Sophie managed to avoid an answer, heading outside to set the food on the picnic table beneath the tall oak at the corner of the yard. As she struggled to reposition a couple bales of hay, Sophie couldn’t help wondering how Caleb Tucker had managed to carry two of them at a time.
Cars began pulling into the driveway, and the backyard was soon abuzz with three-and four-year-olds, all equally awed by Grace’s birthday donkeys. Mr. Crawford had the ease of manner to get everyone lined up for a turn around the yard.
The back door opened. Sophie glanced up. Aunt Ruby and Uncle Roy walked over, Ruby with her usual take-charge manner and Roy looking unsure of his welcome. Taller than her husband by several inches, Ruby had always been the clear leader between the two, Roy the kind of man who preferred peace to conflict and usually did whatever it took to achieve it.
“Hello,” Sophie said, shooting a protective glance toward Grace.
“Sophie,” Aunt Ruby said, nodding once, her lined face stern, her gray hair pulled back in the same severe bun she’d worn since Sophie was a child.
Sophie hugged them both, Ruby’s posture stiff and unyielding. Roy hugged her back though and gave her an awkward pat on the shoulder. She was shocked by how much older they both looked, Roy’s once-black hair now nearly white.
“You look good, Sophie,” he said.
“Thanks, Uncle Roy.”
Darcy stepped forward just then and said, “You must be Sophie’s aunt and uncle. I’m Darcy Clemens. Nice to meet you.”
“Who knew Sophie had so many friends?” Ruby said to Roy as if Sophie and Darcy weren’t standing there.
Darcy’s eyes widened. She started to say something, but Sophie shook her head. Darcy pressed her lips together.
“Could I get you something to drink?” Sophie asked.
“Just point us in the right direction. We can help ourselves. And where’s that little Grace?”
“She’s on the white donkey,” Sophie said, folding her arms across her chest and forcing politeness into her response.
“My goodness. Pretty little thing, isn’t she? She doesn’t look a bit like you.”
Ruby marched toward the food table then, Roy following with downcast eyes.
As soon as they were out of earshot, Darcy blew out a snort of disbelief. “Oh, my gosh. You grew up with that?”
Sophie shrugged. “You learn to ignore her.”
“Sophie. No one should have to put up with that. Why do you let her come at all?”
She was quiet for a moment, and then said, “They’re the only family I have.”
“Some family.”
Sophie glanced down, rubbed a thumb across the back of her hand.
Darcy squeezed her arm. “I’m sorry. That sounded awful.”
“It’s okay, Darc. I know how it looks. Maybe I should have cut the ties long ago, but she was my mother’s sister. They were nothing alike, but she’s the last link I have.”
“It’s a shame we don’t get to pick our relatives,” Darcy said.
“I have no intention of letting her ruin this party. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about her.”
“Sure,” Darcy said, sympathy in her voice.
“I’d better check on the sandwich trays,” Sophie said and headed for the kitchen.
CHAPTER FOUR
WHEN SOPHIE CAME BACK out a few minutes later, Mr. Crawford had put the two donkeys in the shade with a little hay to nibble on. All the children gathered around the picnic table for cake and ice cream. Most of them ended up wearing as much on their clothes as they managed to eat, eating with the kind of unrestrained pleasure children show for simple things.
On the invitation, Sophie had asked that the guests not bring presents but items to donate to the local animal shelter in Grace’s name instead. The box by the picnic table was full with paper towels, canned food, detergent, everyday items the shelter needed to stay in operation.
The children played games for forty-five minutes or so, Red Rover, Simon Says and jump rope. They all took one last ride on Oscar and Lulu, and then it was time for Mr. Crawford to load the donkeys up and take them home.
Once he’d gone, some of the children began to leave. Those whose mothers hadn’t yet come to pick them up remained, and a new game of Red Rover began.
From across the yard, Sophie watched Ruby single Grace out and kneel down beside her, one hand pushing Grace’s blond hair back from her face where it had escaped her ponytail. Some protective instinct surged inside her, and it was all she could do not to storm over and sweep her daughter up in her arms.
A couple of minutes later, Ruby walked over and said it was time for them to go. “You’ve made a nice home for yourself, Sophie. You and Grace. I hope you’re happy.”
“We are,” Sophie said, hearing the defensiveness in her own voice.
Ruby reached inside her oversize purse and pulled out what looked like some kind of legal document. “Oh, and by the way, there’s a little something I need for you to sign.”
“What is it?” Sophie asked, surprised.
“The land my daddy left to me and your mama. Roy and I have decided we’d like to build a house on it. We think ten thousand dollars is a fair price to buy you out. And since it’s not something you’re ever going to use—”
“What land?” Sophie asked, shaking her head.
“It’s just a few acres outside of town. We never even saw fit to tell you about it, since it wasn’t worth anything.”
“Ten thousand dollars sounds like something.”
“We just want to make sure we’re being fair to you.”
Sophie glanced at Roy, who stood behind Ruby, hands in his pockets, his gaze set on the children still playing. She pressed her lips together and then said quietly, “This is something that belonged to my mother, and you never told me about it?”
