A Sound Among the Trees

by Susan Meissner

  “It’s going to be fine. We’re going to be fine. You and I …”

  But his voice fell away, and he did not finish his thought.

  This time, Marielle did not attempt to finish it for him. She had no idea what it was he had started to say.

  Brette raised her head from where she sat with her skirted knees up against her chest. Rising from the steps, she ran toward them. Marielle couldn’t tell if the little girl was running toward her, toward Carson, or toward the in-between place that separated them.

  Marielle hadn’t planned to correspond with anyone on her online dating account who didn’t already live in the southwest. It was the fourth time in five years Marielle was giving online dating a try, and she had formulated several deal-breaker rules that she’d promised herself she would not renege on. No one younger than she by more than five years. No one recently divorced. No one who didn’t call back when they said they would. No one who called her Mary Ellen. No one who wanted to meet up at a cocktail lounge in a hotel lobby. No one who didn’t live within a couple of hours’ drive. Experience had taught her that a few ground rules were a good thing.

  When a glitch deposited a Virginia man’s profile into her inbox, Marielle had been a mere keystroke away from deleting it when she saw that Carson Bishop didn’t like chocolate. At all.

  Having never met a person who also did not like chocolate, she perused the rest of his profile and discovered he also didn’t like roller coasters or tight spaces or shellfish. Marielle’s first correspondence to Carson was a simple e-mail quipping that she had begun to believe she was the only person on the planet who didn’t like Hershey’s on the half shell. She had no intention of continuing to e-mail him. She told him plainly in her e-mail that it was too bad he did not live closer as she might’ve pursued a friendship with him.

  When he e-mailed back commenting that he too wished she lived closer, a tiny fissure formed in her tightly constructed parameters. She e-mailed him back.

  And the electronic conversation continued.

  She learned Carson was forty and the widowed father of a son and daughter. His wife, Sara, had died four years earlier from complications of an ectopic pregnancy. He was a systems engineer for a defense contractor in DC and lived with his kids and their great-grandmother in a one-hundred-sixty-year-old mansion in Fredericksburg’s oldest neighborhood.

  A graduate of William and Mary as well as Virginia Tech, he liked live stage over film, Tim Hortons coffee when he could get it, playing tennis, and the color green. Raised Methodist. Wore his sandy brown hair cut short and rimless glasses. Loved to watch old movies and hang out with his kids. Unskilled at instigating a relationship with a woman, his friends at work had spent the last year coercing him to try online dating. He hadn’t yet corresponded with anyone he’d been matched with. Marielle was the first person to respond to his profile that he had replied back to.

  He’d confided in her because she was safe. She was too far away to worry about having to meet in person right away or take out on a date. It had been a long time since he’d been on a date. She had found his vulnerability strangely endearing.

  After eight weeks of e-mails and then dozens of phone calls, Marielle began to feel like their random meeting online hadn’t been random at all.

  “I know I haven’t even met him yet, but I think I’m falling in love with him,” she told her mother. “He’s not like the other guys I’ve dated. He’s always more interested in finding out how my day was than he is telling me about his. He calls me when he says he’s going to call, he laughs at my jokes, he asks about you and Dad. He … he just makes me feel like I’m important.”

  “But … what if you meet him and there are just … no sparks?” her mother had cautioned.

  In the last decade Marielle had learned to mistrust relationships that started out with fireworks like the Fourth of July and then fizzled on any ordinary gray day in November. She could already tell there was something different about her attraction for Carson. He made her feel relaxed and peaceful. There was no pounding kaboom. No eye-popping dazzle. It felt very natural. And she liked it.

  “I’m not worried about that,” she’d answered.

  Her mother had paused for a moment before adding, “You do know there aren’t any deserts in Virginia.”

  Marielle had nodded. She loved the desert.

  But the desert was not a lover.

  he last of the wedding presents—a tall, lead crystal water pitcher that stood atop a crush of white tissue paper—lay open on Marielle’s lap. The cut glass caught sunlight at odd angles and splashed prisms in all directions onto the garden’s patio stones. Adelaide poked at a miraged rainbow drop with her foot, and Hudson, sitting next to her, laughed and stomped on the one nearest him.

