The River Valley Series

by Tess Thompson

  She dreamt of her mother, her slender hands moving in a white bowl sprinkled with cobalt blue flowers. Eleanor took a warm cloth from the bowl and laid it gently on Lee’s forehead. Her mother’s skin was unwrinkled, dewy with youth, her eyes clear, her brown hair in a shiny sheet on her shoulders. Lee’s star necklace, Tommy’s gift, nestled in the hollow of her mother’s neck. She put the cloth back in the bowl and her green eyes, so like Lee’s own, were sorrowful. “There’s so much you don’t know.”

  Lee awakened with a start, the feel of her mother on her skin. The windows were wide open and the night’s breeze smelled of dust, dry grasses, and the sweet rose of late fading summer. A memory of another dry August night, long forgotten, surfaced.

  The August Lee was thirteen was hot, the temperature running up to 108 in the late afternoon for five days in a row. Day after hot day Lee sat on the front porch sketching and making lists, longing for the feel of the water on her scorched skin. With each day of intense heat Eleanor seemed to disappear further inside herself. On the 16th of August Lee awakened around midnight, heart pounding, alarmed from either a dream or sound. The air had cooled slightly but her skin harbored the day’s heat. She threw her feet onto the hardwood floor, the fine hairs on her scrawny arms sticking up under her worn cotton nightgown. She tiptoed to her mother’s room and peeped through the crack in the door. The bed was empty. She sprinted down the stairs and searched the living room and kitchen. She was not in the house. Lee went to the screen door. Her mother was sprawled across the thirsty grass. The screen door creaked as she opened it and her mother called out, “Come see the stars. They’re falling.” She sounded as if she had a mouthful of cotton balls. Fully clothed in a flowered cotton dress with puffy sleeves and a full skirt that seemed a size too large and that Lee had never seen before, she held a half empty bottle of vodka next to her slack and puffy face. Lee looked up at the sky and indeed a meteor shower was in full expression across the Milky Way. Stars dripped across the black sky, brilliant as they took their final journey and disappeared as if they were an imaginative fancy, or nothing more than a memory.

  Lee crept to her and rested her fingertips on the pale flaccid skin of her mother’s forearm. “Mommy, it’s late. Come inside.”

  “They were supposed to come home on the sixteenth of August. Everyone’s gone. I’m all alone.”

  “Mommy, I’m here.”

  “You don’t count.”

  Stunned, Lee raised her head and stared at her, disoriented for a moment. Then she was above the scene. She saw her mother’s emaciated body and unfocused eyes that moved around the night sky as if on fire. Her cheeks were stained with tears and dust, her hair tangled and scattered on the parched grass. A girl, her skinny white arms wrapped around stick legs, a pinched nervous face, leaned over the woman. And she knew her mother was right, she didn’t count. She might not even exist, she thought.

  Now, she went back to sleep, knowing it was the only relief she would find.

  * * *

  “Lee, wake up.” She opened her eyes to Ellen shaking her. “You sick? I’ve been calling you for two days.”

  Lee rolled over and pulled the cover over her head. “I’m just tired.”

  Ellen yanked the covers from the bed. “Have you eaten?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Ellen opened the shades and threw back the covers. “Take a shower. Come down for lunch.”

  Lee flopped onto her other side, squinting at the bright light bolting through the window. “I don’t want to.”

  Ellen stood over her, hands on her hips. “I don’t want to have to drag you by the hair, but I will.”

  * * *

  Ellen stood at the stove, frying a frozen turkey burger on the skillet. There were slices of wheat bread on the plate next to the stove, covered with mustard and mayonnaise. Ellen looked up when she came into the kitchen. “Sit. Eat.” She dropped the burger onto the bread and set the plate in front of Lee. “Annie says you haven’t been to work in two days.”

  Lee took a small bite of the burger. It tasted like dust in her mouth. She choked down another bite and pushed the plate to the middle of the table. She rubbed her eyes and felt pain in every part of her body.

