by Jane Bradley
I lay there a while listening to the sounds of birds. I didn’t want to wake Roy or Livy with my wandering through the house. I knew Livy would need to sleep as long as the night would allow. I knew she would need to be as rested as she could be that day, a year from the day that Jesse Hollowfield had snatched her daughter, broken her, and left her dead on the ground.
I slipped out of bed, walked softly across the floor. I told myself I would wait to make the coffee, but going down the hall, I could smell it in the air. I hadn’t heard a sound, not the kettle, not the grinder for the beans. And I still wonder what it is about a mother’s gift that she can work so silently, so unnoticed when she does those little things to please. I didn’t have to call to know where she was. I went to the living room and saw her on the front porch, with two mugs and the French-press pot, the coffee steeping, waiting for me. I walked outside, and we didn’t need to speak. She just smiled and pressed the coffee, poured. I had planned to say something like Are you ready for this? It would be a hard day, probably harder than she could guess to go to the site where her daughter had died, a little clearing that the farmer said would always be reserved for Katy. We had put a cross there, planted a lily, but Livy said she wanted to go back and make it something beautiful, something Katy would like. She had a little notebook in her lap, a list made. She waved it at me, set it on the table, and said, “Things I’ll want to buy for Katy’s memorial. I want specific things, not just anything, but things that would be right for Katy.”
“Absolutely,” I said as she handed me my coffee. She was ready, rested and ready. My job was to simply be there, the way it always is. I’d be there to hold her steady when she trembled. This is what I do. I sipped my coffee, spotted the biscotti and strawberries on a plate. “I could get used to this,” I said, “walking down the hall to find the coffee made and cookies on a plate.”
“I’ll put in a word to Roy,” she said. “I’ve got Lawrence bringing me coffee in bed on Sunday mornings now. If he can be trained, just think of the possibilities for Roy.”
“I don’t want him to change one bit,” I said. “We have an agreement. We leave each other to be the person we met, the one we fell for. If it works, don’t mess with it.” And I thought about that phrase, the one we fell for, like love is some kind of accident. It’s no accident at all. I wouldn’t say Roy and I fell into anything. I’d say it’s more like we grew the way a honeysuckle vine reaches over a fence, covers it so thick that the boundaries don’t really matter because the air is so sweet. I’d say that’s the way to love each other: Show up, give a little water and light, and leave room for the other one to grow.
Livy offered me biscotti. “You changed. He got you out of sleeping in that REV center every night.”
“It gets a little crowded in there sometimes.” I thought of those faces of the missing still tacked to the walls. It wasn’t healthy to live night and day, every day, in a place where lost souls are always looking out to you, calling to be found. “It’s a big world,” I said. “That’s what Roy keeps telling me: It’s a bigger world than you think.” He’d told me I’d never be able to make those faces of the missing go away. There would always be the sorrow. “That room of sorrow,” he said, “it’s in your heart, Shelby, but you can build a bigger house around it.” That was when I knew I wanted to be in his house. It was the moment he said those words to me. Then he said, “You can go to sleep and wake up, not to a room of sorrow but to the good things in this world.”
“Like you?” I said, teasing.
He blushed a little at that. Then he grinned and said, “Yeah, like me.”
Livy reached and stroked the back of my arm that way mothers do when they just have to reach to feel that the child they love is there. “It’s going to be a good day,” she said. “We’ll make it a good day. It’s what Katy would want. We’ll make it good. You and me.” Then she rose and said, “Let’s get this day started, Shelby. You and me. Let’s show the world what two women and some gardening tools can do to make some little patch of ground a better place.”
So there I was, driving back over this road of Katy’s final journey, and Livy sipped a Slurpee beside me and watched the land go by. She had said she needed something cold and sweet to drink so she wouldn’t cry when we were at K-Mart buying the plants and the tools and the mulch. Like I said, she wanted to make the site pretty somehow, and I couldn’t believe a mother would think to change a place of such hard dying to a place where she could stand to dig, make something grow from the very ground where her daughter had died.
I drove and smelled the topsoil, the sharp scent of mulch and the fertile smell of the plants in the backseat: lantana and creeping myrtle and blooming thyme. And a butterfly bush. Its branches bent against the roof of the truck, tangled at my hair, tickled my shoulder if I didn’t sit just right. Livy had to get that butterfly bush because Katy loved butterflies. And we had to get an angel, of course, a little stone angel with long, curling hair, a coy little smile, and her hands pressed in a prayer. She just looked wishful and kind of naive to me, but I said she was perfect.
