Dark River Road

by Virginia Brown

  After that, it went a lot more quickly. Pace produced some paperwork, said a few things about the rights of a minor and lack of evidence, spouted a few Latin terms, and then the cuffs were off his wrists and he was given back his boot laces and shown out the front door. Mr. Pace and his grandmother exchanged a few pleasantries on the front sidewalk, and she said she’d have Chantry in his office first thing the next day. Then she turned to him.

  Sunlight picked out some gray in her hair, but most of it was still a soft brown, like her eyes. “Well, Chantry, this has been a busy morning indeed. How hungry are you?”

  He blinked. She lifted a brow at him when he didn’t answer. He fumbled for something to say, then just shrugged. “Not too.”

  “Well, I’m starved. All I’ve had all morning is coffee. I’ve been on the phone trying to sort through things. We need to talk without Mikey nearby, and I need some food.”

  She’d parked on the street in front of Juvenile Court, a four-story building of red brick, and he followed her to the silver Jaguar by a meter. He’d never been in this nice a car, not even Cinda’s mother’s or Dale Ledbetter’s. Leather smelled new and rich. He fastened his seatbelt and tried not to think about Cinda. He still had her bracelet, in the backpack along with his mother’s letters . . . damn.

  “Where’s my backpack?” He shot his grandmother a quick look. “It has—stuff in it.”

  “I know. I have it. It will be returned to you in the same shape, I promise. First, we have to talk.”

  She took him to a small, quiet restaurant that overlooked the Mississippi River. It was hard to think that this was the same river that bordered Cane Creek; here it looked almost serene, with barges and riverboats nudged up against old cobblestones and sunlight glittering on the surface. It was deceptive. He knew how quickly the river could suck the unwary down with undercurrents and treacherous sandbars. Sometimes it felt too much like his life. Just when he thought he was going along pretty good, he’d hit a sandbar or undertow.

  “Chantry,” his grandmother said when a waiter had served their food, “I need answers from you before I can make any kind of decision. Once I know where we stand, I’ll know what to tell Robert Pace.”

  “I thought you were supposed to tell your lawyer everything.” Chantry looked down at his cheeseburger. It was as big as the plate, with thick fries at one side and a sprig of something green that looked like a weed.

  “That can be tricky. It all depends on the truth.”

  He looked up at her. She met his eyes and didn’t look away. “And if the truth isn’t what you want to hear?” he said finally.

  “I’ll listen anyway. And we’ll decide what’s best to tell Robert. Now. Start where you feel comfortable, but tell me how you came to be accused of stealing ten thousand dollars.”

  He didn’t know where to start. None of it felt comfortable. Maybe it’d all started with the dog anyway, because that’s when he’d begun to learn about far-reaching consequences.

  “Chantry.” She leaned forward. “Nothing you can say or do will make me think less of my daughter, or change the fact that you’re my grandson and I’ll do for you what I should have done for Carrie. I can’t go back and make things right with her now. This is my opportunity to make things right for you and Mikey. Please. Give me that chance.”

  Then he found himself telling her about Rainey, about Mama and how she’d just wanted Mikey to be okay, about how he’d let her down and how angry he’d been with her, and how sorry he was now that he’d never told her how much he loved her. He told her about Quinton, most of it anyway, except the secrets that weren’t his to tell, like Tansy and Chris, and Julia. He didn’t know if he’d said too much or too little, but it was more than he’d ever talked at one time in his entire life, and when he was done he felt sick and exhausted and thirsty. And he didn’t even know if she’d believe him.

  Silence fell, long and heavy, but not strained. His grandmother had bent her head, and she looked up finally, eyes wet and filled with something like grief.

  “You won’t have to worry about Bert Quinton, Chantry. Whether you choose to stay with us or leave, I’ll make sure he doesn’t get his hands on you.”

  “He doesn’t back down easy.”

  “Neither do I. That’s a genetic flaw in this family. Pride and arrogance can be disastrous or advantageous, depending upon the situation.” She reached out to cover his hand with hers, and he didn’t pull back, but didn’t invite more. “I know you got off on the wrong foot with your grandfather, but he’s basically a good man.”

