Wind trembled through the magnolia tree; leaves plunged to the ground in a twirling ballet. Annabelle stepped off the porch toward the tree. She remembered what the expert had told her-that this tree would not stand for long, that the extra weight and pull of the new offshoots would weaken the main trunk. She hadn"t wanted to believe him because to her this tree represented her family. They didn"t pull one another down, but held one another up through buffeting winds and storms.
Now it seemed important that she be right about this, that the tree still stood strong and sure, that the leaves and branches were healthy and thriving, that the root system went deep. Annabelle knelt at the tree"s base and ran her hand along the k.n.o.bby ground, up the trunk and through the lower branches, where her children once hid when it was time for ch.o.r.es or homework.
The branches remained firm, the leaves waxy, green. Her relief was so great, she finally allowed the sobs to come-the weeping she had withheld all during the eight-hour drive from the place where Liddy Parker had lived with her daughter, Sofie, the last piece of earth her husband had touched. The ground below the magnolia absorbed her tears of sorrow and confusion, the root system nourished by her own loss and uncertainty.
She leaned against the trunk, allowed it to hold her up as exhaustion followed and her eyes closed. She stretched out on the ground and laid her head on a thick protruding root. Her eyes stung, her head ached as she whispered, "I"m home."
A peace that only comes with letting go washed over her. Trust was moving and breathing again inside her, turning to faith in Knox even though she didn"t understand his actions.
Keeley"s voice screeched across the yard, shattering the quiet. It took Annabelle a moment to realize what she was saying. "What is wrong with you? Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind?"
Keeley stood with her hands flailing, staring at Annabelle as though she were indeed insane. Annabelle sat up, wiped her face where she felt the grit of dirt and moss on her cheek. "I"m fine, Keeley. You can stop screaming at me."
Keely turned away from her as though she were ashamed to look at her, to see her dirty face and clothes. Annabelle stood and touched her daughter"s shoulder.
Keeley spun around again, her expression contorted with emotion. "What are you doing? Why are you lying in the dirt?"
Annabelle read the trepidation under Keeley"s anger. She had lost her father and didn"t understand why. And now it appeared that her mother had completely lost her mind. All this time, Annabelle had thought the glittering anger emanating from Keeley stemmed from hate, but the emotion moving, living and breathing in Keely was fear.
New relief filled Annabelle. She could not cleanse her daughter of anger or hate, but she could a.s.suage Keeley"s terror. She touched her daughter"s arm. "I"m fine. We"re all fine. I was out here rejoicing in the strength of our family, in the strong roots we have. We"re okay."
Keeley wiped at her face, as if this could remove the emotions shifting across her features. "What about . . . Dad? He"s not okay, and he"s not who we thought. What if . . . what if he really was leaving us?"
Annabelle held both Keeley"s shoulders in her hands, held her fast so Keeley had to look into Annabelle"s eyes. "I know this feeling, Keeley. I"ve been there. I know what you"re thinking."
Keeley shoved Annabelle"s hands off her shoulders. "There is no way you know what I"m thinking. You can"t read my mind."
"You"re thinking this: you"re scared to death that everything you"ve believed about your father is an illusion. That everything that has guided your life, the very foundation of your life, is false, a lie. It"s a terrible place to be, a terrible place to live. It"s dark and scary and twirling with ugly thoughts, and all of a sudden nothing seems to matter anymore-not school, not friends, not family. Nothing really matters because what you believed isn"t true. That"s why I ran off to North Carolina." Annabelle stopped and took a deep breath, realized the words had come too fast, too bluntly.
Keeley bent over, placed her hands on her knees. "Stop, Mom. Please shut up."
Annabelle placed her hand on top of Keeley"s chestnut curls and remembered holding this child against her breast, shushing her to sleep, patting her back until her breathing smoothed out and she could place her in the crib next to her night-night doggie stuffed animal and let her sleep in peace. Oh, to do that now, Annabelle thought, to place her hand on Keeley"s head until sleep and peace came that easily.
"Oh, Keeley. Just remember. Just remember one thing about your father, and you"ll know. Think."
Keeley straightened and her hard, wet eyes and clenched, trembling jaw were a portrait of confused emotions. She set her feet in motion and ran barefoot across the lawn toward the road, toward the park and bay. Her frayed jeans, her untucked tank top were too loose on her small frame.
Annabelle watched until Keeley reached the edge of the bay and stopped at the dock. Then Annabelle went after her. When she arrived at Keeley"s side, Keeley twirled around. "Leave me alone. I mean it. Leave. Me. Alone."
"No," Annabelle said.
"Why? Why can"t you just go away?"
