, “This isn’t over! You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” Then he shoved the dog inside, started the engine, and was gone.

  MARY WAS A PRETTY, slim woman in her late forties. She had dark hair in a trendy cut and deep brown eyes that gave her the Mediterranean look Kate had noticed in the photograph Arnie Kerr had given her. She was preparing tea in the tiny Memphis apartment kitchen while Kate sat on the barstool at the counter. Mary set the cups carefully on a tray and blew out a breath, then stilled her shaking hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m nervous.”

  “You don’t need to be nervous with me.” Kate smiled into her eyes as she imagined herself in the woman’s place, surprised by a stranger with life-changing news. Kate’s heart went out to her.

  Mary set the teakettle on to boil. She was on the other side of the counter, standing with one hand resting on the surface and the other playing with a paper napkin. “Why didn’t she come to find Valerie herself?” Mary asked.

  “It’s complicated,” Kate began. “I want you to know that Patricia, Valerie’s birth mother, completely respects your privacy. If you and Valerie don’t want to meet her, that’s okay. She doesn’t want you to feel...pushed into anything you don’t want to do.”

  Her brow furrowed. “I’m not following,” Mary said. “I thought the whole reason you came was to find Valerie for her.”

  “It’s not for her, exactly, though I feel certain that she would like to meet Valerie and you. She’s told me how grateful she is for what you’ve done, and she completely respects you as Valerie’s mother. But you see,” Kate paused, “Valerie has a twin sister.”

  Mary’s hand went to her mouth. “A twin? But why didn’t the social worker mention that to me? We would have adopted her too if we’d known—”

  “Marissa wasn’t put up for adoption,” Kate said. She leaned forward and met Mary’s eyes. “It was too hard for Pa
tricia to...give up both girls.”

  “I can understand that,” she said, her eyes clouded. “So she wants the girls to meet?”

  The teakettle sounded, and Mary went to turn off the burner. She set the tray of cups, sugar, cream, and an assortment of tea bags on the counter in front of Kate and then poured the water. The two women prepared their hot beverages in silence, the only sound, that of their spoons clinking against the sides of the cups.

  Then Kate looked up at Mary and answered. “You see, Marissa has leukemia.”

  “Oh...” Mary said, her stirring hand stilled. “That’s horrible.”

  “We’re hoping that Valerie would be willing to be tested to see if she’s a bone-marrow match. The likelihood is higher among blood relatives, especially siblings...”

  “I don’t know how Valerie’s going to handle all of this,” Mary said honestly. “She’s had her struggles with being adopted in the first place, and to learn that she has a sister...” She shook her head. “She always wanted a sister but...” she paused. “Well, her father and I didn’t have the best marriage. By the time we would have adopted another child, things had started falling apart. We couldn’t have biological kids.” Mary looked away.

  Kate wanted to comfort her, but she knew that would’ve made the situation even more awkward.

  “I wish we’d had an open adoption,” Mary confessed. “I think it might’ve made things easier for Valerie, instead of always wondering about who she is and the circumstances that led her birth mother to give her up.” She took a sip of her tea.

  “Any child would wonder the same,” Kate said.

  “I wish I could help you,” Mary went on, “but my daughter hasn’t been real happy with me these last few years, since the divorce. She’s blamed me for her dad moving away...I don’t know if I’d even be able to get her to talk to me, much less her birth mother. I could try, but...she’s been living with a girlfriend down near Graceland—”

  “Graceland?” Kate said. She remembered the many Elvis trinkets she had seen around Marissa’s room and wondered if Valerie loved his music as much as her sister did. Could such a common interest be biological? She shook the thought off as crazy. Yet she’d heard far crazier things about twins who first met in adulthood. Their lives were often far more similar than any scientific research could explain.

  “Oh yes,” Mary said, “she’s always had a fascination with that place. I don’t know why. When I told her I’d gotten a job in Memphis, she was thrilled to move here just to be closer to her hero.”

  Kate chose to take this news as a sign from God that everything would work out just fine. But then the thought crossed her mind that things hadn’t worked out so well for the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.

  PAUL FOUND JACK in the backyard at his Aunt Susan’s house that afternoon. Scout was tied to the dog run that went out to the doghouse near the garage. Jack was splitting wood with long, angry whacks of the ax.

  Paul made his way across the brown grass. Jack looked up when he was halfway to him. Then he turned his back to Paul, put another log on the stump, and lifted the heavy ax overhead, bringing it down with a heavy grunt. The dog barked, and Jack turned to scowl at her. “Shut up, you dumb mutt!” he shouted.

  “Jack,” Paul said, closing the distance between them. “This can’t go on.”

  Jack shrugged and lifted one of the pieces of wood that had fallen to the ground and set it on the stump for another split. Scout let out another bark, then settled to sleep in the doorway to her house.

  “You know that the dog-food company is going to make the check out to Carl regardless of whether you give the dog back or not, don’t you? You signed the release before the competition.”

  “They can talk to my lawyer,” Jack grunted.

  “You don’t want to do that, and you know it,” Paul said, hoping it was true.

  Jack turned toward Paul, a hurt look in his eyes. “Why does Carl get everything? Since we were little kids, it was always Carl this and Carl that. Dad always put him first...”

