Cancel the Wedding (10 page)

As I worked my way toward the rear of the house there would have been the formal dining room. Was there a chandelier? Were the walls plastered? Wallpapered? Maybe a hand-painted mural?

From there one would pass through the butler's pantry to the kitchen. Who did the cooking in there once her mother died? I knew it wasn't my mother or she and her father would have starved. I laughed to myself as I thought again of my mother's awful cooking.

Elliott was walking up the small hill to the oak tree and the graveyard. I think he was trying to give me some time to absorb all of this.

I called my sister, Georgia. When she answered I said, “Guess where I'm standing.”

“Um, at our grandparents' grave in the cemetery?”

“Nope. At the ruins of Mom's house.”

“Oh my God! No way! You found it?”

I filled her in on our day of research at the library and how we had come to find the site of the house. I described it all to her as best I could. I really wanted her to be here with me to see all of this. I glanced over at Logan, who was still picking the wildflowers.

I called out to her. “Lo! Stop picking the flowers.”

Georgia asked, “Why can't she pick the flowers?”

“They were planted by a garden club or something. There's a sign that specifically tells you not to pick them. I can't wait for you to come down here, Gigi. You need to see all of this.”

I could hear her flipping paper and could see her clearly in my mind's eye standing in her kitchen, looking through her calendar. “I know. Should I try to come down this weekend? No, Adam has a baseball tournament. Maybe Monday? William's trying to get out of that sales trip to San Diego.” She let out a big breath. “I don't know.”

I knew she was feeling left out. “Don't worry, really. There's no rush. This place isn't going anywhere.” The image of Georgia thumbing through her calendar reminded me of the date. “Mom's birthday! That's when we should scatter her ashes.” It was in a few weeks. I knew from watching my father's birthday loom over us the first year after he died that it would be a bad day anyway. Why not pile all the depression into one really awful horrible bad day?

“Aw, that's a good idea, Livie. You and I can fly back down there and spend the night. You can show me the town.”

Hearing Georgia say “fly back down” made it sound like I would be leaving Tillman any minute, heading back home. Something in my stomach lurched at the thought; for some reason that I couldn't quite grasp I was in no hurry to leave Tillman.

Elliott was standing under the tree on the hill. He called out from the small family graveyard. “Hey, I found something!”

Georgia asked, “Who's with you?”

“Elliott and Graham brought us out here by boat.”

“Oh, Graham is the one Logan likes?”

I whispered into the phone. “Don't tell her I told you!”

“I won't. And Elliott, is he the old newspaper guy?”
Yes, the Wilford Brimleyesque newspaperman. He managed to climb up here with his walker.

“Yeah, he's helping us with the research, in case there's a story there for the paper. And he's not really that old.” I walked over to Logan and said, “Do you want to talk to Lo?” Then I handed her the phone.

I wasn't lying to Georgia about Elliott. She had come up with the idea that he was older all by herself. I didn't give it to her. I just wasn't correcting her. She would just worry unnecessarily if she knew that Elliott was, through no fault of his own, very good-looking. I didn't see the point in bringing it up.

Logan immediately asked her mom if she could speak to her little brothers. After a beat I heard her voice change to a sweet and caring tone. She was asking Will about his little league game and how his skinned knee was healing. I think she missed her pesky little siblings.

As I walked up to where Elliott was, he knelt down and wiped some dirt off one of the headstones and wrote down what it said. He folded the page back on the small spiral notebook he was holding and then tucked his pencil behind his ear. He was sweating from the heat of the afternoon and it was making his shirt stick to his back. I could see the outline of his shoulders clearly as I got closer. I slowed down a bit and watched the way his body tensed and moved as he balanced himself. One single bead of sweat trailed down the length of his darkly tanned neck and as I watched it I forgot for just a moment what exactly I was doing there.

Suddenly he popped up on his feet, snapping me out of my trance. I shook myself back to the present as I approached the small gate. It creaked as I pushed it open and then it stuck so that I had to squeeze through it. I closed it behind me for some reason. Who was I trying to hold in here anyway?

Elliott wrote something else in his little spiral notebook and then put it in his pocket. I asked, “So what did you find?”

The graveyard held about thirty plots. Most of the headstones were simple granite pieces carved with names and dates. There was one large obelisk on a dais that was clearly someone important. A few of the newer markers had more elaborate dedications with Bible verses and carved motifs of the life lived. Crossed cavalry swords, bouquets of flowers, hands in prayer.

Elliott said, “I've never even been in here. Isn't that weird? All the times I've been up here and I've never come in the cemetery.”

I squatted down to run my finger along the dates of one of the more weathered stones. Died in eighteen seventy-five. “Well, they probably didn't put the keg in here, so you had no reason to open the gate.”

He pushed me over. “Oh look at that. You seem to have fallen.”

“Elliott!” He was like a kid. I put my hand out and he took it to help me back up, redeeming himself.

“Olivia, this is your family's graveyard.” His arms were spread out wide. “These are the Huntley Rutledges. Well, and a few other names thrown in for good measure.” He grabbed my hand and led me to the far side of the fenced-in graveyard. “I think this must be your grandparents.”

We stood together as we read the inscription on the double headstone. On the right was my grandmother:

M
ARTHA
C
ALHOUN
R
UTLEDGE

B
ORN
1910, D
IED
1956.

L
OVING
WIFE
AND DEVOTED MOTHER
.

On the left was my grandfather:

H
ON
. W
INCHESTER
T
ILLMAN
R
UTLEDGE

B
ORN
1906, D
IED
1967.

H
ONEST
,
TRUE
,
AND A FRIEND TO ALL
. L
OVING
HUSBAND
AND DEVOTED FATHER
.