  “He’s an asshole.”

  She drew in a deep breath but didn’t argue the point. “At times, yes. He and Carrie loved each other very much, but neither of them ever gave an inch. It cost us all dearly.”

  He could understand that.

  “So,” she said then, and sat back, “we’ll sort things out and see what the future brings.”

  If the past was anything to go by, he didn’t hold out much hope it’d get better, but he didn’t say that. He just nodded and it seemed to please her.

  Nothing worth having was ever easy coming, Mama had always said when he complained about things, and he supposed that was true now, too. Bert Quinton didn’t want to let go of it easy, and it took quite a fight to keep Chantry in Memphis. Lawyers filed motions and papers, and his grandmother had long conversations with Robert Pace and loud ones with his grandfather. He heard them sometimes, even though the door to his grandfather’s study would be quickly shut by one of them. Still, he heard enough to know that he was a bone of contention. A thorn in the side of his mother’s father. He avoided him when possible, but it was inevitable that one day soon it would end in a clash.

  That day came the morning of Mikey’s seventh birthday. Miss Bettie took Mikey with her to a store to pick out new clothes, but Chantry stayed at the house, still not entirely comfortable with their assumption that he’d stay. He hadn’t made up his mind, just didn’t talk about it, and let them read what they wanted into his silence.

  Chantry went out on the veranda with Shadow, watching the September sunshine warm the flagstones and shine on carefully cultivated rose bushes. Gardeners had been there the day before, mowing and weeding, tending flowerbeds that ran along the fence line and bordered the pool. Someone had overlooked nutsedge growing in one of the rose beds, and he stepped into the thick mulch to pull it up.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing stomping on my roses?” a voice demanded, and he didn’t need to turn around to know who was asking.

  “You’ve got weeds.”

  “I do not. I pay gardeners to weed. Now get out of there before you crush my Madame Sauvignon.”

  “Fine.” He straightened up and turned, meaning to step over the paving stones that edged the bed, but miscalculated and slid on the fresh mulch. He went backward, into the rose bush, and felt one of the canes crack. His grandfather stared speechlessly, eyes bright with anger. “Sorry,” Chantry got out when he regained his balance. “I slipped.”

  “You slipped all right. That’s what you are—a slip-up.”

  Chantry’s jaw set at the tight fury in the voice and eyes, at the insult lobbed so casually, like it was always on the tip of his tongue. He stared back at him, silent because there was no point in trying to deny it.

  After a moment, his grandfather looked away, throat working as he regarded the bright streamers Miss Bettie had hung earlier on the veranda for Mikey’s party. “You shouldn’t even be here.”

  “In the world, or in your house?” he couldn’t help asking.

  His head jerked back, eyes boring into him. “If it wasn’t for you, Carrie never would have left.”

  “If it wasn’t for you, she’d have come back.”

  “That’s a lie. She knew I wanted her home.”

  “And you knew it was a package deal. That was it, wasn’t it? You wanted her but not me. She could come back if she gave me away just like . . . like an unwanted puppy.”

  His gran
dfather’s face turned red. “You were a mistake.”

  “And in your world, mistakes are buried, right? Not paraded around in front of friends and the other doctors.”

  He’d scored a direct hit, it seemed. His grandfather drew back a hand as if he intended to slap him, then he stopped, controlling himself with an obvious effort. After a moment, he said calmly, “Carrie was brilliant. She could have been a university professor if she chose. Instead, she had an illegitimate baby and became an elementary school teacher in an obscure delta town.”

  “Not by choice. If you’d read her letters, you’d know that.”

  “She knew my terms.”

  “Terms?” Chantry gave a disbelieving laugh. “Terms? She was your daughter, not a loan applicant. Jesus, I can’t believe you’re so arrogant you’d even think to make her choose between her child and being part of your life. Well, you know what? I’m glad she never came back. We were better off with Rainey. At least he made it easy to see him for a snake.”

