One Mountain Away
One Mountain Away
Emilie Richards
“A powerful and thought-provoking novel that will both break your heart and fill you with hope." —International bestselling author Diane Chamberlain With nothing but brains, ambition and sheer nerve, Charlotte Hale built a career as a tough, do-anything-to-succeed real-estate developer. She’s at the top of that mountain…but her life is empty. Her friends are as grasping and insincere as she has become. Far worse, she's alienated her family so completely that she's never held or spoken to her only granddaughter.One terrifying day, facing her own mortality, she realizes that her ambition has almost destroyed her chance at happiness. So Charlotte vows to make amends, not simply with her considerable wealth, but by offering a hand instead of a handout. Putting in hours and energy instead of putting in an appearance.Opening her home and heart instead of her wallet. With each wrenching, exhilarating decision, Charlotte finds that climbing a new mountain—one built on friendship, love and forgiveness—will teach her what it truly means to build a legacy."This is truly a marvelous piece of work.” —New York Times bestselling author Catherine Anderson"Haunts me as few other books have.” New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas
With nothing but brains, ambition and sheer nerve, Charlotte Hale built a career as a tough, savvy real-estate developer. Her reputation is rock-solid...but her life is empty.
One terrifying day, facing her own mortality, she realizes that her ambition has almost destroyed her chance at happiness.
So Charlotte vows to make amends, not simply with her considerable wealth, but by offering a hand instead of a handout. Putting in hours and energy instead of putting in an appearance. Opening her home and heart instead of her wallet.
With each wrenching, exhilarating decision, Charlotte finds that climbing a new mountain—one built on friendship, love and forgiveness—will teach her what it truly means to build a legacy.
One Mountain Away
Emilie
Richards
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For all the women who have reached out to me throughout my life. My very own anonymous goddesses, too many to count or name.
Contents
Chapter One (#u8ddbac1e-655d-51ec-9ccd-2e98037554b0)
Chapter Two (#u84382be7-abf1-5bb6-9e39-4f47c8c4d379)
Chapter Three (#u6febfeee-f331-549a-b457-3cb110c00fdf)
Chapter Four (#ueb8c20aa-d144-503a-a674-c7707925a400)
Chapter Five (#ud052158a-a0ca-5f0c-9731-5531d2b27656)
Chapter Six (#u90621581-70c3-5b81-a182-34047567d6b4)
Chapter Seven (#uee59a1b5-9338-52b1-b961-2a7d2e526b8b)
Chapter Eight (#u9c39a2e1-73ef-5f3c-b20d-0b8eb91e1af3)
Chapter Nine (#u1744a5fb-da7a-517e-8b67-2a6ce7706446)
Chapter Ten (#u29d5b009-e7e4-5c52-ae3b-2b67b9a90496)
Chapter Eleven (#u8fdf50e9-c08d-5c92-a110-6510e6cd7fce)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Reader’s Guide (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
First Day Journal: April 28
Today Maddie is wearing blue, the color of a summer sky. The choice is a good one. Any shade of blue probably suits her, but, of course, in the years before adolescence, most children look wonderful in every shade of the rainbow. At Maddie’s age skin is flawless and radiant, and hair is glossy. I think her eyes are probably blue. This is an educated guess, based on the light brown of her hair, the rose tint of her cheeks and her preferences for every shade from royal to periwinkle. I bet somebody’s told her how pretty she looks when she wears it. I remember how susceptible girls of ten are to compliments. Her mother certainly was.
This park is always filled with children. I come here to watch them play, while at the same time I worry they make learning personal facts too easy. I feel absurdly protective, so I make it my job to watch out for strangers who show too much interest or approach them to start conversations.
This is absurd, of course, because to the children, I’m a stranger, too. A stranger enjoying a glimpse back in time to a childhood she never experienced. A stranger scribbling in a journal she resisted for weeks until the lure became too great.
I’m calling this my First Day Journal because of a quote from the 1970s. When I first arrived in Asheville the words radiated in psychedelic colors from posters in every store downtown.
“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Ironically, during the time the saying was wildly popular, I was too busy to think about it. For me a day was just something to get through to make way for another. But now, every time I sit down to record my past and my thoughts, I’ll need the reminder that every day brings a new start, whether we need one or not.
A shriek draws my attention. The boy laboring up the spokes of the metal dome with Maddie is named Porter. Apparently his mop of black hair makes it hard to see, because he continually shakes his head in frustration, or maybe just in hopes the strands will fly out of his eyes for the time it takes to lumber to the top. I know his name because the other children shout it loudly and often. Porter’s something of a bully. Overweight, a little shabbier than the others, a little clumsy.
It’s that last that makes the boy pick on Maddie, I think. Porter’s figured out an eternal truth. If he makes fun of someone else, no one will look quite so hard at him. While this makes me angry, I understand. The world’s filled with bullies, but at birth, not a one of them glanced at the next cradle and plotted how to steal the pacifier out of a baby-neighbor’s mouth. It’s only later they learn that knocking down other people may help them stand taller.
So while Porter’s behavior upsets me, I feel sorry for him, as well. He’s still just a boy. I want to take him in hand and teach him the manners he’ll need to get by in the world, but Porter’s neither my son nor grandson. I’m just a stranger on a park bench, watching children make mistakes and enemies, decisions and friends.
One of Maddie’s friends is on her way to the dome right now to make sure Porter doesn’t push her. This child, olive-skinned and lean, is named Edna, which surprised me the first time I heard another child call her name. Of course, names are a circle. They come into favor, then go. Today’s young mothers probably never had an Aunt Edna who smelled like wintergreen and mothballs, and chucked them under the chin at family reunions. They find the name filled with music, the way my generation never did.
The child Edna is filled with music. She’s a girl who dances her way through life. I think if she and I ever spoke she would sing her words. Edna certainly sings her way into the hearts of the other children. She’s powerful here in a way none of the others are. Edna can rescue any situation. She’s tactful when she needs to be, forceful when that’s required and a mistress of the best way to avert trouble before it begins, which is what she’s doing today. If no one beats her to the honor, Edna may well be our first woman president.
Edna waltzes her way up the metal bars with a quick, natural grace, and she’s swaying at the top before Porter can work any mischief. From here it’s obvious she’s talking to him. Talking, not lecturing, because after a moment, I hear him laugh. Not derisively, but like the child he is. I bet Edna told him a joke, because now Maddie’s laughing, too. Maddie’s a courageous child, and she shows no fear. If Porter knocked her to the ground, she would pick herself up and start the climb again. I think Maddie refuses to let anything get in her way. Better yet, she doesn’t seem to hold grudges or rail against obstacles. She simply finds a way to go around them.
I rarely cry. When I was younger than Maddie, I realized how futile tears were. But today my eyes fill as I watch the three children divide the world among themselves. Here’s the future, right in front of me. Edna will lead, efficiently, carefully, fairly. Porter will try to disrupt everything around him, but if Edna can influence him, he may find a better place. And Maddie? Maddie will struggle with whatever life throws at her, but she will always prevail.
For the moment, though, the three are simply children, laughing at Edna’s well-timed joke while I wipe my eyes on a park bench thirty yards away. When I look up, I see Maddie’s grandfather, Ethan, start across the baseball diamond beyond us to fetch his granddaughter.
I turn away quickly to make sure he doesn’t see me. I wonder, though, if he did, would Ethan feel a glimmer of sympathy? Would he understand why I’m sitting here, watching a child I’ve never spoken to? Would he join me on this narrow park bench and tell me about the granddaughter we share, the granddaughter we haven’t discussed since that terrible night ten years ago when we stood at the window of a neonatal intensive care unit and broke each other’s hearts?
As I gather my purse and sweater, and slip my heels back into my shoes, I contemplate what to do next. I’m struck by how many possibilities confront us each moment, possibilities we rarely notice. We move on to the next decision by habit, then the next, and we never look around to see all the paths leading to other places, other lives. Right now I could meet Maddie’s grandfather halfway across the diamond and ask him to talk to me, even to introduce me to the young girl who is so much a part of both of us.
As always there are too many choices to contemplate fully, but as I stand and turn in the other direction, I know I’m making the only one I can.
Chapter Two
CHARLOTTE HALE TRIED to obey the law. She paid strict attention to street signs and rarely risked a yellow light. She drove in the passing lane on the interstate only if she absolutely had to. She was a decent enough driver, except for one flaw. She had never learned to park.
Knowing her limits, most of the time she improvised. She was guilty of lingering in no-parking zones, and leaving her car in a traffic lane with the blinkers on. If she was lucky enough to find a large enough space to park along the curb, she fed the meter well past the time limit, and even in less-challenging slots she often overshot the lines meant to separate her car from others. Consequently, despite being a perfectionist in every other way, she had learned to live with scrapes on her side panels and tickets on her windshield. Through the years she had paid enough citations to fund a personal meter maid.
Today, when she stepped out of her car and into the lot behind Asheville’s Church of the Covenant, she saw she was taking up almost two feet of the space beside her. Since there were still plenty of other spaces available, she decided not to try again. She had no sense of entitlement. It was just better to stay where she was than risk a worse landing.
The late-afternoon breeze was as soft as azalea petals, and the only sounds were cars passing on the street and birds high in towering trees. She turned toward the church. Her heels clattered against the stone path, which looked as if it had been newly washed by their diligent sexton, Felipe. Apparently Felipe had also taken to heart the grounds committee’s suggestion that the boxwood lining the path needed more severe pruning. This afternoon the hedge looked as if it had recently squirmed under the hands of a boot-camp barber.
Luck was with her. Felipe or someone had unlocked the front door and wedged it open, perhaps to let a touch of sunshine inside. She was heartened that she didn’t have to go next door to the parish house to beg the key or wait for the secretary to unlock the door for her.
If the air outside was warm and mountain-meadow fresh, inside it was neither. As always, the sanctuary felt faintly damp and old smells lingered. Women’s perfume, the moldering pages of hymnals, candle wax and Sunday’s lilies from the chancel.
The sanctuary was voluminous, with massive ribbed vaults overhead and wide aisles flanking the nave. Sometimes the room felt like a cavern, sometimes a crypt. Usually, though, even Charlotte, whose head was normally filled with other things, felt a sense of peace, as if fragments of prayers that had been whispered for more than a century still fluttered overhead.
Today she just felt dwarfed by the empty sanctuary, smaller than a speck of dust. And while humility before God was important—and in her case, overdue—this afternoon she needed warmth and comfort, and hoped God wouldn’t begrudge her either.
She found herself moving toward the side chapel, where light streamed through brilliantly colored windows, and she could hear the birds beyond them.
In a pew at the front she bowed her head. She hadn’t stepped foot in a church in weeks, nor in those weeks had she mumbled even a prepackaged prayer. Since childhood, church attendance had always been a given, the need for it drummed into her by a grandmother for whom prayer had been the only barricade against defeat. Now, as she tried to formulate one and failed, she realized how odd it was that at a crossroads in her own life, when most people turned to God, all outward manifestations of her faith had simply vanished.
Charlotte closed her eyes, hoping to connect with something larger than herself, but instead she felt herself falling into a void as dark and limitless as a night sky without stars. Her eyelids flew open, and she could hear her own heart beating. Perspiration filmed her cheeks and dampened her hair, and even though her hands were folded in her lap, they trembled.
The stillness of the chapel seemed to close in around her, as if to ask why she was there. She couldn’t find words, and her mind fluttered from image to image with no place to land. But there was something else the church could offer.
Someone else.
There were no confession booths at the Church of the Covenant, and Charlotte’s minister was younger than she was, stylish and outspoken. They had butted heads on so many occasions that now Charlotte wondered if, deep in her heart, Reverend Analiese Wagner would find pleasure in her turmoil.
Yet where else could she go? Who else could she talk to?
For a woman who had always had answers for everybody, she was surprised to learn how few of them really meant anything.
* * *
As she pulled into the church lot, the Reverend Analiese Wagner was thinking about food, which was not unusual. She always thought about food when she was worried, or when she had five things to do at once. Maybe that was why she was picturing double cheeseburgers in her mind, along with double scoops of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. This afternoon she was doubly stressed.
“If I make it through the memorial service, double cheese on my next pizza,” she promised herself out loud, although she hadn’t eaten pizza for years because it was as impossible to stop eating as salted peanuts. Even now, at thirty-eight, after years of adulthood as a willowy size ten, the fat little girl inside her was still clawing to get out. For the rest of her life she would be forced to watch every bite and exercise without mercy.
Someone had parked in the slot against the side fence reserved for clergy. To be fair, the driver hadn’t exactly parked in the slot. She—and Analiese knew it was a she—had parked beside it, but not well, so the silver Audi was actually taking up two places, one of them Analiese’s. She recognized the car.
“Charlotte Hale.” Mentally she thumped her palm against the steering wheel of her ten-year-old Corolla, the very same Corolla that Charlotte Hale had asked about several months ago, just before she handed Analiese the business card of a car dealer who could arrange a low-interest loan and a trade-in.
Analiese couldn’t recall seeing Charlotte at services or meetings in the past month or so, but that was likely to mean that today Charlotte had a list as long as her arm of problems she wanted to comment on.
Analiese found another spot at the end of the row, but once she turned off the Toyota’s engine, she sat quietly and closed her eyes.
“Please, Lord,” she prayed softly, “help me mind my tongue, my manners and while we’re at it, today please give me an extra spoonful of compassion, no matter how bitter it tastes.” She hesitated. “A slice of no-cal pizza would be good, too, but I know better than to push.”
Out of habit she put two fingers against the hollow of her throat to loosen her clerical collar—until she realized she wasn’t wearing one. In half an hour she would be changing into her robe for the service she was here to conduct, so she was wearing a simple round-necked navy dress. Right now anyone who didn’t know her would assume she was one of the mourners come to honor Minnie Marlborough.
There was nothing particularly ministerial about Analiese. Her nearly black hair was shoulder-length, and she rarely pinned it up so she would look older or plainer. Her regular features added up to something beyond striking. While no one insisted a minister be attractive, her first career had been in television news, where physical beauty had served her well.
She opened her eyes and continued to breathe deeply, staring at the building just beyond her parking place.
The first time she had been driven to this spot by a member of the ministerial search committee, she had sat just this way, gazing at her future. With its arrowhead arches and multispired north tower—not to mention imposing blocks of North Carolina granite and stained glass from the famous Lamb Studios of Greenwich Village—she’d been certain that Asheville’s Church of the Covenant would withstand Armageddon and hang around for the Second Coming.
In any architectural textbook, the city’s most influential Protestant church was just a yawn on the way to more impressive renderings of Gothic Revival glory. The church paled in significance beside the ornate Roman Catholic Basilica of St. Lawrence downtown, or the Cathedral of All Souls in nearby Biltmore Village, the seat of the region’s Episcopal bishop. But Analiese had never quite gotten over that first punch-in-the-gut impression of the church to which she had later been called. Now, as then, she felt unworthy to be its spiritual leader.
One last deep breath propelled her out of the car. Before she locked it she reached into the backseat for the colorful needlepoint tote bag her oldest sister had made as an ordination gift. With the bag slung over her shoulder, she hurried toward the church, avoiding the parish house and, she hoped, the silver Audi’s owner, as well. At the door, she saw Felipe had arrived first. For a moment she was glad she didn’t have to wrestle with the cast-iron lock, which on a good day took the better part of a minute. Then, as she was about to slip inside, she wondered if Felipe had unlocked the door, or if someone else had borrowed the key and was waiting for her inside.
Someone she wasn’t anxious to see.
Her brief burst of good humor disappeared.
She was happiest when the sanctuary was filled with people, and music echoed from the walls. Today the pews were empty, but that wasn’t necessarily the end of the story. Cautiously Analiese found her way along slippery polished tile floors to the transept, following it to the cozier side chapel that had been added early in the twentieth century by an industrialist friend of the Vanderbilts.
Historically the chapel had been a place for quiet contemplation, but most often these days it was used for children’s worship services. Felt banners made by one of the Sunday School classes hung between two narrow stained-glass windows of contemporary design. Stylistically wrought jewel-tone doves and olive branches vied with off-center renditions of the Star of David, the Taoist yin-yang and multiple Buddhas, both smiling and glum.
The woman sitting in the front row staring at the banners was neither, but then Charlotte Hale was not a woman who often showed emotion. In the ten years of her ministry here, Analiese had learned that the Charlottes in a congregation were the members an alert minister should most fear.
She debated what to do. She couldn’t believe Charlotte had come for Minnie’s memorial service. Beyond that, the service didn’t start for almost an hour, so mourners could attend after work.
Analiese almost turned away, but something told her not to. Maybe it was the way Charlotte was sitting. Maybe it was the stillness in the chapel and the sanctuary beyond, plus the fact that Charlotte had entered this quiet place alone.
She walked through the doorway, making enough noise to alert the other woman. Charlotte was not dressed for a memorial service. She wore a casual lightweight turtleneck with three-quarter sleeves and a skirt of the same mulberry. Her auburn hair was windblown, and she hadn’t bothered with jewelry except tiny gold studs in her earlobes. She looked as if she’d run out for milk and bread and forgotten her way home.
“Charlotte?”
Charlotte turned to look at her. Her expression was blank, her cheeks pale, and she looked exhausted, which was unusual. “Reverend Ana.” She nodded, but she didn’t smile.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Analiese said. “Offer comfort or silence. You look like you might need both.”
“I was just thinking about these banners.”
Analiese didn’t sigh, but that took effort. “I’m afraid our first and second graders aren’t at their artistic peaks,” she said, but not as an apology. “They don’t know it, though. They get such a thrill from seeing their work hung here for a week or two.”
“Then you’re planning to take them down?”
“Only because the other Sunday School classes are making more, and they all want their turn.”
Charlotte turned back to the banners. “I hope all of them are as funny as these. The Star of David on the left has seven points. Did you notice? And that Buddha—” she pointed to a thin stick of a man “—looks like he’s been on the South Beach Diet.”
Analiese was minimally encouraged. “He’s probably historically correct. The fat Buddha is actually based on the folktale of a Chinese monk named P’utai, who was eternally laughing and happy, not to mention well fed.”
“And the children and the rest of us are learning these stories from you in church every Sunday.”
“It’s a very small world, and we’re all neighbors.”
If Charlotte disagreed, at least she had the grace not to say so. “I was glad to find the front door unlocked. When I was a girl…about a million years ago…I used to wish I had a quiet spot like this to come and sit.”
Analiese didn’t know Charlotte’s age. There were a thousand committed members here and many more who simply showed up on holidays. She had long ago given up trying to memorize every biography. She guessed Charlotte was only in her late forties, perhaps early fifties. Most likely well-executed surgery had given back a portion of the perfection age had stolen, so she was an attractive middle-age woman who knew how to make herself even more so. It was odd to hear her refer to herself as old, but today her shoulders drooped and her face looked drawn, as if she was trying to live up to her words.
Analiese made an attempt to crack open the invisible door between them. She dropped down beside her, making sure to leave enough room so Charlotte would feel comfortable. “You needed a place to think?”
“I was on the Council Executive Committee the year we decided to keep the building locked unless there was a service taking place, but I’ve regretted that every time I’ve wished I could slip inside, sit in a pew and stare up at the rose window. We were worried about vandalism.”
“It’s a valid concern.”
“I thought so at the time, yet here I am.” She turned to gaze at Analiese. “Because the door was open. Is there a reason?”
“There’s a memorial service in an hour. Felipe probably propped it open after he cleaned, or he didn’t bother to lock up after the florist delivered the arrangements.”
“I noticed them. Very sweet, like somebody went to an abandoned farmstead and picked everything that was blooming.”
Analiese thought just how fitting the flowers must be, then, and how Minnie’s many friends had planned it that way. “I haven’t seen the arrangements. I was just on my way up front to check and make sure everything’s set up correctly before I robe.”
“I didn’t know about a memorial service. Is it a church member?”
“Not a member, no. But a church as large as ours was needed to hold this one.”
“Somebody important, then.”
Analiese nodded. “Yes, she was important.” She paused, then plunged. “The service is for a woman named Minnie Marlborough.”
Charlotte’s expression didn’t change, but she was suddenly still, because certainly the name was familiar to her. “Minnie Marlborough died?”
“Last week.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve been out of town for a while. I didn’t know. Had she been ill for long?”
Analiese couldn’t figure out how to answer that. From the moment she had seen Charlotte’s car, she had known this conversation might be necessary, although she hadn’t been sure Charlotte would remember Minnie. Now she was just as confused about the direction to take as she had been before she murmured her prayer in the parking lot.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said after a long pause. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I can tell you the truth, or I can tell you some version that’s easier to hear.”
“I remember the first time I heard you speak in our pulpit—I was overwhelmed by your honesty.” Charlotte paused, but not long enough to allow Analiese to respond. “But I was also fascinated.”
“Were you?”
“At the time you had to know you were destroying your chances of being called as our pastor, but that didn’t stop you from telling the truth, exactly the way you saw it.”
“Here I am, anyway,” Analiese said, “ten years later, and both of us completely baffled about how it happened.”
“I voted against you.”
“I assumed.”
Charlotte rubbed an eye, a gesture that was out of character for a woman who gave the impression she wouldn’t flinch under torture. “So do what you do best, and please tell me the truth.”
“Minnie never adjusted to life in town.”
Charlotte waited for more, but Analiese shrugged. “I’m sorry, it’s that simple. Her little farm, her animals? They were all she had. When they were gone, she didn’t have anything left to live for. At least that’s what her friends say.”
“You blame me for that.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m your minister. It’s not my place to blame you, Charlotte. I wasn’t even sure you’d remember her.”
“And what about the woman Analiese Wagner. Does she blame me?”
“I wish I could separate the two that easily.” Analiese turned the question around. “What about the woman Charlotte Hale? How does she feel?”
Charlotte spoke slowly, as if she were putting memories together. “Minnie Marlborough’s farm was needed for a retirement facility that would benefit hundreds of seniors and has. Her neighbors wanted to sell when they heard our terms. We thought everyone would come out ahead. The city’s richer for the taxes the facility pays. The road’s been widened and improved, so residents in the area benefited, too.”
We, Analiese knew, was Falconview Development, of which Charlotte Hale was the founder, president and CEO.
She thought carefully before she spoke, struggling to be fair. “I know you or someone at Falconview found her an apartment where she could have some of her things—”
“I knew how much she loved those animals. I got the owner to lift the restrictions on pets so she could bring the two cats she’d had the longest,” Charlotte said, although not defensively.
“And found homes for almost all the rest who were healthy. I know.”
“Did you ever see her house? Ever walk around the grounds? Every penny Minnie Marlborough had from Social Security and savings went to those animals she took in. And she was such an easy mark. Somebody’s cute little kitten started clawing the furniture and suddenly Minnie found a new pet on her doorstep. She could never say no, and everybody knew it. I was told the house was falling down around her. I doubt she ate as well as the animals she fed.”
Analiese thought carefully before she spoke. “I think the hardest decisions are the ones where we’ll reap benefits from only one of the outcomes. How can we remain objective?”
“I guess you’re saying I didn’t.”
“I’ve been told Minnie had friends who went to that house every day to help. They brought food and took animals to the vet, and helped her find homes for everything from iguanas to llamas. I’m told that for every person who took advantage of her, there was another who reached out to help. She wasn’t a hoarder. She was poor, overworked, but she was happy. She had friends, purpose, the animals she loved, the home she’d lived in all her life.”
“You do blame me.”
“Right now I’m more concerned about how you’ll feel if you stay here much longer. You accused me of an abundance of honesty, but I think you need to know. There will be people coming through those doors in a little while, and some of them will be unhappy to find you here.”
“I was here for…” Charlotte stopped and shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to stay.” She put her hand on Analiese’s arm when the minister slid forward to rise. “You really are expecting a crowd, then?”
“That’s the guess.”
“She had that many friends?”
“SRO.” She saw Charlotte hadn’t understood the show-business term. “Standing room only,” she clarified.
“All those people…” Charlotte dropped her hand.
“A tribute to a life well lived.” Analiese got to her feet. She had delivered her message, and while she’d been unsurpassingly blunt, she thought she’d done Charlotte a favor. Grief had turned to anger for some of Minnie’s friends who blamed Minnie’s decline and death on Falconview and everyone connected with it. Charlotte would not be welcome here today, and Minnie’s friends would probably make certain she knew it.
“It was a complicated situation,” Charlotte said, still seated.
“I know. We specialize in those in this building.”
“Are they taking memorial donations?” Charlotte reached for her purse.
“Don’t.” Analiese spoke so sharply the word echoed off the stone walls and could not be retrieved.
Charlotte looked startled, then she tilted her head in question. “I just thought…maybe the animal shelter? I can write a check.”
“Minnie Marlborough never asked for a handout in life, so I doubt she’d want one in death. She was a woman with her hand outstretched to help, not to ask. That’s what people loved about her. That’s why they’re all coming today.”
“You’re giving a sermon, and I’m the only one here.”
Analiese knew Charlotte was right, but she couldn’t apologize. “A hazard of the profession.”
“How many people will be at your funeral, do you suppose?”
“I’m sorry?”
“When you die, how many people will come to say goodbye?”
Analiese had never asked herself the question. “Why do you ask?”
“Maybe it is the measure of a life well lived.”
“Only if people attend because they want to.”
Charlotte’s smile warmed and softened her face, like a light going on inside a room at dusk, and even though the smile was sad, she looked more like herself. “You mean well-dressed businessmen checking smartphones don’t count?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to ignore them completely. Say…three businessmen equal one faithful mourner.”
“Maybe I’d better reserve this little chapel for my own funeral. Or the sexton’s broom closet.” Charlotte smiled again, almost as if in comfort.
Analiese wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take a number. The broom closet’s been booked for months.”
As exit lines went, that and the smile accompanying it would do, but Analiese didn’t leave. She could hear a clock ticking inside her head, and still she couldn’t go without offering something better. As odd as it seemed, she felt as if Charlotte had just tried offering something to her.
“I don’t think we should worry,” she added. There’s probably time for both of us to cultivate a few more mourners. Unless we take matters into our own hands, only God knows the hour of our death.”
Charlotte looked surprised. “How strange you should say that.”
“Why?”
“I was thinking about that exact phrase, right before you walked in.”
“Cultivating mourners?”
“No, that only God knows the hour of our death. A long time ago I heard those same words in a very different place, and I’ve never forgotten.”
Chapter Three
EARLY IN HIS granddaughter’s life Ethan Martin had learned that his major role—next to doting uncontrollably—was to give Maddie the confidence she needed to become an adult who took the hand life had dealt her and played it with skill and daring. This meant that while he never lied to her, he also never quite leveled, at least not when she scared him to death. Which she did frequently.
She was scaring him now, swaying at the top of a piece of carefully engineered climbing equipment like a pirate searching the seas for ships to plunder. She was with two other children, and he recognized one, Edna Ferguson, whose mother, Samantha, was a long-time friend of his daughter’s. Sam wasn’t far away, on a bench typing on a laptop, but he caught her eye. She nodded, then gave a barely perceptible thumbs-up sign that told him Maddie was fine, but she had kept his granddaughter in her sights just in case. All was well.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, when he got close enough that Maddie could hear him. “We’re having an early supper tonight, remember?”
“Papa!” Maddie swung lower until she’d reached a height that no longer frightened him. He judged all heights the same way. How far could the girl fall without hurting herself? At what point was she risking a broken bone? A concussion? He was never sure, but he was sure it wasn’t his place to hamper her. Maddie and her mother had worked out rules, and so far Maddie had been good about obeying them, most likely because they were few and sensible.
She launched herself into his waiting arms, the way a younger child might. But Maddie was small for her age, and delicately boned. He caught her easily and swung her to the ground.
Ethan ruffled her hair. “See the Blue Ridge Parkway from way up there?”
“I wasn’t paying attention. Edna was telling us about a movie she saw on television. Where’s Mom?”
“Making dinner. She’s teaching a class tonight, so you’ll have me all to yourself.”
“Cool!” Maddie’s blue eyes danced. “You’re eating with us, too?”
“I even brought dessert.”
“Cookies?”
“Chocolate chip.”
Maddie yelled goodbye to the other children. Then she waved at Samantha, who glanced up as if she’d just realized Maddie was there and smiled in response.
As they crossed the park they chatted about school. Although she was ten, Maddie was only in fourth grade, which wasn’t uncommon. Parents often held children with summer birthdays back, even if they were officially able to start school a year earlier. But Taylor, Ethan’s daughter, had decided Maddie should start later because, among other things, she had been more than two months premature at birth.
The street where Taylor and Maddie lived was eclectic, modest one-story homes mixed with more expansive ones. The architectural styles were eclectic, too, and it pleased Ethan, an architect himself, that the homes weren’t cookie-cutter copies. Most were well taken care of, but some, particularly the obvious rentals, needed paint or simple landscaping.
Taylor’s own landlord was, for the most part, invisible, because Taylor only contacted him when something major needed repair. He, in return, never asked for an increase in her modest rent. Ethan hoped nothing changed in the near future. The house spelled independence, something Taylor badly needed.
They were still two houses away when he smelled charcoal. They cut across Taylor’s yard, bordered with swaths of daffodils and grape hyacinth in full bloom, and rounded the house. His daughter was just putting burgers on the grill in the center of a postage-stamp patio, paved in salvaged flagstone she and Maddie had laid themselves. A confirmed vegetarian, she’d fashioned the burgers from black beans and quite possibly baked the buns herself. They would be delicious, he knew, but as he smacked his lips in appreciation, he would still think longingly of USDA prime.
“Hey, sweetie,” Taylor called to her daughter. “Can you get the salad out of the fridge? Just put it on the picnic table. Then get the lemonade. These will only take a few minutes on each side.”
Maddie grumbled, more as if it was expected than with conviction, and climbed the back steps.
“She do okay?” Taylor asked softly.
Before he spoke Ethan took a moment to admire his daughter. Taylor was medium height and deceptively slender, deceptive because the narrow hips and long legs didn’t project the strength within. She wore her dark brown hair as short as a boy’s, but cut in feminine wisps around her face and nape. The cut emphasized heavily lashed brown eyes, which were a mirror of his own, and the delicate lips of her mother. She was already dressed to teach her yoga class in a green tank top covered with a gauzy scoop-necked shirt and leggings. She wore no jewelry except gold hoop earrings. Taylor spent little time on her appearance, but the effect was striking, anyway.
“She was up at the top of the jungle gym when I got there,” he said. “But Sam had an eye on her. You don’t think Maddie knows Sam’s there to watch out for her?”
“She knows, but it’s the kind of world where parents have to keep an eye on their kids, isn’t it?”
“Did you tell me Sam’s looking for a new job?”
“And she got one. She’s so excited. She wanted something where she could have a bigger impact on patient care, and now she’ll be the nursing supervisor at a maternal health clinic. She’s the kind of person I wanted watching over me when I was pregnant with Maddie,” Taylor said.
“The way she was watching over her today.”
Taylor lowered her voice to match his. “There are only so many excuses I can invent to go to the park myself. And she’s been free of heavy-duty seizures for three full months. I have to let go. I’m not going to hold her back from anything if I don’t have to.”
Three months without a major seizure was a new record, and Ethan, like his daughter, was cautiously hopeful. Several times a day Maddie experienced swirls of light or odd sensations in her stomach. These were manifestations of simple partial seizures, but she didn’t lose consciousness, and usually only those who knew her well could tell anything out of the ordinary had just occurred.
While children born prematurely suffered from epilepsy more often than full-term children, there were no easy answers as to why Maddie was one of them. Her seizures had begun at age three. From that point on she had experienced frequent complex partial seizures, classified as such because she lost awareness of the world around her, and sometimes experienced spasms, which caused her body to jerk uncontrollably.
Maddie’s neurologist was a cautious older man, long experienced in managing epilepsy. Right from the beginning he had taken time with Taylor, questioning her carefully and listening to her answers. Although he was a highly trained specialist, in personality he was more the legendary family doctor who was never too busy to take a phone call. Three months ago he had placed Maddie on a different drug regimen to manage her seizures, which had become more frequent and severe, carefully adjusting and weaning her off prior medications. Taylor was confident her daughter was in the best of hands, and confident that the new treatment would finally give her daughter a better life.
So far, she seemed to be right.
“She had a good time today,” Ethan said. “And the exercise was good for her.”
“Next week, if all’s well, I’m going to let her ride her bike to the park.” Taylor must have seen the question in his eyes, because she added, “She needs to believe she can conquer the world, and the only way to make sure of that is to let her try.”
He knew better than to protest. Maddie wore a helmet when she rode her bike, required by the state of North Carolina for children, anyway. If she had a seizure and fell, she would be like a million other kids who tumbled off bikes to the sidewalk. She would climb back on as soon as she could and pedal away.
“I appreciate you staying with her tonight,” she went on. “She has a lot of homework, so she’ll be better off here. They give them so much these days. She has to write a poem about spring, read a chapter in her social studies textbook and look up something she finds interesting on the internet to get more information. Plus they’re already doing geometry, if you can believe it, and she has worksheets.”
“I remember how much you loved geometry.”
“That’s funny, I don’t.” She smiled conspiratorially, because Taylor’s disdain of math was legendary. Ethan had always been the go-to parent when it came to the subject. Charlotte had never…
He cut that off as quickly as the thought occurred to him. Not thinking about Taylor’s mother was one of the things he did best.
Taylor flipped the burgers, before she crooked her neck to see if she could spot her daughter, or at least her shadow in the kitchen behind them. “I wonder what’s taking Maddie so long.”
“She probably had to hit the little ladies’ room first,” Ethan said. “I’ll go check on her. I can grab the lemonade.”
“Great, I’ll set the table.”
Ethan let himself in through the screen door and called to Maddie, but there was no answer. No salad adorned the counter, nor lemonade, so he figured his guess had been right. He took out both, the salad a glistening medley of leafy greens and finely chopped vegetables, the lemonade with lemon slices floating on top inside a cut-glass pitcher. Taylor liked to make dinner a special occasion when he shared it with them. She thought, incorrectly, that her father didn’t eat well enough when he was alone, and he didn’t put much energy into convincing her otherwise, since it meant meals like this one.
“Maddie?” he called again. There wasn’t a corner anywhere in the tiny house where she couldn’t hear a booming male voice. For the first time he began to worry.
Taylor stepped inside, frowning. “She didn’t answer?”
“Not yet…” Ethan started through the house, Taylor close at his heels. They didn’t have to go far. Maddie was on the floor outside the bathroom. Her eyes were open, then they rolled back and her body arched, and she began to convulse.
* * *
An exhausted Maddie cuddled on the family room sofa with Ethan and picked at her dinner. After what he had recognized as a grand-mal or generalized convulsive seizure, he had carried her here to nap, and she still hadn’t left. Taylor had called Dr. Hilliard to describe the ferocity of the event. Not only had the long string of seizure-free weeks ended, the girl seemed to have passed into a new land. Ethan knew a lot about his granddaughter’s condition, but now there would be new language to describe what had happened, new theories why and surely new or additional medication as she traveled her lonely path.
In the meantime Taylor would need to go into school and tell Maddie’s teacher what to do if Maddie experienced a similar seizure in class. The other students knew she had epilepsy. She’d had seizures in school, but they had been milder in comparison, not as frightening to witness. Even Ethan, who had seen many, had felt angry and helpless during this one. There’d been so little to do. Move things out of reach. Get a cushion under her head. Stay right there so that when she regained consciousness, they could comfort and reassure her, or turn her to her side as she slept off the effects.
Maddie played with the medical alert bracelet she always wore, sliding it up and down her wrist. “The teacher explained to my class. She said it’s like a lamp cord. Sometimes the wire has a short inside it, wires that rub together or something, and when somebody moves the cord, the lamp will blink or even stop working. Then, if they move it back to the right place, it works just as well as it ever did.”
“How did you feel when she said that?”
“I guess it was okay. Kids asked me what a seizure feels like. I told them I don’t know, that I can’t remember. They thought that was weird. One boy said maybe if I didn’t move my head, I’d never have another one, like not moving the lamp cord. I don’t know how to do that, though.”
“It wouldn’t help,” Ethan assured her, “because you’re not a lamp.”
“Mom thought the new pills made me all better. But they make me feel funny. Like I’m not me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like I’m somebody watching me.”