  Ellen washed the pan in the sink and dried it with the cotton towel hanging on the stove handle. She crossed her arms over her cotton dress. “Rumor has it Tommy’s sick too.” She raised her eyebrows and gave her a quizzical look.

  Lee felt tears start in her throat and turned to grab a napkin from the holder. There was a weathered envelope on top of the stack of napkins. There was a sticky note from Joshua that said, “Found this behind the dresser in one of the bedrooms. See you next week.” The postage date stamp said August 14, 1974. It was addressed to Eleanor Johnson. “What is it?” said Ellen.

  “Some old letter addressed to my mother. Joshua found it.”

  Ellen peered over her shoulder and Lee felt her stiffen. “That’s from Christopher. My son.”

  Lee looked at the address in the corner and saw the name Christopher White and Ellen’s address scrawled in black pen. “It’s to my mother?” She glanced up at Ellen and noticed her suntanned face was white.

  Ellen put a trembling hand on her shoulder and spoke in a strangled voice. “Open it.”

  Lee lifted a weathered school-lined paper from the envelope and tried to hand it to Ellen. Ellen stared at the wall above the kitchen table, gripping the back of the chair so that her knuckles were white. “You read it to me.”

  Lee took a deep breath and read, “August 14, 1974. Ellie, I’ve thought of nothing else since you told me about the baby and I hate that I’ve been at the fair knowing you are home alone, scared and unsure of the future. I can’t get the look of your frightened eyes out of my mind or the way you waved at me as I drove away with my mother, so small and fragile. I don’t want you to worry anymore, because I have a plan. When I get back on Saturday, we’ll sit down and tell our parents about the baby and that I’ll forget Princeton and go to the University of Oregon with you. I called this afternoon and they’ll enroll me for the fall. We can live in campus family housing. I’ll work and go to school and all our dreams will still come true, just not exactly as we planned. But, I love you and you love me and we will love this baby. I know you’re worried about my mother and your father, but their love won’t disappear just because we’ve made a mistake. I’m going to sleep now and dream of sunning on our favorite rock before we plunge headfirst into the deep, deep water of the river. All my love. Chris.”

  Lee stared at the letter. “What does this mean?”

  Ellen’s face had the shell-shocked look of a warrior after a battle. “It means Chris was your father.”

  “That’s impossible. That would make us related.”

  Ellen nodded yes and reached for the letter but then pulled back her hand and smoothed the front of her dress. “I had no idea.” She pulled out a chair and looked as if she might sit but jerked up and stood next to the counter instead. “I wanted to die myself when I got the news. For years and years every night before I went to sleep I prayed I wouldn’t wake up in the morning. If I’d known about you...” She trailed off and stared into space as if the past were there on a screen.

  Lee picked up the letter. His cursive looked like her own, especially the way he looped the p’s and b’s. “How can this be?”

  Ellen spoke as if she hadn’t heard her. “I told Christopher he wasn’t allowed to date, so they must have hid their relationship from us. I wanted him to concentrate on his studies. He wanted to go to Princeton more than anything in the world and I knew the only way we could pay for it was for him to get a scholarship. He did, y’know. He got that scholarship.”

  "But why didn’t she tell you?”

  Ellen sank into a chair and absently rubbed one knobby hand with the other. “I think she tried, once. Your mother went away to college the fall after they were all killed. When she came back in the spring, you were with her. She came to see me one day. You wer
e several months old. I wouldn’t look at you or hold you. It’s no excuse, but I couldn’t without breaking down about my own baby and maybe it was that bitterness that drove me to it, I don’t know, but I told her she should’ve put you up for adoption, that she had no skills and no business trying to raise a baby when she was a helpless child herself. I gave her a lecture about morals and I don’t know what else.” She paused and took a long shaky breath. “It’s my own fault she didn’t tell me.”

  Lee was too shocked to speak.

  “Next thing I knew she was living here and instead of trying to help her, I judged her every time I drove by and saw the yard going to weeds and the paint on the house peeling.”

  Lee cradled her stomach and stared at the letter. “What was he like?”

