“Shall we eat here?” Diane asked after a while. Mary looked her way. The Appleseed Café, the sign said. The front wall was all windows, the tables covered with checkered cloths, the atmosphere cheerful. A few diners sat outside in the sunlight.
“Yes. It looks like a nice place,” Mary said.
“Shall we sit outside?”
“Yes,” Mary agreed and was glad Diane had suggested it. They found an empty table and sat down, and Mary turned her face up to the sun for a moment and closed her eyes. It felt warm and healing. She opened them. Diane was looking at her. She smiled, Diane smiled back, and Mary felt a little ill at ease. It had been a long time since she had sat down with a friend without some purpose between them or some function to perform, even if it was just serving them a meal. She wasn’t sure what to say or how to behave. She was spared by the arrival of the menus. They both examined them. Diane ordered a spinach salad. Mary did the same.
“Is that really what you wanted?” Diane asked when the waitress left.
Mary felt surprised. She lifted her shoulders slightly and was ready to say yes, it sounded good, when she realized the truth. “No,” she said. “I really wanted a hamburger and onion rings and a chocolate milkshake.”
Diane laughed, a merry sound, and Mary found herself laughing, too.
“Well, why didn’t you order it, for heaven’s sake?”
And Mary, for the life of her, couldn’t give an answer. Calories came to mind, but she knew that wasn’t really the truth.
The waitress served their lunch. They chatted about Carl. About Elijah. About their gardens. About the drought again, Diane’s face taking on a worried expression but clearing quickly. “I guess Carl’s illness has put things into perspective for me,” she said. “I’m not so worried about things as I was before.”
“If everybody is healthy and happy, that’s what matters,” Mary said quietly, and she felt that familiar desolation creep over her, and having it back made her realize that for a while, for a few hours, at least, it had been gone.
“I think I know why you ordered the spinach salad,” Diane said quietly.
“What?” Mary was disconcerted at the sudden change of subject.
“I said, I think I know why you ordered the salad instead of what you really wanted,” Diane repeated.
Mary gave her head a small shake, not sure what in the world Diane was talking about.
“I haven’t seen you happy in years,” Diane said, still in that gentle quiet tone. “In fact, I’ve seen you push happiness and joy away, as if you didn’t deserve to have them.”
Mary felt as shocked as if Diane had taken her glass of water and thrown it in her face. She stared for a moment, then found, to her dismay, that her eyes were filling with tears. She picked up her napkin and pressed it against them, sniffed, and cleared her throat. Diane reached across the table and covered her hand with her own.
“I’ve watched you carry this burden for too long, Mary. I can’t keep silent any longer.”
Mary shook her head. She wished she hadn’t come, for there was no sense in this conversation. Diane could not help her. No one could.
“I’ve prayed for you, my friend. Oh, how I’ve prayed for you.” Diane’s face was tender and grieved. “I’ve prayed for all of you until I have no prayers left. Just murmurs and groanings too deep for words.”
Mary remained silent, fighting back the tears that had a grip on her throat. The waitress came and took away their plates.
“It’s too much to get over,” she finally managed to say, and she remembered again how Margaret had looked. She felt again her hopelessness and horror when she had realized she was gone. “It’s too big to heal.”
“That’s a lie straight from the pit of hell,” Diane said, and Mary’s mouth dropped in sheer, simple surprise.
“There is no condition of the human heart that Jesus Christ can’t heal,” Diane said in a strong, fervent voice.
Mary was silent, but inside she felt as if two opponents were locked in a fight to death. Oh, how she wanted to believe those words, but something prevented her from grasping their hope.
“Margaret is gone, Mary,” Diane said, and it was a shock to hear that name spoken aloud. “She’s with Jesus now, and nothing is going to bring her back. And neither one of us can fix Annie and Sam, no matter how much we might like to. What are you going to do, Mary? Live out the rest of your life in sorrow and guilt?”
“It’s not that simple,” Mary protested, her voice hot with an anger she hadn’t known she felt.
Diane looked interested rather than offended. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again.