Ethan didn’t know what to say. Taylor had gone through a brief period when she’d refused to medicate Maddie. She’d adjusted her daughter’s diet, trying a hard-line no-carb approach that seemed to help some children, then she’d switched to vitamins and nutritional supplements. She had instructed Maddie in yoga and meditation, and taken her to chiropractors and naturopaths.
Reluctantly Taylor had finally admitted that her daughter’s seizures were milder and fewer when she was on drugs, even as imperfect as they were. That was when she’d discovered Dr. Grant Hilliard, who had restored Taylor’s faith in traditional medicine.
“Do you think you can do a little homework?” Ethan held up Maddie’s social studies textbook. “I brought my laptop. After you read the chapter, you can use it to find more information on the internet.”
“In a little while.” Her speech was slower, and she still seemed a little dazed. He knew better than to push to get her started. Maddie wanted to do well in school, but while she was a smart child and determined to learn, she was also handicapped by the medication, which sometimes made her drowsy, by evenings, like this one, when it was unlikely her assignments would get finished, even by “absence” seizures during class, when she was deaf to all instructions and information.
Then there was the teasing and ostracism by her classmates, which dogged children who were “different” in any way.
Ethan cuddled her closer. Although television had never triggered one of Maddie’s seizures, Taylor had a firm rule that the set not be turned on right after one. “Why don’t I read to you? We can start a new book. We never finished The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Before Maddie could respond the telephone rang. Ethan reached around her to grab the receiver. He made a guess that Taylor’s class was doing warm-ups and she was quickly checking in.
Instead, the voice on the other end was male. Ethan recognized it at once.
“Hello, Jeremy.” He felt Maddie stir against him and push away.
“Is it Daddy?” she asked.
Ethan nodded. “I’m babysitting,” he said into the phone. “Taylor teaches on Thursdays now.”
The twang of country music was a pleasant background to Jeremy Larsen’s drawling baritone. Ethan guessed he was taking time from a rehearsal of his band.
“Sounds like she’s got a full plate.”
Ethan never knew what to say to Maddie’s father. Jeremy and Taylor maintained a cordial relationship so they could be better parents to their daughter, but the road wasn’t easy. Their history was troubled. Maddie had been conceived when Taylor was only sixteen and Jeremy just a year older. Their high school romance had been stormy and brief, the baby a postscript. They had few if any happy memories to build on.
Ethan was never sure where Jeremy’s questions or even casual remarks were leading. Was he merely making conversation? Was he implying Taylor was too busy to be a proper mother? Was he hoping to throw a wrench into the finely tuned machinery of their custody arrangement?
“Taylor manages everything like a pro,” he said pleasantly.
“Maddie still up?”
“It would be a rare evening if she was asleep this early,” Ethan said. “I’m putting her on.”
Maddie was sitting taller, and she flipped her disheveled ponytail over one shoulder. “Daddy!”
Ethan went into the kitchen to give his granddaughter privacy. While technically Jeremy and Taylor shared custody, Taylor had Maddie with her most of the time. Jeremy spent time in Asheville with his daughter whenever he could, but Maddie had never visited him at his home in Nashville. Ethan wasn’t sure if Taylor had convinced him their daughter was better off in familiar surroundings, or if Jeremy didn’t want to learn what he needed to know to care for her. Whatever the truth, Maddie adored and missed her father.
Taylor hadn’t been able to get to the dishes, and now, as Ethan stacked the apartment-size dishwasher he’d given her for Christmas, he hoped his daughter had gotten to the studio in time. She taught eight classes a week at Moon and Stars, and the owner was understanding. He just hoped Taylor hadn’t tested the woman’s patience tonight.
By the time Ethan had finished cleaning the kitchen, Maddie was still chatting with her father. He stood at the sink and stared out at the yard beyond. He was a shadowy reflection in the double-hung window—long face, pointed chin, high forehead—a man still attractive to women, judging by the offers of dinner and more he received from women at least a full decade younger than himself.
Beyond his reflection the faint outline of a crescent moon hung low in the still-bright sky, just visible beyond the neighbor’s tree line. A wisteria-scented breeze through the screen door ruffled his silvering hair. He was just fifty-six. Charlotte had been twenty-five when she had given birth to Taylor, and Taylor had just turned seventeen when Maddie was born. But this evening Ethan felt older than the mountains.
Spring was a time of renewal, of flowers bursting into bloom, of birds mating and building nests. He was twice divorced, but now his first wife, Taylor’s mother, was on his mind, and so was the spring right before they met.
He had only been twenty-five, an intern at a local architectural firm and still a stranger to the city that was now his permanent home. With few contacts and no real friends, he had begun jogging after he returned home in the evenings from the office. He had often parked in unexplored neighborhoods and jogged along residential or downtown streets to learn more about the Blue Ridge community where he’d landed.
Now he remembered one such evening, twilight just beginning to thicken around him and the same haunting fragrance in the air. He had chosen Montford for his jog, a historic neighborhood with a satisfying mixture of architectural designs, some shabby and in need of renovation, but many that were still prime specimens of another generation’s craftsmanship. He’d begun on Montford Avenue, then veered off on a side street to avoid traffic.
He had been lost in thought about the blueprints for an office building he’d been asked to comment on, just aware enough of his surroundings that he didn’t stray into traffic or run behind a car backing out of a driveway. He’d dodged a woman walking two identical yapping poodles, stumbled over a loose chunk of concrete.
Funny the details he still remembered.
He had just been ready to turn the corner and circle the block on his way back to his car when a woman on the next block caught his eye. Back then, as now, Asheville had been filled with young women. He had been as appreciative as any twenty-something heterosexual man of the opportunities, but having just moved away from a failed love affair, he had also been wary.
This woman, seen at a distance, was more vision than flesh. A ruffled skirt floated just above her ankles, a scoop-necked blouse bared a long, graceful neck. Her hair curled over her shoulders, shining and hinting that it might be red, although in the dying light, he couldn’t tell for sure.
Something about the way she hurried tugged at him. She was willowy, bending into the breeze like a sapling at the edge of a mountain stream. He liked the way she held herself. He liked the curve of her hair, of her jaw, of her breasts. He liked the graceful yet determined way she moved up the sidewalk, as if she had all the time in the world and none of it to spare.
He’d wondered then whether the vision-made flesh would be less than this fleeting glimpse. Would he be disappointed, sorry the dream was eclipsed and replaced with reality? He remembered that he had been torn between speeding up or slowing down, and before he could decide, the vision had entered the ground floor of a funky old Tudor and vanished behind the door, never to be seen in that place again, despite more frequent and increasingly desperate jogs.
Charlotte Hale, his twilight vision, who months later would spring to life in a university classroom, and who had not, at least for years, disappointed at all.
Charlotte, who, as it turned out, had been best enjoyed from a distance.
Charlotte, who, this afternoon, unless he was mistaken, had abandoned a park bench as he approached, just thirty yards from the climbing dome where their granddaughter had been playing with her friends.
Chapter Four
First Day Journal: April 28
“Only God knows the hour of our death!”
I’m sitting in a coffee shop not far from Biltmore Forest, because I’m not ready to face my empty house for the evening. I’m writing in this journal with hopes those words will stop revolving in my head once I commit them to paper. Reverend Ana spoke them this afternoon, with no idea of their impact. But the first time I heard them was on a day I wish I could forget. In far too many ways that day defines me.
Maybe in real-time it’s April of my fifty-second year, but in my mind it’s August, and counting backward I think the year must be 1970. I’m ten years old, Maddie’s age, and I’m sure I’ve been sitting in our little country church for at least a century. But, of course, at ten, so much feels that way.
Ten yards in front of me the preacher slaps his Bible against our pulpit, one my grandmother is particularly proud of, since her own father carved it from a fallen black walnut tree. When I was six Gran pointed out the stump of the “pulpit” tree in a wooded clump not far from her kitchen garden. Sometimes now I go there to think, especially when Hearty comes home drunk, which is most of the time.
I’m startled by the slapping noise, and only Gran’s withered arm across my chest keeps me from diving under the pew in front of us.
“Lottie Lou, you sit up now, and no more dozing,” she whispers to me as she hauls me closer. “Else you’ll end up being the ’zample in this fool’s sermon, you get my meaning?”
The preacher screeches the same words again. He’s a guest in the pulpit of our church, the Trust Independent Baptist Church, because the regular preacher, equally loud but less given to repetition, is hauling a truckload of hand-harvested burley tobacco to Raleigh. Preaching is something he does on the side, for the sake of the Lord.
The guest preacher farms tobacco, too, but his is as sorry as his sermons, so it isn’t likely he’ll need a truck or a trip any time in the near future. He’s as scrawny as a cornstalk in a drought, and he drools when he shouts, so now his chin glistens.
I wriggle on the unpadded bench to get blood flowing to my backside. The service started with hymns, then the preacher demanded we stop singing so he could preach—which he’s been doing forever. I worry we’ll be here another hour or more.
And while we listen to Preacher Pittman’s substitute fumble with words, what will Hearty Hale be doing?
It’s as hot inside as it would be if we were standing full in the sunshine. All week the church is closed up, and it takes more than half an hour to suck out the heat before services. The building sits to the side of a country road, and there’s no electricity for fans, although we have a woodstove for winter. Windows dot the walls to let in what breeze can be had, but we have no screens. Wasps fly in and out and circle the freshly washed heads of worshipers.
I have nothing to do except think about the words that brought me so fully awake. I can’t picture a God who not only knows when everybody on earth is going to die, but keeps track of the information, too. I wonder if He makes notes, or if He can just snap His fingers and call up whatever He needs in an instant.
I imagine God pointing and shouting, “You over there, your day’ll be July 17, 1977, and not an hour later! And if I was you, I wouldn’t bother taking out pork chops when you get up that morning. You won’t be needing them.”
When I giggle, Gran pokes me with her elbow. I look for something else to occupy my mind. I settle on a girl who’s two years ahead of me in school and two rows in front of me now. She has white-blond hair, wispy and fine, and she’s pulled it back from her face with a black velvet hair band that has a bow on the side, anchored with a cluster of rhinestones. Her name is Sally Klaver, and she lives not far away, in a brand-new house, brought in by truck and set right down on a slab of concrete. The house is the color of a creek bottom, with a porch in front, just big enough for a pot of flowers and a doormat with Welcome printed nice and proper on it.
The old house, where Sally used to live, is still standing back behind some trees, but it’s boarded up now, and most likely full of mice and hornets’ nests. Sally’s daddy runs cattle and fattens more from his acres of corn. Mr. Klaver grows more tobacco than anybody else in the vicinity. I wonder what that would be like, having a house nobody else ever lived in, having enough cattle to eat beefsteak every night, having money to just walk into a store and buy a velvet headband whenever I felt like it.
I’m not just tired of sitting, I’m tired of worrying, too. This morning our neighbors, Bill Johnston and his wife, picked up Gran and me as we walked down the road on our way to church. Gran squeezed into the cab, and I settled myself in the back of the truck, making a little nest on an old piece of canvas to keep my dress from getting dirty.
I was glad to sit in the open. As we bumped over the dirt road I watched out for my father, but I never saw a sign of his truck or him. I’m not worried something’s happened to Hearty. I’m not even hoping it has, at least not while I’m sitting in church, because it’s possible God listens a little harder here, and wishing your father would keel over dead might get you in trouble.
Right now I just want to know where Hearty Hale is this morning, and whether he’s going to make Gran or me that much more miserable later.
The preacher finally wears down and stops, slamming his Bible one more time against the pulpit as he shouts “Amen.” The girl who’s playing the piano leaps to her feet and throws herself across the bench, as if she’s afraid he might change his mind.
In a moment we’re all singing “On Jordan’s Banks,” and the preacher is exhorting sinners to come forward and make a commitment to Jesus. I figure everybody’s as hot and cranky as me, because today only a few straggle forward, as if afraid the preacher will keep shouting until supper time if they don’t.
After the last chorus I shake down my skirt and admire the lace adorning the hem. My grandmother added the lace by hand to “prettify” my dress, something she made over from one my own mother wore as a girl.
When I was younger I might have been thrilled at this connection to Thalia Hale, but now I’m not so sure. My mother died of pneumonia just one month after giving birth to me, her only child, and with ten years to consider it, I’ve decided it’s likely Thalia thought the best way to get away from Hearty and her squalling baby girl was to cross the river Jordan as swiftly as possible.
I wish that weren’t true, but even Gran admits she indulged the sickly young Thalia shamelessly, and forever after Thalia did exactly what she pleased. Gran’s told me pretty stories of baby birds my mother rescued, poems she learned and songs she sang, but nobody else has ever said a good word about Thalia in my presence. And I’ve been paying close attention.
Around me now people are moving into clusters, most pausing near windows or the door, catching up on the week’s gossip while they try to catch a breeze. Gran will linger. Despite the sorry state of the Sawyer farm—which is what everybody in Trust calls our home place—and the sorry state of her son-in-law, the local people respect Gran and wish her well. As far as they can, they do whatever they’re able to be neighborly, just as long as it doesn’t involve helping Hearty Hale.
“Lottie Lou…” Sally Klaver of the velvet headband rounds the corner of her pew and heads straight for me. “Weren’t that just awful? Him going on and on like that? I wish we’d gone over to Marshall. They got air-conditioning at the church there, but my daddy says we have to come here sometimes, too, so people don’t forget who we are.”
I figure nobody will ever forget Sally’s family, because the Klavers will always be sure to hang their good fortune right out where everybody can see it, like a bedsheet flapping in the wind.
“That a new dress?” Sally asks, smiling a little as her gaze drops lower.
Despite myself I stand straighter. “My gran made it for me.”
“I guess she made it big, so you’d get lots of wear out of it.”
I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks.
“But green’s a good color with that red hair of your’n,” Sally continues. “Of course, you got to be careful what you wear with hair like that. I’m lucky anything goes with mine. That’s what I told Ma when she brought this brand-new dress home from Charlotte. ‘Get me anything, ’cause it’ll look good on me, I reckon.’” Sally holds out the short skirt of a black-and-yellow-striped dress that looks exactly like a man’s undershirt.
I wish with all my heart that I had one, too.
“It’s real pretty,” I say. “And I guess she bought it big ’cause one of these days you’ll fill it out real nice.”
Sally has narrow eyes, a little too close together, and at that, they narrow even more. “How’s that daddy of your’n? Thought I saw that truck he drives down yonder by the creek.” She flips her hand carelessly over her shoulder. “He fishing while you get right with Jesus?”
I wonder if there’s any truth in Sally’s claim. “Could be. Hearty doesn’t answer to me.”
“You call your father Hearty?” Sally tries to look surprised.
“Everybody calls him Hearty.” I’ve never called my father anything but, although it’s only a nickname he got as a boy on account of his last name, barrel chest and wide shoulders.
“He didn’t tell you anything before he left home this morning?” she probes.
I haven’t seen my father in two days, but I’m not about to report that. “Your daddy tell you where he’s going every minute?” I ask with a toss of my head. “Seems like he’d be awful busy for that, but maybe he’s got all the time in the world to account to you.”
Sally just repeats the sly smile that matches her eyes. “He don’t, on account of how hard he works. But even if he only worked an hour a week, that would be more than your daddy works in a month.”
I can hardly argue. I wait for the next blow. Church is no different than school, where I’m an outcast because I come from one of the poorest families in a poor county. I’ve learned to fight back a little, but I’ve also learned it doesn’t help. There’s nothing I can say or do that will change anybody’s opinion. I am Lottie Lou Hale, daughter of Hearty Hale, whose reputation is as troubled as nearby Spring Creek in a winter storm.
“You oughta come over to our house sometime,” Sally says. “Get that daddy of your’n to drive you, if you can find him.” She smirks and turns away, lifting her hand in a careless wave. Anybody watching will think we’re friends.
I go to find my grandmother, who’s up front talking to the real preacher’s wife. Mrs. Pittman is as tall as any man in the place, with skin that’s seen too much sun and eyes that have seen too much sorrow. Years ago the Pittmans lost their two children in a house fire. She claims her faith got her through it, but to look at her grim mouth and tired eyes, I’m not sure it’s done the trick.
“Mrs. Pittman says she’ll take us home today,” Gran tells me. She waits for me to add my thank-yous.
“That’s mighty nice of you,” I say dutifully. “It’s a long walk for Gran, with her arthritis and all.”
Gran’s arthritis, which cripples her once-sturdy legs and twists her arms, is, in my view, worse than having a drunk for a father and a mother who died rather than face her unfortunate choices. Gran’s had enough problems trying to make do with nothing, trying to raise her granddaughter and keep her husband’s family farm from being taken for taxes or sold off by her greedy son-in-law.
Unfortunately, my grandpa never made a will. He died suddenly, so the farm was divided by the state, one half to Gran, and one half to my mother, their only child. When Thalia died without a will, her half was divided again, half to Hearty and half to me. This means Hearty only owns one-quarter of the property, but he wields it like a hatchet. Any time he’s unhappy, he threatens to sell his portion along with mine and leave Madison County forever.
So it isn’t as if Gran hasn’t had plenty of trouble. But she holds her head as high as her aching neck will let her and just keeps going. She’s old, though, and the arthritis wears her down. She is increasingly grateful for any help and says pride is a luxury a woman like her just can’t afford.
“We’ll go in a few minutes,” Mrs. Pittman says. “Preacher Pittman asked me to check on two people before I leave. You know which car is ours. You can go ahead and get in if you like. I’ll be quick as I can.”
I wonder if Mrs. Pittman calls her husband “Preacher Pittman” when they’re alone together, eating dinner or plowing their garden.
“Right nice of her to offer,” Gran says, after Mrs. Pittman strides off to find the objects of Preacher Pittman’s concern. “I weren’t sure I wanted to walk home after all that sitting.”
“Sally Klaver said she saw Hearty by the creek down yonder.” I point in the direction of the back of the church.
“None of them Klavers knows a truth from a lie. That’s how come they came into so much land. Her grandpa cheated a brother out of his inheritance, just like Esau and Jacob, and took it for himself. Me, I take anything any one of them says with a grain of salt.”
I feel a little better that I’m not the only one in the church with no-good relatives. “He could be back there, sleeping by the creek,” I warn. “It’s the kinda thing he’d do.”
“If he is, he’ll wake himself up when he’s good and ready. You don’t need to worry about Hearty.”
I’m still standing in church, so I know better than to risk the Lord’s wrath by admitting how little I worry about my father. I lower my voice. “I was worrying he might wake up and come wandering up here.”
“We’ll be gone soon enough.”
But we aren’t, not nearly, because when we walk through the door to get into the preacher’s car, Hearty is staggering up the road, his shirt wrinkled and unbuttoned, his belt unbuckled and his pants sagging down around his hips. I see he is dirty and unshaven, and his hair, which hasn’t been cut in months, looks like a tangle of fishing line.
More than half the worshipers are still standing in the shade of dogwoods heavy with creamy blossoms to chat with friends. As if they are one body, they turn to watch Hearty’s approach.
“You go down and see if you can head him off,” Gran says softly. “I ain’t got the strength to do it myself, and I’m not fast enough.”
“What’ll I say?”
“I don’t rightly know. Maybe something about his truck. Maybe somebody told you he’s got himself a flat tire. Tell him you’ll go with him to see.”
Hearty does love his old truck. When he’s sober, which isn’t often, he spends hours under the hood, and even though he’s too lazy to pick fights for no good reason, he can flare into a rage if the truck gets scratched or dented. The sheriff has slapped him in jail a time or two for truck-related attacks.
I head quickly toward my father, my cheeks blazing with embarrassment. I keep my head high, although what I want most is to look at the ground and not at the faces turning toward me. I hear somebody snickering, and see Sally Klaver with a small group of kids around her age, watching and pointing.
“Didn’t I tell you I saw him down by the creek?” Sally calls. “Ought to have gone and looked for that ol’ drunk before he came callin’.”
I just lift my head a little higher and move my feet faster.
I reach Hearty before he gets to the parking lot.
“Hearty!” I call. “Where you going?”
He squints at me as if he’s trying to recall where he’s seen me. Once he was handsome enough to steal my mother’s heart, despite all warning from my grandmother. Now his belly hangs over the top of his pants, like a woman in her final months of pregnancy, and his skin is slack and sallow. I haven’t inherited anything obvious from my father except his auburn hair, but today Hearty’s is the color of Georgia mud.
“Came to get money…” He stops, as if trying to remember what he was just saying. “That grandmother of your’n,” he finishes, after a long moment during which he sways from side to side, as if considering which way to fall.
“Gran doesn’t have any money, Hearty. Her check comes next week, and there’s nothing left of the last one.” I remember what my grandmother has told me and change the subject. “Listen, while you’re here, one of those girls up there said she saw your truck, and you got a flat tire in the front. I’ll go back with you. Maybe we can wrestle it off together.”
“You…come with me?” He snorts. “Since…when you want to be anywhere I am?”
“You want help with that tire or not?” I ask.
“Ran out of gas.” He stares beyond me, as if looking for my grandmother so he can plead his case.
Hearty works in the woods cutting and hauling lumber, but he rarely has money. When he manages to gather a little he buys gas and liquor, in that order, since this is a dry county and he needs the first to get the second. I doubt he’s really run out of gas, but I bet he’s run out of liquor.
I hear a noise behind me and turn. Mrs. Pittman is coming toward us. Her dress has red-and-white checks, like a tablecloth Gran uses in the summertime, and the skirt snaps angrily against her calves.
“That…ol’ scarecrow…” Hearty spreads his hands in some odd sort of illustration, and the motion nearly sends him careening into me.
“What’s happening here?” Mrs. Pittman asks in a voice that says she already knows.
“Nobody…ast you for a ’pinion,” Hearty says.
“You owe this child better than showing up in public looking the way you do,” Mrs. Pittman says. “You’re embarrassing her and your mother-in-law.”
“Don’t care.” Hearty waves his hands again. “I need money. You got some you want to rid yourself of, I’ll take it…and be gone.”
“You’re lower than a rattlesnake, Hearty Hale. You ought to get down on your knees and beg the Lord for forgiveness. You’ve tried the patience of the rest of us for too long. He’s all that’s left.”
Hearty spits on the ground at his feet. “Somebody here’ll give me money.”
“Not as long as I’m standing here. Now you go back the way you came, you hear?”
By now I want to throw myself off a mountain ledge. I know everyone is watching, and a glance over my shoulder shows two of the men from the service are coming up behind Mrs. Pittman, one of them the morning’s preacher, the other Sally Klaver’s father. I realize that most likely they are spurred by embarrassment that a woman has been forced to lead the charge.
Hearty sees them, too, and realizes they aren’t coming to help him. With a snarl, he falls forward. I’m not sure if he propels himself in Mrs. Pittman’s direction, or if he merely loses his precarious balance, but without thinking I sidestep quickly and just in time. In a moment my father is sprawled on top of Mrs. Pittman, pinning her to the ground.
The men launch themselves forward to drag Hearty away. As drunk as he is, he fights back, slugging the preacher in the stomach with a fist, kicking out at Mr. Klaver with the toe of his worn work boot. It’s all over in a moment. While sober he might have held his own, now he’s slow and uncoordinated. The men grab him under the armpits and haul him off Mrs. Pittman, who sits up, then manages, with my help, to get to her feet. By then Gran has joined us.
Hearty is blinking hard, as if trying to remember what’s just happened.
“You hurt, Mrs. Pittman?” Mr. Klaver asks, shoving Hearty to one side. “He hurt you?”
She looks a little dazed, but she shakes her head and begins to brush off her checkered dress. “He wants money.”
“You don’t give a man like this money.” Mr. Klaver looks at Gran. “What are you going to do about him? Why’d you let him come here, anyway?”
I want to weep, but Mrs. Pittman intervenes. “What are you saying? She’s an old woman. There’s nothing she can do, but the men in this community might consider forming a plan. She and that girl need protection, not accusations.”
“Hearty’s never hurt either of us,” Gran says. “He just drinks.”
“And lies and steals,” the preacher says. “Don’t pretend he don’t. He’ll take anything that’s not nailed down and claim he didn’t, so he can buy himself more liquor. People ’round here pretend they don’t see, because they respect you. But one of these days he’ll go too far, and somebody’ll come after him with a shotgun.”
“I’ll take…my shotgun to them first,” Hearty says, just before he bends double and vomits at the preacher’s feet.
“You’uns leave us.” Gran shakes her head as her son-in-law retches and heaves. “We’ll get him out of here. But we’ll have better luck doing it without you. I’m sorry it’s come to this.”
“No,” Mrs. Pittman says sharply. “These men will walk him back to wherever he came from. I’m taking you home myself. You got stuck with Hearty Hale when your daughter made a foolish decision, but you don’t have to be stuck with him today. Now come along.”
I hope my grandmother will refuse, that the command in the other woman’s voice will anger her enough she’ll stay right here. I don’t want to walk back to the preacher’s car and face the knots of churchgoers again, not as long as I live. But Gran looks the way a dog does after he’s been whipped. She doesn’t have the strength to refuse. Instead, she starts hobbling after the preacher’s wife and beckons for me to join her.
The walk back through the lot and over to the preacher’s car is the longest I’ve ever made. I can feel every eye staring at me, particularly Sally’s, and I know what everybody is thinking.
If I ever harbored hope that someday people might overlook the man who fathered me and see me for the person I am, now I know that hope was foolish. I will always be Lottie Lou Hale, the daughter of no-good Hearty Hale. And as long as I live in Trust, North Carolina, my future has already been decided.
Chapter Five
THE COFFEE SHOP where Charlotte had settled to write in her journal had been recently remodeled. Now it was officially a bistro, with a newly painted sign announcing it had evolved, but it was still called Cuppa. The Orange Peel, a music venue down the street, was probably awakening for a long night and beginning to attract patrons, and she was glad she had arrived early enough to find parking.
Cuppa had a row of tall windows looking over the street and fancifully trimmed topiaries between each set. Ferns hung in the window, and the hostess stand was flanked by trios of potted palms. Once past the hostess stand, though, Charlotte had seen just how casual the little restaurant was. Denim ruled, and several patrons had set up laptops on their tables. More were talking on cell phones with nothing in front of them except steaming mugs. A coffee bar jutted from one side of the room, and two young women stood there chatting and waiting for the barista to supply their order. Maybe the owners had added space for more tables and real food, but at heart the place probably hadn’t changed much.
When she had asked for a quiet table, a young man in a green T-shirt had led her as far away from the hubbub as he could without pushing her through the emergency exit, and for a long time she’d had the area to herself. But now that she was finished writing in her journal, it was dinnertime, and a family with two squabbling preschoolers was divvying up a pizza at the table beside hers. A middle-age couple, who looked as if they’d either had a bad day or engineered one for everybody else, had just been seated steps away from both tables, and the man, in his early forties, was squinting at the menu as if it had been salvaged from a shipwreck.
Charlotte knew she had taken up her table for too long, ordering coffee, then an untouched pastry, out of guilt. Now she was finally hungry and knew she should probably try to eat something before she left for home. Cuppa wasn’t exactly her usual, much more casual than the places she frequented with friends and colleagues, but the atmosphere was upbeat and the pizza at the next table smelled wonderful.
She studied a menu snuggled alongside a brief wine list between the sugar dispenser and the salt and pepper shakers. The selection was simple. Pizza, salads, wraps, a variety of sandwiches and a few Italian specialties. As ordinary and ubiquitous as the choices were, the ingredients seemed innovative. The Cobb salad had pea shoots and shiitake mushrooms, the Greek wrap featured baby spinach, fire-roasted red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes.
She had sat there long enough for a shift change. Now a tall young woman approached, dressed in another of the restaurant’s dark green T-shirts paired with an ankle-length khaki skirt. She had long sun-bleached hair pulled back in a low ponytail, masses of freckles and eyes rimmed with sandy lashes. The all-American, girl-next-door essentials were marred by a gold ring in her nose and the winged edges of a tattoo just visible on the right side of her neck. Charlotte thought the image might be a fairy or a dragonfly.
Green eyes flicked to the menu in Charlotte’s hand, then back up again, before the young woman spoke. “Hi, my name is Harmony, and I’ll be happy to get you anything you’d like.” She smiled shyly to show slightly crooked teeth.
“You know what, the eggplant provolone pizza sounds wonderful,” Charlotte said. “Is it as good as it sounds?”
“I like it.”
Charlotte ordered the pizza and a salad, and asked for a bottle of sparkling water to go with them.
The young woman took her order, then moved to the couple who had just arrived and introduced herself to them, as well.
“Harmony?” the man asked loudly enough that half the restaurant could hear him. “I bet that’s not what your mother named you.”
The young woman looked puzzled. “Harmony No-Middle-Name Stoddard, right there for all the world to see on my birth certificate. May I get you something to drink before I tell you our specials?”
“I bet you were born in Asheville.”
Charlotte was trying not to eavesdrop, but it was impossible, since the couple were so close. She knew not everyone held their mountain community in the highest regard. Some of her colleagues thought Asheville was outdated and outclassed, a frontier hippie outpost with a redneck contingent that barely kept it from tumbling off the left side of the universe. Luckily most of them kept such unpalatable sentiments to themselves, at least in public, but this man had either had too much to drink already, or too many frustrations.
The waitress looked perplexed, and the man’s companion, a frumpy brunette who looked only marginally more pleasant, intervened. “My husband’s just saying it’s not as uncommon a name here as it is in other places. He’s making an educated guess.”
“Harmony, Serenity, Moonbeam, Sagittarius.” The man picked up the wine list and waved it as if he were shooing flies. “Do you sell wine by the bottle?”
“I was born in Kansas, and no, we only sell by the glass. What would you like?” The young woman looked composed, but wary, as if she understood she’d been insulted and was hoping to get beyond it.
“I’ll have a glass of red wine,” the woman said. “Cabernet?”
Harmony nodded. “And for you?” she asked the man.
“Whatever…”
“Then shall I bring you the cabernet, too?”
He gave a curt nod.
Charlotte knew all too well what the young server was probably feeling. Years had passed since she’d waited on tables herself, but it wasn’t a time in her life that was easily forgotten. When a restaurant wasn’t too busy and customers were friendly, the work was tolerable, even enjoyable. But when customers were rude, like this man, then a shift could last forever.
Harmony returned with Charlotte’s water and promised the pizza would be ready in about twenty minutes. Then she gave the couple their wine and set ice water in front of them, too. “Would you like to hear our specials?” she asked them.
“Not if they’re low-fat, whole grain and heaped with vegetables.” The man sneered.
“You’ve pretty well described it. You might like the pot pie, though, our chef—”
“It’s an exaggeration to call anybody who works in this place a chef,” he said. “We’ll split a large eggplant-provolone pizza.”
“I have to apologize,” Harmony interrupted, “but the chef just told me he used the last of the eggplant on another order. Could I interest you in our pissaladière? It’s a white-onion pizza with thyme, rosemary and feta, and—”
“Unbelievable.”
Charlotte frowned. The girl looked pale, as if having to deal with the man’s bad humor was taking its toll.
The woman poked her menu in Harmony’s direction, as if to forestall more of her husband’s bad temper. “We’ll split a large one, and bring us two green salads, please. I’ll have the raspberry vinaigrette on the side. He’ll have the specialty mushroom blue cheese.”
“Out of eggplant?” he said loudly, after Harmony had left and after he’d taken a long sip of his cabernet.
In a few minutes Harmony returned with salads on a tray. She gave Charlotte hers first, then placed the woman’s in front of her. Just as she was about to set the man’s on his place mat, one of the children at the next table screamed and launched herself off her chair, slamming into the server, who dropped the ceramic salad bowl. Salad flew over the table and into the man’s lap, and the bowl bounced against the table edge and shattered when it struck the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” the mother at the next table said, clearly horrified at what her daughter had done. She grabbed the girl’s arm and hauled her back to her chair, while the man leaped to his feet, eyes blazing.
Harmony, who could not have avoided the accident even if she’d been an Olympic gymnast, tried to apologize, anyway, but he was furious. Dressing splattered his pants and sport coat, and lettuce tumbled to his shoes.
“You need a new profession,” he said. “Who told you waiting on tables was a good career move? Get the manager. Now!”
The young woman’s eyes glistened, and her freckles stood out in sharp relief on pale cheeks. “She…she’s stepped out. I’ll send her right back when—”
He stopped dabbing at the stain with his napkin and threw it on the table. “You think we’re staying?”
“Let me take your number, and I’ll be sure she calls—”
“You’ll be sure?” He sounded as if he was sure she wouldn’t get that right, either.
The young woman looked down at the vegetables and crockery covering the floor at their feet, the dressing oozing into a chunky cheese puddle dotted with green, and suddenly her face drained of all color. She closed her eyes, covered her mouth with her hand and took off toward the coffee bar.
Charlotte could remain silent no longer. With one smooth motion she pulled a pad out of her purse, stood and held it out to the man. “Do us all a favor and put your number there. You can leave it on the way out. And maybe you can add an apology.”
He had the grace to look ashamed, or maybe he was just worried Charlotte was going to continue. “Never mind.” He stood and motioned to his wife. “Let’s get out of here.”
He rounded the table and started toward the door, his wife close behind him.
Charlotte started to sit back down, but she realized what little appetite she’d had was gone now, and she was too upset to eat. Instead, she took out her wallet and dropped two twenties on the table before she started toward the door, too.
Harmony was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
In Charlotte’s opinion, her house was the finest example of Colonial Revival architecture in upscale Biltmore Forest. Built from salmon-tinged brick with imposing white pillars and decorative woodwork, it ruled over its neighbors from a rise in the center of a two-acre lot.
The house was much too large for a woman alone, which hadn’t stopped the newly divorced Charlotte from snapping it up when it came on the market ten years ago. She’d had her eye on the house for years, had even tried to buy it once before when she was still married. So when it had come back on the market a second time, she’d made sure she was first in line.
Since then, despite a sagging economy, the house had increased in value, thanks to her constant attention to maintenance and landscaping. Of course, even though she was free to gloat, there was nobody who cared. The house inspired one of two undesirable reactions. The first was awe, often tinged heavily with envy. The second was worse, something she could only tag as dismay. The house clearly sucked up money and resources without mercy or discrimination.
The house in Biltmore Forest had been a dream, a symbol, a satisfied “yes” at the end of a long, torturous road.
Or so she’d thought.
This evening she turned into the driveway with groceries tucked into the passenger’s seat. After leaving Cuppa she had stopped at Earth Fare to stock up on fresh salads and baked goods, because her refrigerator was as empty as the rest of her evening promised to be.
Right now all she wanted was to put the bags in the refrigerator without even bothering to unpack them and fall asleep in her bedroom, fully clothed. She was so tired every cell in her body had shriveled from fatigue.
She didn’t bother with the garage. She pulled into the stone-paved parking area hidden behind a bower of English ivy and turned off the engine.
“Okay, now you’re getting out,” she said out loud, then forced herself to follow her own orders.
Inside, she put away the groceries and told herself it was good to be home. But once she’d made herself a cup of hot tea and a slice of toast, she lay exhausted on the living room sofa, staring at the ceiling. In the end, as the grandfather clock tolled ten, she rose, smoothed wrinkles from her clothes, closed the front door behind her and headed back to Cuppa.
After being forced to park several blocks away on a side street, she stood outside the restaurant once more. She doubted Harmony Stoddard would appreciate reacquainting herself with a witness to her unfortunate dinner-shift encounter, but Charlotte wanted to be certain that the bad-tempered man hadn’t complained. And if someone else had spoken to the manager, the mother at the next table, perhaps, or another server, Charlotte wanted to be sure Harmony wasn’t blamed for something that was certainly not her fault.
Inside, the hostess stand was empty. Farther in a few people sipped coffee, but one of them was packing up her computer. A muscular middle-age man in one of Cuppa’s signature shirts stopped Charlotte as she continued toward the back.
“We’re closing,” he said. “Did you need something?”
“By any chance are you the manager?”
“She went home early. I’m in charge.”
“I was here earlier. I was sitting in the back, and a child at the next table slammed into my server and sent salad flying all over a man at another table. I just wanted to be sure the server didn’t get into trouble. I was right there, and it was absolutely not her fault.”
He looked surprised. “You came all the way back to tell us that?”
“And to make sure she’s okay.” She decided to level. “The man behaved badly. He didn’t apologize. I thought somebody ought to.”