I realized I was still holding Elliott's hand and I let go. I cleared my throat. “It's so strange to be here and see this.”

Elliott gestured to the surrounding headstones. “Your people go back to the early eighteen hundreds. The big one—”

“The obelisk.”

“Right. That's George Howell Huntley. Huntley County was named for him. He was a Revolutionary War hero. And over there is a whole line of Calhouns and more than one Tillman.”

Howell, Calhoun, Tillman: these were all the names I had heard from the innkeeper Mrs. Chatham when she was blathering on about the family lines in the town. Now I wished I had paid more attention. Maybe I had the provenance to be one of them. I was starting to understand what it might mean to be one of the Huntley Rutledges.

I wandered around the small graveyard reading the headstones as Elliott continued to take notes, writing down every name and the date of each headstone. There were so many babies and young children buried here. It was a reminder of how difficult it had once been just to make it to adulthood.

As I read through all of the names I realized I was recognizing half of the street names in the town. These people, “my people” as Elliott had called them, were an integral part of this community. They had obviously helped to build this area, these towns. It was strange that we never knew about any of it. That we had never been a part of it.

My sister and I had grown up like nomads. Both of my parents had been only children and both were so much older when they had us that their parents had long since died. We were a family with no ties, no strings or tethers to anyplace or anyone. We were utterly adrift. That had never bothered me. We had our little unit and we were solid. When other people had to endure family gatherings and dinners I just felt sorry for them. And extended family reunions? I would shudder at the thought. All of those strangers that you pretended were family just because you shared a name? Absurd.

But as I stood there looking at a spot rooted with generations of my family I suddenly felt a little bit lonely. I wanted to have a place that was home. A place that had ties to things that made me who I was before I was ever even a consideration. I wanted a connection to the generations behind me.

I made a conscious decision to force out any anger I might have felt toward my mother for keeping all of this from us. She had her reasons. I may never know what they were but I had to remind myself that I loved her and trusted her. I may never understand her, but I had to trust her.

Logan came over and hopped the gate and plopped into the graveyard.

“A little respect for the place please, Logan.”

“Sheesh. Sorry. So who are all of these people?”

“These”—I waved my hands at the headstones—“are your relatives.”

“Cool.”

Yes, it was. I would have to see it that way instead of seeing it as something that had been denied me. I had all of this now and that would have to be enough.

I took some pictures with my cell phone camera and sent them to Georgia and Leo. Logan wandered around laying her illegally picked wildflowers on the graves of the babies and kids.

I took the paper bag that was holding our picnic lunch and ripped it open until it was a smooth sheet of brown paper. I placed it flat against the carvings of flowers on my grandmother's headstone and used Elliott's pencil to do a rubbing.

I was staring at the image of huge mop-headed clusters of flowers that had been transferred to the paper. Elliott stood behind me and looking over my shoulder said, “Hydrangeas.”

We left the graveyard and spent some more time wandering around the ruins of the house. Well, I wandered around the ruins. Graham and Logan were sunning themselves at the edge of the water and Elliott was fixing a broken cleat on the boat.

Eventually we spread out our picnic at the dock on the lake. We ate our sandwiches with our feet dangling in the cool water.

Elliott was flipping through his notebook. “I'll make you an ancestral chart when we get back. I have a program on my computer we can use. You just plug in the names and dates and it creates the chart.”

“Thanks. I would really love that.” I turned my attention back to the house and looked at the chimney stacks rising from the ground. “I can't quite get over being here. Seeing that we're related to all of these people. I can't explain what it's like to go your whole life thinking you don't have any family and then . . . you stumble across this whole history. It's just weird.” I thought back to the grace and charm I had encountered since arriving in Tillman. I may be related to them from some long-ago line of people, but I wasn't like them. “I feel like I don't really fit in here though.”

Elliott agreed. “You really don't.” I was kind of offended, which I think he could read on my face because he started laughing at me. “I meant that as a compliment. It's nice to talk to someone who actually says what she's thinking. Sometimes people are so polite that they stop saying anything of any value. It can be tedious, so much civility.”

“Well, that's the same everywhere. People here are just a lot more charming about it.”

Graham butted into the conversation. “We are super charming.” He nudged Logan with his shoulder and she giggled.

He was a funny kid. I tapped the notebook where Elliott had written all of the names in the cemetery. “How many people were in there?”

Elliott counted the names. “Thirty-four. I wonder if we can find any photos of them now that we know their full names.”

Logan said, “Thirty-five.”

“What?”

She said, “There were thirty-five graves.”

Elliott went back through his notes. “Are you sure? I only have thirty-four. I must have missed one.”

Logan was putting on lip gloss. She smacked her lips. “It didn't have a name. It was that rock at the edge, like over by the fence. It just has an
O
carved in it. But why would it be there if it wasn't a grave?”

Elliott looked at me and I just shrugged. He flipped to the next page in his notebook and wrote: “O? Date?”

We finally climbed aboard the boat to head back. As we cruised over the water, I stood with Elliott at the front of the boat because Logan was sitting in the back with Graham.

Elliott leaned close to me so that I could hear him over the sound of the motor and the wind. “So, what are you two doing tomorrow?”

“I promised to teach Logan how to drive.”

Elliott winced. “You might need a drink after that.”

I laughed. “Definitely.”

Elliott leaned back into his chair steering the boat effortlessly with two fingers hooked over the edge of the steering wheel. There was a thin, straight tan line from his sunglasses running along the side of his face. The wind whipped around his head, blowing hair in his eyes but he made no move to tame it. He tapped his hand on the edge of the boat; he had made up his mind about something. “I know where we need to go.”

We?
I said, “Has Logan been orchestrating another date?”

Elliott made a face as if he hadn't considered Logan and Graham. “Sure, they should come too.”