“What?” Mary demanded.
“Nothing.” Diane closed her mouth into a tight line.
“You may as well say whatever it is,” Mary challenged her. “You’re already in it with both feet. How much worse could you make it?”
Diane shrugged philosophically, apparently agreeing with her logic. “You may get angry at me for saying it,” she warned.
“I may,” Mary shot back, and Diane laughed out loud, obviously not used to such honesty from her.
“Well, it just occurred to me that perhaps it’s not yourself you blame.”
It was a huge rock of a statement, and it landed on Mary painfully. Only her denial would relieve that pressure, and she could not make it.
Twenty-eight
Annie stopped for lunch at the Subway in Silver Falls, then drove to the little grocery. The store was open, the sign turned around, and Annie felt a swift relief flood her heart. She parked the car and went inside. The bell jingled, and after a moment Mrs. Rogers appeared. Her face lit into a brilliant smile.
“I just knew you were going to come back,” she said triumphantly. “The Lord told me you were.”
Annie just smiled.
“Come on back!” Mrs. Rogers beckoned from the doorway, and Annie followed her. Something smelled delicious. It turned out to be freshly brewed coffee and blueberry pie.
“Have a piece?” Mrs. Rogers invited.
“Didn’t you make it for something special?”
“I told you, the Lord told me you were coming.”
Annie couldn’t help but laugh. “In that case, yes. I’d love a piece.”
Mrs. Rogers cut her a generous slice, and Annie took a bite, followed by the hot, strong coffee, generously laced with sugar and real cream. Mrs. Rogers helped herself, and the two of them chatted and ate.
“I knew you’d be back,” she repeated.
Annie smiled. “The Lord told you.”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Rogers said easily, then smiled when she saw Annie’s skeptical face. “Sometimes Herman doubted that the Lord had spoken to me, too. But His sheep really do hear His voice.”
Annie did not comment on that. “Herman was your husband?” she asked.
“For forty-nine years,” Mrs. Rogers said. “Just missed our fiftieth anniversary by three months.”
“I’m sorry,” Annie said.
Mrs. Rogers nodded in acknowledgment. “That was a hard year,” she agreed. “Imagene wanted me to shut things down and move to Charleston. Said the store didn’t make any money and wasn’t any use to anybody.”
Annie frowned, not sure what to say. Imagene sounded like a heartless person, but she was Mrs. Rogers’ daughter, after all.
“I don’t make much money,” Mrs. Rogers admitted. “If I had to make a living, I’d have to do something else. But this place is long paid for, and I live off my social security and Herman’s retirement from the railroad. I told Imagene, ‘Thank you kindly, but no. N-O.’ Told her this was my life, and this was where I was going to stay. There’s no sense at all in running away from things.”
Something in the simplicity of that statement stabbed Annie with reproof, for wasn’t that what she had done? Run away from her life? Wasn’t that what she was still intending to do, only now to Los Angeles rather than Seattle?
“I’m getting a divorce,” she said blu
ntly. “I suppose you’d call that running away.” She waited to see what the old woman would say.
“Don’t surprise me none,” Mrs. Rogers said, swinging her leg. “I knew you had some kind of trouble the first time I set eyes on you. But there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.”
Annie frowned and wondered what that was supposed to mean. “I’ve already filed,” she said, as if that would end the discussion. “It will be final in a couple of months.” She swallowed. Somehow that plan seemed more real now. It may have been hatched far away in cold, anonymous distance, but she was freshly aware it would be carried out here in the presence of aching flesh.
She went over her plan again. She would return to Seattle, get into her truck—Sam’s truck, she realized guiltily—and drive to Los Angeles. She would begin her new job working for Jason Niles. She would return to Seattle to be granted her divorce, and then she would be free and unencumbered, but the thought did not bring the happiness she had thought it would.
Mrs. Rogers quirked an eyebrow. “Like I said, sometimes we make our plans, and sometimes the Lord knows better.”