“You know how rare that would be?” He ran his hand through short-cropped hair. “Who was it? Harmony?”
“Uh-huh.” She wondered how he knew.
His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “She had a bad night. I didn’t know why.”
“Is she here? Maybe I could make it a better one.”
“She left about half an hour ago, after she finished her shift.”
Charlotte felt a pang of regret. “Maybe I could write her a note?”
“Sure. Just leave it on the coffee bar. I’ll make sure she gets it.”
Charlotte wandered over and sat on a stool. She penned a few lines on a sheet of notebook paper and signed it. Then, on a whim, she added her business card and circled her cell phone number, although she doubted the young woman would call.
With nothing else to do she left the note and trudged to her car. The air was cool, and while the street wasn’t deserted, she felt utterly alone. On the street, in the city, on good old Mother Earth. She thought of the memorial service where she had not been welcome. She thought of the wary expression in her own minister’s eyes.
She thought of her granddaughter climbing to the top of a jungle gym, unaware that her grandmother was sitting just yards away watching her.
She slowed her pace. She had nowhere to go except home, and nothing to do there but think.
If she hadn’t slowed she wouldn’t have glanced into the car parked in front of her. Under the light of a streetlamp the sedan looked like something General Motors had long since discontinued. Rust etched wheel hubs. The rear door had been badly dented and someone—clearly not a professional—had tried to hammer it back into shape. Most important, as Charlotte drew even with the car, what she saw inside made her stop and stare.
The woman in the backseat, head pillowed on a blanket and another blanket drawn up around her, was all too familiar.
Charlotte debated what to do. She’d come to find Harmony Stoddard, but not like this. Before she could make herself continue along the sidewalk, Harmony’s eyes opened, and the two women stared at each other.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said, since only a pane of glass separated them. She started forward, then she stopped and went back. “Are you okay?”
Harmony was sitting up now, and she wiped her eyes before she moved over to the door and opened it, swinging her long legs over the side to face Charlotte.
“What are you doing here?” She didn’t sound angry.
“Well, right now I’m on my way to my car, but I was just at Cuppa to find you. I wanted to apologize. That man behaved so badly, and I wanted to be sure you weren’t in trouble for anything he did or said.”
Tears glistened on Harmony’s cheeks, and she rubbed them away with her fist before she spoke. Charlotte was reminded of her daughter as a toddler. Taylor had always done exactly that. Taylor, the daughter she hadn’t spoken to for almost eleven years.
“You didn’t have to come back. It was okay.” Harmony got out of the car and stood with her back to it.
“It wasn’t okay.” Charlotte debated what to do or say next. Part of her thought she ought to continue to her car. But suddenly the conversation wasn’t about a stranger’s bad manners anymore. It was about so many other things.
“You’re not okay,” she said. “Are you sleeping in your car tonight?”
“No…” Harmony bit her lip. “Not for the whole night, anyway.”
“Just part of it?”
“I’m…I’m staying with a friend.”
“You can’t get in? You don’t have a key?”
“That’s not it.” The young woman seemed to debate with herself. “She’s got a date. I don’t want to be there when…”
Charlotte understood. “Oh, right, I see.” She hesitated. “It’s a small place, I guess?”
“Like a closet, and I’m crashing on her sofa until I can find something better. I—” She shook her head.
“You’ve been there awhile?”
“You don’t want to hear all this.” Harmony smiled a watery smile. “This isn’t your problem, right?”
“Absolutely not. Not one bit.” Charlotte smiled, too. “So tell me, anyway.”
Harmony started to cry. Charlotte wasn’t sure what to do, but before she could decide, she’d put her arms around the girl and pulled her close.
“When was the last time you ate?” she asked, as Harmony, bending at the waist, sobbed against her neck. She felt the girl’s shoulders hunch in answer.
“Will your car be okay here tonight?” Charlotte asked, making a decision.
“I…I guess. But I don’t—”
“You’re coming home with me, and don’t worry, you can call your friend and tell her where you are. You’ll be safe. I’m not a serial killer.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
Charlotte was afraid she did. She was afraid no one needed to do it more.
Chapter Six
LIVING IN ASHEVILLE was a trade-off for Taylor Martin. At first, after Maddie’s problematic birth, the city of Taylor’s own birth was the only place she could live. Without her father’s help, both financial and emotional, she would never have been able to support herself and care for her daughter.
Jeremy’s parents, who also lived in town, had helped, as well, and despite Taylor’s disdain for her daughter’s father, she couldn’t dislike the senior Larsens. From the beginning they had stepped up to the plate, insisting that Jeremy acknowledge the baby, then offering financial support. After Maddie’s birth they had put their son through college, or tried to, but they had also made certain Jeremy understood that once he was earning a living, they expected him to take over the child support payments.
The Larsens were now only part-time Asheville residents, migrating to Florida for the coldest months, but when they were in town, they were enthusiastic babysitters, available at a moment’s notice. While nowadays Jeremy paid his own child support, his parents paid all the health care extras insurance didn’t cover.
Taylor knew she should consider moving to a city with more and better jobs, perhaps one with specialists making their mark in neurobiology. But nowhere else on the planet would she have the support system she had here, and nowhere else would Maddie be surrounded by so many people who loved her.
This evening she reconsidered that conclusion. Classes at Moon and Stars were physically grueling, and in addition to yoga, she also taught Pilates at a local gym. For this she was paid enough to keep body and soul together, but not much more. She had a degree in Health and Wellness promotion and had hoped to go on to something in the medical field, but earning one degree had been difficult enough, even with a network of friends and family.
Asheville was short on jobs and long on people with the same kind of skills she had. At times like this she found herself imagining a less exhausting way to survive. The truth was, she was lucky to have the jobs she did. Her employers at both the gym and the yoga studio understood that sometimes Maddie needed Taylor more than her students did. That benefit was impossible to beat.
This evening, when she pulled up in front of her house, she stared up at the crescent moon rising overhead. She knew Maddie was all right or her father would have called. Her daughter was probably sleeping off the effects of the most serious seizure Taylor remembered in years, what her doctor had called a “breakthrough” seizure on the phone, since it had been an escalation of symptoms. She’d been so sure they had finally gotten the medications right. Dr. Hilliard had been cautiously optimistic, as well. And now they might have to start all over.
She got out of the car and only then noticed that her father’s Acura was no longer in front of her house. His spot had been taken by a familiar yellow Volkswagen bug.
The front door of the house was unlocked, which was no surprise. Taylor locked up at bedtime, but the neighborhood was quiet, and the neighbors on both sides had great-grandchildren and time to watch the world go by outside their windows. Her neighbors were another reason she didn’t want to move to a better job in a faceless city.
She closed the front door loudly so her guest would know she was home. The house was so small she was through the living room and kitchen in seconds, then beyond to the family room that was just large enough for a small television and sofa. The television was off and Samantha Ferguson was curled up on the cushions, but if she’d been sleeping, she wasn’t now. She smiled, arms out and fists clenched as she stretched.
“You’re not my father,” Taylor said. “He’s older, and his hair’s turning gray.”
“I forgot you were teaching this evening. I popped by on my way back from Mom’s, so I told him I’d wait for you. He looked tired. I think he was glad to go.”
Taylor felt a twinge of guilt. Her father adored Maddie, but she wondered if she was taking advantage of his devotion. By drawing constantly on his support and help, was she keeping him from finding a woman he could share his life with?
She tossed her backpack on the coffee table and flopped down beside her friend. “Where’s Edna?”
“Mom’s got her. Tomorrow’s a field trip to a local farm, and Mom’s on spring vacation, so she said she’d chaperone.”
Taylor lowered her voice. “Maddie’s already asleep?”
“For a good hour. She was exhausted.”
“Dad told you what happened?”
“He said she had a generalized tonic-clonic seizure.”
Samantha’s medical training made it so easy to talk to her. Taylor was always grateful not to have to mince words. “Maybe it was an anomaly,” she said.
Samantha nodded. “It’s hard to know.”
Normally Taylor might have treated herself to a glass of wine after a long day, but Samantha didn’t drink, and the two women were such old friends that if Samantha had wanted anything else, she would have gotten it.
“She seemed okay?” Taylor probed.
“A little disoriented. I don’t think she got much homework done.”
“I’ll have to call her teacher. They try not to give homework over the weekend. Maybe Maddie can make up whatever she didn’t do on Saturday.”
Samantha was half lying, half sitting, with her dark hair spread against the back of the old sofa. She was of mixed ancestry, as if the continents of the world had huddled together at her creation. Her father had been half Korean, half African-American. Her mother’s heritage was unknown but likely European. Samantha’s face was long and elegant, her huge eyes slightly tilted, her hair wild, her complexion the color of almonds. She wasn’t classically beautiful, and exotic was too charged a word to describe her. She was distinctive, extraordinary. At twenty-nine, she’d already lived harder and faster than most people twice her age.
“Maddie told me she talked to Jeremy,” she said.
“Did she tell you what they talked about?” Taylor didn’t even try to mask a grimace.
“She told him about the seizure. She said he asked a lot of questions.”
“He’s good at questions. It makes him feel involved, like he’s actually participating in her life.”
“By my standards, sweet pea, he’s Father of the Year. He pays child support, and puts money aside for her college.”
There was something to be said for that. Samantha refused to even discuss Edna’s father, who she claimed was completely out of the picture. In contrast, last year, after one of his songs had sold to a recording company, Jeremy had sent Taylor an unexpected bonus check to sock away for emergencies. Taylor had to give the man some credit.
“Getting checks is great,” she said. “But he’s around just enough to remind Maddie that she has a father, and gone just enough to make her yearn for a real one.”
“What would you do if he was around all the time?” Samantha asked. “Would you really like that better?”
Taylor shrugged that off. “Not worth worrying about, since it’s never going to happen. He’s got Nashville in his blood, and that’s where the money is for the band. I’d better hope he doesn’t move here, or he’ll be writing ballads about being too broke to support his baby girl.”
The phone rang just in time to prevent Samantha from answering. She got up and ambled into the kitchen to give Taylor privacy. “I’d love some tea,” Taylor called after her, before she picked up the telephone.
The male voice was unmistakable, but he identified himself, just in case. “Taylor, Jeremy.”
It might be relatively early, but she was tired, and she wondered if he knew it. Jeremy wasn’t a bully, but he was a master at figuring out how to get what he wanted. He called that talent the ability to size up a situation, something that had helped him wedge open the door of the country music scene. It hadn’t helped him enough to make him a star, but his band, the Black Balsam Drifters, was now opening for big-name acts, and the songs he wrote and sang were being heard by significant players in the business.
“It’s been a long day,” she said, hoping honesty would throw him off his game. “I just got home, and I’m beat. Can we make this short?”
“Maddie and I had a nice talk.”
“Sam told me.”
“How is Sam?”
“Waiting in the kitchen while we finish this,” she said.
“Maddie said she had a whopper of a seizure this afternoon.”
“That’s how she said it?”
“She described how she was feeling at the moment, and I guessed the rest. Maybe I’m wrong?”
“No.” She sighed. “She’d been doing really well. I hoped the new meds…” Her voice trailed off.
“How bad was it?”
“Bad enough.”
“You called the doctor?”
“No, I sent her out to play in traffic.” She could have kicked herself the moment the words came out of her mouth. “I’m sorry. It really has been a long day.”
“What did he say?”
Jeremy was almost always rational, and he rarely engaged in sniping. Usually she was at least polite. She attempted to continue that tradition.
“He told me to keep an eye on her and bring her in on Monday. If anything significant comes of the visit, I’ll let you know, I promise.”
“Taylor, I know this is a bad time to bring this up. You’ve made it clear you’re whupped. But I think we can do better than Dr. Hilliard. I know you like him—”
“Like him? Before Dr. Hilliard, Maddie was just a name on a chart. Half the time I don’t think the doctor of the moment even read her case history. If I have a problem, he calls me back. He’s doing everything he can to get the medication adjusted, so we don’t have more events like the one we had at dinnertime.”
“But it’s not working.”
“This is not a sinus infection. If epilepsy were simple to treat, I could go to the drugstore and grab something over the counter.”
The silence went on so long, she began to wonder if they had been disconnected. Then he spoke.
“Not the right time for this. And it’s not a criticism, Taylor. But I worry. You’re right there, you can watch and make decisions based on what you see. I don’t have that…”
“What? Luxury? Is that what you were going to say? You think it’s a luxury to be right here watching her go through this?”
“I don’t have that information,” he said. “I need more time with her.”
“You know where we live. You send her support check to this address every month.”
“I want her to come to Nashville this summer.”
This time the silence was on Taylor’s end. “Did I hear that right?” she asked at last. “You want her to come to Nashville? And then what? You get a gig out of town, drag her along and stow her backstage? Or what, she stays at your apartment with a babysitter who doesn’t know jack about how to help her if she needs it?”
“None of the above. Look, there’s no casual way to tell you this. I’m engaged. Her name’s Willow, and she was our promoter on the last tour. She loves kids. I want her to get to know Maddie before we get married.”
Taylor took a moment to recover. “Well, that’s completely out of the blue. Does Maddie know?”
“Willow and I have been together awhile, but I didn’t see any point in telling Maddie if it wasn’t going to work out.”
“Thanks for that.”
“I do think about what’s good for her.”
“Why don’t you just bring Willow to Asheville to meet Maddie?”
“I don’t want her to meet Maddie. I want her to spend time with Maddie. Real time, two weeks at the beginning of summer. And Maddie’s been asking to come to Nashville. Willow has a little house with some land outside the city, and it’s a great place for a kid, so we’ll stay there. The band’s going to hunker down and put together our next CD, so there’s no chance we’ll be out on the road. I want to introduce them here, where there’s no pressure from anybody else.”
“Nobody here’s going to pressure you, Jeremy. But I think it would be better if you introduce the two of them where Maddie feels comfortable and safe. Her doctor’s here.”
“She needs to be here with me, without you,” he said pointedly. “She needs to be away from Asheville to give Willow a real chance. We have good doctors in Nashville, and I’ll get copies of her records. Our custody agreement allows for this.”
There was no threat in his tone, but the threat was in the words. Custody agreement. Papers they had signed. Choices they had made when they were still teenagers.
“We have time to talk this over,” she said at last.
“We have time to make the arrangements,” he countered. “I’m not going to change my mind. I didn’t mention it to Maddie, because I wanted to warn you first, but I will tell her the next time we talk.”
Warn, not consult. She heard the difference.
“Anything else?” she asked. “New and better bombshells?”
He spoke slowly and with surprising feeling, as if he had rehearsed what came next. “We’ve done surprisingly well through all this, you and me and the kiddo. Not the best start, not the best circumstances, but we’ve muddled through and grown up along the way. I know you’ve had the major burden, while I got to go out into the world and live my dreams. But it’s time for me to take some of the day-to-day stuff on my shoulders, and time for you to have a little flexibility and freedom. This isn’t going to be a one-time thing, Taylor. It’s the beginning of a new phase for all of us. Let’s make it work for Maddie, okay?”
“I always want what’s best for her.”
“Then we’re on the same page.” He said good-night and hung up.
Taylor stared at the wall until Samantha came back in, carrying two bright red mugs of tea.
As she handed a mug to Taylor, peppermint and chamomile scented the air. “It can’t be that bad.”
Taylor told her just how bad it was.
Samantha flopped down on the sofa beside her. “Well, what do you know about that?”
“Very little, as a matter of fact. He hasn’t given me a single hint this was coming.”
“The two of you never talk about anything personal. Why should he?”
“Because he’s giving my daughter a stepmother. Doesn’t that seem like something he’d mention?”
Samantha waved her free hand in emphasis. “In your eyes Jeremy can’t do anything right. You do see that, correct? I mean, a few minutes ago you were dissing him for not spending more time with Maddie, and now you’re after him for wanting to spend a couple of weeks of quality time with her while he introduces somebody who’s going to be important in her life.”
Taylor considered that, but not for long. “See, there was this day, oh, eleven years ago, give or take a month or two. I went to him, sobbing, and told him I was pregnant with his baby. And you know what he said to me?”
“Something stupid? Like any seventeen-year-old boy with a noose around his neck?”
“Maddie is not a noose.”
“You know that, and so does he. Now. But his whole life changed in that moment, and he was still just a kid. Both of you were.”
“Eleven years ago he told me my baby wasn’t his problem, that I was the one who was pregnant, and I’d better leave him out of it.”
“And you’ve never forgiven him.”
Taylor hadn’t. At times she’d come close. She realized that nobody should be judged by something he said when the world as he knew it was collapsing. Later, when confronted by his parents, Jeremy had not denied that the baby was his. Of course, denial would have been futile, since a paternity test would have proved him a liar.
“You remember how it went,” she said. “We’d broken up. He was already dating somebody else when I realized I was going to have his baby. Later he told me he thought I was just making up a pregnancy to get even with him.”
“I can see that.”
“Really? I can’t. He knew me better than that.”
“Maybe not. He was the class bad boy. Your mother wouldn’t let you date him, right? Whenever you saw him you were sneaking behind her back. How well could you know him? How much time could you spend together? “
“Enough to make a baby.” Taylor shook her head. “I guess we’ve worked things out well enough, considering our start. There’s no love lost between us, but both of us love Maddie. Now, everything’s going to change.”
“Particularly if you don’t lose the attitude.”
Samantha had been her friend for so long that Taylor couldn’t be offended. She just reached over and socked her on the arm.
“I don’t think it’s Jeremy,” Samantha said, unperturbed. “I don’t think you want to share Maddie. And you’re wondering what you’ll do without her for two weeks. Part of you wants her to have a closer relationship to her daddy, and part of you probably hopes she’ll get along with her new stepmother. But another part of you hopes the whole thing will blow up, and she’ll never want to leave you again.”
“If that’s true it sounds pretty squirrely.”
“No, it sounds pretty natural. I don’t have that problem, since Edna’s father was never in the picture. But if he showed up tomorrow and said he’d been searching for us all this time, I’d probably feel the same way you do. Like he was the enemy clambering over my castle walls, an invader trying to stake a claim to a piece of my daughter.”
“And people think the hard part of being a single parent is not having anybody to share childrearing with.”
“The hard part of being a mother is knowing when to let go and when to hang on.”
For no good reason, Taylor thought of her own mother. As always, she was sorry she had.
Chapter Seven
First Day Journal: April 29
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to forget my past. Maybe I thought if I changed myself into someone else, the past would fade away with my Appalachian accent and one day a country girl named Lottie Lou Hale would cease to exist.
Now I know how much time I wasted. No matter how hard we try to lock memories away, they break free, sometimes taking on new life because we witness others with the same struggles, like the young woman sleeping in my guest room this morning. Just like Harmony Stoddard, I was once nearly homeless, with no one to help me and nothing to fall back on.
It’s not a memory I recall with fondness. But this morning, while I wait for my guest to wake up, I’ll take it out again and examine it here.
Almost exactly seven years after Hearty’s Sunday morning appearance at the Trust Independent Baptist Church, I am sitting beside him on a bench in front of the pulpit, and this time no one is trying to persuade him to leave.
In the past year someone has donated screens, and someone else convinced the county to run an electric line so that now floor fans blow channels of steamy air over the mourners lucky enough to be sitting close to them.
I’m not one of those. I’m sitting in the front row, close enough to my grandmother’s coffin to wish I could hop up and brush away the flies that entered the church with the mourners. I know better than to make a scene. I am seventeen, newly graduated from high school, and now I’m a woman. None of my grandmother’s friends gathered today would appreciate even a pause in Preacher Pittman’s words. Those attending came out of respect, but I know that no one wants to sit in the heat a moment longer than necessary. Fans or not, the temperature has to be close to ninety and climbing as the sun rises higher in the sky.
“Would anybody out there like to speak?” the preacher asks at last.
I turn to my father, who wears a clean shirt and pants and is, for once, freshly shaved. Even Hearty Hale realized he had to show up at his mother-in-law’s funeral or risk losing whatever shred of credibility is still attached to his name.
Do not get up, I mouth.
He narrows his eyes, as if trying to make sense of that. I realize saying something about Gran has never occurred to him.
From behind us a neighbor stands and begins to speak, detailing the kindness my grandmother showed his family, the food she brought when his wife was sick, little gifts for his children when Gran could hardly afford bacon and beans. Someone else remembers how hard she worked and the way she held her little family together after her husband died, even giving her son-in-law and granddaughter a place to live. The unspoken message, of course, is that anybody who put up with Hearty all those years is already sitting at the feet of the Lord.
I know my grandmother earned her neighbors’ respect one thoughtful act at a time. I also know that now that Gran has finally succumbed to the torment of her twisted body, respect for anyone at the old Sawyer farm will be buried right beside her. The locals will feel sorry for me, of course, sorry I’ve been left to cope with my alcoholic father and his debts and antics, but they’ll stay as far away as possible, lest they get sucked into the drama of my life when their own are already difficult enough.
I gather my courage and stand when it’s clear no one else intends to speak.
“My grandmother was the only mother I ever knew,” I say, my voice strong and clear, despite the lump in my throat. “She was a God-fearing Christian, and she practiced every principle anybody ever preached from that pulpit. I think she held on to life just long enough to see me graduate, but I’m glad she’s gone now, because she suffered. A whole lot.” I clear my throat. “I just want to say thank you for those of you who were kind to her and to me while she lay dying. She would have wanted me to say that.”
I sit down, and the preacher nods. A hymn is sung, a prayer is said and the service is over.
We all stand as four of the deacons come to the front to shoulder Gran’s pine coffin and carry it outside.
I follow, and in a moment my father stands to follow behind me. I hope he doesn’t stumble or worse. It will be a testimonial to my grandmother if Hearty can make it to the graveside without creating a scene.
Gran asked to be buried at our farm, in the family cemetery next to her husband and my mother. Outside, I glance at my father, who is leaning against a tree, his eyelids drifting closed. I wonder if he’s sober enough to remember where he parked his pickup to drive himself home.
The coffin is loaded into a hearse, and I sit beside the driver and wonder how many mourners will accompany us. I glance behind me and see a dozen cars, headlights bright, and I know what a tribute this is to my grandmother.
The trip takes just minutes. On our hillside cemetery the grave has already been dug, and the ceremony there is blessedly short. Mrs. Pittman, dressed in a black skirt and blouse, with her graying hair pulled back in a tight bun, comes to stand beside me. She puts her hand on my arm once I’ve thrown the first handful of dirt on the coffin that holds the only person who ever loved me.
“Why don’t you come home with us now, Lottie Lou?” she asks, turning me so I won’t have to stare at the coffin disappearing under clods of dirt thrown by the rest of the mourners. Men from the church will finish filling the grave once the others leave, but my grandmother’s friends are doing their parts with gusto.
“Preacher Pittman can drive you home after supper.” Mrs. Pittman bites her lip, as if the thought of my returning home without my grandmother to protect me is disturbing. Normally the neighbors would go up to the house after the funeral. Food would be served and memories exchanged, but no one is about to go to our house, knowing Hearty Hale will be the one waiting there.
A few other mourners are closing in to mouth their condolences, and I must speak quickly.
“You’re very kind, but I made other plans.” I hesitate, then lower my voice. “I’m going to Asheville. Bill Johnston’s taking me. He’s got flowerpots to deliver this afternoon, and I guess you could say he’s delivering me right along with them.”
“Asheville?” Mrs. Pittman sounds puzzled. “Do you have family there? Friends?”
“I have some money Gran saved for me. I’ll find a job. I just can’t live here no—anymore.”
Mrs. Pittman clears her throat. “Are you afraid to be alone with your father?”
I know what she’s worried about, but I shake my head. “Not like what you mean.”
“Then don’t you think you ought to wait until you have something lined up? Maybe we could help find you—”
“I can’t stay another minute,” I say. “I already packed, and my stuff is in Bill’s truck. He picked up my suitcase when he took me to the church. There’s nothing keeping me here. It’s time to move on with my life.”
“Your father—”
“Is a worthless no-good, even when he’s sober. And there’s nothing I can do to change him, but he’ll drag me down if I stay. Gran warned me he would, and she was right.”
Mrs. Pittman doesn’t argue, because what is there to say, even for a preacher’s wife? “What about the farm?”
“I guess he’s welcome to it.” The people waiting impatiently on the sidelines begin to move in.
“Does he know?”
“He’ll find out soon enough.”
Soon enough comes sooner than I expect. When just about everyone else has gone, after Preacher Pittman has silently pressed two twenty-dollar bills into my palm along with his phone number, I turn and see Bill Johnston pull his pickup around so he’s headed down our driveway. I know Bill hoped to get an earlier start into the city, and the time has come to leave—and quickly. But before I can get in the front, I see my father staring into the bed of Bill’s pickup, squinting at the small suitcase that once belonged to my mother, one he clearly recognizes.
“What’s that doing there?” Hearty claps a hand on my shoulder as I try to pass.
I had hoped to simply tell him that Bill Johnston was taking me to a friend’s, but I can’t think of any lie that involves the suitcase, too. I decide the time has come for the truth.
“Mr. Johnston’s taking me down to Asheville.” I shrug off Hearty’s hand. “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” He seems unable to comprehend the word.
“That’s right. I’m going to start a new life.”
“With what?”
I ponder that a moment. I’m leaving home, setting out for an uncertain future, and Hearty has only zeroed in on what for him is the crucial question. How have I gotten enough money to make this escape, and how can he get it away from me?
“I’ll miss you, too, Hearty,” I say, leaning close. “Thanks for the good times and good wishes.”
His eyes narrow. “Where’d you get the money to leave?”
“Gran left me just enough to get away from you. She did the best she could.”
“How much?”
I shake my head. “Don’t matter. You aren’t getting a cent of it.”
“Who’s going to take care of things?”
The switch is so sudden, it takes me a moment to catch up. “Things?”
“The farm? Get me dinner when I’m home? Take care of things!”
“I have no idea. Maybe you’ll figure that out.”
“You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Try and stop me.” I hear Bill’s door slam and his footsteps as he rounds the cab.
“It’s your job to stay and take care of…things!”
I see Bill come up behind my father. “Can we leave now?” I ask.
Bill is a substantial man, outweighing Hearty by fifty pounds and topping him by at least four inches. Right now I’m glad for all the years and pounds of his wife’s deep-fried country cooking.
“You can’t take her,” Hearty says.
“I don’t want a fight,” Bill responds. “But the girl’s going where she wants to.”
Hearty considers that. I can almost see him weighing his options. Winning a fight with the well-fed Bill isn’t one of them. He turns back to me.
“You leave now, I’ll give my share of this farm your grandma loved so much to one of my drinking buddies when I die. You won’t be able to get your hands on my piece of it.”
I shrug because I’m fairly sure that Hearty will destroy the farm before it comes to that, burn down the house, whatever it takes.
“Or that ridge land of mine, neither,” he says, when he sees I’m not impressed enough. “You won’t get a square inch of it.”
From his own family Hearty has inherited land too steep for anything but logging, something Hearty does when he absolutely has to earn money. The more valuable Hale land was left to his four sober sisters, who stayed away from Hearty and, by extension, me, as if what ailed their baby brother might be catching. The ridge land was a blessing, because when he was there hauling out trees, Hearty was gone for days.
“You’re welcome to everything,” I say. “I don’t want to lay eyes on you again. Not ever. You can drink yourself to death, or sober up and change your ways. Makes no difference to me.”
I glance at Bill and see that the last part of my speech dismayed him. I know I sounded heartless, so I sigh and add, “Of course, for your sake, Hearty, I hope you can change.”
“I want some of that money your grandmother gave you. Right now.” He holds out his trembling hand, palm up. “I deserve it.”
“The girl’s heading for a new life, and you want to steal her money?” Bill asks.
“If she’s got money, it came from this farm. I own part of the farm.”
Bill shakes his head, and this time he shoots me a sympathetic glance. “We’re going now.” Bill reaches around Hearty and takes my arm.
I skirt my father and step up to the running board. Bill’s wife, Zettie, moves over to the middle to make room for me, then she leans over and opens the door. “You get inside, Lottie Lou. And don’t you give that man one red cent.”
I slide inside, but Hearty holds on to the door. “You got nothing for your father?” he says.
“That’s what you gave me my whole life.” I have to force the words past a sudden lump in my throat. Hearty Hale is my father, and while I despise him, he is my blood and my past. Suddenly the future looks very frightening, more frightening than I had anticipated.
“That’s what you’ll get if you leave me,” Hearty says. “I’m warning you.”
Bill has already circled the truck, and now he slams his door shut and starts the engine. Without another word he starts forward. I grab the door handle, and when my father loses his grip on it, I slam the door shut.
A part of me knows I ought to turn my head for one more look at the man who sired me. I will not come back. These will be our final moments together. But I don’t turn. I hold tight to the door handle all the way down to Asheville.
Chapter Eight
HARMONY AWOKE IN a strange bed, and for a moment panic filled her. She had been dreaming of home, of the muffled footsteps of her mother wearing the slippers Harmony had given her as a birthday gift. Before that, no matter the season, Janine Stoddard had tiptoed around the house in her bare feet, because she had been afraid of prematurely waking Harmony’s father.
Harmony’s childhood had been all about walking on tiptoes, about muffling laughter or tears, about apologies. The dream was no surprise, but this bed and this room startled her into stillness. She was afraid to move, afraid to cry out. And whose name would she call, anyway?
Slowly the events of last night came back to her. Her shift at Cuppa, the man who had succeeded in making her feel small and stupid. The chunks of salad spread on the floor with dressing pooling beside…
She wouldn’t think of that now.
Charlotte Hale, who had witnessed everything, had found her lying in the backseat of her Buick. Her cheeks burned at the memory. She had been afraid to park on a darker side street until it was okay to go back to Jennifer’s. Instead, she had parked far enough away from Cuppa to feel certain no one would spot her. When she’d returned to the car after her shift, she had stretched out in the back as best she could, an army blanket rolled under her head and another pulled over her.
She had wondered where Davis was at that moment—and with whom. She had wondered exactly why she was alive.
Then she’d opened her eyes to see Charlotte Hale staring down at her.
Now she was in the woman’s mansion, because Harmony could think of no other word for this house. It was a home beyond any she had ever been inside, with a front hall as large as Jennifer’s entire apartment. She had been stunned as they walked to the kitchen, scuffing her soles over rugs as soft as pillows, winding through rooms with sky-high ceilings. She had been unable to stomach more than a glass of milk, and as she’d sipped, she had gaped at what had to be a place where food would be smart enough, confident enough, to cook itself without interference.
Charlotte—because that was what she insisted on being called—had seen how exhausted and upset Harmony was, and she had led her here, to a green-and-yellow bedroom with polished cherry furniture and a bathroom Harmony would be content to live in. Charlotte had returned with a nightgown that was inches too short but otherwise perfect, told her where to find a new toothbrush, soap and anything else she desired, then abandoned her.
Now, gazing up at the ceiling, Harmony was once again amazed. Even the ceiling was extraordinary. It was high, like all the ones she’d noted last night, but the center was marked by a plaster medallion that would look at home in a palace. She thought she identified grapes and the faces of cherubs. The ceiling curved down into sage green walls, and where it did, there was more adornment, plaster ivy, flowers, birds. In another era artists might have labored for months creating these scenes. Now she imagined there were shortcuts and factory-produced enhancements that could be quickly added by construction workers, but she was still awed by the time and expense, if not by the art itself.
She only moved her eyes. She didn’t move her head. In the past week she’d learned that lesson. When she awoke it was important not to move quickly, to let her body adjust and prepare. Then she could get up by degrees, swinging her legs over the bed in slow motion, pushing up an inch at a time until she was sitting on the edge. If she was lucky she’d remembered to put her purse beside her, and packs of saltines from Cuppa’s vast supply waited there for nibbling. If she didn’t move quickly, if she took her time slowly eating a morsel at a time, she would not have to run gagging to the perfect marble bathroom with its multinozzle shower and spa tub.
She wondered if there would be time for a shower after she finally rose. By now Charlotte would surely be asking herself why she had invited a stranger to her home. One look around had proved there was so much here worth stealing. The house was filled with valuable art; even this room had china figurines that were clearly not from the Walmart housewares department. Of course, Harmony had never stolen so much as a toothpick. Even the saltines in her purse were courtesy of her manager.
Fifteen minutes later she was on her feet and holding steady. The saltines had, as she’d hoped, calmed her roiling stomach. She debated a shower, and in the end, she couldn’t resist. Inside the marble-tile enclosure three separate sprays pummeled her from behind. The showerhead itself had more settings than Davis’s state-of-the-art flat-screen television, but the warm water made her nauseous, and she didn’t stay long.
She dressed in yesterday’s rumpled skirt and Cuppa T-shirt, which were all she had until she could get back to Jennifer’s apartment to rummage through her suitcases for something clean. She pulled her wet hair back from her face and fastened it with the same band she’d used last night. Then she went to find Charlotte.
She realized it was possible her hostess might still be asleep. Harmony had always been an early riser. She’d never had an opportunity to be anything else. As a child, if she wanted time in the family bathroom before school, she’d needed to get up at dawn, because once her father and brother, Buddy, were up, the house and everything in it belonged to them. In the summer she’d been required to get up by six to help Buddy bag newspapers for his route.
Since leaving home she hadn’t lived anywhere she could be comfortable sleeping in. Even when she had lived with Davis, she’d felt obligated to cook an early breakfast before he left for his office. He had never told her she had to, but he’d made enough snide jokes about “kept women” that she’d known better than to become one.
Charlotte’s house was easy to get lost in. Harmony paid attention as she tiptoed through the hallway looking for her hostess and still ended up in a mahogany-paneled study by mistake. She left that quickly, and later, the dining room, although she could swear she’d also seen a dining room off the entry way. A house with two dining rooms perplexed her. Separate dinner parties? Would the guests realize they had competition for their hostess from the other side of the house?
She found the kitchen at last, guided by the smell of coffee brewing. While she’d given it up, the smell was enticingly familiar, and her stomach behaved. She stepped in and saw Charlotte wearing a fuzzy bathrobe and standing at the stove.
“Good morning,” she said tentatively.
Charlotte turned and smiled at her. The smile was so welcoming that Harmony felt her tension ease.
“I hope I didn’t wake you while I puttered around in here,” Charlotte said.
“This house is so big, I think you could drill for oil and I wouldn’t hear you.” The moment she said it, Harmony wondered if she’d sounded critical, but before she could apologize, Charlotte laughed.
“On top of that, the builder did everything he could to soundproof the rooms. Maybe he thought it was destined for a large noisy family.”
Harmony moved closer, then took a seat at the island when Charlotte waved in that direction. “It’s an amazing house. Really.”
“I could say you don’t know the half of it, and I would be right. It goes on and on and on, and you haven’t even been upstairs. If you were wearing hiking boots, I’d give you a tour.”
Harmony relaxed a little more. “I really can’t thank you enough for—”
Charlotte held up her hand. “It was so little, Harmony. Were you comfortable?”
“More than comfortable. That’s the most wonderful bed I’ve ever slept in.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I think you might be the first person to try out the mattress.”
“It’s new?”
Charlotte hesitated just a moment. “Just unused. I don’t have many guests.” She held up a coffeepot. “Ready for some of this?”
Harmony shook her head. “I…I don’t drink coffee. I mean, at least not right now.”
Charlotte nodded. “Tea?”
Harmony wasn’t sure that she should have tea, either. In fact, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to drink. “I…” She shook her head.
“Orange juice, then?”
“Oh, that would be perfect. But I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“Now if you’d been here yesterday morning, you might have been. My refrigerator was practically empty. But not today, so I’m delighted to share. Let’s figure out what we should eat. I have bread for toast, fresh berries, yogurt. I almost never cook anymore, but I can do that much.”
“This kitchen never gets used?” Harmony couldn’t believe it. She was a Food Network groupie, and she was pretty sure Giada, Rachel and Paula had never seen a kitchen better equipped than this.
“I know. It hardly seems fair, but I’m afraid it’s used only rarely,” Charlotte said. “And then mostly by caterers if I’m putting on a dinner party. The rest of the time I eat out or snack.”
Harmony realized she was actually hungry. In fact, she tried to remember when she’d last eaten. Yesterday afternoon, she thought. A Cuppa wrap purchased with her employee discount. She was going to have to do better—and fast.
“Everything sounds good,” she said.