  “It’s beautiful, thank you.” Marielle beamed toward Pearl, who sat one table away in the shade with the rest of the Blue-Haired Old Ladies. Most of the guests hadn’t stayed for the opening of the presents, just family and close friends. But the Ladies had.

  “I know Adelaide’s got dozens of water pitchers, but you need one of your own!” Pearl seemed quite pleased with herself.

  Hudson leaned toward his great-grandmother. “Does she, Mimi?” he whispered. “Does she need one of her own?”

  Adelaide peered at him. “Let Pearl have her little delusions,” she whispered back.

  “What?”

  “I’m not sharing my water pitchers.”

  Hudson’s mouth broke into a slow grin. “You’re teasing me.”

  “It’s been a long day.”

  “It’s been a boring day. I’m bored.” Hudson looked to the table of opened presents, the remains of the cake, the empty champagne bottles. “We’re done now, right?”

  Adelaide rubbed a callous on her finger, formed by sewing brass buttons and golden braid for years on end. “Depends on what you mean by ‘done.’ ”

  “I mean, I can go now, right? That’s what I mean.”

  Adelaide regarded her great-grandson, studied his face. People said he favored Adelaide’s side, that he had Sara’s eyes, Caroline’s chin, and her nose. She saw the resemblance—who couldn’t?—and it pleased her. She resisted the urge to lay a wrinkled hand on his head—he hated that—to feel the comfort in his boyness. There hadn’t been a boy born at Holly Oak until Hudson since 1863. Adelaide’s gaze rose instinctively to Brette, who sat across from her, practically on Marielle’s mother’s lap, toying with the woman’s charm bracelet. The child was drunk on grandmotherly attention from a woman whose only grandchild to that point was a chatty boy with a vacuum cleaner name.

  Adelaide wasn’t sure what the future held for Brette. Hudson’s arrival hadn’t kept Sara alive, hadn’t brought Caroline crawling back. Hudson would surely, if not eventually, usher in something new, but that wouldn’t change what had happened before. Nothing could do that.

  “I know what you mean, Hudson,” she murmured. “But we have guests. And it would not be fair to Kirby for you to disappear into the house and leave him here in the garden.”

  Adelaide motioned with her head to where Kirby sat next to his parents on the opposite side of the tables of spectators. He was thumbing through a large, colorful cookbook—one of the gifts. The bow tie he had on earlier was now peeking out of his front pants pocket.

  “He won’t care, Mimi. He thinks I’m a kid.”

  “You are.”

  “He thinks he’s older than me.”

  “He is older than you.”

  “He won’t care.”

  “If you are going into the house to play a game or to watch the television you will need to ask that boy who thinks he is older than you if he would like to join you.”

  Hudson stood. “He won’t care.” Her great-grandson tossed the three words over his shoulder.

  “Well, I care. You are a gentleman.”

  “You said I’m a kid.”

  “Who is learning to be a gentleman.”

  Hudson shuffled away. Adelaide watched him
approach Kirby, watched the vacuum-cleaner boy shrug, stand, and then place the cookbook on his chair. They began to walk toward the open dining room doors. Brette dashed away without a word from the lap on which she was leaning to follow them, leaving Marielle’s mother to look thoughtfully after her.

  Carson stood to address the thirty or so people who had remained. “Marielle and I just want to thank you all again for coming today. I’m especially glad Marielle’s family could be here from Arizona and New Mexico and that all of you could meet them. It’s been so wonderful to share this day with you all.”

  “You deserve to be happy again, Carson,” Maxine interjected.

  Adelaide sighed. Leave it to Maxine to painfully state the obvious at the most unnecessary time.

  “Yes, well, uh, thanks again, everyone.” Carson reached for Marielle, putting his arm across her shoulders. “It really means a lot to us that you came.”