“Oh, Sophie,” Ruby said, her voice rising, “don’t go and romanticize something that isn’t a big deal. Your mother wouldn’t have given two licks about that land.”
“How do you know?” Sophie said, gripping the papers between clenched fists. “I have a feeling you have no idea what my mother cared about.”
Ruby took a step back, as if Sophie had slapped her. “You were always such an ungrateful—”
“Ruby,” Roy said. “Let’s go.”
Ruby stared at Sophie, her gaze hardening. “Look over the papers, Sophie. Roy and I both would appreciate your cooperation.”
With that, she turned and walked away, her shoulders stiff.
Sophie glanced at the document, threw it on the chair behind her, then started clearing the picnic table of sticky plates and cups, tossing them into a big garbage bag.
Darcy came over and began helping. “They’re gone, huh?”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “At least I know why they came now.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. It was a wonderful party,” Darcy said. “Grace had a blast.”
Sophie nodded. “I think everyone had fun.”
Darcy dropped a cup into the bag. “You’re a wonderful mother, Sophie. Grace is a lucky little girl to have you as her family.”
“No,” Sophie said, a sudden catch in her throat. “I’m the one who’s lucky to have her.”
SOPHIE WALKED THE LAST child to the front door. Grace stood beside them, her eyes so heavy she could barely keep them open.
Darcy led her two equally tired daughters to the minivan, waving goodbye as she got into the driver’s seat. Sophie picked up Grace, who immediately tucked her face into Sophie’s neck and closed her eyes.
“Thank you, Mama,” she said, her voice barely audible. “For the party.”
“You’re so very welcome, baby,” Sophie said. “Are you ready for a nap?”
Grace nodded, too worn out to offer up her usual protest against sleep.
Sophie turned to close the door. A truck pulled away from the curb across the street. She glanced over her
shoulder, spotting the back end of a familiar white Ford diesel pickup.
Was that Caleb Tucker’s truck?
She stretched her neck but couldn’t get a glimpse of the driver.
But then what would he be doing parked across from her house?
She recalled Darcy’s teasing and could not deny the flutter in her stomach at the possibility of his having thought of her since yesterday.
Grace stirred in her arms. Sophie shook her head at her own foolishness, stepped inside the house and closed the door.
CALEB SHOVED THE 350’s gearshift into Fourth and barreled down Ivy Run Road without regard for the residential speed limit, leaving Sophie Owens’s house behind as fast as he could. He shot onto the 29 Bypass and kept the accelerator to the floor until the city began to fade behind him. Farmland appeared on either side of the truck, alfalfa fields, cornfields. He let up on the gas then, pulling air into his lungs.
On the seat beside him lay a dozen white roses wrapped in green florist paper. The breeze from his lowered window caught a petal and tossed it to the floor.
He kept driving, not letting himself think about where he was headed.
Five or so miles later, the turnoff rose up on the right. Caleb’s stomach dropped. Sweat beads broke out on his forehead, and he gripped the wheel as if to let go would send him flying off to someplace he could not return from.
The cemetery was at the end of the quarter-mile gravel road. A heavy chain with a padlock blocked the entrance.
Caleb had never been given a key, and so he stopped the truck just short of the gate and turned off the engine. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to gather the courage to get out. A crow sat on one of the fence posts, its caw-caw the only sound in this solitary place.
The plot belonged to Laney’s family. Generations of Scotts were buried here with headstones that ranged from rocks with initials scratched in as a reminder of who lay beneath to the ornate dedication that Laney’s parents had insisted she have. Even through the haze that had been his reality three years ago, Caleb had thought she would much rather have been remembered with a simple rock pulled from the nearby field. But then Laney’s mother had her own way of doing things, and all decisions in the Scott family were made her way.
Caleb reached across the seat for the roses and got out of the truck. His palms were damp and left marks on the florist paper.
He stepped over the heavy chain and walked the short distance to the graveyard. A black wrought-iron gate lay at the end of a stone footpath. Caleb lifted the handle. It made a rusty rasp of protest.
Laney’s headstone was in the far right-hand corner of the neatly mowed enclosure. He weaved his way through the other graves, most of the headstones indicating average to long life spans, another arrow of unfairness that Laney should be here with only thirty-one years spent on this earth.
He stopped just short of her grave.
Others had been here today; the grass in front of the headstone was covered with four different arrangements of flowers.
Something inside him had locked up, and he couldn’t remember how to make his arms or legs move. His heart thudded heavily, and the metallic taste of panic stung the back of his throat.
Finally, he bent down on one knee and placed his own offering to the side of the others, recognizing the enormous spray of carnations as favorites of Mary’s. Laney had hated carnations.
The wind threw out a short gust, scattering a few of the rose petals across the grave. It seemed a better idea to him, so Caleb began pulling the white petals from the stems, letting them fall where they would.
When the stems were bare, he sat down on the grass, weakened as if he’d just finished a miles-long run.
“Wonders never cease.”
Startled, Caleb jerked around, ran a hand across the back of his neck. “I didn’t hear you pull up, Mary,” he said.