“Wonderful. It sounds good to me, too. Let’s eat everything in one fell swoop.”
“Have you ever wondered what that means? Have you ever seen any swooping fells?”
Charlotte’s laugh was low, almost sultry, and somehow didn’t fit with her uptown bearing. “Not lately. Swooping fellows, maybe, in singles’ bars, but I haven’t seen any of those in decades.”
“They’re still there, only now they come with their latest blood test clutched in one hand and industrial-strength condoms in the other.” Harmony realized what she’d said and wondered if she ought to just take a vow of silence.
“Then I’m guessing that’s not how you got pregnant,” Charlotte said, after a brief pause.
Harmony hung her head. “How did you guess?”
“Well, I have a daughter. And while I had her a long time ago, I’ve never forgotten the thrill of morning sickness all day long. I figured it out last night.”
“No, I didn’t meet the father in a singles’ bar.” Harmony cleared her throat. “We were living together, but I moved out when I realized I wasn’t the only woman he was sleeping with.”
“And I’m guessing this was recent, and the reason you’re sleeping on a girlfriend’s sofa?”
Harmony nodded. “Three weeks ago. I…I didn’t know I was pregnant until last week, at least not for sure.”
“This must be a confusing time for you. And it probably doesn’t help that you don’t have your own place.”
“One of the baristas at Cuppa might know of a room for rent. She promised she’d check for me.”
“Networking, huh?”
Harmony looked up and made a wry face. “She’s not very reliable, but Jennifer’s lease runs out at the end of June, and she said if I haven’t found something else by then, maybe we can rent something bigger together.”
“So you’re making plans.”
“It will work out.”
Charlotte didn’t answer. She got food out of the refrigerator and turned down Harmony’s offer of help. She put bread in the toaster, then dished yogurt into bowls and washed berries to go with it, setting things on the island as she worked.
Harmony watched closely. Charlotte Hale was a stranger, but there were clues as to what kind of woman she was. She was middle-age, with hands that were well-cared for and hair that was probably touched up but naturally that deep shade of red, since it fit so perfectly with the creamy tones of her skin. Jennifer worked at an expensive salon, and she was always pointing out things like that.
Charlotte was probably around the age of Harmony’s own mother, but she looked much younger because she had time and money to take care of herself, and a belief that she had the right, something Harmony’s own mother lacked. She was probably from somewhere in the South, although Harmony guessed her educated drawl hadn’t come from here, but perhaps from someplace less “mountain,” like Atlanta or Charlotte. The latter would even explain her name. She moved with grace, but slowly, as if she wasn’t certain her body was up to the tasks she’d set for it this morning.
She was clearly rich. Unless she was the housekeeper for the real owner. Harmony smiled, because she was pretty sure that was not the case.
Charlotte closed the refrigerator. “Would you like to eat here? In the breakfast room?”
“Here’s great,” Harmony said. Her stomach was rumbling now, and the breakfast looked perfect.
“Oh, good. My choice, too.” Charlotte slid everything closer to her guest, and motioned for her to take a plate and dish up.
“When we finish, I’ll leave,” Harmony said, in case that hadn’t been clear. “And I’ll find a way back to my car. You don’t have to worry. Jennifer can—”
“There’s no hurry. Unless you have an early shift at Cuppa?”
“No, I go on at four. I just need to go back to Jennifer’s and change clothes before I go in.” Harmony dug into her breakfast, which couldn’t have tasted better.
“This is none of my business…” Charlotte had settled beside her and was dishing berries over a small dollop of yogurt as she spoke.
“You want to know about the baby, right?”
“Only what you want to tell me.”
Harmony wondered if Charlotte was part of one of those organizations that made it their mission to talk girls like Harmony out of abortion. She wondered if that was why Charlotte had invited her here, because she had guessed Harmony was pregnant and possibly alone.
That all made sense, although Charlotte wasn’t pushy, the way Harmony had imagined someone with that agenda would be. Somehow it didn’t really fit, because she didn’t seem to be selling anything.
“I wasn’t planning to get pregnant,” Harmony said. “I was pretty careful. I guess pretty careful wasn’t careful enough.”
“I’ve been there. I understand.”
Harmony thought maybe there was a sisterhood of “pretty careful” women who had been faced with decisions like hers. She was afraid to ask Charlotte’s story, although she wished she knew.
“Davis doesn’t know. I haven’t told him yet.”
“I’m sure you have a good reason.”
Harmony found herself relaxing again. “I guess I don’t want him telling me what to do. He likes to do that. When I lived with him, I let him. His place, his rules. But all my life, other people have told me what I should do, and now, well, I need to figure this out myself. Because this baby won’t matter nearly as much to anybody else as it will to me. So that means I have to be the one to decide things.”
“That makes sense to me, although you sound pretty certain the baby won’t matter as much to Davis.”
“He doesn’t like children.”
“So you’re pretty sure what he’ll say when you tell him?”
“He won’t be happy.”
Charlotte reached over and rested her hand on Harmony’s. “There’s good news. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want. Nobody can.”
“It’s just…well, it’s just going to be a little crazy for a while. I just have some hard thinking to do.”
“Right. Without interference.”
Harmony was glad to hear those last two words. “I’ve been thinking about making a list. You know, of things I need to do and things to decide. Maybe then I could figure them out faster. Check things off…”
Charlotte passed the plate of toast, and Harmony gladly took another piece. The bread was wonderful, and Charlotte had put real butter on it. She tried to remember the last time she’d had real butter on toast. Davis had insisted on olive oil spread because he wanted to live forever.
“What’s going to be at the top of the list?” Charlotte asked. “Have you gotten that far?”
“Finding a place to live.”
“Sounds like you have definite priorities.”
“That’s number one, for sure. I’ve still got to save up a little more, even if Jennifer and I get a place together. I’ve been working extra shifts, and I saved some money when I lived with Davis, but then I had car problems, and there was a month when Cuppa closed down while they finished the renovations.” Harmony wondered why she was telling Charlotte all this, and decided it was because Charlotte was listening. She couldn’t remember the last time anybody had really listened to her.
“I like the way you think,” Charlotte said. “You’ve got important decisions, but I’m guessing you want to be settled before you get too much further.”
“I need a better job, too. Something with regular hours and insurance. The baby deserves that. And once I have to pay for child care…” Harmony shook her head. “But one step at a time, right?”
“I imagine this is scary, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
“May I tell you a story?”
As nice as it had been to have somebody listen to her, Harmony was glad to be out of the spotlight. “About you?”
“About me, yes. Because when it’s finished, I’m going to tell you that the guest room where you stayed last night, or any guest room in the house, is yours as long as you need time to figure things out.” Charlotte held up her hand to stave off Harmony’s protests. “Let me tell the story first, then we’ll get back to that. Okay?”
Harmony couldn’t say no. How could she refuse such a small thing, when in the past ten hours Charlotte Hale had made her feel like a whole person again?
* * *
Charlotte watched her houseguest’s expressions as she recounted the story of her grandmother’s funeral, the same one she’d written in her journal that morning before Harmony woke up. After finding Harmony in the car last night, that day had been very much on her mind, and sharing it with the young woman now seemed natural, although in her whole life she’d only told it to one other person.
Ethan.
“So you left home? You just drove away?” Harmony asked, after Charlotte finished.
Charlotte pulled herself back to the present and nodded gravely. “We just drove away.”
“You were terrified. I know you were.”
Charlotte decided not to take Harmony’s comment at face value. “I’m guessing something like that may have happened to you?”
Harmony bit her bottom lip. Then she nodded. “I left home, just like you. I…I couldn’t stay. My father didn’t drink, but he’s not a nice man.”
Charlotte sat quietly and waited, but Harmony didn’t go on, so she said, “A bad father should make us appreciate the good men in our lives when we find them, but we’re not always able to without practice.”
“Sometimes I still believe the things my father said about me.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say you’re reconsidering them.”
Harmony smiled a little. “What happened next? After you got to town?”
“It was pretty awful.” Charlotte glanced out the window at the expansive lawn stretching away from the house, at the dogwoods in bloom, the magnolias in bud. She hadn’t gotten this far in her journal, and it was hard to find the right words. It had been awful. She still felt a stab of fear when she thought about it, even though she had worked so hard in the intervening years to put that day behind her.
“I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have any place to go.” She turned back to Harmony. “Was it that way for you when you arrived?”
“I had a friend from middle school who had moved here. That’s why I chose Asheville. Her family gave me a place to stay for the summer, but they’re gone now, living in California. Still, they helped me get on my feet, find a job and car, make some new friends….”
Charlotte didn’t point out that Harmony’s security net was still full of rips and tears. No one knew that better than the girl herself.
“I had a little money,” Charlotte said, “but not much. What the preacher gave me, the little my grandmother had been able to save. It was late by the time we got to town. Bill and Zettie took me to a cheap hotel, and they paid for a week, even though I hated that, because I knew they couldn’t afford it. They told me to call if I couldn’t find a job or a place to live, and they would come and get me. But I knew if they did, I’d never come down from the mountains again, that I’d never find a different path.”
“You must have found one,” Harmony said, looking around, because Charlotte’s house spoke for itself.
“It was the end of the week, and I had one more night at the hotel. I’d walked everywhere, talked to everybody. I bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter on sale, and that’s what I ate every day until it was gone, then I bought more. Nobody wanted me. Nobody needed me. I didn’t have any experience. I didn’t have the right kind of clothes. I was desperate, but what does that mean?” She looked at Harmony. “Call the preacher or the Johnstons and admit I’d failed? Rob a bank?”
The last got a smile out of Harmony. “It kind of looks like you did,” she said. “That would explain things.”
Charlotte was glad her story was helping, and telling it was easier than she’d expected. “I was sitting in a café, reading the paper, hoping I’d missed something, some job I could apply for, some lead, anything at all. Two women came in and sat next to me, and ordered breakfast. I’d ordered the day’s special. One egg, a slice of toast, a cup of coffee. Ninety-nine cents. Do you believe that price?”
“Where is that place?”
“Closed, I’m sorry to say. The women ordered these huge breakfasts. Bacon and sausage and French toast. I was so hungry I wanted to steal the food right off their plates.” She saw that Harmony understood, and she reached over and touched her hand again. “You know, I’ve never told anybody that part before.”
“Not everybody would get it.”
Charlotte patted her hand. “I was close to tears, so I started listening to them to keep my mind off my future. One of the women was in her thirties, and I realized she was complaining about how she needed a live-in babysitter for the summer, but nobody wanted a low-paying job like that. Her friend laughed and said that maybe the problem was they didn’t know what to do with two active boys. It would take somebody young and energetic. And stupid, the other woman said, and they both laughed.”
“Nothing like a hard sell, huh?” Harmony said.
“So I stood up and leaned over. And I said, ‘I’m not stupid, but I am looking for a job for the summer and a place to live.’ They looked me over like I’d just crawled out of a tunnel. I knew I had thirty seconds to sell myself. So I told them I had references, that I was from the mountains but I had a high school diploma and, more important, that I really needed the job and the place to stay because my grandmother had just died. I said if that mother hired me, she could be sure I wasn’t going to up and leave—that’s how I said it—because I really didn’t have any other place to go, no matter how much trouble her little boys were, and besides, I had helped my gran teach Sunday School for years, so I knew kids.”
“It’s like somebody put that woman in your path.”
Charlotte considered that. Maybe at the time it had felt that way, but in the years afterward she’d convinced herself that people made their own luck—probably so she could be even prouder of herself for what she had achieved.
“That’s the definition of faith, isn’t it? I honestly don’t know whether I believe that, Harmony, but I do believe this. If life hands you an opportunity, you grab it and hold on to it the way you hold on to a child who’s squirming to be set free. That’s what I did. Mrs. King was never sorry, not for one moment, that she grabbed her own opportunity and hired me. I stayed with the family a couple of years, and by the time they moved away, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew I could make it, and I did.”
“Lottie Lou?”
Charlotte felt herself smiling. “My mother’s idea, and I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not even a nickname. It’s the name that was right there on my birth certificate. I changed it legally the moment I had the money to do it, but Charlotte Louise Hale is a fraud.”
“Never a fraud. You’re a kind woman. And all this, this part of your past? That’s why you’re offering me a place to stay?”
Charlotte thought of all the reasons why she had offered, so many more than she could tell the young woman. She had already made herself uncharacteristically vulnerable, and that was enough for one day.
“That’s the reason,” she said. “Because I know what it’s like to need a safe place to get back on your feet. I was homeless. I know what it feels like to worry about where you’ll sleep and whether you’ll be safe. I wanted you to know that I really do understand.”
“Wow.” Harmony’s eyes filled with tears. “But that woman at the restaurant gave you a job, Charlotte.”
“Harmony, you have a job. You don’t need another one.”
“No, you worked for what you got. I’d just be living here and taking up space.” She brightened. “I could cook for you. And clean.”
Charlotte saw that earning her way made all the difference to Harmony. “I have a housekeeper who comes in part-time to clean, but she doesn’t cook. Do you like to cook?”
“I love to when my stomach cooperates. But I’m a vegetarian. I don’t cook meat. And I’ll have to fix things early in the day if I’m working the dinner shift. Would that be okay?”
“Better than okay. I have a small appetite, so I won’t need anything fancy. And I’ll pay for all the groceries.”
“May I do the shopping? You can tell me what you like, and I’ll make sure we have it in the house.”
Charlotte reached over and held out her hand, palm up. “That would be such a big help.”
Harmony slapped the outstretched hand with her own. “You’ve turned things around to make me feel better about this. We both know you’re helping me.”
“Trust me when I say it’s mutual, okay?”
“What could you need that you don’t have already?”
Charlotte tried to smile. What did she need? A thousand “first days” to fix all the mistakes she had made? Her daughter and granddaughter safe in her arms? A chance to tell Ethan she was sorry she had so easily discounted the life they had shared?
“I’ll get back to you on that,” she said. “For now? A friend and a cook.”
“May I look around the kitchen? You know, to see what’s here?”
“I’m officially turning it over to you.”
Harmony looked as if Charlotte had just given her a present. “You won’t be sorry.”
Charlotte wasn’t sure about much in her life, but she was sure she wouldn’t be sorry she had made this offer. No matter how it turned out, what did she have to lose?
Chapter Nine
IF ANALIESE HAD one complaint about the Church of the Covenant, it was the migraine-producing administrative tasks that fell to her. The meetings, the committees, the pledge campaigns, even her association with Covenant Academy, the private school affiliated with the church. On the day that she had heard the call to ministry she had envisioned a different life, filled with prayer and the spiritual needs of her flock. Instead, too often she combed through budgets, fiddled with mission statements, coordinated volunteers and staff alike. Even their competent church administrator couldn’t save her from the worst of it.
During her first week she had realized she would burn out quickly if she allowed her days to be swallowed by paperwork. So she’d made rules. Except for emergencies, Thursdays were devoted to the Sunday service, the sermon and liturgy, and whatever research they required. Fridays were devoted to pastoral calls and counseling.
Usually Fridays were her favorite day of the week, but today she awakened with a vague feeling of dread.
She made two hospital visits before stopping for sandwiches downtown with the new chairman of the finance committee. The young CPA had recently gotten a divorce, and instead of budgets and endowments, they talked about how well he was coping. Well enough, she decided, when he admitted his biggest concern had been who would get custody of their collie. Analiese hoped he would wait a few years before he tried married life a second time, but she was glad he’d ended up with the dog, if not the wife.
After he left to go back to work, the afternoon stretched in front of her. She had two counseling appointments in the early evening and plenty to do at church. But she had one more person to see before she went back to the relative peace of her office.
A vision of Charlotte Hale sitting in the chapel had nagged at her since yesterday. It had bothered her all through Minnie Marlborough’s funeral and later that night at the monthly council meeting. When she got out of bed this morning, she had realized she had to see Charlotte again.
She didn’t want to call her at Falconview or meet her there. She had been to the Falconview headquarters once on church business. There was nothing wrong with the modern office building on Hendersonville Road, with its sleek surfaces and smoky glass windows, except that words seemed to echo and disappear in Charlotte’s office. At the time she had wondered if that was intentional. After all, Charlotte was not particularly fond of listening to anyone else.
Now she pulled out her cell phone and called Charlotte at home to leave a message. She planned to ask if she could drop by that evening. Instead, she got Charlotte on the first ring. She was so surprised it took her seconds to form a different plan.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d be leaving a message. I was calling to see if I could stop by for a visit this evening, but if you’re home now and up for it…?”
Charlotte sounded weary, but she told Analiese to come ahead.
Half an hour later she pulled up in front of Charlotte’s house. Sitting in her car and reluctant to go inside, she looked over the serene landscape. She’d been here several times, and it never ceased to amaze her that one woman lived alone in a house that was large enough for three generations.
Several years ago Charlotte had volunteered this house for a mission fundraiser, and a hundred people had fit so easily inside and around the light-bedecked swimming pool that Analiese had been sorry the committee hadn’t tried to accommodate twice as many.
The fundraiser had gone off without a hitch, organized down to the final slice of cheesecake by Charlotte herself. It had all been so perfect, but no one had lingered, or talked too loudly, or eaten more than his share. No one had taken off pumps or wingtips, rolled up hems and dangled feet in the twinkling turquoise pool. By ten the caterers had disappeared, and Analiese and the others had gone home, oddly sober despite an abundance of fine wine and a bartender with unlimited abilities.
She wasn’t sure what she was going to say. I’m sorry I snapped at you when you were trying to make amends? I can’t shake the feeling you might need to talk and I might need to listen? I’m worried about you even though you’re a woman who discourages such a thing?
Without a firm plan she got out of the car and walked to the front door. Sometimes it was just best to see what was needed. Anyway, it was entirely possible that Charlotte would politely and firmly boot her back out the door before she had a chance to probe.
She rang the bell and listened to the electronic Westminster chimes resonate through the foyer and up the curving staircase. Charlotte took her time, but she answered the door herself. She opened it and stood back to let Analiese inside. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look as if she regretted the intrusion.
“I have iced tea,” she said. “And juice. Why don’t we get something to drink and sit out by the pool? It’s turned into a beautiful day, hasn’t it?”
Analiese agreed but asked for iced water instead. In a few minutes they were sitting on a flagstone patio with the kidney-shaped pool sparkling just beyond them.
“Is this how you get your exercise?” Analiese asked. “With the weather getting warmer, swimming must be something to look forward to.”
Charlotte played with her glass of tea, rubbing the accumulating moisture with her palms. “I hate to say this, but I almost never use it. I used to swim every single day when I moved in, but over the years…?” She shrugged.
Swimming was a communal activity for Analiese. She couldn’t remember ever being in a pool alone, and she wondered if that bothered Charlotte, too.
“How did the memorial service go?” Charlotte asked, before Analiese could think of a way to say what she needed to.
“The best services leave people feeling better because they can start to put the life and death in perspective. I think we began that yesterday. The stories about Minnie went on almost an hour. There was a lot of laughter. That’s always good.”
“I never met her.”
“I didn’t think you had.”
“When Falconview realized we had to have her property, I sent other people out to talk to her. They brought back reports. They did all the legwork. I only saw the house once, just before it was torn down. I never saw…” She shook her head, staring at the pool. “Do you ever look back at your life and wonder how you could have been so wrong when you were so sure at the time you were right?”
Analiese didn’t know what to say. She had known Charlotte Hale for nearly a decade, but this was not the same woman.
She realized something personal was called for. “You know I used to be in television news? I can’t tell you the number of times I pushed people to reveal something on the air that I knew would come back to haunt them. I told myself the public had a right to know the truth. That’s what we always told ourselves, but when I look back on it now? It doesn’t seem to help.”
“You’re being kind.”
“I’m being truthful.”
“I have so many regrets.”
Analiese felt as if she’d stepped into another dimension.
Charlotte turned to look at her and saw her confusion. “And now you’re wondering if Charlotte Hale’s been the victim of body snatchers.”
“No, I’m thinking that I’m glad I’m sitting here with you. Being here today won’t be one of the things I regret.”
Charlotte sighed. “I’m dying.”
For a moment Analiese wasn’t sure she’d heard her right. She leaned forward and rested her fingertips on Charlotte’s arms. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe I’m being dramatic. I have leukemia, an acute form, which means the news is very rarely good. I got sick a couple of months ago—in fact, I nearly died. The doctors say it’s still theoretically possible I won’t die at all. Not from leukemia, anyway. But even the most optimistic say it would have improved my chances to make an earlier diagnosis. I let myself get right to the point of no return because I was too busy to pay attention to the way I felt. Too busy changing the Buncombe County landscape. Too busy making money and trying to get the world to see things my way.” She smiled a little. “Too busy to wonder why I never recovered from what I thought was a drawn-out winter cold.”
“I am so sorry.”
“You and me both.”
“But you could beat it?”
“I did a serious round of chemo at Duke and I’m in remission, waiting for my strength to improve and my counts to go up high enough to start the next phase. But while the bone marrow looks good, the counts don’t, so my doctors are being cautious.”
“How did you pull this off without people knowing?”
“I told anyone who mattered that I was in Europe with a group of investors, then off to Saint Martin on a well-deserved vacation. Trust me, chemo was no vacation.” She touched the top of her head. “I didn’t lose too much of my hair, so that was a bonus, and I could afford a good haircut and products galore to make it look thicker. I’m trying to gain back some weight.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then? Was there somebody…?”
“To help? No, you’re the first person I’ve told, and maybe the only one for a while. The last thing I want is anybody to feel sorry for me. I don’t want anybody trying to be nice because they don’t want to feel guilty when I die.”
Analiese already felt this secret weighing her down. All the things she knew that might help wouldn’t, not unless Charlotte was willing to let people know she needed their support.
“Why are you telling me?” she asked at last.
Charlotte laughed a little, and to Analiese the sound seemed real, not a bit forced. “You mean you don’t think I need you to absolve me of all my sins?”
Analiese smiled in response. “I would, if that were in my power.”
“I know. You take your job very seriously.”
“I’m afraid it’s a serious job.”
“Especially at moments like this one.”
“Not my favorite part.”
“Do you feel burdened?”
“Who’s helping whom?”
Charlotte was quiet for a moment, as if she needed to put her words in order. “You know, if you were some kindly older man, with thirty years of ministry behind you and a beatific smile—”
“This would be easier,” Analiese finished for her.
“That’s actually not what I was going to say. No, I was going to say this would be impossible.”
“Really?”
“Here’s the truth, and I’ve given it a lot of thought. No matter our differences, I know I can trust you. And I know you’re going to give helping me your best shot. You’re going to be sensible and thorough, and you’re going to dig deeper than somebody who thinks he has all the answers at his fingertips because he’s too tired to look for more.”
“That may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about my ministry.”
“And now you’re waiting for the punch line.”
“Something like that.”
Charlotte set her glass on the table and wiped her hands against her beige capris. “I should die more often. It makes for great repartee.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I think you mean that.”
“I think so, too.”
Charlotte was silent again, and Analiese sat quietly.
“I said I have a lot of regrets,” Charlotte began at last. “Here’s one of my biggest. When I heard the diagnosis, in the moments right before I zoomed off to Durham? I felt such a rush of relief.” She had been looking out at the pool, but now she turned. “Even though I was terrified, I thought, ‘It will be good to die and get this over with.’”
Analiese realized her concern must have shown, because Charlotte hurried on.
“I would never, never take my own life. You have to understand that. But when I realized living a long full life was probably out of my hands? I just wanted to close my eyes and wait for the end. My grandmother used to tell me death was the last mountain we have to climb, and just before she died, she opened her eyes and looked toward the window in her bedroom as if she were viewing a miracle.”
“That must be a good memory.”
“When the doctor told me my diagnosis? I thought about that day and about the look on her face, and I found myself hoping that she hadn’t really been looking at the gates of heaven, that there really wasn’t anything waiting for any of us except eternal sleep. That’s when I realized what a loss my life has been.”
When she didn’t know what to say, Analiese knew not to say a thing. She was almost certain this was not the moment for reassurance, although it felt wrong not to give it.
“I have to change things,” Charlotte said at last. “I realize whatever time I’ve been given, whether it’s months or years, I can’t die knowing I’ve made so many mistakes and never tried hard enough to set them right. I realize dying’s not about what comes next, because no matter how great or poor our faith, we really can’t know what’s waiting, or at least I can’t. For me it’s about what came before. The impact we had. The love we gave. The hearts we left intact…” She cleared her throat, and her eyes filled with tears. “Or broken.”
“I hope you aren’t saying that you’ve done nothing important with your life until now. Because you’ve given generously in many ways.”
“Too often for the wrong reasons.” Charlotte held up her hand to stop Analiese from continuing. “I realize nothing’s that cut and dried. I’ve done things because I knew they were important and right, and sometimes they were. But I’ve done so many things that seemed right and were terribly, terribly wrong. Like moving poor Minnie off her land. And here’s how I know. When I found out I was dying, I realized there wasn’t one person in the world who would really care. That I’ve lived fifty-two years, and while some people will feel conflicted, or even a little bit sad, no one will really miss me. Not because people are cruel, but because I haven’t given them a reason to.”
Analiese would have given almost anything to be able to contradict her, but not only wasn’t that the right approach, she was afraid what Charlotte had just said was true.
Who would miss Charlotte at the Church of the Covenant? The council and committee members whose opinions she had too often ignored or overlooked? The staff who winced whenever she approached with a new list of jobs or, worse, helpful advice on how to do their present ones?
And what about the rest of Charlotte’s contacts? She was said to have an iron grip at Falconview, with an annual exodus of staff who fell out of favor or disagreed with her one time too many. She’d served on boards all over town, but despite the advantages she brought of insight, financial support and prestige, she routinely tried the patience of administrators and board members alike.
Then, of course, there was her family, who were never mentioned, despite the fact that they lived right here in Asheville.
“Why haven’t you?” Analiese asked. “Why haven’t you allowed anybody to get close?”
“That would take longer to tell than we have now.”
“But it sounds like you understand, at least a little?”
“I had nothing but time when I was hooked up to those IVs at Duke. Everybody should be shut up alone in a room for weeks, with nothing to do but reconsider their lives.”
“And it wouldn’t hurt to have an actual death sentence to urge them on.”
“It’s quite the motivator.”
Analiese felt for the right words. “I admire you. I admire this—this desire to set things right, to reevaluate, even though your life could be nearing its end. But, Charlotte, are you trying to make a bargain with God?”
“No, I think God’s better than that.”
“This is a lot to admit to, especially to someone you’ve butted heads with in the past.”
“That’s what makes you perfect, Analiese. Because if you ever had anything to lose by being honest with me, you’ve lost it already. So I think I can count on you to continue being honest, to pull me up short if I go off half-cocked, to help me live out whatever time is left in a way that won’t come back to haunt me on my deathbed. That’s what frightens me most. That one day in the not so distant future I’ll have only moments to look back on my life and nothing I’ll see will give me comfort.”
Charlotte leaned closer. “I know I’m asking a lot, more than I should. You’ve probably already guessed one thing I want to try to set right before I die.”
“Minnie? You tried to give me money for the animal shelter….”
“When I got home that night I wrote a check in her honor and sent it off, anyway. But you were right, that’s not what she would have done. It’s a worthy cause, and I’m glad I did it, but she would have acted in a way that mattered personally, reached out without thinking about the consequences. So I’ll be looking for more ways to do that myself. To honor her.”
Analiese took Charlotte’s hands. It felt natural, although before today she could not have imagined touching Charlotte Hale spontaneously and with affection. “Do you want me to look for ways to help?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. I think I’ll know the right things when I see them. I just wanted someone to know what I’m feeling. And I guess I just needed to say this out loud.”
Analiese nodded, but she gripped Charlotte’s hands a little tighter and felt them soften in hers. “What else can I do?”
“Will you let me tell you about my daughter?”
Chapter Ten
First Day Journal: April 30
Each day at the park is like a human lifetime. Early in the morning everything sparkles with promise. Dew glistens on blades of grass; the sidewalks are empty pages sneakered feet have yet to write on. The air is still, as if a puff of breath from an angel’s lips is needed to set the day in motion.
As morning progresses, the park begins to waken. Birds sing on branches, and young lovers walk hand in hand. On benches like mine, coffee’s consumed, newspapers unfolded, cell phones pulled from pockets for casual conversations. Two mothers push strollers and chat. The sun peeks through the leafy canopy.
By afternoon balls whiz through the air and children shout commands. On the playground, mothers keep careful eyes on preschoolers who beg to swing higher. The climbing dome becomes a spaceship, the monkey bars an obstacle course over teeming pools of barracuda. The sun beats down on baseball caps and the open pages of books.
When evening comes, stragglers take their time departing, as if sorry to move on to other things. Some scoop up trash and toss it in bins. Others scuff feet in newly planted grass, as if making sure to leave their mark. Darkness is kept at bay by strategically placed lights.
In this way only is a day at the park different from a lifetime. No one and nothing can keep our darkness at bay, no matter how hard we try. I learned this in the hospital from a woman named Gwen, a powerful and uninvited lesson that haunts every step I take.
It’s morning now, and I’ve been waiting an hour. Maddie isn’t here, although she often comes to the park on Saturdays. I wonder how many friends she has. Are other children frightened of her seizures? Do they shun her to avoid the possibility of witnessing one?
Edna is here with her mother, who is typing on her laptop from a bench closer to the jungle gym. Her mother’s name is Samantha, and I came here for days before I realized exactly who she was. I knew her when she was a teenager. That this eluded me so long is a surprise, because Samantha is striking enough that even more than a decade later, I should have known her immediately.
In fairness to me, the girl I knew always carried herself as if she was spoiling for a fight. The woman smiles and moves with extraordinary grace. She laughs easily and clearly adores her daughter. She doesn’t seem to be watching Edna and her friends, but I know from watching her that she’s always aware. The transformation is so complete that I wonder what brought it about.
I wonder, too, about Samantha’s mother, Georgia Ferguson, once the Covenant Academy headmistress, where Taylor and Samantha, even Jeremy, Maddie’s father, went to school.
At the end of an hour Samantha gets up and approaches me. There’s no place to go without drawing attention, so I look away. She stops in front of me until I’m forced to glance up.
“She’s not coming today,” she says.
I don’t pretend not to understand. Instead, I thank her, and she nods and motions for Edna, who reluctantly follows her up the hill.
I wonder how long she’s known that I come here to watch my granddaughter. I wonder why she, of all people, cares enough not to expose that secret to my daughter. She hasn’t told Taylor, or I’m sure I would know. Although we haven’t spoken in years, Taylor would find and confront me.
My visit to the park has ended in disappointment, but I think I’ve discovered a friend, even though I don’t deserve her.
Chapter Eleven
AFTER LEAVING THE park, Charlotte found herself driving aimlessly before she thought about where to go. Since she had instinctively headed toward town, she parked near the center and stopped by the City Market, something she hadn’t done in years.
After a cup of coffee and some self-scrutiny, she wandered through the stalls, buying a pound of fresh red pepper linguine she knew Harmony would like, along with honey and eggs. The last vendor was selling woven baskets, and on impulse she bought one and filled it with another vendor’s fragrant handmade soaps, which bore romantic names like Moon Lady’s Ocean and Ginger Grass and Silk. She was glad she had come, because she knew exactly who to give the basket to, if she dared.
She pulled out her cell phone and got Samantha’s address by calling Falconview and asking the receptionist to scout directories. Five minutes later she was on her way.
Ten minutes after that she pulled up to a tiny brick cottage not far from the street where Taylor lived. The house was substantially smaller than those around it, with a front yard gobbled up by a circular driveway and what looked like a complete absence of yard in the back. Now Charlotte understood why Samantha and Edna spent so much time at the park.
A yellow Volkswagen was parked in the driveway, and Charlotte thought she’d probably found them at home. Before she could think too hard, she took a deep breath, tucked the basket under an arm and made her way to the front door to ring the bell. Laughter spilled out through open windows, and in a moment Edna answered the door.
“I’ve seen you at the park,” she said in greeting.
“Yes, you have,” Charlotte said. “My name’s Charlotte.” Up close the child was even prettier than she’d expected, but of course, her mother was stunning. Edna had green eyes set off by her coffee-and-cream skin, and her shining black hair fell in curls to just above her shoulders. Tiny hoops adorned her earlobes, and her smile was beyond magnificent.
“I brought your mother a present,” Charlotte said, “but I bet you’ll enjoy it, too.” She handed the basket to Edna, who rummaged through, picking up the first bar of soap to sniff it.
“This smells good!”
“I liked it, too.”
“Mom?” Edna shouted. Samantha, who probably could have heard a whisper in the tiny house, came out wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She stopped when she saw who their visitor was, then she smiled.
“Come in, Charlotte.”
Edna ran over to show her the basket, while a relieved Charlotte stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“This is lovely,” Samantha said. “Edna, why don’t you put the basket in the bathroom? And choose a soap you’d like for your bath tonight.”
Edna turned, basket in hand. “Thank you,” she told Charlotte. Then she took off.
“Thank you from me, as well,” Samantha said. “But you know—”
“That I didn’t have to do it?” Charlotte found herself relaxing. “I know, but I wanted to. I think you’ve gone out on a limb for me, and for no good reason I can think of.”
“Except that I understand how much you probably wish you could know Maddie. Come sit down. Iced tea or hot?”
“Whatever’s easiest.”
Charlotte made herself at home on a comfortable slipcovered sofa and took a glass of iced tea when Samantha returned with a tray. She added lemon and a packet of sugar before she spoke.
“I think I’ve put you in an awkward situation. I take it you and Taylor are friends? And you haven’t told her about seeing me at the park?”
“We’ve been friends since the Academy. Of course she was younger than I was, but a kindred spirit. Neither of us was comfortable there. Now, of course, we have daughters in common.”
“I love watching Edna at the park. She’s quite a diplomat, in the best possible way.”
“I only recognized you last week. How long have you been coming?”
“At first just on and off. Then… Well, a lot recently.”
“I haven’t told Taylor.”
Charlotte wasn’t surprised, given Samantha’s kindness so far. “I want to talk to her, Samantha. Do you think she might listen?”
Samantha was silent for a long time. Charlotte watched as she doctored her tea. She wore a purple T-shirt with sequins sprinkled over swirls of violet, and denim shorts that showcased her long legs. Her movements as she lifted the cup, added sugar and lemon, were like waves in a gentle ocean. Charlotte understood why Edna was so graceful.
“I don’t think she will,” Samantha said at last. “And I’m sure it won’t help to have anyone else plead your case.”
“I would never ask you to do that, but this can’t go on. Nobody should have to keep secrets for me. I never meant to involve anybody else.”
“You must feel so frustrated.”
“That’s the least I deserve.”
Samantha was silent, and Charlotte was glad the younger woman didn’t deny it or make excuses for her.
“This has gone on so long, this trouble between the two of you,” Samantha said at last. “I know time can heal, but sometimes it can magnify pain. I’m afraid that’s what’s happened with this.”
“Do you have a suggestion?”
“Did you know they’re back to square one on medication for Maddie’s seizures? That’s why she wasn’t at the park today. So this is a stressful time for Taylor. Maybe not the best moment to pop back into her life.”
Charlotte wanted every detail, but she knew she had no right to information. Still, she had to ask. “I appreciate the warning, but is there anything at all you can you tell me about Maddie’s condition? Without feeling like you’re betraying Taylor?”
“You probably already know she has temporal lobe epilepsy and they’re on a roller coaster ride. They’re looking for the perfect combination of medications to halt the seizures, but from the reading I’ve done in my nursing journals, I’m not sure it’s that easy. Taylor and her doctor are determined, though.”
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Emilie Richards
“A powerful and thought-provoking novel that will both break your heart and fill you with hope." —International bestselling author Diane Chamberlain With nothing but brains, ambition and sheer nerve, Charlotte Hale built a career as a tough, do-anything-to-succeed real-estate developer. She’s at the top of that mountain…but her life is empty. Her friends are as grasping and insincere as she has become. Far worse, she's alienated her family so completely that she's never held or spoken to her only granddaughter.One terrifying day, facing her own mortality, she realizes that her ambition has almost destroyed her chance at happiness. So Charlotte vows to make amends, not simply with her considerable wealth, but by offering a hand instead of a handout. Putting in hours and energy instead of putting in an appearance.Opening her home and heart instead of her wallet. With each wrenching, exhilarating decision, Charlotte finds that climbing a new mountain—one built on friendship, love and forgiveness—will teach her what it truly means to build a legacy."This is truly a marvelous piece of work.” —New York Times bestselling author Catherine Anderson"Haunts me as few other books have.” New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas
With nothing but brains, ambition and sheer nerve, Charlotte Hale built a career as a tough, savvy real-estate developer. Her reputation is rock-solid...but her life is empty.