  His words fell away, but Paul didn’t miss their significance.

  “Did your dad give the dog to Carl?” he intuited.

  Jack nodded. “He didn’t give me a thing. I just wanted him to think of me once. That was all. He had two sons, not just Carl. Yet he acted as if I didn’t even exist.” He set another small log on the stump and brought the ax down. The log split neatly in half, falling to the ground with a thumping sound. “I was the kid Mom wanted, the tack-on. He would’ve been happy if I’d never happened.”

  “I doubt that,” Paul said.

  Jack met his eyes with a look that said, You never met my dad.

  “He’s in a nursing home now,” Jack went on. “With Alzheimer’s. He doesn’t even remember my name half the time. But he remembers Carl! Good old Carl.” He bent to gather the pieces of wood from the ground, then placed them on the neat stack that filled the space between two tall pine trees behind him.

  “So, you thought if you at least had Scout, you’d have a piece of your father’s love?” Paul asked.

  Jack shrugged. “At least Carl wouldn’t rub my nose in it every day.”

  “Does he really do that?” Paul asked.

  Jack turned his back again and set up another piece of wood. “I’ll never have what I really want,” Jack admitted. “You might as well take the dog.”

  SOMETHING HAD CHANGED. Patricia could feel it. There was something different about her daughter that Wednesday. Perhaps it was simply that she was tired after having so many visitors the day before. But there was more. Her skin, which was pale before, now was almost blue in appearance—it had the look of death. Patricia tried not to think that, but every time she gazed at her daughter’s sleeping form, she saw it.

  Marissa had been sleeping all day with a few stirrings here and there. Each time she would awaken, it was with an urgency, as if she were frantic about something. Her wide eyes would search the room until she found her mother, and then her tense body would relax and she’d drift away once again.

  Patricia had asked the nurses to send their apologies to any visitors, except Pastor Hanlon. Marissa simply wasn’t up to it today.

  The curtains were drawn against the day. Patricia hadn’t even looked outside to see if it was sunny or gloomy. She sat in the chair next to the bed and watched the rhythm of her daughter’s breathing.

  Another image flashed through her mind. It had only been a few short months ago, in this same hospital. Only then it had been Ray lying there, that blue tinge about him. His rugged, handsome form withered and struggling up until the very end, as Marissa struggled now.

  Patricia touched her daughter’s warm hand, which was turned palm-side up on the bed. Marissa closed her fingers around her mother’s. Somehow that simple action gave Patricia hope. Marissa was still here. Patricia had to keep believing. Lord, she closed her eyes and sent up a silent prayer, be here with us. Find a way to heal my daughter’s body. I’m begging you. Because I love her so much.

  When she opened her eyes, Marissa was gazing at her. “How long have I been sleeping?” she asked.

  “Most of the day,” Patricia said.

  “Has Kate called about Valerie?”

  “No.”

  “She should have seen her by now, right?”

  Patricia nodded. “I’m guessing so.”

  “Don’t be scared, Mom.” She squeezed her hand. “I’m not.”

  “About finding Valerie?” Patricia asked.

  “No. About me dying.” Her dark eyes penetrated her mother’s blue gaze. “If I die, promise me you won’t hide from the world. You have to go on with your life. For me. I want you to be happy and not shut yourself away like you did when Dad died. Take risks, even if it means hurting. At least you’ll know you’re alive. You have so much to offer.”

  “Don’t talk about—” Patricia started, tears welling in her eyes.

  “I have to, Mom,” Marissa insisted. “Because I love you. And you have another dau
ghter, who I’m sure would like to know you and love you too. If you’ll just take the chance to get to know her. It’s like you’ve been given a gift in my place, and that’s okay. I’m going to be okay. Heaven will be a glorious place.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Kate parked her Honda on the street in front of the apartment building where Valerie’s mother said she was living. It was a four-story brick building, modest but nice looking. The front was landscaped in cylindrical-shaped hedges and short, round evergreen bushes under the first-story windows. A cement sidewalk cut the brown lawn in half.

  Kate stared through her windshield, gathering the courage to go in. She wondered how Valerie would receive her, especially without her mother there to ease the way. Kate had tried to talk Mary into coming with her, but the woman had insisted that her presence would only make it harder. Kate didn’t know whether that was true, but it sure wasn’t easy on her own.

  Mary had warned Kate that Valerie’s schedule was a bit unpredictable, since she was a student, but Kate was determined to wait for her. After a while a slight woman carrying a brown paper grocery bag made her way along the sidewalk toward the apartment building. She looked to be in her early twenties, and she had long dark hair that hung almost to her waist. When the young woman raised her head and Kate saw her face, she gasped. She had to be Valerie. Kate was sure of it. She had Marissa’s face—those dark, penetrating eyes, and dimples—and the same hair Kate had seen in pictures of Marissa before the leukemia treatments caused it to fall out.

  Kate climbed out of the car and walked toward the girl, smiling at her. “Valerie Olsen?” she called.

  “Yes. Do I know you?” Valerie stopped walking and adjusted the grocery bag in her arms.

  “I’m Kate Hanlon,” she began. “I’m from Copper Mill, near Chattanooga. Your mother said I could find you here.”

  At the mention of her mother, the girl’s eyes narrowed. “My mother sent you?”