“I’m sure if you had, you would have left,” she said, walking over to stop just short of the headstone. She wore black, head to toe. Her once-blond hair was now gray. Grief had etched hard lines into her face, and she was so thin, her clothes hung on her.
“I thought you’d already been here today,” Caleb said.
“I had. With Emmitt. I wanted to come back by myself.”
Silence weighed heavy between them. Caleb got to his feet. “So, how’re you doing, Mary?”
She shrugged, tipping her head. “Some days are better than others. And you?”
“Pretty much just like that.”
“I keep expecting to hear you’ve moved on. Found someone else.”
“Expecting or hoping?”
“Why should it matter to me one way or the other?”
“Why should it?” he threw back.
Mary folded her arms across her chest and stared at her daughter’s headstone. “I know you loved her, Caleb, but—”
“But what, Mary?” he interrupted, his voice hard. “But if she hadn’t married me, none of this would have happened? Is that what you were going to say?”
Mary stared out past the cemetery at some point in the distance, not answering for a long while. When she finally did, she said, “Laney deserved more than you had to give her.”
The words cut deep. “I know you lost your daughter, Mary,” Caleb said. “But I lost my wife, too. And I did love her.”
She looked directly at him then, her eyes filled with a piercing grief. “Sometimes, that’s just not enough though, is it?” she said. She turned then and walked away. He watched as she got in her car, backed up and drove off.
He stood there for a long time, then finally dropped onto his knees next to the grave.
He had not come here once since the funeral. Before today, just the thought of doing so had filled him with instant resistance. He couldn’t bear to return to the place where he had left her, this spot out in the country that had marked the end of their life together. Nor could he bear to think of his young, beautiful wife here in this lonely place.
Now that he was here, he saw the senselessness in his thinking. This spot was no more than a memorial to her physical presence on earth. Laney was wherever the good went. This he knew in the marrow of his bones.
But her child was here. In the same town where he worked and lived.
He’d somehow imagined she would have been adopted by someone out of the area. It hadn’t been a stipulation, so he could hardly blame the agency.
A soft swoosh of wind lifted the boughs of a nearby pine tree. He felt the touch on his shoulder, soothing, comforting. He looked around. There was no one there, and yet he felt the presence of his wife as surely as if he were looking at her.
He wondered again if he was losing his mind, if this was how it happened. Truth and desperate hope merging to form new reality.
Whatever the explanation, the pain inside him softened and dissolved into something more neutral. Something bearable so that his mind cleared like fog dissipating before a waiting sun.
He had driven out to Sophie Owens’s house today to convince himself he had been wrong. That the resemblance between the little girl and his wife was nothing more than his imagination looking for some new way to reach Laney when she was no longer reachable.
He’d spent the night on the porch in the old rocker, unable to face the bed they had shared, and he had never had the heart to replace. He hadn’t slept, but sat up wide awake until the sun rose, the knowledge burning in him that he had seen with his own eyes the child to whom Laney had given birth.
After three years of blocking his mind to her existence, she had appeared right in front of him, as if that, too, had been part of some plan laid out for him without his consent.
The child’s face hung in his mind now like a newly taken snapshot, and in her likeness to his wife, he imagined the children they had hoped to have together and wondered if they would have looked like Laney, too.
BECAUSE CATHERINE WAS miserable, they left North Carolina a day early and drove all the way back with no more than ten words spoken b
etween them. It had been that way all weekend, and regardless of how many times Jeb asked her, Catherine would not tell him what was wrong. She had put up yet another wall between them, and he was beginning to feel the hopelessness of ever getting through again.
They got home around five, each of them unpacking their suitcases in silence. Catherine was downstairs in the kitchen starting supper when he walked through on his way outside to get the newspaper.
She stood by the sink, slicing apples, halving each one and then scooping out the center with a quickness that made her agitation clear.
He stopped at the door, walked across the floor and put his hand on her shoulder. He felt her stiffen beneath his touch, but forced himself not to let go.
“Don’t I have a right to know what happened, Cath? At least then, I might be able to defend myself.”
She continued slicing, then stopped and said, “You should have asked Betsy.”
He restrained a sigh. His big sister could rarely resist meddling. “What did she say?”
Catherine turned, her blue eyes meeting his. “Basically that I need to wake up and realize how miserable you are.”
He opened his mouth to deny it, then stood there mute when the words wouldn’t come out.
Her eyes widened. She turned back to the sink, one hand gripping the edge.
“Betsy shouldn’t have interfered,” he said, keeping his voice soft. “But how long are we going to go on like this, Cath?”
She dropped her chin, her shoulders suddenly shaking with silent weeping.
An actual pain stabbed through Jeb’s heart. “Baby, come here,” he said, turning her to face him. He put his arms around her and rubbed the back of her hair with his hand. “Shh. Don’t cry.”
“It’s like there’s this black cloud over me,” she said after a minute or two, “and I can’t see through it anymore. Most days, I don’t want to try.”
“Maybe you need to see somebody,” he said carefully. “There’s medicine for this kind of thing—”
She stiffened again, pulling back with a look of pure fear. “I’m not sick, Jeb.”
A Gift of Grace Page 4
