A Gift of Grace

by Cooper, Inglath

“She loved to swim, too. She was on the team in college. Her mama and daddy said the first time they ever put her in water, it was like she’d been born there. She just knew what to do.”

  Sophie blinked. “That’s how Grace is.”

  Caleb looked at her.

  The silence held for a while before he said, “She was a good person, not a saint by any means. But she thought about other people, cared if she said something unintentionally hurtful, couldn’t rest until she’d set it right again. We started going out in high school. Neither of us ever dated anyone else. I knew the first time I saw her that she was the one.”

  He hesitated and then said, “It feels good to talk about her. Sometimes I wish I could erase it all. Even the good because remembering it makes not having her so painful.”

  Sophie reached out to touch his shoulder, the impulse immediate, if not well thought out. “You shouldn’t blame yourself for what happened, Caleb.”

  Something she could only identify as anguish flickered across his face.

  “It would be natural,” she went on, “to look for a way to put reason into something that makes no sense at all. But sometimes there is no reason.”

  He was silent still, and Sophie began to wonder if she’d overstepped her bounds. Around them, darkness had settled, sounds carrying from neighboring yards. Children being called in for the night. Doors clicking closed. A cat voicing protest over invaded territory.

  “I often wish the police hadn’t shot him.”

  Caleb’s voice startled her a little, and it took a second for the words to penetrate. She started to say something, anything, then stopped, sensing that what he needed was someone to listen.

  “Sometimes, I wish he were in prison so I could go and see him locked up, ask him if he misses his life. I wish I could see him paying for what he did.”

  Bitterness colored the words, and Sophie thought what an awful burden that would be to carry the distance of a lifetime.

  “What happened to him?” she asked quietly.

  “He abducted another woman in South Carolina. Someone saw him shove her in the car and called the police. He held her hostage for most of a day before they took him out.”

  The picture was an ugly one, and Sophie shied from sketching in too many details. It didn’t seem possible to connect this man with her daughter.

  “When I look at Grace…she’s such a perfect child,” Caleb said, echoing her thoughts.

  “I like to think that she got all of your wife’s goodness. That it was her gift to Grace.”

  Caleb looked at her then, and even in the night shadows, she could see appreciation in his eyes. “I see so much of Laney in her.”

  “I’m glad,” Sophie said. And she really was.

  “Tell me about your family, Sophie.” The request was quiet and direct with what sounded like sincere interest.

  “There really isn’t much to tell.”

  “Your aunt and uncle are your closest relatives?”

  She nodded, old hurts rising up to mingle with far more recent ones. “And not that close, as you saw in court,” she said, irony in her voice.

  “Were they good to you when you were growing up?”

  “I had a roof over my head,” she said, hearing the flatness in the words. “I suppose they felt obligated to take care of me when my parents and my sister died.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Caleb’s gaze was intent on her, so much so that she angled a shoulder away from him, afraid he would see too much. “Our house burned down one night. I was the only one who got out.”

  He drew in an audible breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “My aunt and uncle weren’t able to have children of their own. I wasn’t exactly what she wanted. Kind of like a consolation prize.”

  Caleb put a hand on her shoulder. She jumped at the touch. He turned her to face him, looking into her eyes with an intensity that made her glance away. “They should have been grateful to have you, Sophie.”

  “They took care of me,” she defended automatically as she always had. “I could have ended up in foster care or worse.”

  She had never told any of her friends what she had just told Caleb for fear that it would make her a lesser person in their eyes. She had never even told her ex-husband everything, rather a glossed-over version of her childhood that didn’t encourage too many questions.

  They stood there for a while, neither of them saying anything, or feeling compelled to do so. She remembered suddenly the attraction she’d felt to him the first time she’d seen him, before the truth had come to light. She wanted to touch him. Wished he’d reach for her, put his mouth to hers.

  She stepped away then, too quickly, and bumped her coffee cup from the end table where she had set it earlier.

  It toppled onto the stone floor of the porch and broke.

  “Oh, no,” she said, dropping down to pick up the largest pieces.

  “It didn’t cut you, did it?” Caleb asked.

  “No,” she said.

  He knelt beside her to help gather the rest of the shattered cup. “I think that’s all of it.”

  The words clearly marked the moment for them to stand, move apart, dilute the sudden thickness of the air around them. But they stayed where they were, watching one another.

  Most shocking was the look on Caleb’s face, a reflection of the same longing that Sophie felt.

  “Sophie,” he said, his voice not sounding like his at all.

  She couldn’t speak, could find no words to answer the questions she heard in her name.

  “I should go home,” he said.

  “It’s late,” she agreed, her gaze on her hands.

  They both moved for the sliding door at the same time, creating an awkward two-step where they avoided eyes and said simultaneous excuse-mes.

  In the kitchen, she put the broken cup in the trash, made a pretense of washing her hands at the sink just so she could keep her back to him.

  His boots sounded on the floor behind her. He touched her shoulder. “Sophie?”

  She turned to look at him, not trusting herself to speak.

  “You would regret it,” he said.

