“She’s beautiful.”
“She’s so grown up.”
“I can see that.”
“It hasn’t been long since she thought boys had cooties.”
Ben laughed, only the laugh wasn’t wholehearted. He couldn’t shake the feeling of something nagging at him.
. . . since she thought boys had cooties.
Cooties.
Cootie. That boy’s name had been Cootie.
No. Realization hit Ben. Connor.
The boy had first introduced himself as Connor.
“Bill,” Ben said, leaning forward against the desk. “I think I might have another name.”
Bill yanked out a piece of paper and a stub of a pencil. “Let me have it.”
“All this time we’ve been looking for a Cootie. He said it to us once when he came to the house. Connor. He called himself Cootie but his name was Connor.”
“Connor . . . Connor Banks? Is that who we are looking for?”
“I believe so.”
“I’ll run it through the system,” Bill said. “See what comes up.”
NORA WAS AT HOME alone when the knock sounded on the Crabtrees’s front door. When Nora answered it and recognized her pastor, she froze with fear. “Pete? What is it?”
He reached a hand to her. “Don’t be scared, Nora. It’s—”
“Why are you here?”
“I’ve come because of Creede. He’s asked me to do this.”
“Pete?” She touched his arm, her fingers trembling.
“Creede landed at Addison Airport a few minutes ago and phoned me. He’s taken a tour in the crop duster. He thinks he’s found them.”
Creede. Nora backed away, holding the door open so Pete could follow her. The moment her legs touched the edge of the sofa, she sank onto it. “Ben isn’t here. He’s at the sheriff’s office. If Creede’s found her, does he know if she’s safe?”
“We’ll drive to the courthouse and get Ben, Nora. If you’ll come with me, I’ll explain on the way.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The helicopter rotors pulsed in the air, sending off a vibration that throbbed against Nora’s eardrums. As it lifted off and left her and Ben standing on a landing pad two blocks away from the Magnolia Hotel, Nora felt as if she wasn’t standing in this odd place, that someone else was moving her, and touching her heart, and making her breathe. The helicopter pilot had given them directions during the flight. They knew which streets to cross to find their way.
When they stepped into the elevator lobby of the Magnolia Hotel, the gold-leaf and plaster ceiling seemed surreal. For long absurd moments, she considered their surroundings and thought, Tess has brought Tansy Aster to a palace! She’d read about it once in Texas Monthly, how this old oil building had been transformed into an upscale downtown hotel.
Ben spoke briefly to the concierge at the front door and, within moments, an armed security guard appeared, prepared to go with them. Once the elevator doors slid shut, Nora saw they were etched with the outline of a flying horse.
This strategy had been laid out quickly. If Nora’s conversation with her daughter did not go well, a Dallas SWAT team would move in. Nora saw the security guard check the status of his pistol and he said, “We can only hope that they aren’t armed.”
Ben said nothing. Even in his fear for their granddaughter, he had not reached out to his wife since she had made her confession. He carried his own strain alone as Nora stared at the floor numbers as the elevator proceeded skyward. As the numbers climbed, a green light moved across the panel. “How did they get here?” Nora asked the uniformed officer. “Surely someone would have caught them trying to sneak onto the roof. How are they going up and down?”
“The laundry department,” the security guard said, scowling. “Apparently, she’s been doing the hotel laundry for quite some time. The people who know your daughter do care about her, Mrs. Crabtree. Of course we’ll have an in-house investigation. When she told them why she wanted time up here, the van driver in the laundry department helped them.”
The doors slid open on the twenty-fourth floor. The top five floors, the sign explained, were serviced only by a secure elevator for guests with passes to the penthouses. “We’ll have to get to the fire escape.” The guard led them down the hallway. “Here.”
For four floors, as they banged up enclosed stairs, Nora could barely see where they were going. They came to a final grey door with metal webbing. Nora shoved it open, and caught herself, swaying. Nothing stood between her and the pavement four-hundred feet below except for a narrow iron grate, barely wide enough for one person. Above her head rose a tapering stairway with open metal steps, one slim rail on either side.
The rickety collection of iron stairs disappeared over a ledge of limestone. The height made her reel. “Don’t follow me,” she said to Ben, to the guard, both of whom looked like they wanted to overrule her. “It doesn’t look like these will support all of us.”
“I should do this, Nora,” Ben rebuked her. “Tess trusts me.”
“No, Ben.” She didn’t look at the ground below. She didn’t look at the sky above. Nora clung to the rails and focused where her next step would be. Only one step. “It has to be me.”
It isn’t my purpose to change the situation, beloved. It is my purpose to change you.
“Tansy?” she called over the wind. “Tansy, can you hear me?” Only the silence answered her.
She stepped up on the first rung, felt herself begin to totter. She stepped up to the next rung anyway.
What if I stopped trusting what I think I deserve, and started trusting You, Father?
When she climbed over the ledge, no one was there. “Tess?” The security guard below her had drawn his gun.
Nothing.
Oh, Father. Please.
“Tess, honey,” she called again. “Are you here?”
City sounds from below seemed to tumble away with her voice. The wind soughed over the ledges of the building. Overhead, the neon lights buzzed and crackled. Everything around Nora seemed to sway.