One terrifying day, facing her own mortality, she realizes that her ambition has almost destroyed her chance at happiness.
So Charlotte vows to make amends, not simply with her considerable wealth, but by offering a hand instead of a handout. Putting in hours and energy instead of putting in an appearance. Opening her home and heart instead of her wallet.
With each wrenching, exhilarating decision, Charlotte finds that climbing a new mountain—one built on friendship, love and forgiveness—will teach her what it truly means to build a legacy.
One Mountain Away
Emilie
Richards
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
For all the women who have reached out to me throughout my life. My very own anonymous goddesses, too many to count or name.
Contents
Chapter One (#u8ddbac1e-655d-51ec-9ccd-2e98037554b0)
Chapter Two (#u84382be7-abf1-5bb6-9e39-4f47c8c4d379)
Chapter Three (#u6febfeee-f331-549a-b457-3cb110c00fdf)
Chapter Four (#ueb8c20aa-d144-503a-a674-c7707925a400)
Chapter Five (#ud052158a-a0ca-5f0c-9731-5531d2b27656)
Chapter Six (#u90621581-70c3-5b81-a182-34047567d6b4)
Chapter Seven (#uee59a1b5-9338-52b1-b961-2a7d2e526b8b)
Chapter Eight (#u9c39a2e1-73ef-5f3c-b20d-0b8eb91e1af3)
Chapter Nine (#u1744a5fb-da7a-517e-8b67-2a6ce7706446)
Chapter Ten (#u29d5b009-e7e4-5c52-ae3b-2b67b9a90496)
Chapter Eleven (#u8fdf50e9-c08d-5c92-a110-6510e6cd7fce)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirty-Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-One (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Forty-Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo)
Reader’s Guide (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
First Day Journal: April 28
Today Maddie is wearing blue, the color of a summer sky. The choice is a good one. Any shade of blue probably suits her, but, of course, in the years before adolescence, most children look wonderful in every shade of the rainbow. At Maddie’s age skin is flawless and radiant, and hair is glossy. I think her eyes are probably blue. This is an educated guess, based on the light brown of her hair, the rose tint of her cheeks and her preferences for every shade from royal to periwinkle. I bet somebody’s told her how pretty she looks when she wears it. I remember how susceptible girls of ten are to compliments. Her mother certainly was.
This park is always filled with children. I come here to watch them play, while at the same time I worry they make learning personal facts too easy. I feel absurdly protective, so I make it my job to watch out for strangers who show too much interest or approach them to start conversations.
This is absurd, of course, because to the children, I’m a stranger, too. A stranger enjoying a glimpse back in time to a childhood she never experienced. A stranger scribbling in a journal she resisted for weeks until the lure became too great.
I’m calling this my First Day Journal because of a quote from the 1970s. When I first arrived in Asheville the words radiated in psychedelic colors from posters in every store downtown.
“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
Ironically, during the time the saying was wildly popular, I was too busy to think about it. For me a day was just something to get through to make way for another. But now, every time I sit down to record my past and my thoughts, I’ll need the reminder that every day brings a new start, whether we need one or not.
A shriek draws my attention. The boy laboring up the spokes of the metal dome with Maddie is named Porter. Apparently his mop of black hair makes it hard to see, because he continually shakes his head in frustration, or maybe just in hopes the strands will fly out of his eyes for the time it takes to lumber to the top. I know his name because the other children shout it loudly and often. Porter’s something of a bully. Overweight, a little shabbier than the others, a little clumsy.
It’s that last that makes the boy pick on Maddie, I think. Porter’s figured out an eternal truth. If he makes fun of someone else, no one will look quite so hard at him. While this makes me angry, I understand. The world’s filled with bullies, but at birth, not a one of them glanced at the next cradle and plotted how to steal the pacifier out of a baby-neighbor’s mouth. It’s only later they learn that knocking down other people may help them stand taller.
So while Porter’s behavior upsets me, I feel sorry for him, as well. He’s still just a boy. I want to take him in hand and teach him the manners he’ll need to get by in the world, but Porter’s neither my son nor grandson. I’m just a stranger on a park bench, watching children make mistakes and enemies, decisions and friends.
One of Maddie’s friends is on her way to the dome right now to make sure Porter doesn’t push her. This child, olive-skinned and lean, is named Edna, which surprised me the first time I heard another child call her name. Of course, names are a circle. They come into favor, then go. Today’s young mothers probably never had an Aunt Edna who smelled like wintergreen and mothballs, and chucked them under the chin at family reunions. They find the name filled with music, the way my generation never did.
The child Edna is filled with music. She’s a girl who dances her way through life. I think if she and I ever spoke she would sing her words. Edna certainly sings her way into the hearts of the other children. She’s powerful here in a way none of the others are. Edna can rescue any situation. She’s tactful when she needs to be, forceful when that’s required and a mistress of the best way to avert trouble before it begins, which is what she’s doing today. If no one beats her to the honor, Edna may well be our first woman president.
Edna waltzes her way up the metal bars with a quick, natural grace, and she’s swaying at the top before Porter can work any mischief. From here it’s obvious she’s talking to him. Talking, not lecturing, because after a moment, I hear him laugh. Not derisively, but like the child he is. I bet Edna told him a joke, because now Maddie’s laughing, too. Maddie’s a courageous child, and she shows no fear. If Porter knocked her to the ground, she would pick herself up and start the climb again. I think Maddie refuses to let anything get in her way. Better yet, she doesn’t seem to hold grudges or rail against obstacles. She simply finds a way to go around them.
I rarely cry. When I was younger than Maddie, I realized how futile tears were. But today my eyes fill as I watch the three children divide the world among themselves. Here’s the future, right in front of me. Edna will lead, efficiently, carefully, fairly. Porter will try to disrupt everything around him, but if Edna can influence him, he may find a better place. And Maddie? Maddie will struggle with whatever life throws at her, but she will always prevail.
For the moment, though, the three are simply children, laughing at Edna’s well-timed joke while I wipe my eyes on a park bench thirty yards away. When I look up, I see Maddie’s grandfather, Ethan, start across the baseball diamond beyond us to fetch his granddaughter.
I turn away quickly to make sure he doesn’t see me. I wonder, though, if he did, would Ethan feel a glimmer of sympathy? Would he understand why I’m sitting here, watching a child I’ve never spoken to? Would he join me on this narrow park bench and tell me about the granddaughter we share, the granddaughter we haven’t discussed since that terrible night ten years ago when we stood at the window of a neonatal intensive care unit and broke each other’s hearts?
As I gather my purse and sweater, and slip my heels back into my shoes, I contemplate what to do next. I’m struck by how many possibilities confront us each moment, possibilities we rarely notice. We move on to the next decision by habit, then the next, and we never look around to see all the paths leading to other places, other lives. Right now I could meet Maddie’s grandfather halfway across the diamond and ask him to talk to me, even to introduce me to the young girl who is so much a part of both of us.
As always there are too many choices to contemplate fully, but as I stand and turn in the other direction, I know I’m making the only one I can.
Chapter Two
CHARLOTTE HALE TRIED to obey the law. She paid strict attention to street signs and rarely risked a yellow light. She drove in the passing lane on the interstate only if she absolutely had to. She was a decent enough driver, except for one flaw. She had never learned to park.
Knowing her limits, most of the time she improvised. She was guilty of lingering in no-parking zones, and leaving her car in a traffic lane with the blinkers on. If she was lucky enough to find a large enough space to park along the curb, she fed the meter well past the time limit, and even in less-challenging slots she often overshot the lines meant to separate her car from others. Consequently, despite being a perfectionist in every other way, she had learned to live with scrapes on her side panels and tickets on her windshield. Through the years she had paid enough citations to fund a personal meter maid.
Today, when she stepped out of her car and into the lot behind Asheville’s Church of the Covenant, she saw she was taking up almost two feet of the space beside her. Since there were still plenty of other spaces available, she decided not to try again. She had no sense of entitlement. It was just better to stay where she was than risk a worse landing.
The late-afternoon breeze was as soft as azalea petals, and the only sounds were cars passing on the street and birds high in towering trees. She turned toward the church. Her heels clattered against the stone path, which looked as if it had been newly washed by their diligent sexton, Felipe. Apparently Felipe had also taken to heart the grounds committee’s suggestion that the boxwood lining the path needed more severe pruning. This afternoon the hedge looked as if it had recently squirmed under the hands of a boot-camp barber.
Luck was with her. Felipe or someone had unlocked the front door and wedged it open, perhaps to let a touch of sunshine inside. She was heartened that she didn’t have to go next door to the parish house to beg the key or wait for the secretary to unlock the door for her.
If the air outside was warm and mountain-meadow fresh, inside it was neither. As always, the sanctuary felt faintly damp and old smells lingered. Women’s perfume, the moldering pages of hymnals, candle wax and Sunday’s lilies from the chancel.
The sanctuary was voluminous, with massive ribbed vaults overhead and wide aisles flanking the nave. Sometimes the room felt like a cavern, sometimes a crypt. Usually, though, even Charlotte, whose head was normally filled with other things, felt a sense of peace, as if fragments of prayers that had been whispered for more than a century still fluttered overhead.
Today she just felt dwarfed by the empty sanctuary, smaller than a speck of dust. And while humility before God was important—and in her case, overdue—this afternoon she needed warmth and comfort, and hoped God wouldn’t begrudge her either.
She found herself moving toward the side chapel, where light streamed through brilliantly colored windows, and she could hear the birds beyond them.
In a pew at the front she bowed her head. She hadn’t stepped foot in a church in weeks, nor in those weeks had she mumbled even a prepackaged prayer. Since childhood, church attendance had always been a given, the need for it drummed into her by a grandmother for whom prayer had been the only barricade against defeat. Now, as she tried to formulate one and failed, she realized how odd it was that at a crossroads in her own life, when most people turned to God, all outward manifestations of her faith had simply vanished.
Charlotte closed her eyes, hoping to connect with something larger than herself, but instead she felt herself falling into a void as dark and limitless as a night sky without stars. Her eyelids flew open, and she could hear her own heart beating. Perspiration filmed her cheeks and dampened her hair, and even though her hands were folded in her lap, they trembled.
The stillness of the chapel seemed to close in around her, as if to ask why she was there. She couldn’t find words, and her mind fluttered from image to image with no place to land. But there was something else the church could offer.
Someone else.
There were no confession booths at the Church of the Covenant, and Charlotte’s minister was younger than she was, stylish and outspoken. They had butted heads on so many occasions that now Charlotte wondered if, deep in her heart, Reverend Analiese Wagner would find pleasure in her turmoil.
Yet where else could she go? Who else could she talk to?
For a woman who had always had answers for everybody, she was surprised to learn how few of them really meant anything.
* * *
As she pulled into the church lot, the Reverend Analiese Wagner was thinking about food, which was not unusual. She always thought about food when she was worried, or when she had five things to do at once. Maybe that was why she was picturing double cheeseburgers in her mind, along with double scoops of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. This afternoon she was doubly stressed.
“If I make it through the memorial service, double cheese on my next pizza,” she promised herself out loud, although she hadn’t eaten pizza for years because it was as impossible to stop eating as salted peanuts. Even now, at thirty-eight, after years of adulthood as a willowy size ten, the fat little girl inside her was still clawing to get out. For the rest of her life she would be forced to watch every bite and exercise without mercy.
Someone had parked in the slot against the side fence reserved for clergy. To be fair, the driver hadn’t exactly parked in the slot. She—and Analiese knew it was a she—had parked beside it, but not well, so the silver Audi was actually taking up two places, one of them Analiese’s. She recognized the car.
“Charlotte Hale.” Mentally she thumped her palm against the steering wheel of her ten-year-old Corolla, the very same Corolla that Charlotte Hale had asked about several months ago, just before she handed Analiese the business card of a car dealer who could arrange a low-interest loan and a trade-in.
Analiese couldn’t recall seeing Charlotte at services or meetings in the past month or so, but that was likely to mean that today Charlotte had a list as long as her arm of problems she wanted to comment on.
Analiese found another spot at the end of the row, but once she turned off the Toyota’s engine, she sat quietly and closed her eyes.
“Please, Lord,” she prayed softly, “help me mind my tongue, my manners and while we’re at it, today please give me an extra spoonful of compassion, no matter how bitter it tastes.” She hesitated. “A slice of no-cal pizza would be good, too, but I know better than to push.”
Out of habit she put two fingers against the hollow of her throat to loosen her clerical collar—until she realized she wasn’t wearing one. In half an hour she would be changing into her robe for the service she was here to conduct, so she was wearing a simple round-necked navy dress. Right now anyone who didn’t know her would assume she was one of the mourners come to honor Minnie Marlborough.
There was nothing particularly ministerial about Analiese. Her nearly black hair was shoulder-length, and she rarely pinned it up so she would look older or plainer. Her regular features added up to something beyond striking. While no one insisted a minister be attractive, her first career had been in television news, where physical beauty had served her well.
She opened her eyes and continued to breathe deeply, staring at the building just beyond her parking place.
The first time she had been driven to this spot by a member of the ministerial search committee, she had sat just this way, gazing at her future. With its arrowhead arches and multispired north tower—not to mention imposing blocks of North Carolina granite and stained glass from the famous Lamb Studios of Greenwich Village—she’d been certain that Asheville’s Church of the Covenant would withstand Armageddon and hang around for the Second Coming.
In any architectural textbook, the city’s most influential Protestant church was just a yawn on the way to more impressive renderings of Gothic Revival glory. The church paled in significance beside the ornate Roman Catholic Basilica of St. Lawrence downtown, or the Cathedral of All Souls in nearby Biltmore Village, the seat of the region’s Episcopal bishop. But Analiese had never quite gotten over that first punch-in-the-gut impression of the church to which she had later been called. Now, as then, she felt unworthy to be its spiritual leader.
One last deep breath propelled her out of the car. Before she locked it she reached into the backseat for the colorful needlepoint tote bag her oldest sister had made as an ordination gift. With the bag slung over her shoulder, she hurried toward the church, avoiding the parish house and, she hoped, the silver Audi’s owner, as well. At the door, she saw Felipe had arrived first. For a moment she was glad she didn’t have to wrestle with the cast-iron lock, which on a good day took the better part of a minute. Then, as she was about to slip inside, she wondered if Felipe had unlocked the door, or if someone else had borrowed the key and was waiting for her inside.
Someone she wasn’t anxious to see.
Her brief burst of good humor disappeared.
She was happiest when the sanctuary was filled with people, and music echoed from the walls. Today the pews were empty, but that wasn’t necessarily the end of the story. Cautiously Analiese found her way along slippery polished tile floors to the transept, following it to the cozier side chapel that had been added early in the twentieth century by an industrialist friend of the Vanderbilts.
Historically the chapel had been a place for quiet contemplation, but most often these days it was used for children’s worship services. Felt banners made by one of the Sunday School classes hung between two narrow stained-glass windows of contemporary design. Stylistically wrought jewel-tone doves and olive branches vied with off-center renditions of the Star of David, the Taoist yin-yang and multiple Buddhas, both smiling and glum.
The woman sitting in the front row staring at the banners was neither, but then Charlotte Hale was not a woman who often showed emotion. In the ten years of her ministry here, Analiese had learned that the Charlottes in a congregation were the members an alert minister should most fear.
She debated what to do. She couldn’t believe Charlotte had come for Minnie’s memorial service. Beyond that, the service didn’t start for almost an hour, so mourners could attend after work.
Analiese almost turned away, but something told her not to. Maybe it was the way Charlotte was sitting. Maybe it was the stillness in the chapel and the sanctuary beyond, plus the fact that Charlotte had entered this quiet place alone.
She walked through the doorway, making enough noise to alert the other woman. Charlotte was not dressed for a memorial service. She wore a casual lightweight turtleneck with three-quarter sleeves and a skirt of the same mulberry. Her auburn hair was windblown, and she hadn’t bothered with jewelry except tiny gold studs in her earlobes. She looked as if she’d run out for milk and bread and forgotten her way home.
“Charlotte?”
Charlotte turned to look at her. Her expression was blank, her cheeks pale, and she looked exhausted, which was unusual. “Reverend Ana.” She nodded, but she didn’t smile.
“I’m not sure what to do,” Analiese said. “Offer comfort or silence. You look like you might need both.”
“I was just thinking about these banners.”
Analiese didn’t sigh, but that took effort. “I’m afraid our first and second graders aren’t at their artistic peaks,” she said, but not as an apology. “They don’t know it, though. They get such a thrill from seeing their work hung here for a week or two.”
“Then you’re planning to take them down?”
“Only because the other Sunday School classes are making more, and they all want their turn.”
Charlotte turned back to the banners. “I hope all of them are as funny as these. The Star of David on the left has seven points. Did you notice? And that Buddha—” she pointed to a thin stick of a man “—looks like he’s been on the South Beach Diet.”
Analiese was minimally encouraged. “He’s probably historically correct. The fat Buddha is actually based on the folktale of a Chinese monk named P’utai, who was eternally laughing and happy, not to mention well fed.”
“And the children and the rest of us are learning these stories from you in church every Sunday.”
“It’s a very small world, and we’re all neighbors.”
If Charlotte disagreed, at least she had the grace not to say so. “I was glad to find the front door unlocked. When I was a girl…about a million years ago…I used to wish I had a quiet spot like this to come and sit.”
Analiese didn’t know Charlotte’s age. There were a thousand committed members here and many more who simply showed up on holidays. She had long ago given up trying to memorize every biography. She guessed Charlotte was only in her late forties, perhaps early fifties. Most likely well-executed surgery had given back a portion of the perfection age had stolen, so she was an attractive middle-age woman who knew how to make herself even more so. It was odd to hear her refer to herself as old, but today her shoulders drooped and her face looked drawn, as if she was trying to live up to her words.
Analiese made an attempt to crack open the invisible door between them. She dropped down beside her, making sure to leave enough room so Charlotte would feel comfortable. “You needed a place to think?”
“I was on the Council Executive Committee the year we decided to keep the building locked unless there was a service taking place, but I’ve regretted that every time I’ve wished I could slip inside, sit in a pew and stare up at the rose window. We were worried about vandalism.”
“It’s a valid concern.”
“I thought so at the time, yet here I am.” She turned to gaze at Analiese. “Because the door was open. Is there a reason?”
“There’s a memorial service in an hour. Felipe probably propped it open after he cleaned, or he didn’t bother to lock up after the florist delivered the arrangements.”
“I noticed them. Very sweet, like somebody went to an abandoned farmstead and picked everything that was blooming.”
Analiese thought just how fitting the flowers must be, then, and how Minnie’s many friends had planned it that way. “I haven’t seen the arrangements. I was just on my way up front to check and make sure everything’s set up correctly before I robe.”
“I didn’t know about a memorial service. Is it a church member?”
“Not a member, no. But a church as large as ours was needed to hold this one.”
“Somebody important, then.”
Analiese nodded. “Yes, she was important.” She paused, then plunged. “The service is for a woman named Minnie Marlborough.”
Charlotte’s expression didn’t change, but she was suddenly still, because certainly the name was familiar to her. “Minnie Marlborough died?”
“Last week.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve been out of town for a while. I didn’t know. Had she been ill for long?”
Analiese couldn’t figure out how to answer that. From the moment she had seen Charlotte’s car, she had known this conversation might be necessary, although she hadn’t been sure Charlotte would remember Minnie. Now she was just as confused about the direction to take as she had been before she murmured her prayer in the parking lot.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said after a long pause. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I can tell you the truth, or I can tell you some version that’s easier to hear.”
“I remember the first time I heard you speak in our pulpit—I was overwhelmed by your honesty.” Charlotte paused, but not long enough to allow Analiese to respond. “But I was also fascinated.”
“Were you?”
“At the time you had to know you were destroying your chances of being called as our pastor, but that didn’t stop you from telling the truth, exactly the way you saw it.”
“Here I am, anyway,” Analiese said, “ten years later, and both of us completely baffled about how it happened.”
“I voted against you.”
“I assumed.”
Charlotte rubbed an eye, a gesture that was out of character for a woman who gave the impression she wouldn’t flinch under torture. “So do what you do best, and please tell me the truth.”
“Minnie never adjusted to life in town.”
Charlotte waited for more, but Analiese shrugged. “I’m sorry, it’s that simple. Her little farm, her animals? They were all she had. When they were gone, she didn’t have anything left to live for. At least that’s what her friends say.”
“You blame me for that.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’m your minister. It’s not my place to blame you, Charlotte. I wasn’t even sure you’d remember her.”
“And what about the woman Analiese Wagner. Does she blame me?”
“I wish I could separate the two that easily.” Analiese turned the question around. “What about the woman Charlotte Hale? How does she feel?”
Charlotte spoke slowly, as if she were putting memories together. “Minnie Marlborough’s farm was needed for a retirement facility that would benefit hundreds of seniors and has. Her neighbors wanted to sell when they heard our terms. We thought everyone would come out ahead. The city’s richer for the taxes the facility pays. The road’s been widened and improved, so residents in the area benefited, too.”
We, Analiese knew, was Falconview Development, of which Charlotte Hale was the founder, president and CEO.
She thought carefully before she spoke, struggling to be fair. “I know you or someone at Falconview found her an apartment where she could have some of her things—”
“I knew how much she loved those animals. I got the owner to lift the restrictions on pets so she could bring the two cats she’d had the longest,” Charlotte said, although not defensively.
“And found homes for almost all the rest who were healthy. I know.”
“Did you ever see her house? Ever walk around the grounds? Every penny Minnie Marlborough had from Social Security and savings went to those animals she took in. And she was such an easy mark. Somebody’s cute little kitten started clawing the furniture and suddenly Minnie found a new pet on her doorstep. She could never say no, and everybody knew it. I was told the house was falling down around her. I doubt she ate as well as the animals she fed.”
Analiese thought carefully before she spoke. “I think the hardest decisions are the ones where we’ll reap benefits from only one of the outcomes. How can we remain objective?”
“I guess you’re saying I didn’t.”
“I’ve been told Minnie had friends who went to that house every day to help. They brought food and took animals to the vet, and helped her find homes for everything from iguanas to llamas. I’m told that for every person who took advantage of her, there was another who reached out to help. She wasn’t a hoarder. She was poor, overworked, but she was happy. She had friends, purpose, the animals she loved, the home she’d lived in all her life.”
“You do blame me.”
“Right now I’m more concerned about how you’ll feel if you stay here much longer. You accused me of an abundance of honesty, but I think you need to know. There will be people coming through those doors in a little while, and some of them will be unhappy to find you here.”
“I was here for…” Charlotte stopped and shook her head. “Don’t worry. I’m not planning to stay.” She put her hand on Analiese’s arm when the minister slid forward to rise. “You really are expecting a crowd, then?”
“That’s the guess.”
“She had that many friends?”
“SRO.” She saw Charlotte hadn’t understood the show-business term. “Standing room only,” she clarified.
“All those people…” Charlotte dropped her hand.
“A tribute to a life well lived.” Analiese got to her feet. She had delivered her message, and while she’d been unsurpassingly blunt, she thought she’d done Charlotte a favor. Grief had turned to anger for some of Minnie’s friends who blamed Minnie’s decline and death on Falconview and everyone connected with it. Charlotte would not be welcome here today, and Minnie’s friends would probably make certain she knew it.
“It was a complicated situation,” Charlotte said, still seated.
“I know. We specialize in those in this building.”
“Are they taking memorial donations?” Charlotte reached for her purse.
“Don’t.” Analiese spoke so sharply the word echoed off the stone walls and could not be retrieved.
Charlotte looked startled, then she tilted her head in question. “I just thought…maybe the animal shelter? I can write a check.”
“Minnie Marlborough never asked for a handout in life, so I doubt she’d want one in death. She was a woman with her hand outstretched to help, not to ask. That’s what people loved about her. That’s why they’re all coming today.”
“You’re giving a sermon, and I’m the only one here.”
Analiese knew Charlotte was right, but she couldn’t apologize. “A hazard of the profession.”
“How many people will be at your funeral, do you suppose?”
“I’m sorry?”
“When you die, how many people will come to say goodbye?”
Analiese had never asked herself the question. “Why do you ask?”
“Maybe it is the measure of a life well lived.”
“Only if people attend because they want to.”
Charlotte’s smile warmed and softened her face, like a light going on inside a room at dusk, and even though the smile was sad, she looked more like herself. “You mean well-dressed businessmen checking smartphones don’t count?”
“It wouldn’t be fair to ignore them completely. Say…three businessmen equal one faithful mourner.”
“Maybe I’d better reserve this little chapel for my own funeral. Or the sexton’s broom closet.” Charlotte smiled again, almost as if in comfort.
Analiese wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take a number. The broom closet’s been booked for months.”
As exit lines went, that and the smile accompanying it would do, but Analiese didn’t leave. She could hear a clock ticking inside her head, and still she couldn’t go without offering something better. As odd as it seemed, she felt as if Charlotte had just tried offering something to her.
“I don’t think we should worry,” she added. There’s probably time for both of us to cultivate a few more mourners. Unless we take matters into our own hands, only God knows the hour of our death.”
Charlotte looked surprised. “How strange you should say that.”
“Why?”
“I was thinking about that exact phrase, right before you walked in.”
“Cultivating mourners?”
“No, that only God knows the hour of our death. A long time ago I heard those same words in a very different place, and I’ve never forgotten.”
Chapter Three
EARLY IN HIS granddaughter’s life Ethan Martin had learned that his major role—next to doting uncontrollably—was to give Maddie the confidence she needed to become an adult who took the hand life had dealt her and played it with skill and daring. This meant that while he never lied to her, he also never quite leveled, at least not when she scared him to death. Which she did frequently.
She was scaring him now, swaying at the top of a piece of carefully engineered climbing equipment like a pirate searching the seas for ships to plunder. She was with two other children, and he recognized one, Edna Ferguson, whose mother, Samantha, was a long-time friend of his daughter’s. Sam wasn’t far away, on a bench typing on a laptop, but he caught her eye. She nodded, then gave a barely perceptible thumbs-up sign that told him Maddie was fine, but she had kept his granddaughter in her sights just in case. All was well.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, when he got close enough that Maddie could hear him. “We’re having an early supper tonight, remember?”
“Papa!” Maddie swung lower until she’d reached a height that no longer frightened him. He judged all heights the same way. How far could the girl fall without hurting herself? At what point was she risking a broken bone? A concussion? He was never sure, but he was sure it wasn’t his place to hamper her. Maddie and her mother had worked out rules, and so far Maddie had been good about obeying them, most likely because they were few and sensible.
She launched herself into his waiting arms, the way a younger child might. But Maddie was small for her age, and delicately boned. He caught her easily and swung her to the ground.
Ethan ruffled her hair. “See the Blue Ridge Parkway from way up there?”
“I wasn’t paying attention. Edna was telling us about a movie she saw on television. Where’s Mom?”
“Making dinner. She’s teaching a class tonight, so you’ll have me all to yourself.”
“Cool!” Maddie’s blue eyes danced. “You’re eating with us, too?”
“I even brought dessert.”
“Cookies?”
“Chocolate chip.”
Maddie yelled goodbye to the other children. Then she waved at Samantha, who glanced up as if she’d just realized Maddie was there and smiled in response.
As they crossed the park they chatted about school. Although she was ten, Maddie was only in fourth grade, which wasn’t uncommon. Parents often held children with summer birthdays back, even if they were officially able to start school a year earlier. But Taylor, Ethan’s daughter, had decided Maddie should start later because, among other things, she had been more than two months premature at birth.
The street where Taylor and Maddie lived was eclectic, modest one-story homes mixed with more expansive ones. The architectural styles were eclectic, too, and it pleased Ethan, an architect himself, that the homes weren’t cookie-cutter copies. Most were well taken care of, but some, particularly the obvious rentals, needed paint or simple landscaping.
Taylor’s own landlord was, for the most part, invisible, because Taylor only contacted him when something major needed repair. He, in return, never asked for an increase in her modest rent. Ethan hoped nothing changed in the near future. The house spelled independence, something Taylor badly needed.
They were still two houses away when he smelled charcoal. They cut across Taylor’s yard, bordered with swaths of daffodils and grape hyacinth in full bloom, and rounded the house. His daughter was just putting burgers on the grill in the center of a postage-stamp patio, paved in salvaged flagstone she and Maddie had laid themselves. A confirmed vegetarian, she’d fashioned the burgers from black beans and quite possibly baked the buns herself. They would be delicious, he knew, but as he smacked his lips in appreciation, he would still think longingly of USDA prime.
“Hey, sweetie,” Taylor called to her daughter. “Can you get the salad out of the fridge? Just put it on the picnic table. Then get the lemonade. These will only take a few minutes on each side.”
Maddie grumbled, more as if it was expected than with conviction, and climbed the back steps.
“She do okay?” Taylor asked softly.
Before he spoke Ethan took a moment to admire his daughter. Taylor was medium height and deceptively slender, deceptive because the narrow hips and long legs didn’t project the strength within. She wore her dark brown hair as short as a boy’s, but cut in feminine wisps around her face and nape. The cut emphasized heavily lashed brown eyes, which were a mirror of his own, and the delicate lips of her mother. She was already dressed to teach her yoga class in a green tank top covered with a gauzy scoop-necked shirt and leggings. She wore no jewelry except gold hoop earrings. Taylor spent little time on her appearance, but the effect was striking, anyway.
“She was up at the top of the jungle gym when I got there,” he said. “But Sam had an eye on her. You don’t think Maddie knows Sam’s there to watch out for her?”
“She knows, but it’s the kind of world where parents have to keep an eye on their kids, isn’t it?”
“Did you tell me Sam’s looking for a new job?”
“And she got one. She’s so excited. She wanted something where she could have a bigger impact on patient care, and now she’ll be the nursing supervisor at a maternal health clinic. She’s the kind of person I wanted watching over me when I was pregnant with Maddie,” Taylor said.
“The way she was watching over her today.”
Taylor lowered her voice to match his. “There are only so many excuses I can invent to go to the park myself. And she’s been free of heavy-duty seizures for three full months. I have to let go. I’m not going to hold her back from anything if I don’t have to.”
Three months without a major seizure was a new record, and Ethan, like his daughter, was cautiously hopeful. Several times a day Maddie experienced swirls of light or odd sensations in her stomach. These were manifestations of simple partial seizures, but she didn’t lose consciousness, and usually only those who knew her well could tell anything out of the ordinary had just occurred.
While children born prematurely suffered from epilepsy more often than full-term children, there were no easy answers as to why Maddie was one of them. Her seizures had begun at age three. From that point on she had experienced frequent complex partial seizures, classified as such because she lost awareness of the world around her, and sometimes experienced spasms, which caused her body to jerk uncontrollably.
Maddie’s neurologist was a cautious older man, long experienced in managing epilepsy. Right from the beginning he had taken time with Taylor, questioning her carefully and listening to her answers. Although he was a highly trained specialist, in personality he was more the legendary family doctor who was never too busy to take a phone call. Three months ago he had placed Maddie on a different drug regimen to manage her seizures, which had become more frequent and severe, carefully adjusting and weaning her off prior medications. Taylor was confident her daughter was in the best of hands, and confident that the new treatment would finally give her daughter a better life.
So far, she seemed to be right.
“She had a good time today,” Ethan said. “And the exercise was good for her.”
“Next week, if all’s well, I’m going to let her ride her bike to the park.” Taylor must have seen the question in his eyes, because she added, “She needs to believe she can conquer the world, and the only way to make sure of that is to let her try.”
He knew better than to protest. Maddie wore a helmet when she rode her bike, required by the state of North Carolina for children, anyway. If she had a seizure and fell, she would be like a million other kids who tumbled off bikes to the sidewalk. She would climb back on as soon as she could and pedal away.
“I appreciate you staying with her tonight,” she went on. “She has a lot of homework, so she’ll be better off here. They give them so much these days. She has to write a poem about spring, read a chapter in her social studies textbook and look up something she finds interesting on the internet to get more information. Plus they’re already doing geometry, if you can believe it, and she has worksheets.”
“I remember how much you loved geometry.”
“That’s funny, I don’t.” She smiled conspiratorially, because Taylor’s disdain of math was legendary. Ethan had always been the go-to parent when it came to the subject. Charlotte had never…
He cut that off as quickly as the thought occurred to him. Not thinking about Taylor’s mother was one of the things he did best.
Taylor flipped the burgers, before she crooked her neck to see if she could spot her daughter, or at least her shadow in the kitchen behind them. “I wonder what’s taking Maddie so long.”
“She probably had to hit the little ladies’ room first,” Ethan said. “I’ll go check on her. I can grab the lemonade.”
“Great, I’ll set the table.”
Ethan let himself in through the screen door and called to Maddie, but there was no answer. No salad adorned the counter, nor lemonade, so he figured his guess had been right. He took out both, the salad a glistening medley of leafy greens and finely chopped vegetables, the lemonade with lemon slices floating on top inside a cut-glass pitcher. Taylor liked to make dinner a special occasion when he shared it with them. She thought, incorrectly, that her father didn’t eat well enough when he was alone, and he didn’t put much energy into convincing her otherwise, since it meant meals like this one.
“Maddie?” he called again. There wasn’t a corner anywhere in the tiny house where she couldn’t hear a booming male voice. For the first time he began to worry.
Taylor stepped inside, frowning. “She didn’t answer?”
“Not yet…” Ethan started through the house, Taylor close at his heels. They didn’t have to go far. Maddie was on the floor outside the bathroom. Her eyes were open, then they rolled back and her body arched, and she began to convulse.
* * *
An exhausted Maddie cuddled on the family room sofa with Ethan and picked at her dinner. After what he had recognized as a grand-mal or generalized convulsive seizure, he had carried her here to nap, and she still hadn’t left. Taylor had called Dr. Hilliard to describe the ferocity of the event. Not only had the long string of seizure-free weeks ended, the girl seemed to have passed into a new land. Ethan knew a lot about his granddaughter’s condition, but now there would be new language to describe what had happened, new theories why and surely new or additional medication as she traveled her lonely path.
In the meantime Taylor would need to go into school and tell Maddie’s teacher what to do if Maddie experienced a similar seizure in class. The other students knew she had epilepsy. She’d had seizures in school, but they had been milder in comparison, not as frightening to witness. Even Ethan, who had seen many, had felt angry and helpless during this one. There’d been so little to do. Move things out of reach. Get a cushion under her head. Stay right there so that when she regained consciousness, they could comfort and reassure her, or turn her to her side as she slept off the effects.
Maddie played with the medical alert bracelet she always wore, sliding it up and down her wrist. “The teacher explained to my class. She said it’s like a lamp cord. Sometimes the wire has a short inside it, wires that rub together or something, and when somebody moves the cord, the lamp will blink or even stop working. Then, if they move it back to the right place, it works just as well as it ever did.”
“How did you feel when she said that?”
“I guess it was okay. Kids asked me what a seizure feels like. I told them I don’t know, that I can’t remember. They thought that was weird. One boy said maybe if I didn’t move my head, I’d never have another one, like not moving the lamp cord. I don’t know how to do that, though.”
“It wouldn’t help,” Ethan assured her, “because you’re not a lamp.”
“Mom thought the new pills made me all better. But they make me feel funny. Like I’m not me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like I’m somebody watching me.”
Ethan didn’t know what to say. Taylor had gone through a brief period when she’d refused to medicate Maddie. She’d adjusted her daughter’s diet, trying a hard-line no-carb approach that seemed to help some children, then she’d switched to vitamins and nutritional supplements. She had instructed Maddie in yoga and meditation, and taken her to chiropractors and naturopaths.
Reluctantly Taylor had finally admitted that her daughter’s seizures were milder and fewer when she was on drugs, even as imperfect as they were. That was when she’d discovered Dr. Grant Hilliard, who had restored Taylor’s faith in traditional medicine.
“Do you think you can do a little homework?” Ethan held up Maddie’s social studies textbook. “I brought my laptop. After you read the chapter, you can use it to find more information on the internet.”