"Because I love you too much, and I can"t have you thinking wrongly. You are part of me, Keeley. You cannot, ever, make me stop loving you-no matter what you say or how you act."
"You say that now. But look at Dad-he obviously stopped loving us. And you know it."
"I don"t know any such thing."
"Give me a freaking break, Mother. He ran off with some woman. If you call that loving us, you"re delusional."
"It was Liddy Parker. She was the woman who once owned the art studio here."
Keeley went still, stared out over the water. "I don"t remember her, but I"ve heard people talk about how she started the art studio. Don"t we have one of her paintings?"
"Yes, the one in the foyer," Annabelle said, realizing she still had not stepped into her house and looked at the painting with fresh eyes.
"That"s sick. We have Dad"s mistress" painting in our house? I think I"m going to throw up."
"I don"t think she was his mistress, Keeley. I did think that, but I don"t believe it now."
"Then why the h.e.l.l was she in that plane?"
Annabelle touched her daughter"s face and considered reprimanding her for the curse word, but changed her mind. "Your dad was taking her to see her sick mother in Colorado. That is all I know."
"How can you be so sure he wasn"t . . . with her? There isn"t any other explanation. Unless you"re not telling me something . . ."
"No, there seems to be a lot of mystery around this woman. I went to Newboro because that"s where she lived with her little girl, Sofie. And everyone there believes she is someone else entirely."
"Either way, Dad lied to us."
"Or didn"t tell us the entire story."
"Same thing." Keeley kicked at the ground. "He said he was going hunting alone in Colorado, not flying with some woman from Newboro."
Annabelle nodded.
"Don"t have an answer for that one, do you, Mother?"
"No, I don"t. You"re right about this, Keeley, I don"t have the answer to everything. I can only tell you what I believe."
Keeley took four steps away before she turned around and headed down the bay toward the beach. Annabelle fell into step beside her. They walked in silence until they reached the end of the bay. Together they cut across the wooden boardwalk that was built so no one would walk on the sand dunes and hurt the roots of the sea oats. When they reached the sand, Keeley bent over, rolled her jeans up to her knees. Annabelle pulled off her shoes, placed them side by side on the beach.
They stood, mother and daughter, in silence until Annabelle whispered, "Remember when your dad brought us out here for the lunar eclipse?" She reached down, picked up a smooth sh.e.l.l, bleached white and pure, rolled her thumb into the concave portion, and handed it to Keeley. "Remember?"
Keeley took the sh.e.l.l, held it in her open palm, and then closed her hand around it. "Yes, I remember. He woke me and Jake up in the middle of the night, wrapped us in blankets. Jake walked, dragging his blanket in the sand, and Dad carried me. We lay on the blankets, stared up at the sky, and he told us that story about the G.o.d racing across the sky in a chariot."
Annabelle laughed. "That"s probably why Jake is so into Greek and Roman mythology. It"s all Dad"s fault."
Keeley"s eyes opened wide. "You know about that?"
"You mean that your brother dropped out this semester because he wants to change majors?"
"Oh, I thought he didn"t tell you."
"He told me in Newboro."
"He was there, too?"
"Yes, he was worried about me, which he shouldn"t have been-but I was glad for his company. He"s still there. He wanted to stay another day or so."
"This is crazy." Keeley bent down, picked up another sh.e.l.l. "Remember when Dad came to career day dressed like a fireman because he thought his real job was too boring for me, and he wanted to make the cla.s.s laugh?"
Annabelle felt a giggle rise in her belly, and as if it were a loved one returned, she welcomed the feeling. "Yes, I remember."
"It might have been funny in second grade, but this was eighth grade. I wanted to crawl under my desk."
Annabelle reached down and picked up another sh.e.l.l, cream-colored and cracked, held it up to the sun. "Remember when Jake brought home that girlfriend none of us liked?"
"The one with the tongue ring?"
"No, not her. I liked her. The one with the makeup so thick she looked like a mannequin."
Keeley laughed and Annabelle wanted to take that sound, wrap her arms around it and carry it in her heart like a gift. "Oh, Mom, Lilly-Rose was her name. And Dad asked her why her mother named her after two flowers instead of just one, and she told Dad it was because she was double sweet and Dad said, "Yeah, I smelled that when you walked in the door." "
Keeley took the third sh.e.l.l from her mother"s hand, held them all together and rolled them between her palms until they sounded like wind chimes. "This is how, huh?"
"How what?" Annabelle asked.
"This is how you believe. You just add them all together. All the remembers-you add them together and you believe."
"Yes," Annabelle said; her voice cracked. "We don"t know all the reasons yet, but we do know certain things."