  “I would? Or you would?”

  “Both of us, I suspect.” He pulled his hand back as if her skin had suddenly become burning hot. He went to the back door and called Noah. The dog bolted up the steps, Lily trotting in behind him and coming over to sit at Sophie’s feet.

  “Thanks again for the dinner,” he said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Good night, Sophie.”

  “Good night.”

  For a long time after the front door clicked quietly closed, she stood at the kitchen sink, rubbing Lily’s soft head and trying to decide exactly what had just happened.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE SHOT GLASS TAVERN had lived two lives in Albemarle County. The first was in an old log cabin just inside the town limits. When a fire had burned the place to the ground in 1978, the owners relocated to what had once been a tobacco warehouse farther out where it wasn’t quite so handy for police cruisers to roll by looking for overindulged customers.

  Caleb didn’t realize he’d marked the place as his destination until he turned in at the metal entrance sign and shut off the truck’s diesel engine. A dozen or so cars were scattered throughout the gravel parking lot. Two more pulled in behind him, radios blasting through rolled-down windows.

  He hadn’t been inside the bar in years. Happy, married people had no use for such a place. But tonight, it suited his purpose.

  He lowered the windows a couple of inches and told the already sleeping Noah to wait there. He got out of the truck and hit the remote lock. From outside, thick concrete-block walls and a heavy front door muffled the bar noise. Inside, the blast hit from the speakers hanging in each corner of the ceiling with a row of them down the center, alternating directions. Clint Black held the current spot on the jukebox stage, and several couples danced groin to groin on the small wood fl
oor at the far end of the bar.

  Caleb took a stool and ordered a Jack Daniel’s straight up.

  The bartender dropped him a nod, reached for the bottle and poured the shot. Caleb upended the glass, drained the bourbon in a single gulp, then set it down for another. The bartender raised an eyebrow as he poured again.

  Caleb blinked against the burn blazing down his throat and waited for the numbness to set in. It started with a slow tingle in the center of his belly, then washed out toward fingers and toes. Effective as the liquor was, it didn’t change the fact that he’d wanted to kiss Sophie Owens tonight.

  There.

  Had he needed the bourbon to point that out?

  For three years, that part of him had ceased to exist. Just wasn’t there anymore. He’d pass an attractive woman on the street and feel nothing. He hadn’t missed what he didn’t want.

  She had wanted him to kiss her. He’d felt that, too. And for a few clear seconds, he’d been tempted.

  It scared the hell out of him.

  He’d imagined that if those kinds of feelings ever came back, they would trickle in one at a time, until he woke up one day and decided it was time to act on them. In a planned, logical, fully aware of the consequences kind of way.

  But not like this. Not in a gust of physical need that nearly knocked him off his feet. And not with Sophie Owens.

  He didn’t need to add to his list of offenses seducing a woman whose life he had already shaken off its foundation.

  “Hey, there.”

  Caleb turned his head. A blond twenty-something studied him with a smile that went a few watts beyond friendly. “Hey,” he said.

  “You and Jack look like you could use some company.”

  “We were just leaving,” Caleb said, tipping the edge of his now-empty glass.

  “Oh, come on,” she said, placing two fingers on his left arm. “It’s way early. Things are just getting started.” Her voice held a note of appeal, and her wide green eyes urged him to stay.

  The crowd around them had indeed thickened, and laughter rang out with the sound of people enjoying themselves.

  He dropped his gaze to her hand, waiting for a spark of interest to flare beneath her touch.

  None came.

  Instead, all he felt was disappointment and an inexplicable urgency to prove that what had happened earlier tonight had been need in general and nothing specific to the one woman he could not get involved with.

  “One dance,” he said.

  The girl’s smile widened, her voice cigarette-husky when she said, “Great.”

  The dance floor had gotten more popular with the slowing of the music, and Caleb followed her to a corner where there was barely enough room for them to squeeze in. She stepped right up against him, looped her arms around his neck and tipped her head back with another inviting smile.

  “My name’s Megan,” she said. “I’m a student at the university. And you’re—”

  “Too old for you,” he said, looking down at her with an attempt at lightness.

  “That’s not exactly what I was thinking,” she said with another smile. He suspected she knew how appealing it was. “I was thinking you’re just about right. I haven’t had a date on campus in the last year that I didn’t wish would end by ten o’clock.”

  “Maybe you’ve been accepting the wrong dates.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe I just haven’t run into the right man. Until now.”

  The last two words had deliberate emphasis, and Caleb knew he should at least feel a little flattered. Feel something, anyway. He focused on finding the rhythm in the song and noticed with a kind of removed-from-the-moment detachment the fact that their knees bumped as they danced, that her halter-covered breasts brushed his chest with every turn of their bodies.

  “So what’s your name?” she asked.

  “Caleb Tucker,” he said.

  “Caleb,” she repeated as if she liked the feel of it on her tongue. “What do you do for a living, Caleb?”

  “Farm supply store—”

  “Tucker’s?”

  He nodded.