  She looked at Lee with new eyes. “He was kind of like you. Whip smart. Kindhearted but reserved at the same time. The way you figure and plan things, that was him too.” A trace of a smile crossed Ellen’s face. “He used to rescue all these animals he found in the woods, lizards with no tails, birds with hurt wings—always bringing them in my clean house.” Her eyes snapped and she chuckled. “Those hurt animals were kind of like your crew at Riversong, now that I think of it. He was ten when his dad died in the woods and overnight he had to grow up and take on things a boy shouldn’t have. Just like you did.” She studied Lee’s face. “These months since you’ve been home, I’ve dreamt of him almost every night.” She smoothed Lee’s hair, her eyes sad, even as her mouth moved to a half smile. “I should’ve known.”

  “Did it never occur to you?”

  Ellen shook her head no, gazing out the window. “You get these ideas about the people you love, these stories you tell yourself. I couldn’t imagine my little boy grown enough to make a baby. I still saw them as the children they once were, swimming and splashing at the river’s edge.”

  Lee’s words were choked as she tried to fight the lump in her throat. “I had these elaborate fantasies as a kid about my father, that he would come rescue me from her, from all this. But he never came and I hated her for that.” She shook her head and wiped the tears from her face.

  “If I’d known, I would’ve looked after you.”

  Lee wiped her face with a napkin, bitterness rising from her gut. “If I’m like him, why didn’t my mother love me?”

  Ellen pulled Lee to her spare chest. “Your mother felt alone in this world and it made her crazy.”

  “Just like me.”

  “No, you’re strong and steady. And, you have me. And your gang at Riversong. And, Tommy.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Lee hiked to Ellen’s swimming hole, carrying a small shovel. The early morning dew glistened on the flowers that poked through the wild grasses above the river. A decayed wooden swing swayed from a large oak, as if a child, moments before, had rocked and gazed at the blue sky while he swept his toes above the tickle of the grasses’ dry blades. Lee peered down the steep rocky trail to the patch of sand but her stomach made her too unsteady to risk taking the trail. She perched on the grass under the oak tree instead, breathing in the sunny rock smell of the river and watching the still luscious late summer leaves that rustled in the branches.

  Clumps of buttercups tickled her bare legs. She picked one and stroked the petals underneath her chin and tried to remember the childhood game—if you see yellow reflected on your skin are you made of butter or are you a princess? She closed her eyes and rested her head against the trunk of the oak tree, smelling moss and wet bark. Something scurried and she jerked her eyes open. A lizard ran up the trunk and some other hidden creature scampered through the grass. Overhead a hawk circled. She shivered and changed the focus of her eyes to the tree branch above her head. She thought of her father, who and what he was, and how much she wished to have known him.

  She pulled out the picture of the baby’s ultrasound and placed it in a small silk bag that had once held her engagement ring from Dan. She dug a foot deep hole, placed the silk bag in it and covered it with dirt. She closed her eyes and remembered Dan running across the soccer field and waving to her in the stands—how vital and happy he’d seemed in that moment. She picked a red wildflower and placed it on top of the mound of dirt and closed her eyes, envisioning Dan’s face. She let herself be overwhelmed with the thought of him so that she felt him there. She told him she was sorry she was unable to reach out to him and to love him as he should have been loved. In that moment, next to his makeshift memorial, she filled with forgiveness. She sensed that wherever he was, Dan was at peace and wished her happiness. She forgave herself too, for her inability to save him, and for moving on, for moving into the love Tommy offered her. The baby shifted inside her womb and she felt Dan beside her, blessing their child. She felt how sorry he was to miss the child’s life on the earth. He asked that she make sure the child knew about him and how much he would have loved her. And Lee said, silently, I will, I will.

  She opened her eyes and gazed at the blue sky, and a peace, an acceptance of what is, settled between her shoulder blades.