“We know what happened, Tess. We know what happened to Cootie.”
Taxis honked and, below them on the street, headlights were twinkling on. The legs of the neon horse above them illuminated the silhouette of its steel oil-derrick base with red.
Nora could tell that Ben had made his way up behind her. Even without looking, even in this place where they needed each other, she could sense his injured dissatisfaction with her. Down in the lobby, a SWAT team was waiting. They could be summoned with nothing more than a radio signal from the security guard waiting on those tapering steps.
“Tess,” she called again. “We’re sorry about what happened to Cootie.”
When she glanced back at Ben, his face was grim. He had grown more distant every day. He evaded her eyes even though she cast them imploringly in his direction.
The wind seemed to have stopped in some sort of weird, anticipatory stillness. Nora moved across the roof, each step with caution, and fraught with uncertainty. She had grown so used to the silence that, when the sound began, it caused her to start.
From the opposite side of the roof a little voice began to sing out to her Nana, strong and clear. Jesus loves Tansy, this I know, for the Bible tells me so . . .
“Tansy!” Ben called behind her.
. . . little ones to him belong . . .
The child only sang three measures before someone shushed her. But she was here! She was safe! Nora took another step forward, feeling braver.
“The only reason you’re here,” came Tess’s stiff voice, stopping her, “is because you want Tansy back. You never would have come looking for me.”
Another long period of silence in which none of them spoke or moved. In the evening sky, an airplane contrail gleamed as brightly as the moon. A gull landed on the ledge and then rose again on its wings.
Tess stepped out from the shadow toward her mother. Tess, holding Tansy’s hand beside an ornamented chimn
ey stack. Tansy’s hair had been cut in short, snipped curls all over her head. Tess must have taken the scissors to it.
Nora could tell by the look on Tess’s face that the girl was fully expecting to be stabbed by her mother’s anger. But when Nora spoke, “Baby, baby,” the gentleness in her own voice surprised her. “Why are you here?”
“Don’t come any farther. I don’t want you to.”
Lord Jesus, Nora prayed. Show me what to do.
“Do you see me, Tess? I’m not coming toward you.”
Tess began to gasp. Tears began to choke her. “It’s . . . He . . . he said it to me once, Mama. His mother went away when he was a little boy and she told him to look up here, you know? He said it to me when he came to find me, did you know that? He said he kept thinking if he climbed to the top of the Magnolia Building he could see all the way to her. That he could see all the way to me.”
“Baby.”
“He never did come up here.”
“Tess.”
“I always thought she would m-meet her dad, you know? I wanted to bring her up here to help say good-bye. I always thought . . . well, some day . . . I thought she would get to know him, but she n-never d-did.”
Oh, Father. Help me to know what to say.
“H-he loved this horse. That’s all he ever had, just a memory of his mom. I brought Tansy up here so she could s-see.”
One step toward them. “Tess, I’m so sorry,” Nora said.
“Don’t come any closer.”
But Tansy broke free. She ran across the roof and lunged toward Ben. He scooped her up, practically from mid-air. “Is she really my mom, Grandpa? Is she the one? She says she is.”
Ben nodded. “Yes, Tansy. She is your mama. You okay?” He kissed her hard on her face and clenched her against him. She kissed him right back.
“Are you up here alone?” Nora asked Tess.
“No. Jimmy Ray’s here, too.”
“Baby,” she said, reaching for Tess. And when she did, Tess backed away and let out a ragged sob.
Beloved, here’s what I wanted you to see.
Watch what she’s doing, backing away from you.
Think of all the times you’ve backed away from Me.
This fleeting thought came to Nora’s head like the swoop of a bird. Suddenly, there came a knowledge so full and certain within her that it couldn’t have come from anywhere except heaven.
It goes so much further than my confession, doesn’t it, Lord? It’s about me understanding the depth of what I’ve done.
It is knowing that You care for me the same way that You care for the baby I aborted.
It is about You supernaturally showing me where I am hiding my grief.
And she saw it—she saw what was happening inside herself, saw what she had done to her daughter. And why. And this amazed her. Thank You, Lord. Oh, thank You. And seeing this part of herself, her own unreleased grief affecting everything, her heart was able to change.
“I need to tell you something, Tess.”
He always wanted me to see the brokenness that was keeping me from Him.
“There isn’t anything more we have to say to each other, is there, Mother?”
“Listen to me.” Nora held up a hand. “When you were little, when I told you that you were doing things wrong, you weren’t wrong at all.”
Tess stared at her.
“I was putting my shame on you. I was the one who had done something wrong.”
Tess narrowed her eyes at her. Nora could only imagine how difficult it must be to soak in the words she was saying.
“Every time I saw you, honey, you reminded me of something else.”
“What?” Tess demanded. “What did I remind you of?”
“A long time ago, I did something I wasn’t proud of. Something that bothered me deep inside. Only I didn’t know it bothered me.”
“You have to tell me.”
“We’ll talk about it soon, I promise.”
“Mother—”
“—but from the moment you were born, every time I saw you, you were a reminder of that to me.”