  He wasn’t sure he meant all that, but it didn’t matter anyway. His grandfather would never believe any of it. He believed what he wanted to believe, just like most people, just like so many in Cane Creek had wanted to believe the worst of him.

  Turning on his heel, he walked away, went into the house and up to the room where he slept but didn’t live, and jerked the backpack up from the chair where he kept it. Then he went back downstairs and found his grandfather still out on the veranda, sitting in a chair and staring at the broken rose bush. Furious, aching with resentment and memories, Chantry tossed the packet of letters his mother had written into his grandfather’s lap.

  “You turned your back on her and wouldn’t read them when she was alive. So read them now. It’s the least you can do for her.”

  He didn’t even stay to see if he did, or see if he tossed them into the pool. It didn’t matter. The letters had been written to her father, and now they’d been delivered again. It was up to the doctor to choose.

  Some days are made up of hours, some days, increments of time so excruciating as to feel like days instead of hours. That’s how it felt when he sat in the Juvenile Court before a judge who had the power to send him away or agree to the petitioner’s request to be his legal guardian. Mikey’s petition was quickly granted. But the matter of Chantry was more complicated. He was sixteen, not seven, and there was his record to consider.

  It shouldn’t matter so much. But it did. It wasn’t that he wanted to stay in Memphis; it was that he just wanted somewhere to stay. He still wasn’t part of anything, still stayed on the fringes and wanted it that way. But he had to be practical. The law wouldn’t let him be on his own and if he went back to Mississippi, he’d be on his own in prison. Quinton would see to that.

  His grandmother’s lawyer presented the judge with more paperwork, and he peered at it solemnly for what seemed forever before he finally looked up. He stared hard at Chantry for a few minutes, then he asked the attorney some questions about his juvenile record. He scribbled notes on a pad, then sat back in his chair and looked at them in the dim lights. It wasn’t a large courtroom, with only six benches on each side, and carpeted to muffle noise.

  “I’m granting your request to be legal guardians to Chantry Allen Callahan,” he said after a moment, “but with grave reservations. Are you certain this is what you both want, Doctor and Mrs. Callahan?”

  His grandmother answered yes immediately, and Chantry hoped his fate didn’t hang on his grandfather’s answer. He sat still and quiet, looking back at the judge, until Chantry stole a glance in his direction. They’d hardly spoken since the day of Mikey’s birthday. When the doctor was home, he stayed in his study a lot. Now he just sat looking at the judge, weighing his answer.

  It was slow coming, but finally he said, “Yes, Your Honor. We both want him.”

  Not exactly a declaration of love, but a declaration of acceptance. A start in the right direction, maybe.

  That afternoon, his grandfather came out on the veranda where Chantry sat with the dog, and looked down at them. “What kind of dog is that, anyway?”

  Chantry’s hand went still atop Shadow’s head. “Catahoula.”

  “Catahoula? Like a stock dog?”

  “That’s right.”

  His grandfather went quiet for a moment then said, “When I was a boy, I had a Border Collie named Patches. I’ve never forgotten that dog. Guess there’s some dogs, and people, that a man will always miss.”

  Because he couldn’t think of anything to say to that fact, Chantry just nodded. After a few minutes, his grandfather went back into the house, and he sat there with Shadow’s muzzle resting on his knee and thought for a while about all the people he’d miss.

  Without the specter of prison and Quinton hanging over his head, Chantry could relax. He tried. It didn’t come easy. He’d been enrolled in school, a huge Catholic school for boys. Mama had been brought up as a Catholic, he learned, one more thing about her he’d never known. There was a lot he’d never even suspected. Some things made more sense now, but he still couldn’t sort out everything.

  The main thing was that Mikey was happy, that he was thriving, and that his surgery was scheduled for the Thanksgiving holidays. It would take several operations, but one day he’d be able to walk without braces, and while he’d never run track, he’d be able to do all the things he’d not been able to do these past years.

  There were times Chantry thought he should be content with his life now, that he should focus on the future and not the past, but there were too many unanswered questions. Too many loose threads left untied. He always felt like he was waiting on something, one more disaster or a blinding revelation that never came. It was unsettling.