  Chapter 23

  That afternoon, she turned her phone over and over in her hands, saying a silent chant, Tommy call me, Tommy call me. It rang and she yanked open the cover but it was Mike, not Tommy. “Lee, my buddy at the Times just called. Said there’s a big spread on Riversong. I haven’t seen it yet but I’ll call you later to compare notes.” She walked to the end of the driveway to pick up her edition from the newspaper box. Four weeks had passed since the reporter came to the opening and with everything that had happened since, she’d forgotten about the hope for an article altogether.

  Back in her kitchen, she shifted in her chair, wincing because the baby was heavy now, just weeks from her due date, and opened the paper to the food section. Her stomach dropped. The headline read, “Disgraced Seattle Entrepreneur Reinvented as Food Maven.” There were two bylines under the headline, Sylvia Nox and Alex Wright. Instantly Lee knew Sylvia’s boyfriend was the business section writer that cornered her at the press meeting the day Dan died. Sylvia had said, “He gets assigned to the business section to follow all the high tech companies.” Next to the article was a large photo taken at a fundraiser she and Dan attended two years previously. In the picture, Dan, dressed in a tuxedo, had his arm around Lee in front of the Seattle Art Museum. The Seattle Times must have had it in their files and pulled it for the article. The reporters had done their homework and rehashed it all, detailing Dan’s suicide and the crumbling of Existence Games, Inc. The only item the reporters didn’t detail, because they didn’t know, was the debt to DeAngelo, who would now know where she was.

  Lee ran upstairs and pulled a suitcase from the shelf in the closet, stuffing it full of clothes and toiletries. She called Ellen’s house but there was no answer. She left a message on her voicemail, saying she had to leave unexpectedly and would call her when she was safe, but not to expect to hear from her for some time. She hung up the phone, opened the door a crack and surveyed the yard, saw nothing and ran to her car.

  On the highway she headed south, with no plan other than escape. She drove through town, not looking at Riversong, afraid she’d break down if she glanced at the familiar blue awning. Her mind was a tumble of half thoughts and images: Von’s gun, the menu at Riversong, Alder’s head in her lap, Tommy’s voice, and the baby. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a car approaching from the distance. Her heart leapt to her throat and she pushed harder on the gas pedal. The car was right behind her and it was a man in the driver’s seat, his hand gesturing and waving. She couldn’t think, couldn’t see. She pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the car lurched forward. She saw the odometer read 70, then 80 and she was a mile out of town. All of a sudden, the road curved and she steered to correct but it was too late. Her car spun out of control, across the opposite lane, and began to roll. In midair she heard herself scream and thought of the baby. She felt the car land upright and heard a thundering crash and shattering glass. The seat belt held her
tight but her head wobbled and her teeth rattled. She clutched her stomach. Then it was quiet but for the sputtering and spitting of steam and fluid from the car’s engine. Outside of the car, the air above the dry earth wavered with the late summer heat. She looked across the road. The other car was stopped. A man got out and ran across the highway towards her. Run, she told herself, run. She opened the door, hundred-degree heat blasting her like an oven door. She stumbled in the gravel on the side of the road, sweat dripping in her eyes. She fell, her mind acknowledging pain in a distant way as small sharp stones embedded into the skin of her knees. Hair plastered to her scalp, she scrambled up and started to run again. Then the man was upon her. He tackled her from behind and they both fell, his body cushioning Lee from the hard ground. She heard a voice that seemed familiar and still she couldn’t think. The man shook her. “Lee, it’s me. What’s the matter with you?”

  She wiped the sweat from her eyes and Mike’s face floated before her like a mirage. “Mike?”

  He carried her across the hot pavement to his car and placed her into the passenger seat. He got in the driver’s side and started the engine. The air conditioning blew on her face and she tried to breathe but her chest was tight like she might suffocate. Mike tapped the temperature gauge and muttered a curse under his breath. “It’s 103 degrees out there and dammit, you’re about to have a baby. Do you have any sense?” He looked at her and shook his head. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “I thought you were someone else.”

  “Is someone after you?”

  “Do you have a gun in here?”

  “Under the seat.”