All the earth seemed to spin around them. “Did you look at me and think I was a mistake, Mama?”
“No. Oh, no.” And when Nora took this deep breath, more words of truth came from the very core of her heart. And she meant this, oh yes, how she meant it. “You are the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”
Tears began to roll unchecked down Tess’s cheeks. Her hands unclenched at her sides. Jimmy Ray appeared from behind Tess and held her shoulders. “I think she needs you, Mrs. Crabtree.”
And Nora began to cry, too. “All those times, if you felt like you did things wrong, if that’s what made you leave, it wasn’t you. It was me.”
“From the beginning, I couldn’t do anything good enough for you.”
“No, Tess. It wasn’t you.”
Their eyes fixed on each other. This was going to take a while to sink in. For both of them.
This awareness shifted everything in their relationship.
“I started it. Until you started rebelling against what I was doing to you, honey, it was always me.”
The daughter took a step toward the mother.
The mother took another step toward the daughter.
“We can’t start at the beginning again, Tess. I’d like to find some other place for us to begin.”
“Sometimes I think I deserted Tansy because it was all I knew how to do,” Tess said. “I need you to help me try again with her, too.”
This would be another road to travel, another place to pray, another challenge on dangerous ground, something else that felt impossible. But, when that time would come, Nora would rely on her firsthand knowledge of Jesus, who had said, With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.
“It can take a long time to understand about ourselves, why we do what we do.”
Tess said, very quietly, “Mama, I don’t have anywhere else to go. Can I come home?”
Nora nodded. And said, “Bring Jimmy Ray with you.” She smiled at the haggard boy who must be hurting as much as Tess was hurting. “You both look like you could use a bath and a hot meal.”
EVEN AS BEN STAYED ANGRY at Nora during these days, he also realized this one important thing.
For so long, there had been a heaviness in their lives that he hadn’t been able to understand.
Now, even with Jimmy Ray keeping the fountain clean at the library while he looked for a place of his own, even with Tess seeing a counselor twice a week, even with Creede calling from Barksdale Air Force Base to talk to Tess, even with Tansy and Erin singing karaoke at the top of their lungs, that heaviness—the feeling that had always been there just beneath the surface—seemed to have dissipated.
Oh, yes. He still acted stiff-necked toward his wife. He tried to fathom the idea that they might have had another child; Nora had told him they did have another child in heaven. But that thought was too big to grasp and he sometimes let it drift away.
When his wife would slip past him to water the ivies these days, she was always humming a worship song. When she lightheartedly snipped yellow stalks with her scissors, he would see her spinning the plant around when she was finished, running her fingers through the healthy leaves, taking pleasure in the verdant, solid green.
He caught her drying pans in the kitchen after another big meal, and he realized she wasn’t hurrying to finish the chore. She was polishing the cookware to a fine sheen, her hand moving extravagantly slow, as she stared out the window with a dreamy expression on her face, as if she were thinking of someone who loved her. But when Ben found her at the sewing machine again, her head bent over plaid fabric and a McCall’s pattern, he felt certain that this marked the end of Nora’s serenity. Whenever she pulled out her straight pins, her tape measure, and her collection of threads, he’d always thought, Now we’re in for it. This is what she does whenever she wants to avoid something.
But he found
his wife humming at her sewing table, a smile on her lips as she constructed two matching shirts, as he peeked inside the door.
Good grief, no matter what the case, it was hard to stay mad at someone who was just so happy.
That night, he couldn’t keep his eyes off of her as he watched her towel dry Tansy’s hair after bathtime. “Look,” she said, tousling all those short little curls on Tansy’s head the same way she would toss a salad. “I saw a picture in the magazine and the model had her hair short like yours. If you put a hair clip right here, look what it does, Tansy! We can even use gel on it. You look like a princess.” And the two of them spent a long time examining themselves in the mirror together, one with dark curly hair and one with straight blonde-gray hair, their eyes and their foreheads and their graceful necks, one large and one small, coming from the same mold.
He watched her sit beside Jimmy Ray Garcia at the kitchen table and offer advice to him while he circled apartment rentals in the Echo-Bulletin. “That one is in a complex and it has a balcony.” Or “That one is in the basement of Frieda Storm’s house. It doesn’t have much light but, if you work long hours, Frieda sometimes offers to cook for her tenant. I think you’d like that.” Or “That unit is right beside the Texas and Pacific tracks. It’s cheap, but the noise might drive you crazy.”
Jimmy Ray gave her a proud smile. “I’ve never had anyone help me like this before. Thank you.”
Ben had already donned his pajamas when he heard Nora sewing again. He climbed into bed and puffed his pillows beneath his head, certain that he would fall asleep without her beside him, the way he’d done for months. But he didn’t understand why his heart kept pounding.
Presently, he heard the sewing machine stop. He heard the snap of the plastic box when she put her belongings away. He heard the music of Tess’s voice intermingled with her mother’s.
“What are you doing up so late, Mama?”
“Finishing something I’ve made for you.”
“What.”
“This. I hope it fits you.”
“Oh,” a surprised exclamation. “Thanks.” Then, “Oh, there’s two of them. They match.”
If I Had You Page 22