  Chairs made little scraping sounds on the patio stones as people stood and stretched and began short conversations that would inevitably end with a soon-to-be-spoken good-bye. Except for the Blue-Haired Old Ladies. They signaled the waitstaff to bring them more coffee. Marielle’s mother, Ellen, walked over to Adelaide and sat down in the chair Hudson had occupied.

  “Thanks so much for having the reception here, Mrs. McClane,” Ellen said. “It was so lovely. You have such a beautiful home.”

  “It was my pleasure. Anything worth celebrating has always been celebrated here in the garden. So, where else could we have it but here?”

  Ellen nodded. “Well, it was just wonderful. Carson has told me so much about this house.”

  “Has he.” Adelaide didn’t frame it like a question. It wasn’t a question.

  “Mmm, yes. He said this house has been in your family since before the Civil War. And survived a horrible battle. That’s amazing to me.”

  Adelaide swallowed. “Indeed.”

  “Marielle tells me you sew uniforms for Civil War reenactments. That’s a very interesting hobby. How long have you been doing that?”

  Adelaide repositioned herself in her chair. “It’s actually more than a hobby. Hobbies tend to cost you money. This actually pays for my brandy and cigars.”

  Ellen laughed nervously.

  “I am kidding, dear,” Adelaide continued, and the woman visibly relaxed. “I prefer port over brandy—and without the cigar. And never while I am sewing.”

  “Well. That’s … that’s fascinating.”

  “I use the original patterns, you see, and sew everything but the interior seams by hand. I won’t sell an officer’s decorated greatcoat for less than $350—that’s quite a bit more than most of my competitors. But I don’t care. People buy them. I always have a waiting list. And I’ve been doing it since I retired from teaching. Twenty-five years, if you’re into the math.”

  “So interesting.” Ellen seemed genuinely intrigued. “And how did you get involved in reenactments, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  Adelaide shrugged. “I don’t mind. My great-grandmother and her mother and grandmother sewed uniforms in the same parlor I sew mine in. But theirs were real, if you know what I mean. Many women were called upon to sew uniforms in their parlors during the War Between the States. I have picked up where they left off, you might say.”

  “Wow.” Ellen breathed in deeply, taking in the sweep of the patio, the lawns, and the west end of the garden at their backs. “There’s just so much history here.” Then she pointed toward the back of the yard. “Carson said those two buildings at the edge of the garden there used to be slaves’ quarters.”

  Adelaide followed Ellen’s line of vision to the stone buildings festooned with ivy.

  “Yes. Those are the last two. Hudson keeps his rabbit in one of them.”

  “And the other one?”

  Adelaide was about to speak when an oozy realization crept over her. Marielle’s mother surely knew the other one had been Sara’s art studio. Ellen had been at its steps with the children for the better part of the reception. She had no doubt looked in the windows and asked the children about it. She’d surely seen the pitched tabletops where Sara experimented with paint, fabric, clay, and metal. Had seen the remnants of Sara’s unconventional creativity. Artist friends had long ago taken away the usable elements Sara had left behind, like leftover tubes of paint and fabric. What remained was what Sara had barely started, a few haphazard, gestational pieces whose imagined final appearance no one could guess. They still sat in the studio, covered in dust, visible from the windows.

  “Sara had a studio in the other.” Adelaide turned to face Ellen.

  Marielle’s mother murmured a “hmm” that dissipated into the afternoon air.

  “No one is using it at the moment,” Adelaide continued.

  “Right.” But Ellen’s eyes were on the studio, as if its door were wide open, declaring its current usefulness. Or perhaps its shrinelike aura. Adelaide recognized the look of a mother whose concern for her child gnawed at her.

  “You needn’t worry about the studio, Ellen,” Adelaide said. “Most of Sara’s things have been cleared away. What’s left is rather unremarkable. Things she had barely begun to work on.”

  Ellen slowly turned away from the old buildings at the edge of the garden, her face pained. “I’m sorry, Mrs. McClane. I didn’t mean to bring up anything painful. Has … has this been a hard day for you?”