Without answering, Keeley began to walk farther down the beach. Annabelle didn"t follow-this time it was right for Keeley to walk alone. Annabelle watched her for a few moments as Keely bent over, picked up a sh.e.l.l, ran her fingers over it. Annabelle turned toward home.
Grace Clark stood in the kitchen emptying the dishwasher; Annabelle came up behind her mother and hugged her around the middle. Grace turned and smiled at her. "Tough trip?"
"Yes," Annabelle said, took two gla.s.ses from the dishwasher and placed them in the cupboard. "Take a break, Mom. Sit down."
Together they sat at the counter. Grace held out her hand for Annabelle, who squeezed it. "Thanks for helping me, Mom. I would never have asked if I didn"t really need it."
"You know how much I love Keeley. It was no problem at all. You feel like talking about what happened while you were gone?"
Annabelle rubbed her eyes. "Mom, did you ever think Dad was lying . . . or keeping something from you? I know it"s a strange question, but do you think we can know everything there is to know about the person we love?"
"No, we can"t. We all keep secrets, Belle. Sometimes we won"t admit it even to ourselves, but there are s.p.a.ces in our hearts where we hide things from ourselves and others. Do I think your dad lived a life of integrity and honor? Yes. Do I think he might have kept some things from me? Of course."
"Do you think he ever had an affair?"
"No, I don"t think so. But how can we ever really know?"
Annabelle sighed. "That"s what I"m trying to figure out."
Grace squeezed Annabelle"s hand. "Darling, you don"t have to figure everything out. Life is confusing and messy and doesn"t always make sense. Remember the hurricane?"
"Mom, how could I not?"
"It was the worst time of my life. I was so worried about you and the pregnancy. Worried about the house. Sick about my family"s heirlooms. But do you see how far we"ve come since then? Who we are?"
"What do you mean?"
"Out of that brokenness, out of that tragedy, came a new and stronger house, a marriage between you and Knox that gave me my grandbabies, a sense of community that had never existed in Marsh Cove. . . . You don"t have to figure this all out. You only have to know what you know."
Annabelle stared off toward the hallway, felt the crunch of sand between her toes. She pulled a sh.e.l.l from her jacket, laid it on the kitchen counter.
Grace stood. "I have to get to my garden club meetin". Call me if you need me." She kissed Annabelle on the cheek and held her in a hug a fraction longer than usual.
When her mother had left, Annabelle took a gla.s.s jar from the kitchen cupboard, placed it on the front hall table and dropped her sh.e.l.l into it. She would collect the sh.e.l.ls she found. She would gather memories and keep them in a place of honor in her home and in her heart.
EIGHTEEN.
SOFIE MILSTEAD.
Every breath brought sharp pain into Sofie"s chest, and when she willed herself not to take another, somehow air was forced into her lungs. She contracted her abdomen, tried to release a cry, but her speech was stopped.
She pried her eyes open and saw the lights-too bright. Her hand weighed too much, and when she tried to lift it to shield her eyes, it wouldn"t move. One by one the sensations of her body came to her: needle in the right hand, plastic in her nose, restraints on her wrists. She glanced frantically around the room: taupe drapes closed over what she a.s.sumed were windows, a white curtain between her and the next bed. After the freedom she"d found deep underwater, she was now trapped in its opposite: her personal h.e.l.l, penance for all her lies and deceit.
Monitors beeped next to her ear, but she couldn"t turn her head to see what they measured. The most significant pain came from her chest, where each breath burned.
She attempted to piece together the events that had brought her here. Nothing came to mind except a slight remembrance of waking, of Bedford in the shower, then static-filled noise and no memory.
An empty metal chair faced her bed as if someone had just vacated it. An upholstered chair was shoved in the far-left corner against the drapes. Oh, how she wanted to cry out, to call for someone.
She closed her eyes and told herself to remain calm; she was in a hospital and someone would check on her soon. Then loud voices filled the room-words overlapping so that, like her mother"s paintings, she could understand only the general meaning, not the specifics.
The voices belonged to Bedford and Jake. They were arguing about her safety, Bedford saying Jake was not allowed to enter the room. Bedford thought Jake had hurt her, had brought her to this state. Had he?
Confusion spread down her arms and legs in a tingling sensation. She was diving. Yes, she"d been diving and something had happened.
She opened her eyes, tried to sit up, call out to Jake that he was allowed to come in. The door swished open on air hinges, and both men entered the room. Bedford"s hand was on Jake"s upper arm, attempting to pull him out again. They both stopped in midstep when they saw her staring at them.
Bedford released Jake, came to her bedside. "Oh, baby, you"re awake. You"re okay."
She attempted to shake her head that she was not okay, that she needed to pull the tubes out of her nose and arm, but she couldn"t move.