We turned off the paved road to a dirt lane shaded by trees. My truck struggled against the ruts, lurched side to side. We took another turn to what the locals called the eight road. It had been cleared for some farm kids who liked to take their four-wheelers back in there and ride, and now it was kept clear for no good reason but because it was there. I could see how it would be easy to get lost back in the kind of land that looks the same all around with nothing but blue sky above. Back home in Tennessee, you always had a good idea of where you were by the shape of Lookout Mountain rising above the river. And for the first time since I’d left Suck Creek, I missed those mountains. I had the thought of taking Roy back there. It wouldn’t be such a sad place with Roy beside me. I knew he’d make me see the old beauty there.
Mud splattered the trees and shrubs that suddenly grew so thick, it seemed nature had a mind to reach, to try to hide the site where Katy died. I slowed down and looked out my mud-splattered window, saw two butterflies dart by.
“That’s a sign,” Livy said. “Katy knows we’re here.”
Livy has a need to believe in things, so I nodded. Then I thought, What the hell do I know? Maybe it’s true.
I saw the little clearing in the trees that showed the way off the eight road, and I took the turn down that rutted little lane. And I thought of Katy, how she must have been crying inside, knowing this was the end. Livy’s face was tight but not crying, just seemed to be watching the trees go by through Katy’s eyes. Then up ahead, I saw the field. We got out of the truck, and I looked at the sky to watch the weather. The air was hot and thick, and I could feel it. Before the day was out, a storm would come rolling in.
We walked down the rutted road, and I saw the place where she’d died. Overgrown in patches, bare in others, just a patch of earth like anything else around here. I was thankful to see that the farmer had cleared the trash, the underbrush, and most of the weeds. There was a little white wire fence that marked the spot to be preserved. The farmer had done that. He’d bought the land cheap, he’d said. And now just beyond the place where Katy had died, the corn stood green and shimmering, acres and acres of lush corn, the wind rustling the leaves. I can only say it was beautiful to stand there on the edge of so much green.
The old lady who’d owned the land couldn’t get away quick enough once she’d learned a woman had rotted on the very ground where she and her husband had planted their first stand of corn. The new farmer had said that there would always be room for Katy to be remembered there. Sometimes it can be hard for me to love much of anything in this world. But that farmer, he had a kindness you don’t often expect of a stranger. It seemed people all over town had become just a little more soft, more thoughtful of each other when they realized how Katy Connor had been snatched in broad daylight while they drove by, not minding the car swerving on the Cape Fear River bridge. We got over a hundred calls from people who claimed to have seen
her blue truck that day. I suppose there was a trembling all across town with the news of the Flynn girl in Land Fall, and then a flat-out sickness at the thought of what Jesse Hollowfield had done in broad daylight, miles of traffic all around.
I stayed back from the site, knew it was best to let Livy lead the way. She paused, seemed to say a little prayer, then stepped over the low fence, crouched, and moved her palm over the ground as if she could somehow feel the life there.
Me, I still saw the brush, the trash and leaves and the jawbone torn loose. The mud-caked jeans.
“We’re here for you, Katy,” Livy said. She sat, palms flat on the ground. I told her to be careful; there could still be glass and rusty cans left in the dirt. She just stood, looked at me, said, “Let’s get to work.”
We got the plants, the mulch, the topsoil, jugs of water, tools. We weeded. We raked and worked in new dirt, good dirt that was clean. I watched Livy tamp the dirt down around a lantana plant, its petals like bright confetti. She poured water, watched it seep. I asked where she wanted to put the angel, and she placed it precisely where I’d found the jawbone. There was no talk of scattered bones and mud-caked jeans. She looked at me for approval. “That’s good,” I said. “That works.”
Thunder rolled from a distance. We looked up see the cloud thick and white mottled with gray. The thunderhead sat poised across the flat blue sky like a giant fist. There was a sudden coolness in the air. We both felt it. She stopped, said she needed some cold water to drink, asked me if I wanted any. I told her to go ahead and get a couple bottles from the cooler.
I dug at the hole for the butterfly bush. Bits of broken glass floated up. I thought of bodies, broken bottles, broken bones, floaters in the swamps. I scooped up the dirt and dug. Thunder rolled again, and I plunged the shovel hard, heard a crunch of something, and looked down and saw a shattered skull. My stomach lurched, but I didn’t flinch. I just sucked back a breath and crouched for a closer look. It was a dog. My head went swimmy, and I breathed in, out, in, slowly, squinched my eyes shut, opened, focused. Yes, it was the head, the body of a dog, tufts of fur, a brown collar dangling loosely at the vertebrae exposed. And there. A bullet in the dirt with scattered flecks of bone. The story, I wondered. What was the story? A dog with a collar, shot. It must have been sick, must have been old. Not murdered, not shot for fun, I hoped. It happens. Neighbors shoot neighbors’ dogs for sport, revenge. Sometimes a man has to shoot his own sick dog to ease the pain and suffering. “Your cell phone’s ringing,” Livy called. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I said and used my hand to scoop dirt back into the hole. I felt the sting, saw the green glass in the dirt, the oozing line of blood on the side of my hand. It was a shallow cut, a little thing, but it burned. I stood, used the shovel to push more dirt back. I felt her watching me, turned, and gave a little shrug. “There’s a tangle of tree roots here. We’ll have to plant the bush over there instead.”