Annie stayed silent. She would not get into an argument with her hostess. She took another bite of her pie and looked at the ceramic loaf of bread on the table in front of her. “My grandmother had one of these,” she said, smiling.
“Take one,” Mrs. Rogers invited. “See what the Lord has to say to you today.”
Annie eyed her warily. Mrs. Rogers smiled encouragingly, picked it up, and held it out. Annie took a rectangle of cardboard from the Scripture loaf. She read, blinking. She handed it to Mrs. Rogers, who read it out loud.
“Blessed are they that mourn,” she said softly, “for they shall be comforted.” She nodded soberly. “Now there’s a true word.”
Annie stared past her at the wall, but really she was seeing Margaret. She had not been comforted. And she had mourned these five long years.
Mrs. Rogers took a sip of her coffee and leaned back in her chair. “Annie ran off and got married after her papa said no.”
Annie was jerked out of her thoughts into the story of her namesake.
“They went to a justice of the peace. Her sister came, and Annie wore the sprigged muslin she’d ordered from Fancy’s.” The old woman smiled, and Annie smiled back. She set the piece of cardboard on the table.
“She married Clay Wright, and they took off for the hills. Her sister went back to Asheville and told their father and mother, and they were heartbroken, as you might imagine. The young reverend was, as well. He kept on with his work, but he didn’t marry. There were plenty of women after him, but he had had his heart set on that one, and I guess the thing that hurt his feelings the worst was that he had thought the Lord had promised him that young Annie was going to be his wife. It’s a terrible thing to get yourself offended with God, and the devil tried to get him to take that road, but Lucas—that was his name—he didn’t listen. He just went about his business, and he gave it to God, and every day he prayed for Annie Wright and her husband that the Lord would bless them. And for a while it looked like those prayers were answered.
“They had the boys and then a few years later the girl, but after that times got hard. There was a drought, and the crops failed. They had to sell off their stock, and Clayton went to work logging. He was gone, working too hard, and all out of sorts when he was at home.”
Annie listened intently, amazed at how closely their stories were lining up.
“The children bothered him, and Annie found herself trying to keep them quiet and out of sight when he was around, which wasn’t often. He worked from sunup to sundown, and then he’d fall into bed just to get up and do it again. The third year of the drought they were just about out of food, and that winter was a lean one. Then the boys died, and things got even worse.”
Annie was glad Mrs. Rogers didn’t tell the story in detail. She didn’t want to know the details. She had enough of those lodged in her mind.
“After the boys died, Clay went to the cotton warehouse. Left Annie with enough wood for a couple of weeks and said he was going to come home and take care of things, but the weeks passed and he didn’t come.” Mrs. Rogers got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. “Have some more?” she asked.
Annie held out her cup, but she felt impatient for her to go on with the story.
“After a while Annie Wright was getting desperate. There was no food and no money to buy it, no wood to burn, so she bundled up the baby—Sarah—and she went to the general store to give up her wedding ring to get some cash. Nobody wanted it. They had troubles of their own, but the fellow that owned the general store was a kind man, and he offered to drive her down to her people in Asheville. In the snow.
“Well, you can imagine going down those mountain roads in a horse buggy, slipping and sliding all over the road, and she was wondering if she’d made a bad mistake, and if it hadn’t have been for the little girl, she wouldn’t have cared. But they finally did get to Asheville, and she went home. She reconciled with her papa, and oh, his heart like to have broke to see her the way she was, all wore out and thin. He wanted to keep her there and coddle her, but she wouldn’t hear of nothing but getting on the train and going to Charleston. Said she was going to find her husband.”
The bell jingled. Mrs. Rogers shook her head. “I should have turned the sign around,” she said, clicking her tongue in annoyance. “Just hold on. This won’t take but a minute.” Sure enough she was back in amazing time. She settled back in and took up where she left off.
“Well, her father wasn’t well. His heart, you know.” She thumped on her chest. “He was too sick to carry her to Charleston, but he wouldn’t hear of her going by herself, so he found somebody to go with her.”
“The reverend,” Annie guessed triumphantly, and Mrs. Rogers smiled.