“In a little while.” Her speech was slower, and she still seemed a little dazed. He knew better than to push to get her started. Maddie wanted to do well in school, but while she was a smart child and determined to learn, she was also handicapped by the medication, which sometimes made her drowsy, by evenings, like this one, when it was unlikely her assignments would get finished, even by “absence” seizures during class, when she was deaf to all instructions and information.
Then there was the teasing and ostracism by her classmates, which dogged children who were “different” in any way.
Ethan cuddled her closer. Although television had never triggered one of Maddie’s seizures, Taylor had a firm rule that the set not be turned on right after one. “Why don’t I read to you? We can start a new book. We never finished The Chronicles of Narnia.”
Before Maddie could respond the telephone rang. Ethan reached around her to grab the receiver. He made a guess that Taylor’s class was doing warm-ups and she was quickly checking in.
Instead, the voice on the other end was male. Ethan recognized it at once.
“Hello, Jeremy.” He felt Maddie stir against him and push away.
“Is it Daddy?” she asked.
Ethan nodded. “I’m babysitting,” he said into the phone. “Taylor teaches on Thursdays now.”
The twang of country music was a pleasant background to Jeremy Larsen’s drawling baritone. Ethan guessed he was taking time from a rehearsal of his band.
“Sounds like she’s got a full plate.”
Ethan never knew what to say to Maddie’s father. Jeremy and Taylor maintained a cordial relationship so they could be better parents to their daughter, but the road wasn’t easy. Their history was troubled. Maddie had been conceived when Taylor was only sixteen and Jeremy just a year older. Their high school romance had been stormy and brief, the baby a postscript. They had few if any happy memories to build on.
Ethan was never sure where Jeremy’s questions or even casual remarks were leading. Was he merely making conversation? Was he implying Taylor was too busy to be a proper mother? Was he hoping to throw a wrench into the finely tuned machinery of their custody arrangement?
“Taylor manages everything like a pro,” he said pleasantly.
“Maddie still up?”
“It would be a rare evening if she was asleep this early,” Ethan said. “I’m putting her on.”
Maddie was sitting taller, and she flipped her disheveled ponytail over one shoulder. “Daddy!”
Ethan went into the kitchen to give his granddaughter privacy. While technically Jeremy and Taylor shared custody, Taylor had Maddie with her most of the time. Jeremy spent time in Asheville with his daughter whenever he could, but Maddie had never visited him at his home in Nashville. Ethan wasn’t sure if Taylor had convinced him their daughter was better off in familiar surroundings, or if Jeremy didn’t want to learn what he needed to know to care for her. Whatever the truth, Maddie adored and missed her father.
Taylor hadn’t been able to get to the dishes, and now, as Ethan stacked the apartment-size dishwasher he’d given her for Christmas, he hoped his daughter had gotten to the studio in time. She taught eight classes a week at Moon and Stars, and the owner was understanding. He just hoped Taylor hadn’t tested the woman’s patience tonight.
By the time Ethan had finished cleaning the kitchen, Maddie was still chatting with her father. He stood at the sink and stared out at the yard beyond. He was a shadowy reflection in the double-hung window—long face, pointed chin, high forehead—a man still attractive to women, judging by the offers of dinner and more he received from women at least a full decade younger than himself.
Beyond his reflection the faint outline of a crescent moon hung low in the still-bright sky, just visible beyond the neighbor’s tree line. A wisteria-scented breeze through the screen door ruffled his silvering hair. He was just fifty-six. Charlotte had been twenty-five when she had given birth to Taylor, and Taylor had just turned seventeen when Maddie was born. But this evening Ethan felt older than the mountains.
Spring was a time of renewal, of flowers bursting into bloom, of birds mating and building nests. He was twice divorced, but now his first wife, Taylor’s mother, was on his mind, and so was the spring right before they met.
He had only been twenty-five, an intern at a local architectural firm and still a stranger to the city that was now his permanent home. With few contacts and no real friends, he had begun jogging after he returned home in the evenings from the office. He had often parked in unexplored neighborhoods and jogged along residential or downtown streets to learn more about the Blue Ridge community where he’d landed.
Now he remembered one such evening, twilight just beginning to thicken around him and the same haunting fragrance in the air. He had chosen Montford for his jog, a historic neighborhood with a satisfying mixture of architectural designs, some shabby and in need of renovation, but many that were still prime specimens of another generation’s craftsmanship. He’d begun on Montford Avenue, then veered off on a side street to avoid traffic.
He had been lost in thought about the blueprints for an office building he’d been asked to comment on, just aware enough of his surroundings that he didn’t stray into traffic or run behind a car backing out of a driveway. He’d dodged a woman walking two identical yapping poodles, stumbled over a loose chunk of concrete.
Funny the details he still remembered.
He had just been ready to turn the corner and circle the block on his way back to his car when a woman on the next block caught his eye. Back then, as now, Asheville had been filled with young women. He had been as appreciative as any twenty-something heterosexual man of the opportunities, but having just moved away from a failed love affair, he had also been wary.
This woman, seen at a distance, was more vision than flesh. A ruffled skirt floated just above her ankles, a scoop-necked blouse bared a long, graceful neck. Her hair curled over her shoulders, shining and hinting that it might be red, although in the dying light, he couldn’t tell for sure.
Something about the way she hurried tugged at him. She was willowy, bending into the breeze like a sapling at the edge of a mountain stream. He liked the way she held herself. He liked the curve of her hair, of her jaw, of her breasts. He liked the graceful yet determined way she moved up the sidewalk, as if she had all the time in the world and none of it to spare.
He’d wondered then whether the vision-made flesh would be less than this fleeting glimpse. Would he be disappointed, sorry the dream was eclipsed and replaced with reality? He remembered that he had been torn between speeding up or slowing down, and before he could decide, the vision had entered the ground floor of a funky old Tudor and vanished behind the door, never to be seen in that place again, despite more frequent and increasingly desperate jogs.
Charlotte Hale, his twilight vision, who months later would spring to life in a university classroom, and who had not, at least for years, disappointed at all.
Charlotte, who, as it turned out, had been best enjoyed from a distance.
Charlotte, who, this afternoon, unless he was mistaken, had abandoned a park bench as he approached, just thirty yards from the climbing dome where their granddaughter had been playing with her friends.
Chapter Four
First Day Journal: April 28
“Only God knows the hour of our death!”
I’m sitting in a coffee shop not far from Biltmore Forest, because I’m not ready to face my empty house for the evening. I’m writing in this journal with hopes those words will stop revolving in my head once I commit them to paper. Reverend Ana spoke them this afternoon, with no idea of their impact. But the first time I heard them was on a day I wish I could forget. In far too many ways that day defines me.
Maybe in real-time it’s April of my fifty-second year, but in my mind it’s August, and counting backward I think the year must be 1970. I’m ten years old, Maddie’s age, and I’m sure I’ve been sitting in our little country church for at least a century. But, of course, at ten, so much feels that way.
Ten yards in front of me the preacher slaps his Bible against our pulpit, one my grandmother is particularly proud of, since her own father carved it from a fallen black walnut tree. When I was six Gran pointed out the stump of the “pulpit” tree in a wooded clump not far from her kitchen garden. Sometimes now I go there to think, especially when Hearty comes home drunk, which is most of the time.
I’m startled by the slapping noise, and only Gran’s withered arm across my chest keeps me from diving under the pew in front of us.
“Lottie Lou, you sit up now, and no more dozing,” she whispers to me as she hauls me closer. “Else you’ll end up being the ’zample in this fool’s sermon, you get my meaning?”
The preacher screeches the same words again. He’s a guest in the pulpit of our church, the Trust Independent Baptist Church, because the regular preacher, equally loud but less given to repetition, is hauling a truckload of hand-harvested burley tobacco to Raleigh. Preaching is something he does on the side, for the sake of the Lord.
The guest preacher farms tobacco, too, but his is as sorry as his sermons, so it isn’t likely he’ll need a truck or a trip any time in the near future. He’s as scrawny as a cornstalk in a drought, and he drools when he shouts, so now his chin glistens.
I wriggle on the unpadded bench to get blood flowing to my backside. The service started with hymns, then the preacher demanded we stop singing so he could preach—which he’s been doing forever. I worry we’ll be here another hour or more.
And while we listen to Preacher Pittman’s substitute fumble with words, what will Hearty Hale be doing?
It’s as hot inside as it would be if we were standing full in the sunshine. All week the church is closed up, and it takes more than half an hour to suck out the heat before services. The building sits to the side of a country road, and there’s no electricity for fans, although we have a woodstove for winter. Windows dot the walls to let in what breeze can be had, but we have no screens. Wasps fly in and out and circle the freshly washed heads of worshipers.
I have nothing to do except think about the words that brought me so fully awake. I can’t picture a God who not only knows when everybody on earth is going to die, but keeps track of the information, too. I wonder if He makes notes, or if He can just snap His fingers and call up whatever He needs in an instant.
I imagine God pointing and shouting, “You over there, your day’ll be July 17, 1977, and not an hour later! And if I was you, I wouldn’t bother taking out pork chops when you get up that morning. You won’t be needing them.”
When I giggle, Gran pokes me with her elbow. I look for something else to occupy my mind. I settle on a girl who’s two years ahead of me in school and two rows in front of me now. She has white-blond hair, wispy and fine, and she’s pulled it back from her face with a black velvet hair band that has a bow on the side, anchored with a cluster of rhinestones. Her name is Sally Klaver, and she lives not far away, in a brand-new house, brought in by truck and set right down on a slab of concrete. The house is the color of a creek bottom, with a porch in front, just big enough for a pot of flowers and a doormat with Welcome printed nice and proper on it.
The old house, where Sally used to live, is still standing back behind some trees, but it’s boarded up now, and most likely full of mice and hornets’ nests. Sally’s daddy runs cattle and fattens more from his acres of corn. Mr. Klaver grows more tobacco than anybody else in the vicinity. I wonder what that would be like, having a house nobody else ever lived in, having enough cattle to eat beefsteak every night, having money to just walk into a store and buy a velvet headband whenever I felt like it.
I’m not just tired of sitting, I’m tired of worrying, too. This morning our neighbors, Bill Johnston and his wife, picked up Gran and me as we walked down the road on our way to church. Gran squeezed into the cab, and I settled myself in the back of the truck, making a little nest on an old piece of canvas to keep my dress from getting dirty.
I was glad to sit in the open. As we bumped over the dirt road I watched out for my father, but I never saw a sign of his truck or him. I’m not worried something’s happened to Hearty. I’m not even hoping it has, at least not while I’m sitting in church, because it’s possible God listens a little harder here, and wishing your father would keel over dead might get you in trouble.
Right now I just want to know where Hearty Hale is this morning, and whether he’s going to make Gran or me that much more miserable later.
The preacher finally wears down and stops, slamming his Bible one more time against the pulpit as he shouts “Amen.” The girl who’s playing the piano leaps to her feet and throws herself across the bench, as if she’s afraid he might change his mind.
In a moment we’re all singing “On Jordan’s Banks,” and the preacher is exhorting sinners to come forward and make a commitment to Jesus. I figure everybody’s as hot and cranky as me, because today only a few straggle forward, as if afraid the preacher will keep shouting until supper time if they don’t.
After the last chorus I shake down my skirt and admire the lace adorning the hem. My grandmother added the lace by hand to “prettify” my dress, something she made over from one my own mother wore as a girl.
When I was younger I might have been thrilled at this connection to Thalia Hale, but now I’m not so sure. My mother died of pneumonia just one month after giving birth to me, her only child, and with ten years to consider it, I’ve decided it’s likely Thalia thought the best way to get away from Hearty and her squalling baby girl was to cross the river Jordan as swiftly as possible.
I wish that weren’t true, but even Gran admits she indulged the sickly young Thalia shamelessly, and forever after Thalia did exactly what she pleased. Gran’s told me pretty stories of baby birds my mother rescued, poems she learned and songs she sang, but nobody else has ever said a good word about Thalia in my presence. And I’ve been paying close attention.
Around me now people are moving into clusters, most pausing near windows or the door, catching up on the week’s gossip while they try to catch a breeze. Gran will linger. Despite the sorry state of the Sawyer farm—which is what everybody in Trust calls our home place—and the sorry state of her son-in-law, the local people respect Gran and wish her well. As far as they can, they do whatever they’re able to be neighborly, just as long as it doesn’t involve helping Hearty Hale.
“Lottie Lou…” Sally Klaver of the velvet headband rounds the corner of her pew and heads straight for me. “Weren’t that just awful? Him going on and on like that? I wish we’d gone over to Marshall. They got air-conditioning at the church there, but my daddy says we have to come here sometimes, too, so people don’t forget who we are.”
I figure nobody will ever forget Sally’s family, because the Klavers will always be sure to hang their good fortune right out where everybody can see it, like a bedsheet flapping in the wind.
“That a new dress?” Sally asks, smiling a little as her gaze drops lower.
Despite myself I stand straighter. “My gran made it for me.”
“I guess she made it big, so you’d get lots of wear out of it.”
I can feel the heat rising in my cheeks.
“But green’s a good color with that red hair of your’n,” Sally continues. “Of course, you got to be careful what you wear with hair like that. I’m lucky anything goes with mine. That’s what I told Ma when she brought this brand-new dress home from Charlotte. ‘Get me anything, ’cause it’ll look good on me, I reckon.’” Sally holds out the short skirt of a black-and-yellow-striped dress that looks exactly like a man’s undershirt.
I wish with all my heart that I had one, too.
“It’s real pretty,” I say. “And I guess she bought it big ’cause one of these days you’ll fill it out real nice.”
Sally has narrow eyes, a little too close together, and at that, they narrow even more. “How’s that daddy of your’n? Thought I saw that truck he drives down yonder by the creek.” She flips her hand carelessly over her shoulder. “He fishing while you get right with Jesus?”
I wonder if there’s any truth in Sally’s claim. “Could be. Hearty doesn’t answer to me.”
“You call your father Hearty?” Sally tries to look surprised.
“Everybody calls him Hearty.” I’ve never called my father anything but, although it’s only a nickname he got as a boy on account of his last name, barrel chest and wide shoulders.
“He didn’t tell you anything before he left home this morning?” she probes.
I haven’t seen my father in two days, but I’m not about to report that. “Your daddy tell you where he’s going every minute?” I ask with a toss of my head. “Seems like he’d be awful busy for that, but maybe he’s got all the time in the world to account to you.”
Sally just repeats the sly smile that matches her eyes. “He don’t, on account of how hard he works. But even if he only worked an hour a week, that would be more than your daddy works in a month.”
I can hardly argue. I wait for the next blow. Church is no different than school, where I’m an outcast because I come from one of the poorest families in a poor county. I’ve learned to fight back a little, but I’ve also learned it doesn’t help. There’s nothing I can say or do that will change anybody’s opinion. I am Lottie Lou Hale, daughter of Hearty Hale, whose reputation is as troubled as nearby Spring Creek in a winter storm.
“You oughta come over to our house sometime,” Sally says. “Get that daddy of your’n to drive you, if you can find him.” She smirks and turns away, lifting her hand in a careless wave. Anybody watching will think we’re friends.
I go to find my grandmother, who’s up front talking to the real preacher’s wife. Mrs. Pittman is as tall as any man in the place, with skin that’s seen too much sun and eyes that have seen too much sorrow. Years ago the Pittmans lost their two children in a house fire. She claims her faith got her through it, but to look at her grim mouth and tired eyes, I’m not sure it’s done the trick.
“Mrs. Pittman says she’ll take us home today,” Gran tells me. She waits for me to add my thank-yous.
“That’s mighty nice of you,” I say dutifully. “It’s a long walk for Gran, with her arthritis and all.”
Gran’s arthritis, which cripples her once-sturdy legs and twists her arms, is, in my view, worse than having a drunk for a father and a mother who died rather than face her unfortunate choices. Gran’s had enough problems trying to make do with nothing, trying to raise her granddaughter and keep her husband’s family farm from being taken for taxes or sold off by her greedy son-in-law.
Unfortunately, my grandpa never made a will. He died suddenly, so the farm was divided by the state, one half to Gran, and one half to my mother, their only child. When Thalia died without a will, her half was divided again, half to Hearty and half to me. This means Hearty only owns one-quarter of the property, but he wields it like a hatchet. Any time he’s unhappy, he threatens to sell his portion along with mine and leave Madison County forever.
So it isn’t as if Gran hasn’t had plenty of trouble. But she holds her head as high as her aching neck will let her and just keeps going. She’s old, though, and the arthritis wears her down. She is increasingly grateful for any help and says pride is a luxury a woman like her just can’t afford.
“We’ll go in a few minutes,” Mrs. Pittman says. “Preacher Pittman asked me to check on two people before I leave. You know which car is ours. You can go ahead and get in if you like. I’ll be quick as I can.”
I wonder if Mrs. Pittman calls her husband “Preacher Pittman” when they’re alone together, eating dinner or plowing their garden.
“Right nice of her to offer,” Gran says, after Mrs. Pittman strides off to find the objects of Preacher Pittman’s concern. “I weren’t sure I wanted to walk home after all that sitting.”
“Sally Klaver said she saw Hearty by the creek down yonder.” I point in the direction of the back of the church.
“None of them Klavers knows a truth from a lie. That’s how come they came into so much land. Her grandpa cheated a brother out of his inheritance, just like Esau and Jacob, and took it for himself. Me, I take anything any one of them says with a grain of salt.”
I feel a little better that I’m not the only one in the church with no-good relatives. “He could be back there, sleeping by the creek,” I warn. “It’s the kinda thing he’d do.”
“If he is, he’ll wake himself up when he’s good and ready. You don’t need to worry about Hearty.”
I’m still standing in church, so I know better than to risk the Lord’s wrath by admitting how little I worry about my father. I lower my voice. “I was worrying he might wake up and come wandering up here.”
“We’ll be gone soon enough.”
But we aren’t, not nearly, because when we walk through the door to get into the preacher’s car, Hearty is staggering up the road, his shirt wrinkled and unbuttoned, his belt unbuckled and his pants sagging down around his hips. I see he is dirty and unshaven, and his hair, which hasn’t been cut in months, looks like a tangle of fishing line.
More than half the worshipers are still standing in the shade of dogwoods heavy with creamy blossoms to chat with friends. As if they are one body, they turn to watch Hearty’s approach.
“You go down and see if you can head him off,” Gran says softly. “I ain’t got the strength to do it myself, and I’m not fast enough.”
“What’ll I say?”
“I don’t rightly know. Maybe something about his truck. Maybe somebody told you he’s got himself a flat tire. Tell him you’ll go with him to see.”
Hearty does love his old truck. When he’s sober, which isn’t often, he spends hours under the hood, and even though he’s too lazy to pick fights for no good reason, he can flare into a rage if the truck gets scratched or dented. The sheriff has slapped him in jail a time or two for truck-related attacks.
I head quickly toward my father, my cheeks blazing with embarrassment. I keep my head high, although what I want most is to look at the ground and not at the faces turning toward me. I hear somebody snickering, and see Sally Klaver with a small group of kids around her age, watching and pointing.
“Didn’t I tell you I saw him down by the creek?” Sally calls. “Ought to have gone and looked for that ol’ drunk before he came callin’.”
I just lift my head a little higher and move my feet faster.
I reach Hearty before he gets to the parking lot.
“Hearty!” I call. “Where you going?”
He squints at me as if he’s trying to recall where he’s seen me. Once he was handsome enough to steal my mother’s heart, despite all warning from my grandmother. Now his belly hangs over the top of his pants, like a woman in her final months of pregnancy, and his skin is slack and sallow. I haven’t inherited anything obvious from my father except his auburn hair, but today Hearty’s is the color of Georgia mud.
“Came to get money…” He stops, as if trying to remember what he was just saying. “That grandmother of your’n,” he finishes, after a long moment during which he sways from side to side, as if considering which way to fall.
“Gran doesn’t have any money, Hearty. Her check comes next week, and there’s nothing left of the last one.” I remember what my grandmother has told me and change the subject. “Listen, while you’re here, one of those girls up there said she saw your truck, and you got a flat tire in the front. I’ll go back with you. Maybe we can wrestle it off together.”
“You…come with me?” He snorts. “Since…when you want to be anywhere I am?”
“You want help with that tire or not?” I ask.
“Ran out of gas.” He stares beyond me, as if looking for my grandmother so he can plead his case.
Hearty works in the woods cutting and hauling lumber, but he rarely has money. When he manages to gather a little he buys gas and liquor, in that order, since this is a dry county and he needs the first to get the second. I doubt he’s really run out of gas, but I bet he’s run out of liquor.
I hear a noise behind me and turn. Mrs. Pittman is coming toward us. Her dress has red-and-white checks, like a tablecloth Gran uses in the summertime, and the skirt snaps angrily against her calves.
“That…ol’ scarecrow…” Hearty spreads his hands in some odd sort of illustration, and the motion nearly sends him careening into me.
“What’s happening here?” Mrs. Pittman asks in a voice that says she already knows.
“Nobody…ast you for a ’pinion,” Hearty says.
“You owe this child better than showing up in public looking the way you do,” Mrs. Pittman says. “You’re embarrassing her and your mother-in-law.”
“Don’t care.” Hearty waves his hands again. “I need money. You got some you want to rid yourself of, I’ll take it…and be gone.”
“You’re lower than a rattlesnake, Hearty Hale. You ought to get down on your knees and beg the Lord for forgiveness. You’ve tried the patience of the rest of us for too long. He’s all that’s left.”
Hearty spits on the ground at his feet. “Somebody here’ll give me money.”
“Not as long as I’m standing here. Now you go back the way you came, you hear?”
By now I want to throw myself off a mountain ledge. I know everyone is watching, and a glance over my shoulder shows two of the men from the service are coming up behind Mrs. Pittman, one of them the morning’s preacher, the other Sally Klaver’s father. I realize that most likely they are spurred by embarrassment that a woman has been forced to lead the charge.
Hearty sees them, too, and realizes they aren’t coming to help him. With a snarl, he falls forward. I’m not sure if he propels himself in Mrs. Pittman’s direction, or if he merely loses his precarious balance, but without thinking I sidestep quickly and just in time. In a moment my father is sprawled on top of Mrs. Pittman, pinning her to the ground.
The men launch themselves forward to drag Hearty away. As drunk as he is, he fights back, slugging the preacher in the stomach with a fist, kicking out at Mr. Klaver with the toe of his worn work boot. It’s all over in a moment. While sober he might have held his own, now he’s slow and uncoordinated. The men grab him under the armpits and haul him off Mrs. Pittman, who sits up, then manages, with my help, to get to her feet. By then Gran has joined us.
Hearty is blinking hard, as if trying to remember what’s just happened.
“You hurt, Mrs. Pittman?” Mr. Klaver asks, shoving Hearty to one side. “He hurt you?”
She looks a little dazed, but she shakes her head and begins to brush off her checkered dress. “He wants money.”
“You don’t give a man like this money.” Mr. Klaver looks at Gran. “What are you going to do about him? Why’d you let him come here, anyway?”
I want to weep, but Mrs. Pittman intervenes. “What are you saying? She’s an old woman. There’s nothing she can do, but the men in this community might consider forming a plan. She and that girl need protection, not accusations.”
“Hearty’s never hurt either of us,” Gran says. “He just drinks.”
“And lies and steals,” the preacher says. “Don’t pretend he don’t. He’ll take anything that’s not nailed down and claim he didn’t, so he can buy himself more liquor. People ’round here pretend they don’t see, because they respect you. But one of these days he’ll go too far, and somebody’ll come after him with a shotgun.”
“I’ll take…my shotgun to them first,” Hearty says, just before he bends double and vomits at the preacher’s feet.
“You’uns leave us.” Gran shakes her head as her son-in-law retches and heaves. “We’ll get him out of here. But we’ll have better luck doing it without you. I’m sorry it’s come to this.”
“No,” Mrs. Pittman says sharply. “These men will walk him back to wherever he came from. I’m taking you home myself. You got stuck with Hearty Hale when your daughter made a foolish decision, but you don’t have to be stuck with him today. Now come along.”
I hope my grandmother will refuse, that the command in the other woman’s voice will anger her enough she’ll stay right here. I don’t want to walk back to the preacher’s car and face the knots of churchgoers again, not as long as I live. But Gran looks the way a dog does after he’s been whipped. She doesn’t have the strength to refuse. Instead, she starts hobbling after the preacher’s wife and beckons for me to join her.
The walk back through the lot and over to the preacher’s car is the longest I’ve ever made. I can feel every eye staring at me, particularly Sally’s, and I know what everybody is thinking.
If I ever harbored hope that someday people might overlook the man who fathered me and see me for the person I am, now I know that hope was foolish. I will always be Lottie Lou Hale, the daughter of no-good Hearty Hale. And as long as I live in Trust, North Carolina, my future has already been decided.
Chapter Five
THE COFFEE SHOP where Charlotte had settled to write in her journal had been recently remodeled. Now it was officially a bistro, with a newly painted sign announcing it had evolved, but it was still called Cuppa. The Orange Peel, a music venue down the street, was probably awakening for a long night and beginning to attract patrons, and she was glad she had arrived early enough to find parking.
Cuppa had a row of tall windows looking over the street and fancifully trimmed topiaries between each set. Ferns hung in the window, and the hostess stand was flanked by trios of potted palms. Once past the hostess stand, though, Charlotte had seen just how casual the little restaurant was. Denim ruled, and several patrons had set up laptops on their tables. More were talking on cell phones with nothing in front of them except steaming mugs. A coffee bar jutted from one side of the room, and two young women stood there chatting and waiting for the barista to supply their order. Maybe the owners had added space for more tables and real food, but at heart the place probably hadn’t changed much.
When she had asked for a quiet table, a young man in a green T-shirt had led her as far away from the hubbub as he could without pushing her through the emergency exit, and for a long time she’d had the area to herself. But now that she was finished writing in her journal, it was dinnertime, and a family with two squabbling preschoolers was divvying up a pizza at the table beside hers. A middle-age couple, who looked as if they’d either had a bad day or engineered one for everybody else, had just been seated steps away from both tables, and the man, in his early forties, was squinting at the menu as if it had been salvaged from a shipwreck.
Charlotte knew she had taken up her table for too long, ordering coffee, then an untouched pastry, out of guilt. Now she was finally hungry and knew she should probably try to eat something before she left for home. Cuppa wasn’t exactly her usual, much more casual than the places she frequented with friends and colleagues, but the atmosphere was upbeat and the pizza at the next table smelled wonderful.
She studied a menu snuggled alongside a brief wine list between the sugar dispenser and the salt and pepper shakers. The selection was simple. Pizza, salads, wraps, a variety of sandwiches and a few Italian specialties. As ordinary and ubiquitous as the choices were, the ingredients seemed innovative. The Cobb salad had pea shoots and shiitake mushrooms, the Greek wrap featured baby spinach, fire-roasted red peppers and sun-dried tomatoes.
She had sat there long enough for a shift change. Now a tall young woman approached, dressed in another of the restaurant’s dark green T-shirts paired with an ankle-length khaki skirt. She had long sun-bleached hair pulled back in a low ponytail, masses of freckles and eyes rimmed with sandy lashes. The all-American, girl-next-door essentials were marred by a gold ring in her nose and the winged edges of a tattoo just visible on the right side of her neck. Charlotte thought the image might be a fairy or a dragonfly.
Green eyes flicked to the menu in Charlotte’s hand, then back up again, before the young woman spoke. “Hi, my name is Harmony, and I’ll be happy to get you anything you’d like.” She smiled shyly to show slightly crooked teeth.
“You know what, the eggplant provolone pizza sounds wonderful,” Charlotte said. “Is it as good as it sounds?”
“I like it.”
Charlotte ordered the pizza and a salad, and asked for a bottle of sparkling water to go with them.
The young woman took her order, then moved to the couple who had just arrived and introduced herself to them, as well.
“Harmony?” the man asked loudly enough that half the restaurant could hear him. “I bet that’s not what your mother named you.”
The young woman looked puzzled. “Harmony No-Middle-Name Stoddard, right there for all the world to see on my birth certificate. May I get you something to drink before I tell you our specials?”
“I bet you were born in Asheville.”
Charlotte was trying not to eavesdrop, but it was impossible, since the couple were so close. She knew not everyone held their mountain community in the highest regard. Some of her colleagues thought Asheville was outdated and outclassed, a frontier hippie outpost with a redneck contingent that barely kept it from tumbling off the left side of the universe. Luckily most of them kept such unpalatable sentiments to themselves, at least in public, but this man had either had too much to drink already, or too many frustrations.
The waitress looked perplexed, and the man’s companion, a frumpy brunette who looked only marginally more pleasant, intervened. “My husband’s just saying it’s not as uncommon a name here as it is in other places. He’s making an educated guess.”
“Harmony, Serenity, Moonbeam, Sagittarius.” The man picked up the wine list and waved it as if he were shooing flies. “Do you sell wine by the bottle?”
“I was born in Kansas, and no, we only sell by the glass. What would you like?” The young woman looked composed, but wary, as if she understood she’d been insulted and was hoping to get beyond it.
“I’ll have a glass of red wine,” the woman said. “Cabernet?”
Harmony nodded. “And for you?” she asked the man.
“Whatever…”
“Then shall I bring you the cabernet, too?”
He gave a curt nod.
Charlotte knew all too well what the young server was probably feeling. Years had passed since she’d waited on tables herself, but it wasn’t a time in her life that was easily forgotten. When a restaurant wasn’t too busy and customers were friendly, the work was tolerable, even enjoyable. But when customers were rude, like this man, then a shift could last forever.
Harmony returned with Charlotte’s water and promised the pizza would be ready in about twenty minutes. Then she gave the couple their wine and set ice water in front of them, too. “Would you like to hear our specials?” she asked them.
“Not if they’re low-fat, whole grain and heaped with vegetables.” The man sneered.
“You’ve pretty well described it. You might like the pot pie, though, our chef—”
“It’s an exaggeration to call anybody who works in this place a chef,” he said. “We’ll split a large eggplant-provolone pizza.”
“I have to apologize,” Harmony interrupted, “but the chef just told me he used the last of the eggplant on another order. Could I interest you in our pissaladière? It’s a white-onion pizza with thyme, rosemary and feta, and—”
“Unbelievable.”
Charlotte frowned. The girl looked pale, as if having to deal with the man’s bad humor was taking its toll.
The woman poked her menu in Harmony’s direction, as if to forestall more of her husband’s bad temper. “We’ll split a large one, and bring us two green salads, please. I’ll have the raspberry vinaigrette on the side. He’ll have the specialty mushroom blue cheese.”
“Out of eggplant?” he said loudly, after Harmony had left and after he’d taken a long sip of his cabernet.
In a few minutes Harmony returned with salads on a tray. She gave Charlotte hers first, then placed the woman’s in front of her. Just as she was about to set the man’s on his place mat, one of the children at the next table screamed and launched herself off her chair, slamming into the server, who dropped the ceramic salad bowl. Salad flew over the table and into the man’s lap, and the bowl bounced against the table edge and shattered when it struck the floor.
“I’m so sorry,” the mother at the next table said, clearly horrified at what her daughter had done. She grabbed the girl’s arm and hauled her back to her chair, while the man leaped to his feet, eyes blazing.
Harmony, who could not have avoided the accident even if she’d been an Olympic gymnast, tried to apologize, anyway, but he was furious. Dressing splattered his pants and sport coat, and lettuce tumbled to his shoes.
“You need a new profession,” he said. “Who told you waiting on tables was a good career move? Get the manager. Now!”
The young woman’s eyes glistened, and her freckles stood out in sharp relief on pale cheeks. “She…she’s stepped out. I’ll send her right back when—”
He stopped dabbing at the stain with his napkin and threw it on the table. “You think we’re staying?”
“Let me take your number, and I’ll be sure she calls—”
“You’ll be sure?” He sounded as if he was sure she wouldn’t get that right, either.
The young woman looked down at the vegetables and crockery covering the floor at their feet, the dressing oozing into a chunky cheese puddle dotted with green, and suddenly her face drained of all color. She closed her eyes, covered her mouth with her hand and took off toward the coffee bar.
Charlotte could remain silent no longer. With one smooth motion she pulled a pad out of her purse, stood and held it out to the man. “Do us all a favor and put your number there. You can leave it on the way out. And maybe you can add an apology.”
He had the grace to look ashamed, or maybe he was just worried Charlotte was going to continue. “Never mind.” He stood and motioned to his wife. “Let’s get out of here.”
He rounded the table and started toward the door, his wife close behind him.
Charlotte started to sit back down, but she realized what little appetite she’d had was gone now, and she was too upset to eat. Instead, she took out her wallet and dropped two twenties on the table before she started toward the door, too.
Harmony was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
In Charlotte’s opinion, her house was the finest example of Colonial Revival architecture in upscale Biltmore Forest. Built from salmon-tinged brick with imposing white pillars and decorative woodwork, it ruled over its neighbors from a rise in the center of a two-acre lot.
The house was much too large for a woman alone, which hadn’t stopped the newly divorced Charlotte from snapping it up when it came on the market ten years ago. She’d had her eye on the house for years, had even tried to buy it once before when she was still married. So when it had come back on the market a second time, she’d made sure she was first in line.
Since then, despite a sagging economy, the house had increased in value, thanks to her constant attention to maintenance and landscaping. Of course, even though she was free to gloat, there was nobody who cared. The house inspired one of two undesirable reactions. The first was awe, often tinged heavily with envy. The second was worse, something she could only tag as dismay. The house clearly sucked up money and resources without mercy or discrimination.
The house in Biltmore Forest had been a dream, a symbol, a satisfied “yes” at the end of a long, torturous road.
Or so she’d thought.
This evening she turned into the driveway with groceries tucked into the passenger’s seat. After leaving Cuppa she had stopped at Earth Fare to stock up on fresh salads and baked goods, because her refrigerator was as empty as the rest of her evening promised to be.
Right now all she wanted was to put the bags in the refrigerator without even bothering to unpack them and fall asleep in her bedroom, fully clothed. She was so tired every cell in her body had shriveled from fatigue.
She didn’t bother with the garage. She pulled into the stone-paved parking area hidden behind a bower of English ivy and turned off the engine.
“Okay, now you’re getting out,” she said out loud, then forced herself to follow her own orders.
Inside, she put away the groceries and told herself it was good to be home. But once she’d made herself a cup of hot tea and a slice of toast, she lay exhausted on the living room sofa, staring at the ceiling. In the end, as the grandfather clock tolled ten, she rose, smoothed wrinkles from her clothes, closed the front door behind her and headed back to Cuppa.
After being forced to park several blocks away on a side street, she stood outside the restaurant once more. She doubted Harmony Stoddard would appreciate reacquainting herself with a witness to her unfortunate dinner-shift encounter, but Charlotte wanted to be certain that the bad-tempered man hadn’t complained. And if someone else had spoken to the manager, the mother at the next table, perhaps, or another server, Charlotte wanted to be sure Harmony wasn’t blamed for something that was certainly not her fault.
Inside, the hostess stand was empty. Farther in a few people sipped coffee, but one of them was packing up her computer. A muscular middle-age man in one of Cuppa’s signature shirts stopped Charlotte as she continued toward the back.
“We’re closing,” he said. “Did you need something?”
“By any chance are you the manager?”
“She went home early. I’m in charge.”
“I was here earlier. I was sitting in the back, and a child at the next table slammed into my server and sent salad flying all over a man at another table. I just wanted to be sure the server didn’t get into trouble. I was right there, and it was absolutely not her fault.”
He looked surprised. “You came all the way back to tell us that?”
“And to make sure she’s okay.” She decided to level. “The man behaved badly. He didn’t apologize. I thought somebody ought to.”
“You know how rare that would be?” He ran his hand through short-cropped hair. “Who was it? Harmony?”
“Uh-huh.” She wondered how he knew.
His mouth twisted into a wry smile. “She had a bad night. I didn’t know why.”
“Is she here? Maybe I could make it a better one.”
“She left about half an hour ago, after she finished her shift.”
Charlotte felt a pang of regret. “Maybe I could write her a note?”
“Sure. Just leave it on the coffee bar. I’ll make sure she gets it.”
Charlotte wandered over and sat on a stool. She penned a few lines on a sheet of notebook paper and signed it. Then, on a whim, she added her business card and circled her cell phone number, although she doubted the young woman would call.