“Your cell phone,” she said again. I let it go to voice mail, stamped the ground solid over the dead dog. Thunder rolled again, and a cool breeze rushed with that ozone smell I like so much with storms.
“We need to hurry and finish getting these plants in the ground before the storm hits.”
I dug the new hole, got the bush in the ground, watered it. I stood watching the water pool up, then sink into the ground. I was thinking of Darly. We’d never marked the spot where they’d found her. I suppose we chose to forget it, not look back, carry on. But Darly, she’s always with me. Even though I never saw her there, I’ll always see the picture of her bones scattered on the ground.
Livy touched my arm, and I jumped.
“Sorry,” she said. “But would you look at that? Some kids have built a little tree house over there.” I looked across the cornfield, saw just about six feet up in the low limbs of an oak the rough plywood boards, a hunters’ blind. They must sit up there and watch for the deer to come foraging for corn. Livy, she was smiling at the sight. She’d told me how she liked to watch the kids play in the empty lot next to her house. She was seeing a happy thing. I let it go.
“Yep,” I said. “We better finish up. It’s going to rain.”
“Sometimes storms pass over,” she said.
“But this one’s coming down,” I said. And I knew she saw the tears. I couldn’t stop the tears running down my face. I wiped at them with the back of my hand as if they were sweat. “Damn, it’s hot,” I said.
She grabbed a trowel, knelt with me on the ground, and we dug. The angel seemed to watch, but in truth her eyes were just a concrete stare. I planted faster, wanted to be back in the truck and safe and dry when the storm hit. I couldn’t shake my thoughts of Darly. I told myself I’d go back to Georgia. And with Roy’s help, we’d find the old records, I’d find a way to find the place where Darly had given the last of anything to the earth. With every plant tamped down I said a little prayer: Let it grow; let nothing but birds and bees and butterflies touch what’s blooming here.
Livy patted the dirt, said, “I like to think her spirit will help these things grow.”
“Yes, she will,” I said, and I thought of blood and flesh and bone.
“We’ll need to say a prayer when we’re finished.”
I told her, “I’m saying a little prayer with every plant.”
“You?” Livy laughed. And I could see her daughter’s smile, hear her daughter’s laugh, feel the life of the woman Katy would have grown to be. “You don’t believe in things.”
“I try,” I said, and then I kept working. I told myself, We will do this, and I will do this for Darly one day. I told myself that in a world of so much sorrow, so many lost calling to be found, we can only do what we must do. We weed. We dig. We plant. We water. We pray. And then we will do what we can only do in the end. We will stand and walk away.
Acknowledgments
I first must give my deepest thank you to Penny Carr Britton. I never would have started this venture had it not been for your astonishing grace and strength when facing and enduring the loss of your own lovely daughter, Peggy. You will always inspire me and help sustain me in my own hard times.
And then there are so many others to thank who helped bring this book along:
Thank you, once again, Kyle Minor, Bob Welly, and Page Armstrong. If you hadn’t pushed me, I may have let this story stew inside for eternity. And Bob, you went way past simple support. Thank you for the many dinners out to free my days to write, and thank you for your days of tedious proofreading.
And deep thanks to my agent, Catherine Drayton, who believed in this book from the start. You’ve been much more than an agent. Thank you for helping me revise and reshape this story, and thank you for your heart as well as smarts in seeing this book through to print.
Many thanks to my editor, Greg Michalson, who had enough faith in this dark story to bring it to the light of day, and to readers out there. You’re one fine editor, who knew just the final adjustments needed to sharpen up the storyline, and to make it a tighter, better book overall.
This novel is dedicated to the memory of Peggy Carr, Rebecca Wight, and my sister’s childhood friend, Debbie. Their lives were taken far too young and with a calculated violence that will forever compel me to wonder at the nature and range of evil in the world.
And my deepest love and thanks to Susan Falco and Sarah Elder who keep me believing in the redemptive power of love.
Ten percent of the author’s profits from this book are contributed to C.U.E. (Community United Effort, Wilmington, North Carolina), a generous and tenacious organization that gives steady guidance and comfort to those seeking loved ones lost.
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