  The woman’s question surprised Adelaide a little. Of all the people who might’ve asked how she was feeling about the day, Marielle’s mother was the last person she had expected would ask. She barely knew the woman. Adelaide thought of the moments in the parlor, much earlier that day, before the vacuum boy had intruded on her privacy and the lingering memories of her granddaughter.

  “A little,” Adelaide replied. “I raised Sara, you know. She lived here. Her children began their lives here. Yes, today’s been a little difficult.”

  “And Carson? Do you think it’s been a hard day for him? Maybe just a little?”

  Carson stood several yards away, his hand on the small of Marielle’s back, talking to the man who had twice been his best man. “I don’t know,” Adelaide said. “But I would imagine he would not be the gentle soul that he is if it didn’t still hurt just a little.” She brought her gaze back to the woman who sat next to her.

  Ellen smiled, the kind of slow, measured grin that an honest answer evokes. “I suppose you have a point.” She turned her head to look at Marielle and Carson, who were now walking with a few guests to the garden gate. “I worry that they took this all a little too fast,” she continued, almost as if to no one.

  “Maybe they did,” Adelaide replied, and Ellen swiveled her head back to look at her.

  “You think maybe they should’ve known each other a little longer, don’t you?” Ellen’s quiet voice was laced with subtle urgency and sad camaraderie. She seemed to think she had an ally in Adelaide.

  Adelaide patted the woman’s hand and then withdrew her arm. “It doesn’t really matter what you and I think. It’s done. They are married. And if there’s one thing I have learned in almost ninety years on this planet, it’s that you cannot undo the past by wishing it undone.”

  late afternoon breeze sent a pair of crumpled mauve napkins dodging about the caterers’ feet as they pushed their black rolling totes across the patio stones. Marielle watched the last evidences of her wedding celebration disappear from the garden—in the form of the waitstaff dressed in bridal white, whose hushed service had sent the guests away content. They closed the gate behind them, waving to her as they left. The guests and string quartet were gone as well, and the garden was noiseless now except for a choir of songbirds in the birches and the sound of a neighbor’s lawn mower.

  Marielle’s parents and brother and his family were touring the national cemetery and Marye’s Heights with Carson before the sun went down. She had been to the sites with Brette and Hudson on her first visit to Fredericksburg, and since the children had not wanted to go
again, Marielle opted to stay at Holly Oak with them. Adelaide had gone up to her bedroom to rest, and the silence that now enveloped her was welcoming.

  She turned away from the gate and the empty patio. Sunlight through the trees freckled the stones with a messy ballet of light, and the leaves responded to the breeze with an obedient rustle; applauding the day, perhaps.

  It had been a good day for the most part. Meeting friends and family who had known Sara, loved Sara, hadn’t been as awkward as she had imagined. Everyone seemed to genuinely accept her, some nearly congratulating her for steering Carson out of his pitiable aloneness. The smiles had been kind and sincere. But there had been scattered sideways glances she was most likely not meant to see, accompanied by a cocked head or pressed lip or crinkled forehead.

  Some were wondering.

  Marielle could read, even peripherally, their unspoken concern. Was she really content with living in the same house where the first wife had lived? with the first wife’s grandmother? Those few perplexed glances hadn’t truly surprised her. Her parents—and Chad—had practically the same looks on their faces when she told them where she and Carson would be living after they married.

  She’d returned from the East Coast with Carson’s engagement ring on her finger, and her parents had hastily arranged a dinner party to celebrate. Chad, a regional sales director, had used some frequent flyer miles and flown in from Santa Fe. When the guests left, and as her parents, Chad, and she finished up the last of the coffee and dessert, her father asked if she and Carson would be moving closer to DC after the wedding.

  “That’s quite a commute he’s got,” her father had said.

  Marielle had set her coffee cup down carefully and answered no, they would not. They would live at Holly Oak.

  No one had to ask what Holly Oak was. She had shown them the pictures of the mansion, both inside and out. Her parents and brother knew it was on the National Register. That it survived the shelling of downtown Fredericksburg during the Civil War. They knew how impressive it was. And who had lived there.