With nothing else to do she left the note and trudged to her car. The air was cool, and while the street wasn’t deserted, she felt utterly alone. On the street, in the city, on good old Mother Earth. She thought of the memorial service where she had not been welcome. She thought of the wary expression in her own minister’s eyes.
She thought of her granddaughter climbing to the top of a jungle gym, unaware that her grandmother was sitting just yards away watching her.
She slowed her pace. She had nowhere to go except home, and nothing to do there but think.
If she hadn’t slowed she wouldn’t have glanced into the car parked in front of her. Under the light of a streetlamp the sedan looked like something General Motors had long since discontinued. Rust etched wheel hubs. The rear door had been badly dented and someone—clearly not a professional—had tried to hammer it back into shape. Most important, as Charlotte drew even with the car, what she saw inside made her stop and stare.
The woman in the backseat, head pillowed on a blanket and another blanket drawn up around her, was all too familiar.
Charlotte debated what to do. She’d come to find Harmony Stoddard, but not like this. Before she could make herself continue along the sidewalk, Harmony’s eyes opened, and the two women stared at each other.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said, since only a pane of glass separated them. She started forward, then she stopped and went back. “Are you okay?”
Harmony was sitting up now, and she wiped her eyes before she moved over to the door and opened it, swinging her long legs over the side to face Charlotte.
“What are you doing here?” She didn’t sound angry.
“Well, right now I’m on my way to my car, but I was just at Cuppa to find you. I wanted to apologize. That man behaved so badly, and I wanted to be sure you weren’t in trouble for anything he did or said.”
Tears glistened on Harmony’s cheeks, and she rubbed them away with her fist before she spoke. Charlotte was reminded of her daughter as a toddler. Taylor had always done exactly that. Taylor, the daughter she hadn’t spoken to for almost eleven years.
“You didn’t have to come back. It was okay.” Harmony got out of the car and stood with her back to it.
“It wasn’t okay.” Charlotte debated what to do or say next. Part of her thought she ought to continue to her car. But suddenly the conversation wasn’t about a stranger’s bad manners anymore. It was about so many other things.
“You’re not okay,” she said. “Are you sleeping in your car tonight?”
“No…” Harmony bit her lip. “Not for the whole night, anyway.”
“Just part of it?”
“I’m…I’m staying with a friend.”
“You can’t get in? You don’t have a key?”
“That’s not it.” The young woman seemed to debate with herself. “She’s got a date. I don’t want to be there when…”
Charlotte understood. “Oh, right, I see.” She hesitated. “It’s a small place, I guess?”
“Like a closet, and I’m crashing on her sofa until I can find something better. I—” She shook her head.
“You’ve been there awhile?”
“You don’t want to hear all this.” Harmony smiled a watery smile. “This isn’t your problem, right?”
“Absolutely not. Not one bit.” Charlotte smiled, too. “So tell me, anyway.”
Harmony started to cry. Charlotte wasn’t sure what to do, but before she could decide, she’d put her arms around the girl and pulled her close.
“When was the last time you ate?” she asked, as Harmony, bending at the waist, sobbed against her neck. She felt the girl’s shoulders hunch in answer.
“Will your car be okay here tonight?” Charlotte asked, making a decision.
“I…I guess. But I don’t—”
“You’re coming home with me, and don’t worry, you can call your friend and tell her where you are. You’ll be safe. I’m not a serial killer.”
“You don’t have to do this.”
Charlotte was afraid she did. She was afraid no one needed to do it more.
Chapter Six
LIVING IN ASHEVILLE was a trade-off for Taylor Martin. At first, after Maddie’s problematic birth, the city of Taylor’s own birth was the only place she could live. Without her father’s help, both financial and emotional, she would never have been able to support herself and care for her daughter.
Jeremy’s parents, who also lived in town, had helped, as well, and despite Taylor’s disdain for her daughter’s father, she couldn’t dislike the senior Larsens. From the beginning they had stepped up to the plate, insisting that Jeremy acknowledge the baby, then offering financial support. After Maddie’s birth they had put their son through college, or tried to, but they had also made certain Jeremy understood that once he was earning a living, they expected him to take over the child support payments.
The Larsens were now only part-time Asheville residents, migrating to Florida for the coldest months, but when they were in town, they were enthusiastic babysitters, available at a moment’s notice. While nowadays Jeremy paid his own child support, his parents paid all the health care extras insurance didn’t cover.
Taylor knew she should consider moving to a city with more and better jobs, perhaps one with specialists making their mark in neurobiology. But nowhere else on the planet would she have the support system she had here, and nowhere else would Maddie be surrounded by so many people who loved her.
This evening she reconsidered that conclusion. Classes at Moon and Stars were physically grueling, and in addition to yoga, she also taught Pilates at a local gym. For this she was paid enough to keep body and soul together, but not much more. She had a degree in Health and Wellness promotion and had hoped to go on to something in the medical field, but earning one degree had been difficult enough, even with a network of friends and family.
Asheville was short on jobs and long on people with the same kind of skills she had. At times like this she found herself imagining a less exhausting way to survive. The truth was, she was lucky to have the jobs she did. Her employers at both the gym and the yoga studio understood that sometimes Maddie needed Taylor more than her students did. That benefit was impossible to beat.
This evening, when she pulled up in front of her house, she stared up at the crescent moon rising overhead. She knew Maddie was all right or her father would have called. Her daughter was probably sleeping off the effects of the most serious seizure Taylor remembered in years, what her doctor had called a “breakthrough” seizure on the phone, since it had been an escalation of symptoms. She’d been so sure they had finally gotten the medications right. Dr. Hilliard had been cautiously optimistic, as well. And now they might have to start all over.
She got out of the car and only then noticed that her father’s Acura was no longer in front of her house. His spot had been taken by a familiar yellow Volkswagen bug.
The front door of the house was unlocked, which was no surprise. Taylor locked up at bedtime, but the neighborhood was quiet, and the neighbors on both sides had great-grandchildren and time to watch the world go by outside their windows. Her neighbors were another reason she didn’t want to move to a better job in a faceless city.
She closed the front door loudly so her guest would know she was home. The house was so small she was through the living room and kitchen in seconds, then beyond to the family room that was just large enough for a small television and sofa. The television was off and Samantha Ferguson was curled up on the cushions, but if she’d been sleeping, she wasn’t now. She smiled, arms out and fists clenched as she stretched.
“You’re not my father,” Taylor said. “He’s older, and his hair’s turning gray.”
“I forgot you were teaching this evening. I popped by on my way back from Mom’s, so I told him I’d wait for you. He looked tired. I think he was glad to go.”
Taylor felt a twinge of guilt. Her father adored Maddie, but she wondered if she was taking advantage of his devotion. By drawing constantly on his support and help, was she keeping him from finding a woman he could share his life with?
She tossed her backpack on the coffee table and flopped down beside her friend. “Where’s Edna?”
“Mom’s got her. Tomorrow’s a field trip to a local farm, and Mom’s on spring vacation, so she said she’d chaperone.”
Taylor lowered her voice. “Maddie’s already asleep?”
“For a good hour. She was exhausted.”
“Dad told you what happened?”
“He said she had a generalized tonic-clonic seizure.”
Samantha’s medical training made it so easy to talk to her. Taylor was always grateful not to have to mince words. “Maybe it was an anomaly,” she said.
Samantha nodded. “It’s hard to know.”
Normally Taylor might have treated herself to a glass of wine after a long day, but Samantha didn’t drink, and the two women were such old friends that if Samantha had wanted anything else, she would have gotten it.
“She seemed okay?” Taylor probed.
“A little disoriented. I don’t think she got much homework done.”
“I’ll have to call her teacher. They try not to give homework over the weekend. Maybe Maddie can make up whatever she didn’t do on Saturday.”
Samantha was half lying, half sitting, with her dark hair spread against the back of the old sofa. She was of mixed ancestry, as if the continents of the world had huddled together at her creation. Her father had been half Korean, half African-American. Her mother’s heritage was unknown but likely European. Samantha’s face was long and elegant, her huge eyes slightly tilted, her hair wild, her complexion the color of almonds. She wasn’t classically beautiful, and exotic was too charged a word to describe her. She was distinctive, extraordinary. At twenty-nine, she’d already lived harder and faster than most people twice her age.
“Maddie told me she talked to Jeremy,” she said.
“Did she tell you what they talked about?” Taylor didn’t even try to mask a grimace.
“She told him about the seizure. She said he asked a lot of questions.”
“He’s good at questions. It makes him feel involved, like he’s actually participating in her life.”
“By my standards, sweet pea, he’s Father of the Year. He pays child support, and puts money aside for her college.”
There was something to be said for that. Samantha refused to even discuss Edna’s father, who she claimed was completely out of the picture. In contrast, last year, after one of his songs had sold to a recording company, Jeremy had sent Taylor an unexpected bonus check to sock away for emergencies. Taylor had to give the man some credit.
“Getting checks is great,” she said. “But he’s around just enough to remind Maddie that she has a father, and gone just enough to make her yearn for a real one.”
“What would you do if he was around all the time?” Samantha asked. “Would you really like that better?”
Taylor shrugged that off. “Not worth worrying about, since it’s never going to happen. He’s got Nashville in his blood, and that’s where the money is for the band. I’d better hope he doesn’t move here, or he’ll be writing ballads about being too broke to support his baby girl.”
The phone rang just in time to prevent Samantha from answering. She got up and ambled into the kitchen to give Taylor privacy. “I’d love some tea,” Taylor called after her, before she picked up the telephone.
The male voice was unmistakable, but he identified himself, just in case. “Taylor, Jeremy.”
It might be relatively early, but she was tired, and she wondered if he knew it. Jeremy wasn’t a bully, but he was a master at figuring out how to get what he wanted. He called that talent the ability to size up a situation, something that had helped him wedge open the door of the country music scene. It hadn’t helped him enough to make him a star, but his band, the Black Balsam Drifters, was now opening for big-name acts, and the songs he wrote and sang were being heard by significant players in the business.
“It’s been a long day,” she said, hoping honesty would throw him off his game. “I just got home, and I’m beat. Can we make this short?”
“Maddie and I had a nice talk.”
“Sam told me.”
“How is Sam?”
“Waiting in the kitchen while we finish this,” she said.
“Maddie said she had a whopper of a seizure this afternoon.”
“That’s how she said it?”
“She described how she was feeling at the moment, and I guessed the rest. Maybe I’m wrong?”
“No.” She sighed. “She’d been doing really well. I hoped the new meds…” Her voice trailed off.
“How bad was it?”
“Bad enough.”
“You called the doctor?”
“No, I sent her out to play in traffic.” She could have kicked herself the moment the words came out of her mouth. “I’m sorry. It really has been a long day.”
“What did he say?”
Jeremy was almost always rational, and he rarely engaged in sniping. Usually she was at least polite. She attempted to continue that tradition.
“He told me to keep an eye on her and bring her in on Monday. If anything significant comes of the visit, I’ll let you know, I promise.”
“Taylor, I know this is a bad time to bring this up. You’ve made it clear you’re whupped. But I think we can do better than Dr. Hilliard. I know you like him—”
“Like him? Before Dr. Hilliard, Maddie was just a name on a chart. Half the time I don’t think the doctor of the moment even read her case history. If I have a problem, he calls me back. He’s doing everything he can to get the medication adjusted, so we don’t have more events like the one we had at dinnertime.”
“But it’s not working.”
“This is not a sinus infection. If epilepsy were simple to treat, I could go to the drugstore and grab something over the counter.”
The silence went on so long, she began to wonder if they had been disconnected. Then he spoke.
“Not the right time for this. And it’s not a criticism, Taylor. But I worry. You’re right there, you can watch and make decisions based on what you see. I don’t have that…”
“What? Luxury? Is that what you were going to say? You think it’s a luxury to be right here watching her go through this?”
“I don’t have that information,” he said. “I need more time with her.”
“You know where we live. You send her support check to this address every month.”
“I want her to come to Nashville this summer.”
This time the silence was on Taylor’s end. “Did I hear that right?” she asked at last. “You want her to come to Nashville? And then what? You get a gig out of town, drag her along and stow her backstage? Or what, she stays at your apartment with a babysitter who doesn’t know jack about how to help her if she needs it?”
“None of the above. Look, there’s no casual way to tell you this. I’m engaged. Her name’s Willow, and she was our promoter on the last tour. She loves kids. I want her to get to know Maddie before we get married.”
Taylor took a moment to recover. “Well, that’s completely out of the blue. Does Maddie know?”
“Willow and I have been together awhile, but I didn’t see any point in telling Maddie if it wasn’t going to work out.”
“Thanks for that.”
“I do think about what’s good for her.”
“Why don’t you just bring Willow to Asheville to meet Maddie?”
“I don’t want her to meet Maddie. I want her to spend time with Maddie. Real time, two weeks at the beginning of summer. And Maddie’s been asking to come to Nashville. Willow has a little house with some land outside the city, and it’s a great place for a kid, so we’ll stay there. The band’s going to hunker down and put together our next CD, so there’s no chance we’ll be out on the road. I want to introduce them here, where there’s no pressure from anybody else.”
“Nobody here’s going to pressure you, Jeremy. But I think it would be better if you introduce the two of them where Maddie feels comfortable and safe. Her doctor’s here.”
“She needs to be here with me, without you,” he said pointedly. “She needs to be away from Asheville to give Willow a real chance. We have good doctors in Nashville, and I’ll get copies of her records. Our custody agreement allows for this.”
There was no threat in his tone, but the threat was in the words. Custody agreement. Papers they had signed. Choices they had made when they were still teenagers.
“We have time to talk this over,” she said at last.
“We have time to make the arrangements,” he countered. “I’m not going to change my mind. I didn’t mention it to Maddie, because I wanted to warn you first, but I will tell her the next time we talk.”
Warn, not consult. She heard the difference.
“Anything else?” she asked. “New and better bombshells?”
He spoke slowly and with surprising feeling, as if he had rehearsed what came next. “We’ve done surprisingly well through all this, you and me and the kiddo. Not the best start, not the best circumstances, but we’ve muddled through and grown up along the way. I know you’ve had the major burden, while I got to go out into the world and live my dreams. But it’s time for me to take some of the day-to-day stuff on my shoulders, and time for you to have a little flexibility and freedom. This isn’t going to be a one-time thing, Taylor. It’s the beginning of a new phase for all of us. Let’s make it work for Maddie, okay?”
“I always want what’s best for her.”
“Then we’re on the same page.” He said good-night and hung up.
Taylor stared at the wall until Samantha came back in, carrying two bright red mugs of tea.
As she handed a mug to Taylor, peppermint and chamomile scented the air. “It can’t be that bad.”
Taylor told her just how bad it was.
Samantha flopped down on the sofa beside her. “Well, what do you know about that?”
“Very little, as a matter of fact. He hasn’t given me a single hint this was coming.”
“The two of you never talk about anything personal. Why should he?”
“Because he’s giving my daughter a stepmother. Doesn’t that seem like something he’d mention?”
Samantha waved her free hand in emphasis. “In your eyes Jeremy can’t do anything right. You do see that, correct? I mean, a few minutes ago you were dissing him for not spending more time with Maddie, and now you’re after him for wanting to spend a couple of weeks of quality time with her while he introduces somebody who’s going to be important in her life.”
Taylor considered that, but not for long. “See, there was this day, oh, eleven years ago, give or take a month or two. I went to him, sobbing, and told him I was pregnant with his baby. And you know what he said to me?”
“Something stupid? Like any seventeen-year-old boy with a noose around his neck?”
“Maddie is not a noose.”
“You know that, and so does he. Now. But his whole life changed in that moment, and he was still just a kid. Both of you were.”
“Eleven years ago he told me my baby wasn’t his problem, that I was the one who was pregnant, and I’d better leave him out of it.”
“And you’ve never forgiven him.”
Taylor hadn’t. At times she’d come close. She realized that nobody should be judged by something he said when the world as he knew it was collapsing. Later, when confronted by his parents, Jeremy had not denied that the baby was his. Of course, denial would have been futile, since a paternity test would have proved him a liar.
“You remember how it went,” she said. “We’d broken up. He was already dating somebody else when I realized I was going to have his baby. Later he told me he thought I was just making up a pregnancy to get even with him.”
“I can see that.”
“Really? I can’t. He knew me better than that.”
“Maybe not. He was the class bad boy. Your mother wouldn’t let you date him, right? Whenever you saw him you were sneaking behind her back. How well could you know him? How much time could you spend together? “
“Enough to make a baby.” Taylor shook her head. “I guess we’ve worked things out well enough, considering our start. There’s no love lost between us, but both of us love Maddie. Now, everything’s going to change.”
“Particularly if you don’t lose the attitude.”
Samantha had been her friend for so long that Taylor couldn’t be offended. She just reached over and socked her on the arm.
“I don’t think it’s Jeremy,” Samantha said, unperturbed. “I don’t think you want to share Maddie. And you’re wondering what you’ll do without her for two weeks. Part of you wants her to have a closer relationship to her daddy, and part of you probably hopes she’ll get along with her new stepmother. But another part of you hopes the whole thing will blow up, and she’ll never want to leave you again.”
“If that’s true it sounds pretty squirrely.”
“No, it sounds pretty natural. I don’t have that problem, since Edna’s father was never in the picture. But if he showed up tomorrow and said he’d been searching for us all this time, I’d probably feel the same way you do. Like he was the enemy clambering over my castle walls, an invader trying to stake a claim to a piece of my daughter.”
“And people think the hard part of being a single parent is not having anybody to share childrearing with.”
“The hard part of being a mother is knowing when to let go and when to hang on.”
For no good reason, Taylor thought of her own mother. As always, she was sorry she had.
Chapter Seven
First Day Journal: April 29
I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to forget my past. Maybe I thought if I changed myself into someone else, the past would fade away with my Appalachian accent and one day a country girl named Lottie Lou Hale would cease to exist.
Now I know how much time I wasted. No matter how hard we try to lock memories away, they break free, sometimes taking on new life because we witness others with the same struggles, like the young woman sleeping in my guest room this morning. Just like Harmony Stoddard, I was once nearly homeless, with no one to help me and nothing to fall back on.
It’s not a memory I recall with fondness. But this morning, while I wait for my guest to wake up, I’ll take it out again and examine it here.
Almost exactly seven years after Hearty’s Sunday morning appearance at the Trust Independent Baptist Church, I am sitting beside him on a bench in front of the pulpit, and this time no one is trying to persuade him to leave.
In the past year someone has donated screens, and someone else convinced the county to run an electric line so that now floor fans blow channels of steamy air over the mourners lucky enough to be sitting close to them.
I’m not one of those. I’m sitting in the front row, close enough to my grandmother’s coffin to wish I could hop up and brush away the flies that entered the church with the mourners. I know better than to make a scene. I am seventeen, newly graduated from high school, and now I’m a woman. None of my grandmother’s friends gathered today would appreciate even a pause in Preacher Pittman’s words. Those attending came out of respect, but I know that no one wants to sit in the heat a moment longer than necessary. Fans or not, the temperature has to be close to ninety and climbing as the sun rises higher in the sky.
“Would anybody out there like to speak?” the preacher asks at last.
I turn to my father, who wears a clean shirt and pants and is, for once, freshly shaved. Even Hearty Hale realized he had to show up at his mother-in-law’s funeral or risk losing whatever shred of credibility is still attached to his name.
Do not get up, I mouth.
He narrows his eyes, as if trying to make sense of that. I realize saying something about Gran has never occurred to him.
From behind us a neighbor stands and begins to speak, detailing the kindness my grandmother showed his family, the food she brought when his wife was sick, little gifts for his children when Gran could hardly afford bacon and beans. Someone else remembers how hard she worked and the way she held her little family together after her husband died, even giving her son-in-law and granddaughter a place to live. The unspoken message, of course, is that anybody who put up with Hearty all those years is already sitting at the feet of the Lord.
I know my grandmother earned her neighbors’ respect one thoughtful act at a time. I also know that now that Gran has finally succumbed to the torment of her twisted body, respect for anyone at the old Sawyer farm will be buried right beside her. The locals will feel sorry for me, of course, sorry I’ve been left to cope with my alcoholic father and his debts and antics, but they’ll stay as far away as possible, lest they get sucked into the drama of my life when their own are already difficult enough.
I gather my courage and stand when it’s clear no one else intends to speak.
“My grandmother was the only mother I ever knew,” I say, my voice strong and clear, despite the lump in my throat. “She was a God-fearing Christian, and she practiced every principle anybody ever preached from that pulpit. I think she held on to life just long enough to see me graduate, but I’m glad she’s gone now, because she suffered. A whole lot.” I clear my throat. “I just want to say thank you for those of you who were kind to her and to me while she lay dying. She would have wanted me to say that.”
I sit down, and the preacher nods. A hymn is sung, a prayer is said and the service is over.
We all stand as four of the deacons come to the front to shoulder Gran’s pine coffin and carry it outside.
I follow, and in a moment my father stands to follow behind me. I hope he doesn’t stumble or worse. It will be a testimonial to my grandmother if Hearty can make it to the graveside without creating a scene.
Gran asked to be buried at our farm, in the family cemetery next to her husband and my mother. Outside, I glance at my father, who is leaning against a tree, his eyelids drifting closed. I wonder if he’s sober enough to remember where he parked his pickup to drive himself home.
The coffin is loaded into a hearse, and I sit beside the driver and wonder how many mourners will accompany us. I glance behind me and see a dozen cars, headlights bright, and I know what a tribute this is to my grandmother.
The trip takes just minutes. On our hillside cemetery the grave has already been dug, and the ceremony there is blessedly short. Mrs. Pittman, dressed in a black skirt and blouse, with her graying hair pulled back in a tight bun, comes to stand beside me. She puts her hand on my arm once I’ve thrown the first handful of dirt on the coffin that holds the only person who ever loved me.
“Why don’t you come home with us now, Lottie Lou?” she asks, turning me so I won’t have to stare at the coffin disappearing under clods of dirt thrown by the rest of the mourners. Men from the church will finish filling the grave once the others leave, but my grandmother’s friends are doing their parts with gusto.
“Preacher Pittman can drive you home after supper.” Mrs. Pittman bites her lip, as if the thought of my returning home without my grandmother to protect me is disturbing. Normally the neighbors would go up to the house after the funeral. Food would be served and memories exchanged, but no one is about to go to our house, knowing Hearty Hale will be the one waiting there.
A few other mourners are closing in to mouth their condolences, and I must speak quickly.
“You’re very kind, but I made other plans.” I hesitate, then lower my voice. “I’m going to Asheville. Bill Johnston’s taking me. He’s got flowerpots to deliver this afternoon, and I guess you could say he’s delivering me right along with them.”
“Asheville?” Mrs. Pittman sounds puzzled. “Do you have family there? Friends?”
“I have some money Gran saved for me. I’ll find a job. I just can’t live here no—anymore.”
Mrs. Pittman clears her throat. “Are you afraid to be alone with your father?”
I know what she’s worried about, but I shake my head. “Not like what you mean.”
“Then don’t you think you ought to wait until you have something lined up? Maybe we could help find you—”
“I can’t stay another minute,” I say. “I already packed, and my stuff is in Bill’s truck. He picked up my suitcase when he took me to the church. There’s nothing keeping me here. It’s time to move on with my life.”
“Your father—”
“Is a worthless no-good, even when he’s sober. And there’s nothing I can do to change him, but he’ll drag me down if I stay. Gran warned me he would, and she was right.”
Mrs. Pittman doesn’t argue, because what is there to say, even for a preacher’s wife? “What about the farm?”
“I guess he’s welcome to it.” The people waiting impatiently on the sidelines begin to move in.
“Does he know?”
“He’ll find out soon enough.”
Soon enough comes sooner than I expect. When just about everyone else has gone, after Preacher Pittman has silently pressed two twenty-dollar bills into my palm along with his phone number, I turn and see Bill Johnston pull his pickup around so he’s headed down our driveway. I know Bill hoped to get an earlier start into the city, and the time has come to leave—and quickly. But before I can get in the front, I see my father staring into the bed of Bill’s pickup, squinting at the small suitcase that once belonged to my mother, one he clearly recognizes.
“What’s that doing there?” Hearty claps a hand on my shoulder as I try to pass.
I had hoped to simply tell him that Bill Johnston was taking me to a friend’s, but I can’t think of any lie that involves the suitcase, too. I decide the time has come for the truth.
“Mr. Johnston’s taking me down to Asheville.” I shrug off Hearty’s hand. “I’m leaving.”
“Leaving?” He seems unable to comprehend the word.
“That’s right. I’m going to start a new life.”
“With what?”
I ponder that a moment. I’m leaving home, setting out for an uncertain future, and Hearty has only zeroed in on what for him is the crucial question. How have I gotten enough money to make this escape, and how can he get it away from me?
“I’ll miss you, too, Hearty,” I say, leaning close. “Thanks for the good times and good wishes.”
His eyes narrow. “Where’d you get the money to leave?”
“Gran left me just enough to get away from you. She did the best she could.”
“How much?”
I shake my head. “Don’t matter. You aren’t getting a cent of it.”
“Who’s going to take care of things?”
The switch is so sudden, it takes me a moment to catch up. “Things?”
“The farm? Get me dinner when I’m home? Take care of things!”
“I have no idea. Maybe you’ll figure that out.”
“You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Try and stop me.” I hear Bill’s door slam and his footsteps as he rounds the cab.
“It’s your job to stay and take care of…things!”
I see Bill come up behind my father. “Can we leave now?” I ask.
Bill is a substantial man, outweighing Hearty by fifty pounds and topping him by at least four inches. Right now I’m glad for all the years and pounds of his wife’s deep-fried country cooking.
“You can’t take her,” Hearty says.
“I don’t want a fight,” Bill responds. “But the girl’s going where she wants to.”
Hearty considers that. I can almost see him weighing his options. Winning a fight with the well-fed Bill isn’t one of them. He turns back to me.
“You leave now, I’ll give my share of this farm your grandma loved so much to one of my drinking buddies when I die. You won’t be able to get your hands on my piece of it.”
I shrug because I’m fairly sure that Hearty will destroy the farm before it comes to that, burn down the house, whatever it takes.
“Or that ridge land of mine, neither,” he says, when he sees I’m not impressed enough. “You won’t get a square inch of it.”
From his own family Hearty has inherited land too steep for anything but logging, something Hearty does when he absolutely has to earn money. The more valuable Hale land was left to his four sober sisters, who stayed away from Hearty and, by extension, me, as if what ailed their baby brother might be catching. The ridge land was a blessing, because when he was there hauling out trees, Hearty was gone for days.
“You’re welcome to everything,” I say. “I don’t want to lay eyes on you again. Not ever. You can drink yourself to death, or sober up and change your ways. Makes no difference to me.”
I glance at Bill and see that the last part of my speech dismayed him. I know I sounded heartless, so I sigh and add, “Of course, for your sake, Hearty, I hope you can change.”
“I want some of that money your grandmother gave you. Right now.” He holds out his trembling hand, palm up. “I deserve it.”
“The girl’s heading for a new life, and you want to steal her money?” Bill asks.
“If she’s got money, it came from this farm. I own part of the farm.”
Bill shakes his head, and this time he shoots me a sympathetic glance. “We’re going now.” Bill reaches around Hearty and takes my arm.
I skirt my father and step up to the running board. Bill’s wife, Zettie, moves over to the middle to make room for me, then she leans over and opens the door. “You get inside, Lottie Lou. And don’t you give that man one red cent.”
I slide inside, but Hearty holds on to the door. “You got nothing for your father?” he says.
“That’s what you gave me my whole life.” I have to force the words past a sudden lump in my throat. Hearty Hale is my father, and while I despise him, he is my blood and my past. Suddenly the future looks very frightening, more frightening than I had anticipated.
“That’s what you’ll get if you leave me,” Hearty says. “I’m warning you.”
Bill has already circled the truck, and now he slams his door shut and starts the engine. Without another word he starts forward. I grab the door handle, and when my father loses his grip on it, I slam the door shut.
A part of me knows I ought to turn my head for one more look at the man who sired me. I will not come back. These will be our final moments together. But I don’t turn. I hold tight to the door handle all the way down to Asheville.
Chapter Eight
HARMONY AWOKE IN a strange bed, and for a moment panic filled her. She had been dreaming of home, of the muffled footsteps of her mother wearing the slippers Harmony had given her as a birthday gift. Before that, no matter the season, Janine Stoddard had tiptoed around the house in her bare feet, because she had been afraid of prematurely waking Harmony’s father.
Harmony’s childhood had been all about walking on tiptoes, about muffling laughter or tears, about apologies. The dream was no surprise, but this bed and this room startled her into stillness. She was afraid to move, afraid to cry out. And whose name would she call, anyway?
Slowly the events of last night came back to her. Her shift at Cuppa, the man who had succeeded in making her feel small and stupid. The chunks of salad spread on the floor with dressing pooling beside…
She wouldn’t think of that now.
Charlotte Hale, who had witnessed everything, had found her lying in the backseat of her Buick. Her cheeks burned at the memory. She had been afraid to park on a darker side street until it was okay to go back to Jennifer’s. Instead, she had parked far enough away from Cuppa to feel certain no one would spot her. When she’d returned to the car after her shift, she had stretched out in the back as best she could, an army blanket rolled under her head and another pulled over her.
She had wondered where Davis was at that moment—and with whom. She had wondered exactly why she was alive.
Then she’d opened her eyes to see Charlotte Hale staring down at her.
Now she was in the woman’s mansion, because Harmony could think of no other word for this house. It was a home beyond any she had ever been inside, with a front hall as large as Jennifer’s entire apartment. She had been stunned as they walked to the kitchen, scuffing her soles over rugs as soft as pillows, winding through rooms with sky-high ceilings. She had been unable to stomach more than a glass of milk, and as she’d sipped, she had gaped at what had to be a place where food would be smart enough, confident enough, to cook itself without interference.
Charlotte—because that was what she insisted on being called—had seen how exhausted and upset Harmony was, and she had led her here, to a green-and-yellow bedroom with polished cherry furniture and a bathroom Harmony would be content to live in. Charlotte had returned with a nightgown that was inches too short but otherwise perfect, told her where to find a new toothbrush, soap and anything else she desired, then abandoned her.
Now, gazing up at the ceiling, Harmony was once again amazed. Even the ceiling was extraordinary. It was high, like all the ones she’d noted last night, but the center was marked by a plaster medallion that would look at home in a palace. She thought she identified grapes and the faces of cherubs. The ceiling curved down into sage green walls, and where it did, there was more adornment, plaster ivy, flowers, birds. In another era artists might have labored for months creating these scenes. Now she imagined there were shortcuts and factory-produced enhancements that could be quickly added by construction workers, but she was still awed by the time and expense, if not by the art itself.
She only moved her eyes. She didn’t move her head. In the past week she’d learned that lesson. When she awoke it was important not to move quickly, to let her body adjust and prepare. Then she could get up by degrees, swinging her legs over the bed in slow motion, pushing up an inch at a time until she was sitting on the edge. If she was lucky she’d remembered to put her purse beside her, and packs of saltines from Cuppa’s vast supply waited there for nibbling. If she didn’t move quickly, if she took her time slowly eating a morsel at a time, she would not have to run gagging to the perfect marble bathroom with its multinozzle shower and spa tub.
She wondered if there would be time for a shower after she finally rose. By now Charlotte would surely be asking herself why she had invited a stranger to her home. One look around had proved there was so much here worth stealing. The house was filled with valuable art; even this room had china figurines that were clearly not from the Walmart housewares department. Of course, Harmony had never stolen so much as a toothpick. Even the saltines in her purse were courtesy of her manager.
Fifteen minutes later she was on her feet and holding steady. The saltines had, as she’d hoped, calmed her roiling stomach. She debated a shower, and in the end, she couldn’t resist. Inside the marble-tile enclosure three separate sprays pummeled her from behind. The showerhead itself had more settings than Davis’s state-of-the-art flat-screen television, but the warm water made her nauseous, and she didn’t stay long.
She dressed in yesterday’s rumpled skirt and Cuppa T-shirt, which were all she had until she could get back to Jennifer’s apartment to rummage through her suitcases for something clean. She pulled her wet hair back from her face and fastened it with the same band she’d used last night. Then she went to find Charlotte.
She realized it was possible her hostess might still be asleep. Harmony had always been an early riser. She’d never had an opportunity to be anything else. As a child, if she wanted time in the family bathroom before school, she’d needed to get up at dawn, because once her father and brother, Buddy, were up, the house and everything in it belonged to them. In the summer she’d been required to get up by six to help Buddy bag newspapers for his route.
Since leaving home she hadn’t lived anywhere she could be comfortable sleeping in. Even when she had lived with Davis, she’d felt obligated to cook an early breakfast before he left for his office. He had never told her she had to, but he’d made enough snide jokes about “kept women” that she’d known better than to become one.
Charlotte’s house was easy to get lost in. Harmony paid attention as she tiptoed through the hallway looking for her hostess and still ended up in a mahogany-paneled study by mistake. She left that quickly, and later, the dining room, although she could swear she’d also seen a dining room off the entry way. A house with two dining rooms perplexed her. Separate dinner parties? Would the guests realize they had competition for their hostess from the other side of the house?
She found the kitchen at last, guided by the smell of coffee brewing. While she’d given it up, the smell was enticingly familiar, and her stomach behaved. She stepped in and saw Charlotte wearing a fuzzy bathrobe and standing at the stove.
“Good morning,” she said tentatively.
Charlotte turned and smiled at her. The smile was so welcoming that Harmony felt her tension ease.
“I hope I didn’t wake you while I puttered around in here,” Charlotte said.
“This house is so big, I think you could drill for oil and I wouldn’t hear you.” The moment she said it, Harmony wondered if she’d sounded critical, but before she could apologize, Charlotte laughed.
“On top of that, the builder did everything he could to soundproof the rooms. Maybe he thought it was destined for a large noisy family.”
Harmony moved closer, then took a seat at the island when Charlotte waved in that direction. “It’s an amazing house. Really.”
“I could say you don’t know the half of it, and I would be right. It goes on and on and on, and you haven’t even been upstairs. If you were wearing hiking boots, I’d give you a tour.”
Harmony relaxed a little more. “I really can’t thank you enough for—”
Charlotte held up her hand. “It was so little, Harmony. Were you comfortable?”
“More than comfortable. That’s the most wonderful bed I’ve ever slept in.”
“I’m glad to hear it. I think you might be the first person to try out the mattress.”
“It’s new?”
Charlotte hesitated just a moment. “Just unused. I don’t have many guests.” She held up a coffeepot. “Ready for some of this?”
Harmony shook her head. “I…I don’t drink coffee. I mean, at least not right now.”
Charlotte nodded. “Tea?”
Harmony wasn’t sure that she should have tea, either. In fact, she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to drink. “I…” She shook her head.
“Orange juice, then?”
“Oh, that would be perfect. But I don’t want to be any trouble.”
“Now if you’d been here yesterday morning, you might have been. My refrigerator was practically empty. But not today, so I’m delighted to share. Let’s figure out what we should eat. I have bread for toast, fresh berries, yogurt. I almost never cook anymore, but I can do that much.”
“This kitchen never gets used?” Harmony couldn’t believe it. She was a Food Network groupie, and she was pretty sure Giada, Rachel and Paula had never seen a kitchen better equipped than this.
“I know. It hardly seems fair, but I’m afraid it’s used only rarely,” Charlotte said. “And then mostly by caterers if I’m putting on a dinner party. The rest of the time I eat out or snack.”
Harmony realized she was actually hungry. In fact, she tried to remember when she’d last eaten. Yesterday afternoon, she thought. A Cuppa wrap purchased with her employee discount. She was going to have to do better—and fast.
“Everything sounds good,” she said.
“Wonderful. It sounds good to me, too. Let’s eat everything in one fell swoop.”
“Have you ever wondered what that means? Have you ever seen any swooping fells?”
Charlotte’s laugh was low, almost sultry, and somehow didn’t fit with her uptown bearing. “Not lately. Swooping fellows, maybe, in singles’ bars, but I haven’t seen any of those in decades.”