“Her sister,” Mrs. Rogers said, and Annie felt deflated. “I was just joshing you.” Mrs. Rogers grinned. “Reverend Lucas went with them, too, for single women couldn’t go traveling around by themselves in those days. Annie left her daughter with her mother, and the three of them set out for Charleston.”
“Did they find Clay?”
“They did, in a way.” Mrs. Rogers got up and came back with the pasteboard box. She handed Annie a clipping. Annie read it, scanning the short piece for the relevant facts. Clay, it seemed, had been the unnamed victim in a barroom brawl just one day after arriving in Charleston.
“All that time she waited, and he was already dead,” Annie mused, and she could imagine Annie Wright there in the empty cabin with the baby and her guilt. “What did she do after that?”
“She stayed in Asheville at her father’s house. But it wasn’t the same. For you see, she’d grown up. Going to parties and teas didn’t seem to make her happy any longer, so she started helping out at the church.”
“She and Lucas fell in love,” Annie finished.
“Eventually. But first he was just a friend. Read what she wrote,” Mrs. Rogers invited and handed Annie the journal.
“Earth has no sorrow, Annie, that heaven cannot heal,” Lucas said to me today, and he gave me a picture of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. I thanked him, and I hung it on the wall of my room. When the waters of sorrow feel as if they would close over my head as they did my sons, I look at it and try to believe it is true.
Annie blinked. “What finally happened? How did she ever get over it?”
“The Comforter did His work,” Mrs. Rogers said softly. “That’s the only hope.”
She turned toward the end of the diary and showed Annie another entry.
He came to me today as I was grieving, and this time something was different than it has been before. I felt Him touch me. Almost as if He really did reach out and let His hand rest upon me. I felt something different in my heart, for where it has been cold and empty, it began to fill up with something that felt like warm healing oil. I cannot describe it except to say that I felt completely at peace, and I know I shall see them again
. And I know that my Redeemer liveth.
Annie took a deep breath and set the book down. “My daughter died,” she said softly. “She drowned five years ago. She was four years old.”
Mrs. Rogers face was lined with sorrow, but she did not seem surprised. She nodded. “Well.” She nodded soberly. “I knew it was something. Something big.”
Annie blinked, her pain as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.
“The Comforter did his work for Annie Wright,” Mrs. Rogers said softly, covering Annie’s hand with her own. “He’ll do the same for you.”
“How?” Annie asked it desperately, for she wished it were true. She wanted it to be.
“That’s the last thing you need to worry about,” Mrs. Rogers said, and Annie felt surprised. “The how is up to Him. The only thing you’ve got to do is ask Him and be willing for Him to do His work.”
Ah. That was the rub, wasn’t it? For the truth was, she had been angry. She could see that now. Angry and cold and bitter and turning as far away as she could in her bitterness.
“Are you ready to come back?” Mrs. Rogers asked, and Annie remembered Annie Wright making the long journey back down to Asheville, coming back to the people who had loved and waited for her all along.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Mrs. Rogers nodded and gave her hand a pat. “Well, that’s a start. An honest no is better than a half-minded yes.”
The door jingled, and Annie wiped her nose and gathered up her purse.
“I’d better go,” she said. “Thank you for the pie. And for sharing the diaries with me.”
Mrs. Rogers seemed accepting as they rose and went out into the store. “Had about all you can take for one day, I reckon.”
Twenty-nine
After leaving Diane, Mary did not drive to the interstate and home. She drove out of town, followed a meandering road until she reached a grove of trees, then pulled to the shoulder and stopped the car.
What would it feel like, she asked herself, to stop blaming herself? To forgive herself? How would it feel to release her guilt like a fluttering bird and watch it go flying away? And she knew, somehow, that even if she were to do that, she would still be left with anger and blame, with that aching, wrenching sense of injustice. Diane was right, she realized, and she faced the fact she had been avoiding for years. As she looked at it straight on, it came into clear, ugly focus. She wasn’t only angry at herself. She blamed someone else.
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