  “Do you want to visit anyone back in Cane Creek?” his grandmother asked him one day, and he looked up at her for a long moment before shaking his head.

  “There’s no one there for me anymore.” That was true. Tansy was gone, Cinda out of his reach, and even Dempsey too dependent on old man Quinton to risk his security by going back. Maybe Doc, but that’s the only one he guessed he’d be able to see or talk to. He had all he needed here now, with Mikey and Shadow. Sometimes it just didn’t seem like enough.

  November was wet and cold, and the week after Mikey came home from the hospital with his legs still in casts, Chantry carried him outside onto the veranda on a surprisingly warm day. It had rained, but the sun filtered through clouds to gleam in puddles on the flagstones.

  Mikey settled into one of the lounge chairs, looking a little pinched with pain but smiling. “This is great, Chantry. Isn’t it?”

  “The best, sport. You comfortable?”

  “Sure. Or I will be soon.”

  That was so Mikey. Always looking on the bright side. He wished he was more like him. He sat down nearby, feeling restless but not knowing why. Shadow nudged his hand, and he stroked the soft floppy ears idly, looking at the garden without really seeing it.

  “Look, Chantry. A rainbow.” Mikey sat up and pointed toward the west. “Mama used to say that a rainbow is God’s promise everything’s going to be okay. Do you think she was right?”

  Chantry turned, saw the arc of color in the sky, and thought of Tansy. He saw her face as he’d seen it that night on the front porch, cold and lovely, afraid and brave at the same time, and he’d not even known it then. Rainbows only showed up after rain, and there had been plenty of rain in his life. Hers, too. Tansy had said rainbows were promises. He’d thought she meant something else. Instead, she was just saying goodbye. He’d missed it somehow. Missed the goodbye. Missed the lie by looking for the truth.

  There were some things he’d never forget. Some people.

  “Yeah, sport,” he said, “Mama was right. Everything’s going to be okay.”

  He almost believed it.

  CHAPTER 25

  Miss Pat called him into the kitchen early one morning. Mikey called her Mama Pat, but he called her Miss Pat. He just couldn’t bring himself to call any
one else Mama. He might not have forgiven Mama, but he hadn’t forgotten her.

  “Chantry,” Miss Pat said, looking him right in the eyes, “you should know that Albert Quinton has filed criminal charges and extradition papers against you.”

  It was kind of a relief. He’d been waiting for the other shoe to fall, and now it had. He nodded. “What charges?”

  “The theft of ten thousand dollars.”

  If it hadn’t been so infuriating, he’d have laughed. Instead he just said, “That money burned up in the same fire as Rainey.”

  “I believe you. But Quinton doesn’t. We have to prove your innocence.”

  Familiar rage beat through him, hard and fast. He had to wait a minute for it to subside. “I shouldn’t have to prove anything. Not to him. Never to him.”

  “No, you have to prove it to the courts, Chantry. It doesn’t matter if Quinton believes it or not. My attorney will be here shortly. You remember Mr. Pace? He’s going to tell us what we have to do to make this go away.”

  Chantry nodded.

  Turned out, it wasn’t as easy to make it go away as Miss Pat had hoped. Maybe if he hadn’t had a juvenile record things would have been easier, but he did and they weren’t. Bad as he hated it, he’d have to go back to Cane Creek to face Quinton again. This time, he’d have the advantage of money and legal assistance in his favor, but that didn’t mean Quinton wouldn’t get his way. He’d made a habit all his life of getting his way, and Chantry figured he didn’t intend to stop now.

  Mikey cried and held on to him the day they left for Cane Creek, saying he’d never come back. Chantry knelt down so they were eye level. Tears clung to Mikey’s lashes.

  Chantry managed a smile. “Hey, have I ever lied to you, sport? Maybe things haven’t turned out like we wanted sometimes, but I never told you an outright lie. I won’t now. I’ll be back if I can. I won’t leave you by choice. Just stay here with Miss Bettie and keep getting stronger, okay? You’ve got to take care of Shadow.”