“They’re still there, only now they come with their latest blood test clutched in one hand and industrial-strength condoms in the other.” Harmony realized what she’d said and wondered if she ought to just take a vow of silence.
“Then I’m guessing that’s not how you got pregnant,” Charlotte said, after a brief pause.
Harmony hung her head. “How did you guess?”
“Well, I have a daughter. And while I had her a long time ago, I’ve never forgotten the thrill of morning sickness all day long. I figured it out last night.”
“No, I didn’t meet the father in a singles’ bar.” Harmony cleared her throat. “We were living together, but I moved out when I realized I wasn’t the only woman he was sleeping with.”
“And I’m guessing this was recent, and the reason you’re sleeping on a girlfriend’s sofa?”
Harmony nodded. “Three weeks ago. I…I didn’t know I was pregnant until last week, at least not for sure.”
“This must be a confusing time for you. And it probably doesn’t help that you don’t have your own place.”
“One of the baristas at Cuppa might know of a room for rent. She promised she’d check for me.”
“Networking, huh?”
Harmony looked up and made a wry face. “She’s not very reliable, but Jennifer’s lease runs out at the end of June, and she said if I haven’t found something else by then, maybe we can rent something bigger together.”
“So you’re making plans.”
“It will work out.”
Charlotte didn’t answer. She got food out of the refrigerator and turned down Harmony’s offer of help. She put bread in the toaster, then dished yogurt into bowls and washed berries to go with it, setting things on the island as she worked.
Harmony watched closely. Charlotte Hale was a stranger, but there were clues as to what kind of woman she was. She was middle-age, with hands that were well-cared for and hair that was probably touched up but naturally that deep shade of red, since it fit so perfectly with the creamy tones of her skin. Jennifer worked at an expensive salon, and she was always pointing out things like that.
Charlotte was probably around the age of Harmony’s own mother, but she looked much younger because she had time and money to take care of herself, and a belief that she had the right, something Harmony’s own mother lacked. She was probably from somewhere in the South, although Harmony guessed her educated drawl hadn’t come from here, but perhaps from someplace less “mountain,” like Atlanta or Charlotte. The latter would even explain her name. She moved with grace, but slowly, as if she wasn’t certain her body was up to the tasks she’d set for it this morning.
She was clearly rich. Unless she was the housekeeper for the real owner. Harmony smiled, because she was pretty sure that was not the case.
Charlotte closed the refrigerator. “Would you like to eat here? In the breakfast room?”
“Here’s great,” Harmony said. Her stomach was rumbling now, and the breakfast looked perfect.
“Oh, good. My choice, too.” Charlotte slid everything closer to her guest, and motioned for her to take a plate and dish up.
“When we finish, I’ll leave,” Harmony said, in case that hadn’t been clear. “And I’ll find a way back to my car. You don’t have to worry. Jennifer can—”
“There’s no hurry. Unless you have an early shift at Cuppa?”
“No, I go on at four. I just need to go back to Jennifer’s and change clothes before I go in.” Harmony dug into her breakfast, which couldn’t have tasted better.
“This is none of my business…” Charlotte had settled beside her and was dishing berries over a small dollop of yogurt as she spoke.
“You want to know about the baby, right?”
“Only what you want to tell me.”
Harmony wondered if Charlotte was part of one of those organizations that made it their mission to talk girls like Harmony out of abortion. She wondered if that was why Charlotte had invited her here, because she had guessed Harmony was pregnant and possibly alone.
That all made sense, although Charlotte wasn’t pushy, the way Harmony had imagined someone with that agenda would be. Somehow it didn’t really fit, because she didn’t seem to be selling anything.
“I wasn’t planning to get pregnant,” Harmony said. “I was pretty careful. I guess pretty careful wasn’t careful enough.”
“I’ve been there. I understand.”
Harmony thought maybe there was a sisterhood of “pretty careful” women who had been faced with decisions like hers. She was afraid to ask Charlotte’s story, although she wished she knew.
“Davis doesn’t know. I haven’t told him yet.”
“I’m sure you have a good reason.”
Harmony found herself relaxing again. “I guess I don’t want him telling me what to do. He likes to do that. When I lived with him, I let him. His place, his rules. But all my life, other people have told me what I should do, and now, well, I need to figure this out myself. Because this baby won’t matter nearly as much to anybody else as it will to me. So that means I have to be the one to decide things.”
“That makes sense to me, although you sound pretty certain the baby won’t matter as much to Davis.”
“He doesn’t like children.”
“So you’re pretty sure what he’ll say when you tell him?”
“He won’t be happy.”
Charlotte reached over and rested her hand on Harmony’s. “There’s good news. He can’t make you do anything you don’t want. Nobody can.”
“It’s just…well, it’s just going to be a little crazy for a while. I just have some hard thinking to do.”
“Right. Without interference.”
Harmony was glad to hear those last two words. “I’ve been thinking about making a list. You know, of things I need to do and things to decide. Maybe then I could figure them out faster. Check things off…”
Charlotte passed the plate of toast, and Harmony gladly took another piece. The bread was wonderful, and Charlotte had put real butter on it. She tried to remember the last time she’d had real butter on toast. Davis had insisted on olive oil spread because he wanted to live forever.
“What’s going to be at the top of the list?” Charlotte asked. “Have you gotten that far?”
“Finding a place to live.”
“Sounds like you have definite priorities.”
“That’s number one, for sure. I’ve still got to save up a little more, even if Jennifer and I get a place together. I’ve been working extra shifts, and I saved some money when I lived with Davis, but then I had car problems, and there was a month when Cuppa closed down while they finished the renovations.” Harmony wondered why she was telling Charlotte all this, and decided it was because Charlotte was listening. She couldn’t remember the last time anybody had really listened to her.
“I like the way you think,” Charlotte said. “You’ve got important decisions, but I’m guessing you want to be settled before you get too much further.”
“I need a better job, too. Something with regular hours and insurance. The baby deserves that. And once I have to pay for child care…” Harmony shook her head. “But one step at a time, right?”
“I imagine this is scary, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes.”
“May I tell you a story?”
As nice as it had been to have somebody listen to her, Harmony was glad to be out of the spotlight. “About you?”
“About me, yes. Because when it’s finished, I’m going to tell you that the guest room where you stayed last night, or any guest room in the house, is yours as long as you need time to figure things out.” Charlotte held up her hand to stave off Harmony’s protests. “Let me tell the story first, then we’ll get back to that. Okay?”
Harmony couldn’t say no. How could she refuse such a small thing, when in the past ten hours Charlotte Hale had made her feel like a whole person again?
* * *
Charlotte watched her houseguest’s expressions as she recounted the story of her grandmother’s funeral, the same one she’d written in her journal that morning before Harmony woke up. After finding Harmony in the car last night, that day had been very much on her mind, and sharing it with the young woman now seemed natural, although in her whole life she’d only told it to one other person.
Ethan.
“So you left home? You just drove away?” Harmony asked, after Charlotte finished.
Charlotte pulled herself back to the present and nodded gravely. “We just drove away.”
“You were terrified. I know you were.”
Charlotte decided not to take Harmony’s comment at face value. “I’m guessing something like that may have happened to you?”
Harmony bit her bottom lip. Then she nodded. “I left home, just like you. I…I couldn’t stay. My father didn’t drink, but he’s not a nice man.”
Charlotte sat quietly and waited, but Harmony didn’t go on, so she said, “A bad father should make us appreciate the good men in our lives when we find them, but we’re not always able to without practice.”
“Sometimes I still believe the things my father said about me.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say you’re reconsidering them.”
Harmony smiled a little. “What happened next? After you got to town?”
“It was pretty awful.” Charlotte glanced out the window at the expansive lawn stretching away from the house, at the dogwoods in bloom, the magnolias in bud. She hadn’t gotten this far in her journal, and it was hard to find the right words. It had been awful. She still felt a stab of fear when she thought about it, even though she had worked so hard in the intervening years to put that day behind her.
“I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have any place to go.” She turned back to Harmony. “Was it that way for you when you arrived?”
“I had a friend from middle school who had moved here. That’s why I chose Asheville. Her family gave me a place to stay for the summer, but they’re gone now, living in California. Still, they helped me get on my feet, find a job and car, make some new friends….”
Charlotte didn’t point out that Harmony’s security net was still full of rips and tears. No one knew that better than the girl herself.
“I had a little money,” Charlotte said, “but not much. What the preacher gave me, the little my grandmother had been able to save. It was late by the time we got to town. Bill and Zettie took me to a cheap hotel, and they paid for a week, even though I hated that, because I knew they couldn’t afford it. They told me to call if I couldn’t find a job or a place to live, and they would come and get me. But I knew if they did, I’d never come down from the mountains again, that I’d never find a different path.”
“You must have found one,” Harmony said, looking around, because Charlotte’s house spoke for itself.
“It was the end of the week, and I had one more night at the hotel. I’d walked everywhere, talked to everybody. I bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter on sale, and that’s what I ate every day until it was gone, then I bought more. Nobody wanted me. Nobody needed me. I didn’t have any experience. I didn’t have the right kind of clothes. I was desperate, but what does that mean?” She looked at Harmony. “Call the preacher or the Johnstons and admit I’d failed? Rob a bank?”
The last got a smile out of Harmony. “It kind of looks like you did,” she said. “That would explain things.”
Charlotte was glad her story was helping, and telling it was easier than she’d expected. “I was sitting in a café, reading the paper, hoping I’d missed something, some job I could apply for, some lead, anything at all. Two women came in and sat next to me, and ordered breakfast. I’d ordered the day’s special. One egg, a slice of toast, a cup of coffee. Ninety-nine cents. Do you believe that price?”
“Where is that place?”
“Closed, I’m sorry to say. The women ordered these huge breakfasts. Bacon and sausage and French toast. I was so hungry I wanted to steal the food right off their plates.” She saw that Harmony understood, and she reached over and touched her hand again. “You know, I’ve never told anybody that part before.”
“Not everybody would get it.”
Charlotte patted her hand. “I was close to tears, so I started listening to them to keep my mind off my future. One of the women was in her thirties, and I realized she was complaining about how she needed a live-in babysitter for the summer, but nobody wanted a low-paying job like that. Her friend laughed and said that maybe the problem was they didn’t know what to do with two active boys. It would take somebody young and energetic. And stupid, the other woman said, and they both laughed.”
“Nothing like a hard sell, huh?” Harmony said.
“So I stood up and leaned over. And I said, ‘I’m not stupid, but I am looking for a job for the summer and a place to live.’ They looked me over like I’d just crawled out of a tunnel. I knew I had thirty seconds to sell myself. So I told them I had references, that I was from the mountains but I had a high school diploma and, more important, that I really needed the job and the place to stay because my grandmother had just died. I said if that mother hired me, she could be sure I wasn’t going to up and leave—that’s how I said it—because I really didn’t have any other place to go, no matter how much trouble her little boys were, and besides, I had helped my gran teach Sunday School for years, so I knew kids.”
“It’s like somebody put that woman in your path.”
Charlotte considered that. Maybe at the time it had felt that way, but in the years afterward she’d convinced herself that people made their own luck—probably so she could be even prouder of herself for what she had achieved.
“That’s the definition of faith, isn’t it? I honestly don’t know whether I believe that, Harmony, but I do believe this. If life hands you an opportunity, you grab it and hold on to it the way you hold on to a child who’s squirming to be set free. That’s what I did. Mrs. King was never sorry, not for one moment, that she grabbed her own opportunity and hired me. I stayed with the family a couple of years, and by the time they moved away, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew I could make it, and I did.”
“Lottie Lou?”
Charlotte felt herself smiling. “My mother’s idea, and I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not even a nickname. It’s the name that was right there on my birth certificate. I changed it legally the moment I had the money to do it, but Charlotte Louise Hale is a fraud.”
“Never a fraud. You’re a kind woman. And all this, this part of your past? That’s why you’re offering me a place to stay?”
Charlotte thought of all the reasons why she had offered, so many more than she could tell the young woman. She had already made herself uncharacteristically vulnerable, and that was enough for one day.
“That’s the reason,” she said. “Because I know what it’s like to need a safe place to get back on your feet. I was homeless. I know what it feels like to worry about where you’ll sleep and whether you’ll be safe. I wanted you to know that I really do understand.”
“Wow.” Harmony’s eyes filled with tears. “But that woman at the restaurant gave you a job, Charlotte.”
“Harmony, you have a job. You don’t need another one.”
“No, you worked for what you got. I’d just be living here and taking up space.” She brightened. “I could cook for you. And clean.”
Charlotte saw that earning her way made all the difference to Harmony. “I have a housekeeper who comes in part-time to clean, but she doesn’t cook. Do you like to cook?”
“I love to when my stomach cooperates. But I’m a vegetarian. I don’t cook meat. And I’ll have to fix things early in the day if I’m working the dinner shift. Would that be okay?”
“Better than okay. I have a small appetite, so I won’t need anything fancy. And I’ll pay for all the groceries.”
“May I do the shopping? You can tell me what you like, and I’ll make sure we have it in the house.”
Charlotte reached over and held out her hand, palm up. “That would be such a big help.”
Harmony slapped the outstretched hand with her own. “You’ve turned things around to make me feel better about this. We both know you’re helping me.”
“Trust me when I say it’s mutual, okay?”
“What could you need that you don’t have already?”
Charlotte tried to smile. What did she need? A thousand “first days” to fix all the mistakes she had made? Her daughter and granddaughter safe in her arms? A chance to tell Ethan she was sorry she had so easily discounted the life they had shared?
“I’ll get back to you on that,” she said. “For now? A friend and a cook.”
“May I look around the kitchen? You know, to see what’s here?”
“I’m officially turning it over to you.”
Harmony looked as if Charlotte had just given her a present. “You won’t be sorry.”
Charlotte wasn’t sure about much in her life, but she was sure she wouldn’t be sorry she had made this offer. No matter how it turned out, what did she have to lose?
Chapter Nine
IF ANALIESE HAD one complaint about the Church of the Covenant, it was the migraine-producing administrative tasks that fell to her. The meetings, the committees, the pledge campaigns, even her association with Covenant Academy, the private school affiliated with the church. On the day that she had heard the call to ministry she had envisioned a different life, filled with prayer and the spiritual needs of her flock. Instead, too often she combed through budgets, fiddled with mission statements, coordinated volunteers and staff alike. Even their competent church administrator couldn’t save her from the worst of it.
During her first week she had realized she would burn out quickly if she allowed her days to be swallowed by paperwork. So she’d made rules. Except for emergencies, Thursdays were devoted to the Sunday service, the sermon and liturgy, and whatever research they required. Fridays were devoted to pastoral calls and counseling.
Usually Fridays were her favorite day of the week, but today she awakened with a vague feeling of dread.
She made two hospital visits before stopping for sandwiches downtown with the new chairman of the finance committee. The young CPA had recently gotten a divorce, and instead of budgets and endowments, they talked about how well he was coping. Well enough, she decided, when he admitted his biggest concern had been who would get custody of their collie. Analiese hoped he would wait a few years before he tried married life a second time, but she was glad he’d ended up with the dog, if not the wife.
After he left to go back to work, the afternoon stretched in front of her. She had two counseling appointments in the early evening and plenty to do at church. But she had one more person to see before she went back to the relative peace of her office.
A vision of Charlotte Hale sitting in the chapel had nagged at her since yesterday. It had bothered her all through Minnie Marlborough’s funeral and later that night at the monthly council meeting. When she got out of bed this morning, she had realized she had to see Charlotte again.
She didn’t want to call her at Falconview or meet her there. She had been to the Falconview headquarters once on church business. There was nothing wrong with the modern office building on Hendersonville Road, with its sleek surfaces and smoky glass windows, except that words seemed to echo and disappear in Charlotte’s office. At the time she had wondered if that was intentional. After all, Charlotte was not particularly fond of listening to anyone else.
Now she pulled out her cell phone and called Charlotte at home to leave a message. She planned to ask if she could drop by that evening. Instead, she got Charlotte on the first ring. She was so surprised it took her seconds to form a different plan.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d be leaving a message. I was calling to see if I could stop by for a visit this evening, but if you’re home now and up for it…?”
Charlotte sounded weary, but she told Analiese to come ahead.
Half an hour later she pulled up in front of Charlotte’s house. Sitting in her car and reluctant to go inside, she looked over the serene landscape. She’d been here several times, and it never ceased to amaze her that one woman lived alone in a house that was large enough for three generations.
Several years ago Charlotte had volunteered this house for a mission fundraiser, and a hundred people had fit so easily inside and around the light-bedecked swimming pool that Analiese had been sorry the committee hadn’t tried to accommodate twice as many.
The fundraiser had gone off without a hitch, organized down to the final slice of cheesecake by Charlotte herself. It had all been so perfect, but no one had lingered, or talked too loudly, or eaten more than his share. No one had taken off pumps or wingtips, rolled up hems and dangled feet in the twinkling turquoise pool. By ten the caterers had disappeared, and Analiese and the others had gone home, oddly sober despite an abundance of fine wine and a bartender with unlimited abilities.
She wasn’t sure what she was going to say. I’m sorry I snapped at you when you were trying to make amends? I can’t shake the feeling you might need to talk and I might need to listen? I’m worried about you even though you’re a woman who discourages such a thing?
Without a firm plan she got out of the car and walked to the front door. Sometimes it was just best to see what was needed. Anyway, it was entirely possible that Charlotte would politely and firmly boot her back out the door before she had a chance to probe.
She rang the bell and listened to the electronic Westminster chimes resonate through the foyer and up the curving staircase. Charlotte took her time, but she answered the door herself. She opened it and stood back to let Analiese inside. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look as if she regretted the intrusion.
“I have iced tea,” she said. “And juice. Why don’t we get something to drink and sit out by the pool? It’s turned into a beautiful day, hasn’t it?”
Analiese agreed but asked for iced water instead. In a few minutes they were sitting on a flagstone patio with the kidney-shaped pool sparkling just beyond them.
“Is this how you get your exercise?” Analiese asked. “With the weather getting warmer, swimming must be something to look forward to.”
Charlotte played with her glass of tea, rubbing the accumulating moisture with her palms. “I hate to say this, but I almost never use it. I used to swim every single day when I moved in, but over the years…?” She shrugged.
Swimming was a communal activity for Analiese. She couldn’t remember ever being in a pool alone, and she wondered if that bothered Charlotte, too.
“How did the memorial service go?” Charlotte asked, before Analiese could think of a way to say what she needed to.
“The best services leave people feeling better because they can start to put the life and death in perspective. I think we began that yesterday. The stories about Minnie went on almost an hour. There was a lot of laughter. That’s always good.”
“I never met her.”
“I didn’t think you had.”
“When Falconview realized we had to have her property, I sent other people out to talk to her. They brought back reports. They did all the legwork. I only saw the house once, just before it was torn down. I never saw…” She shook her head, staring at the pool. “Do you ever look back at your life and wonder how you could have been so wrong when you were so sure at the time you were right?”
Analiese didn’t know what to say. She had known Charlotte Hale for nearly a decade, but this was not the same woman.
She realized something personal was called for. “You know I used to be in television news? I can’t tell you the number of times I pushed people to reveal something on the air that I knew would come back to haunt them. I told myself the public had a right to know the truth. That’s what we always told ourselves, but when I look back on it now? It doesn’t seem to help.”
“You’re being kind.”
“I’m being truthful.”
“I have so many regrets.”
Analiese felt as if she’d stepped into another dimension.
Charlotte turned to look at her and saw her confusion. “And now you’re wondering if Charlotte Hale’s been the victim of body snatchers.”
“No, I’m thinking that I’m glad I’m sitting here with you. Being here today won’t be one of the things I regret.”
Charlotte sighed. “I’m dying.”
For a moment Analiese wasn’t sure she’d heard her right. She leaned forward and rested her fingertips on Charlotte’s arms. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe I’m being dramatic. I have leukemia, an acute form, which means the news is very rarely good. I got sick a couple of months ago—in fact, I nearly died. The doctors say it’s still theoretically possible I won’t die at all. Not from leukemia, anyway. But even the most optimistic say it would have improved my chances to make an earlier diagnosis. I let myself get right to the point of no return because I was too busy to pay attention to the way I felt. Too busy changing the Buncombe County landscape. Too busy making money and trying to get the world to see things my way.” She smiled a little. “Too busy to wonder why I never recovered from what I thought was a drawn-out winter cold.”
“I am so sorry.”
“You and me both.”
“But you could beat it?”
“I did a serious round of chemo at Duke and I’m in remission, waiting for my strength to improve and my counts to go up high enough to start the next phase. But while the bone marrow looks good, the counts don’t, so my doctors are being cautious.”
“How did you pull this off without people knowing?”
“I told anyone who mattered that I was in Europe with a group of investors, then off to Saint Martin on a well-deserved vacation. Trust me, chemo was no vacation.” She touched the top of her head. “I didn’t lose too much of my hair, so that was a bonus, and I could afford a good haircut and products galore to make it look thicker. I’m trying to gain back some weight.”
“Why didn’t you tell me then? Was there somebody…?”
“To help? No, you’re the first person I’ve told, and maybe the only one for a while. The last thing I want is anybody to feel sorry for me. I don’t want anybody trying to be nice because they don’t want to feel guilty when I die.”
Analiese already felt this secret weighing her down. All the things she knew that might help wouldn’t, not unless Charlotte was willing to let people know she needed their support.
“Why are you telling me?” she asked at last.
Charlotte laughed a little, and to Analiese the sound seemed real, not a bit forced. “You mean you don’t think I need you to absolve me of all my sins?”
Analiese smiled in response. “I would, if that were in my power.”
“I know. You take your job very seriously.”
“I’m afraid it’s a serious job.”
“Especially at moments like this one.”
“Not my favorite part.”
“Do you feel burdened?”
“Who’s helping whom?”
Charlotte was quiet for a moment, as if she needed to put her words in order. “You know, if you were some kindly older man, with thirty years of ministry behind you and a beatific smile—”
“This would be easier,” Analiese finished for her.
“That’s actually not what I was going to say. No, I was going to say this would be impossible.”
“Really?”
“Here’s the truth, and I’ve given it a lot of thought. No matter our differences, I know I can trust you. And I know you’re going to give helping me your best shot. You’re going to be sensible and thorough, and you’re going to dig deeper than somebody who thinks he has all the answers at his fingertips because he’s too tired to look for more.”
“That may be the nicest thing anyone’s ever said about my ministry.”
“And now you’re waiting for the punch line.”
“Something like that.”
Charlotte set her glass on the table and wiped her hands against her beige capris. “I should die more often. It makes for great repartee.”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I think you mean that.”
“I think so, too.”
Charlotte was silent again, and Analiese sat quietly.
“I said I have a lot of regrets,” Charlotte began at last. “Here’s one of my biggest. When I heard the diagnosis, in the moments right before I zoomed off to Durham? I felt such a rush of relief.” She had been looking out at the pool, but now she turned. “Even though I was terrified, I thought, ‘It will be good to die and get this over with.’”
Analiese realized her concern must have shown, because Charlotte hurried on.
“I would never, never take my own life. You have to understand that. But when I realized living a long full life was probably out of my hands? I just wanted to close my eyes and wait for the end. My grandmother used to tell me death was the last mountain we have to climb, and just before she died, she opened her eyes and looked toward the window in her bedroom as if she were viewing a miracle.”
“That must be a good memory.”
“When the doctor told me my diagnosis? I thought about that day and about the look on her face, and I found myself hoping that she hadn’t really been looking at the gates of heaven, that there really wasn’t anything waiting for any of us except eternal sleep. That’s when I realized what a loss my life has been.”
When she didn’t know what to say, Analiese knew not to say a thing. She was almost certain this was not the moment for reassurance, although it felt wrong not to give it.
“I have to change things,” Charlotte said at last. “I realize whatever time I’ve been given, whether it’s months or years, I can’t die knowing I’ve made so many mistakes and never tried hard enough to set them right. I realize dying’s not about what comes next, because no matter how great or poor our faith, we really can’t know what’s waiting, or at least I can’t. For me it’s about what came before. The impact we had. The love we gave. The hearts we left intact…” She cleared her throat, and her eyes filled with tears. “Or broken.”
“I hope you aren’t saying that you’ve done nothing important with your life until now. Because you’ve given generously in many ways.”
“Too often for the wrong reasons.” Charlotte held up her hand to stop Analiese from continuing. “I realize nothing’s that cut and dried. I’ve done things because I knew they were important and right, and sometimes they were. But I’ve done so many things that seemed right and were terribly, terribly wrong. Like moving poor Minnie off her land. And here’s how I know. When I found out I was dying, I realized there wasn’t one person in the world who would really care. That I’ve lived fifty-two years, and while some people will feel conflicted, or even a little bit sad, no one will really miss me. Not because people are cruel, but because I haven’t given them a reason to.”
Analiese would have given almost anything to be able to contradict her, but not only wasn’t that the right approach, she was afraid what Charlotte had just said was true.
Who would miss Charlotte at the Church of the Covenant? The council and committee members whose opinions she had too often ignored or overlooked? The staff who winced whenever she approached with a new list of jobs or, worse, helpful advice on how to do their present ones?
And what about the rest of Charlotte’s contacts? She was said to have an iron grip at Falconview, with an annual exodus of staff who fell out of favor or disagreed with her one time too many. She’d served on boards all over town, but despite the advantages she brought of insight, financial support and prestige, she routinely tried the patience of administrators and board members alike.
Then, of course, there was her family, who were never mentioned, despite the fact that they lived right here in Asheville.
“Why haven’t you?” Analiese asked. “Why haven’t you allowed anybody to get close?”
“That would take longer to tell than we have now.”
“But it sounds like you understand, at least a little?”
“I had nothing but time when I was hooked up to those IVs at Duke. Everybody should be shut up alone in a room for weeks, with nothing to do but reconsider their lives.”
“And it wouldn’t hurt to have an actual death sentence to urge them on.”
“It’s quite the motivator.”
Analiese felt for the right words. “I admire you. I admire this—this desire to set things right, to reevaluate, even though your life could be nearing its end. But, Charlotte, are you trying to make a bargain with God?”
“No, I think God’s better than that.”
“This is a lot to admit to, especially to someone you’ve butted heads with in the past.”
“That’s what makes you perfect, Analiese. Because if you ever had anything to lose by being honest with me, you’ve lost it already. So I think I can count on you to continue being honest, to pull me up short if I go off half-cocked, to help me live out whatever time is left in a way that won’t come back to haunt me on my deathbed. That’s what frightens me most. That one day in the not so distant future I’ll have only moments to look back on my life and nothing I’ll see will give me comfort.”
Charlotte leaned closer. “I know I’m asking a lot, more than I should. You’ve probably already guessed one thing I want to try to set right before I die.”
“Minnie? You tried to give me money for the animal shelter….”
“When I got home that night I wrote a check in her honor and sent it off, anyway. But you were right, that’s not what she would have done. It’s a worthy cause, and I’m glad I did it, but she would have acted in a way that mattered personally, reached out without thinking about the consequences. So I’ll be looking for more ways to do that myself. To honor her.”
Analiese took Charlotte’s hands. It felt natural, although before today she could not have imagined touching Charlotte Hale spontaneously and with affection. “Do you want me to look for ways to help?”
“I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. I think I’ll know the right things when I see them. I just wanted someone to know what I’m feeling. And I guess I just needed to say this out loud.”
Analiese nodded, but she gripped Charlotte’s hands a little tighter and felt them soften in hers. “What else can I do?”
“Will you let me tell you about my daughter?”
Chapter Ten
First Day Journal: April 30
Each day at the park is like a human lifetime. Early in the morning everything sparkles with promise. Dew glistens on blades of grass; the sidewalks are empty pages sneakered feet have yet to write on. The air is still, as if a puff of breath from an angel’s lips is needed to set the day in motion.
As morning progresses, the park begins to waken. Birds sing on branches, and young lovers walk hand in hand. On benches like mine, coffee’s consumed, newspapers unfolded, cell phones pulled from pockets for casual conversations. Two mothers push strollers and chat. The sun peeks through the leafy canopy.
By afternoon balls whiz through the air and children shout commands. On the playground, mothers keep careful eyes on preschoolers who beg to swing higher. The climbing dome becomes a spaceship, the monkey bars an obstacle course over teeming pools of barracuda. The sun beats down on baseball caps and the open pages of books.
When evening comes, stragglers take their time departing, as if sorry to move on to other things. Some scoop up trash and toss it in bins. Others scuff feet in newly planted grass, as if making sure to leave their mark. Darkness is kept at bay by strategically placed lights.
In this way only is a day at the park different from a lifetime. No one and nothing can keep our darkness at bay, no matter how hard we try. I learned this in the hospital from a woman named Gwen, a powerful and uninvited lesson that haunts every step I take.
It’s morning now, and I’ve been waiting an hour. Maddie isn’t here, although she often comes to the park on Saturdays. I wonder how many friends she has. Are other children frightened of her seizures? Do they shun her to avoid the possibility of witnessing one?
Edna is here with her mother, who is typing on her laptop from a bench closer to the jungle gym. Her mother’s name is Samantha, and I came here for days before I realized exactly who she was. I knew her when she was a teenager. That this eluded me so long is a surprise, because Samantha is striking enough that even more than a decade later, I should have known her immediately.
In fairness to me, the girl I knew always carried herself as if she was spoiling for a fight. The woman smiles and moves with extraordinary grace. She laughs easily and clearly adores her daughter. She doesn’t seem to be watching Edna and her friends, but I know from watching her that she’s always aware. The transformation is so complete that I wonder what brought it about.
I wonder, too, about Samantha’s mother, Georgia Ferguson, once the Covenant Academy headmistress, where Taylor and Samantha, even Jeremy, Maddie’s father, went to school.
At the end of an hour Samantha gets up and approaches me. There’s no place to go without drawing attention, so I look away. She stops in front of me until I’m forced to glance up.
“She’s not coming today,” she says.
I don’t pretend not to understand. Instead, I thank her, and she nods and motions for Edna, who reluctantly follows her up the hill.
I wonder how long she’s known that I come here to watch my granddaughter. I wonder why she, of all people, cares enough not to expose that secret to my daughter. She hasn’t told Taylor, or I’m sure I would know. Although we haven’t spoken in years, Taylor would find and confront me.
My visit to the park has ended in disappointment, but I think I’ve discovered a friend, even though I don’t deserve her.
Chapter Eleven
AFTER LEAVING THE park, Charlotte found herself driving aimlessly before she thought about where to go. Since she had instinctively headed toward town, she parked near the center and stopped by the City Market, something she hadn’t done in years.
After a cup of coffee and some self-scrutiny, she wandered through the stalls, buying a pound of fresh red pepper linguine she knew Harmony would like, along with honey and eggs. The last vendor was selling woven baskets, and on impulse she bought one and filled it with another vendor’s fragrant handmade soaps, which bore romantic names like Moon Lady’s Ocean and Ginger Grass and Silk. She was glad she had come, because she knew exactly who to give the basket to, if she dared.
She pulled out her cell phone and got Samantha’s address by calling Falconview and asking the receptionist to scout directories. Five minutes later she was on her way.
Ten minutes after that she pulled up to a tiny brick cottage not far from the street where Taylor lived. The house was substantially smaller than those around it, with a front yard gobbled up by a circular driveway and what looked like a complete absence of yard in the back. Now Charlotte understood why Samantha and Edna spent so much time at the park.
A yellow Volkswagen was parked in the driveway, and Charlotte thought she’d probably found them at home. Before she could think too hard, she took a deep breath, tucked the basket under an arm and made her way to the front door to ring the bell. Laughter spilled out through open windows, and in a moment Edna answered the door.
“I’ve seen you at the park,” she said in greeting.
“Yes, you have,” Charlotte said. “My name’s Charlotte.” Up close the child was even prettier than she’d expected, but of course, her mother was stunning. Edna had green eyes set off by her coffee-and-cream skin, and her shining black hair fell in curls to just above her shoulders. Tiny hoops adorned her earlobes, and her smile was beyond magnificent.
“I brought your mother a present,” Charlotte said, “but I bet you’ll enjoy it, too.” She handed the basket to Edna, who rummaged through, picking up the first bar of soap to sniff it.
“This smells good!”
“I liked it, too.”
“Mom?” Edna shouted. Samantha, who probably could have heard a whisper in the tiny house, came out wiping her hands on a dishtowel. She stopped when she saw who their visitor was, then she smiled.
“Come in, Charlotte.”
Edna ran over to show her the basket, while a relieved Charlotte stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“This is lovely,” Samantha said. “Edna, why don’t you put the basket in the bathroom? And choose a soap you’d like for your bath tonight.”
Edna turned, basket in hand. “Thank you,” she told Charlotte. Then she took off.
“Thank you from me, as well,” Samantha said. “But you know—”
“That I didn’t have to do it?” Charlotte found herself relaxing. “I know, but I wanted to. I think you’ve gone out on a limb for me, and for no good reason I can think of.”
“Except that I understand how much you probably wish you could know Maddie. Come sit down. Iced tea or hot?”
“Whatever’s easiest.”
Charlotte made herself at home on a comfortable slipcovered sofa and took a glass of iced tea when Samantha returned with a tray. She added lemon and a packet of sugar before she spoke.
“I think I’ve put you in an awkward situation. I take it you and Taylor are friends? And you haven’t told her about seeing me at the park?”
“We’ve been friends since the Academy. Of course she was younger than I was, but a kindred spirit. Neither of us was comfortable there. Now, of course, we have daughters in common.”
“I love watching Edna at the park. She’s quite a diplomat, in the best possible way.”
“I only recognized you last week. How long have you been coming?”
“At first just on and off. Then… Well, a lot recently.”
“I haven’t told Taylor.”
Charlotte wasn’t surprised, given Samantha’s kindness so far. “I want to talk to her, Samantha. Do you think she might listen?”
Samantha was silent for a long time. Charlotte watched as she doctored her tea. She wore a purple T-shirt with sequins sprinkled over swirls of violet, and denim shorts that showcased her long legs. Her movements as she lifted the cup, added sugar and lemon, were like waves in a gentle ocean. Charlotte understood why Edna was so graceful.
“I don’t think she will,” Samantha said at last. “And I’m sure it won’t help to have anyone else plead your case.”
“I would never ask you to do that, but this can’t go on. Nobody should have to keep secrets for me. I never meant to involve anybody else.”
“You must feel so frustrated.”
“That’s the least I deserve.”
Samantha was silent, and Charlotte was glad the younger woman didn’t deny it or make excuses for her.
“This has gone on so long, this trouble between the two of you,” Samantha said at last. “I know time can heal, but sometimes it can magnify pain. I’m afraid that’s what’s happened with this.”
“Do you have a suggestion?”
“Did you know they’re back to square one on medication for Maddie’s seizures? That’s why she wasn’t at the park today. So this is a stressful time for Taylor. Maybe not the best moment to pop back into her life.”
Charlotte wanted every detail, but she knew she had no right to information. Still, she had to ask. “I appreciate the warning, but is there anything at all you can you tell me about Maddie’s condition? Without feeling like you’re betraying Taylor?”
“You probably already know she has temporal lobe epilepsy and they’re on a roller coaster ride. They’re looking for the perfect combination of medications to halt the seizures, but from the reading I’ve done in my nursing journals, I’m not sure it’s that easy. Taylor and her doctor are determined, though.”
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Emilie Richards
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Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: “A powerful and thought-provoking novel that will both break your heart and fill you with hope." —International bestselling author Diane Chamberlain With nothing but brains, ambition and sheer nerve, Charlotte Hale built a career as a tough, do-anything-to-succeed real-estate developer. She’s at the top of that mountain…but her life is empty. Her friends are as grasping and insincere as she has become. Far worse, she′s alienated her family so completely that she′s never held or spoken to her only granddaughter.One terrifying day, facing her own mortality, she realizes that her ambition has almost destroyed her chance at happiness. So Charlotte vows to make amends, not simply with her considerable wealth, but by offering a hand instead of a handout. Putting in hours and energy instead of putting in an appearance.Opening her home and heart instead of her wallet. With each wrenching, exhilarating decision, Charlotte finds that climbing a new mountain—one built on friendship, love and forgiveness—will teach her what it truly means to build a legacy."This is truly a marvelous piece of work.” —New York Times bestselling author Catherine Anderson"Haunts me as few other books have.” New York Times bestselling author Sandra Dallas