  “I love that place! Every spring I buy petunias and impatiens and geraniums for Mother’s Day. My mom is big into flowers.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Caleb said. She was young. And he suddenly felt a lot older than he had when he’d come into this place. Aside from that, the Jack Daniel’s lift had already fizzled, leaving him with a dull headache in his left temple.

  “I’ll have to drop by and see you sometime.”

  Clearly embedded in the statement was the hope that he would say something like “Do that,” or “I’ll be looking for you.” She closed the distance between them by a couple more inches. And Caleb felt nothing.

  The truth was impossible to deny. The desire he’d felt earlier tonight had been about Sophie Owens. Her touch. The clear hope in her eyes that he would kiss her.

  The song came to an end.

  “One more?” she asked with a smile.

  “Time for me to go home,” he said, already backing up. “Thanks for the dance, though.”

  “Wait!” she said, grabbing a book of matches from the bar, then asking the bartender for a pen. She scribbled something on the cover and handed it to him.

  “Good night,” he said and headed for his truck, fully aware that he never should have stopped in the first place.

  THE DOORBELL PULLED SOPHIE from the tub at just after ten that night. Dressed in a robe and pajamas, she went downstairs to find Darcy on her front step, relief etched in her expression.

  “I couldn’t stand it another minute,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get you all day. I was sure something had happened—”

  “Oh, Darcy. I’m sorry,” Sophie said, contrite. “You drove back to check on me?”

  “It was either that or call the police.”

  Sophie waved her in, apologizing again. “I should have called you back.”

  They walked into the kitchen where Sophie poured them both a glass of iced tea and asked about Darcy’s family.

  “Everybody’s okay,” she said. “Gran was eighty-five. She had a good life. I’m trying to tell myself it’s better to go the way she did, peacefully, in your sleep, than to linger for years not knowing your own children.”

  Sophie nodded. “Still. I’ve been an awful friend. Only thinking about myself.”

  “Hey,” Darcy said. “You’re allowed. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. I am. Grace is here. Upstairs asleep.”

  Darcy’s eyes widened. “What?”

  “Caleb brought her back this afternoon. He said she needed to see me, that she’d been crying since the social worker arrived with her.”

  “And what did he think she would do?” Darcy asked, bitterness edging her voice.

  Sophie shook her head. “He was here for a long time. He ate dinner with us.”

  “You’re kidding,” Darcy said, disbelieving.

  “I know. It sounds crazy. We talked. About his wife. Laney.”

  “And?”

  “I think he’s still trying to make sense of it all.”

  “While ruining your life in the process,” Darcy said.

  “That’s what I thought. Before today.”

  Darcy looked at her for a long moment, eyes narrowed.

  “What’s going on, Soph? Are you falling for this guy?”

  Sophie glanced up. “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s it like then?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  Darcy set her glass down on the counter. “My God. Sophie. Have you considered that maybe this is part of his plan? To make you feel sorry for him so you’ll give him what he wants?”

  Sophie heard the ugly suggestion behind the words and suddenly wondered if it could possibly be true. “I wanted him to stay. He’s the one who left.”

  “Four years, and you have little to no interest in dating. And now him? That makes no sense, Sophie. You’re the one who said the wri
ting was on the wall when you were dating Peter. That your marriage was doomed from the start. Wouldn’t Caleb Tucker fall under that same category?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Darcy put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ve been through so much these past few weeks. Your emotions are on a roller coaster. Maybe you’re mistaking gratitude for something else.”

  “Nothing happened. Nothing is going to happen.”

  Darcy was quiet for a few moments. “So what now?”

  “The selfish part of me wants to go back to the way things were. Just me and Grace.” She hesitated. “Another part of me wonders if there’s a way to make this work for all of us.”

  “You mean share custody with him?”

  “What if it’s that or lose her altogether? I had a glimpse this morning of what that would be like. I can’t let that happen.”

  “It’s not right, though,” Darcy said. “In every way that counts, Grace is your daughter.”

  “So here’s the question then,” Sophie said, holding her friend’s concerned gaze. “If I willingly let him into her life, will that make her any less so?”

  THE QUESTION STAYED with her throughout the next day.

  Late Sunday afternoon, Sophie called her normal sitter and asked her to stay with Grace for a couple of hours.

  She changed into khaki pants and a light blue blouse, deliberately choosing two of the most nondescript items in her closet. She pulled her hair back in a ponytail and slipped on flat leather sandals.

  It was nearly eight-thirty by the time she reached the turnoff to Caleb’s house. She stopped the car just outside the stone-column entrance, hands clenched on the steering wheel, her stomach doing multiple somersaults. A nearly choking sense of panic left beads of sweat on her forehead.

  She eased the Volvo down the gravel road, reaching for courage as she parked beside Caleb’s truck.

  She saw him immediately, sitting outside on the front porch. Twilight draped the house in shadow.

  She turned off the car, opened the door and got out. Music floated across the yard, the strains identifiable as Vivaldi.

  The sound brought her up short, as if she were intruding on some private moment. “I’m sorry for not calling,” she said. “Do you have a minute?”