Final Rights (20 page)

But all she said was: “You’ll never get it.
I swear you’ll never get it.” She ran into the bedroom and locked the door. He
went wild, smashing everything he could get his hands on, then kicking in the
bedroom door and demanding again.

“It’s for the girl! You’ll never get it! I
swear you’ll never get it!” Her refusal reverberated through his head, clashing
so hard against his belief she would rescue him that he couldn’t make sense of
her words.

When he did, when he understood she would
not give him what he asked for, he stood staring at her dumbstruck. Anger
surged through his veins just as the heroin had, but instead of reaching
nirvana, he exploded in rage. And then he hit her, hard. And kicked her. And
she collapsed and he knew he’d killed her.

As painful as his withdrawal was, it paled
in comparison to the anguish that flooded over him as he saw her in a heap on
the floor. Her beautiful eyes, which used to look at him with such love and
adoration, now radiated only fear and disappointment. He shrank away from her
and ran as fast as his broken body would carry him out of the house and along
the familiar path to the park, to the good place. Maybe he would find the peace
he pursued there.

The ancient old tree welcomed him as usual.
No recriminations, no judgments. He pulled the weathered bench over to the old
swing, climbed up and wrapped the thick rope twice around his neck. He spoke
his final words into the clear, sweet air as he stepped off the bench. “I’m
sorry, Maw. I tried to be good. I love you.”

THIRTY-FOUR

1962

Richard Price handled funeral arrangements for Ellie and
Clayton who were buried side-by-side on a sloping meadow in Riverside Cemetery.
Leland attended the services, still in a daze, and said his final farewell to
Ellie while standing on the exact spot where he would one day rest beside her.
But contrary to his wishes, much time would pass before he joined her there.

All members of the Price household rallied
to create a sanctuary for Leland, who, despite their best efforts, refused
consolation. He slept fitfully in the luxurious guest room, roamed restlessly
through the verdant gardens and consumed only the barest minimum of food and
water.

None of those things
that sustain life seemed relevant to Leland, whose internal battle between
putting a decisive end to his keening grief or living in unabated sorrow raged
on for several days. Ultimately, his final promise to Ellie tethered him
reluctantly to survival. He must see to it that Cally got her things. Then he
would find his way to Ellie. With his mission clear in his mind, he could
finally begin formulating a coherent plan.

The next day, Leland rose early, bathed and
put on clean clothes for the first time since leaving his own home. Exhausted
by the effort, he sat in the courtyard, listening to the early morning songs of
the birds and dozed in and out until his friend joined him, followed shortly by
the housekeeper carrying a breakfast tray for the two of them.

“I’m hungry,” Leland said in an unsteady
voice. This revelation surprised both of them, though it pleased only Richard.

“That’s a good sign, Leland. And I see you
put on different clothes today—another good sign.”

“I’ll have some coffee,”
Leland said as the strong aroma whetted his appetite. He took a small bite of
scrambled eggs. Weakened by days of little sleep or food, Leland’s hand
trembled, prompting Richard to pour the coffee, taking care to fill Leland’s
cup only halfway.

“I want to go back to my house today.”

“I hoped to get the place cleaned up before
you went back, Leland. Why not stay with us? You’re welcome here for as long as
you want.”

“I need to get some things for Cally. I
promised.”

Richard Price’s stomach churned. He had
dreaded this moment ever since he learned Cally was gone, too.

“Can’t that wait awhile, Leland? You need to
get your strength back.”

“I promised Ellie.” Three simple words, yet
they weighed heavily on Leland. Not just any promise—his
last
promise, and he intended to keep it. “I’m going today. It’s
not far. I’ll walk over.”

Leland had no idea if he
would be able to walk the half mile to his house, but he sensed Richard’s
reluctance to help. He would go on his own if he must. Cally would get her
things. And he wanted to see her, to try to explain.
How do you explain
death to a seven year old?

“What things, Leland? I could pick them up
for you and get them to her.” Richard didn’t know how he would accomplish that
since he didn’t know where to find Cally. He’d just heard all the rumors racing
through town about the tragic events surrounding Ellie’s and Clayton’s deaths,
among them that Rita and Cally had abruptly left Asheville the following day.
He had avoided telling Leland for obvious reasons.

“I can do it, Richard. I don’t want to stay
there. I’ll get the things, take them to Cally’s house, then come back here.”
Leland had eaten a few more bites of breakfast. He took a sip of coffee and
rose to go, determined to carry out his task.

“Leland . . . I need to tell you . . .”
Richard’s voice cracked as he choked back tears.

“What?”
What now?
Alarm shot through Leland’s whole being. Something was wrong.
How could anything else be wrong?
“. . . Richard?”

“I’m so sorry, Leland. I didn’t want to tell
you. Cally is gone. Her mother took her away.”

Aghast at the news and the sudden prospect
of not keeping his word to Ellie, Leland took a step backward, clipping his
heel on the chair leg. He tumbled to the flagstone landing, hitting his head on
a huge earthenware planter on the way down, and passed out. When he finally
regained consciousness, he found himself lying on a small bed in a ward in the
state hospital.

Years
accumulated into decades. Leland Howard played little part in his own life, if
one could call it a life, signing over the right to make all decisions on his
behalf to his friend, Richard Price, who recognized with the help of the
doctors that Leland would remain at risk of suicide if left on his own.

Leland never returned to the house he built
for Ellie, visited the gravesites of his family nor reestablished an active
existence. For those in the community he had once called home, he seemed to
simply disappear, leaving behind ever-mutating stories about the dramatic
events of March 15, 1962. Even they eventually faded into oblivion. He also
left behind an unassuming house with a grand door and a workshop full of
beautiful, one-of-a-kind works of art, demand for which sent their value
skyrocketing. Fortunately, he had a dear friend who managed his estate and his
care with dedicated devotion, flawless integrity and financial acuity.

As for Leland, he spent the years
sequestered, first in the mental hospital where he underwent treatment for
severe depression, including electric shock treatment, and then Forest Glen
where he eventually settled into a quiet life. Over time and with great effort,
he successfully sealed up his memories and buried them deeply in his
subconscious, allowing him to live around the edges of the overwhelming
emotions they contained.

But today, as he sat working small pieces of
basswood into intricate ornaments ready for hand-painting and sale at the
upcoming Christmas Bazaar, the veils between those two worlds—one carefully
constructed over the ruins of the other—fell away with a few words uttered by a
stranger.

“Gampa, it’s me. It’s Cally.”

THIRTY-FIVE

2004

It
had been the most eventful three weeks in Cally’s life. She had let Lauren go,
left Los Angeles and her career, driven herself across the continent, searched
for her roots, not found them, then met Tate and found not only her roots but
so much more. She had found her grandfather. She had found home.

It is often said in Asheville, by those who
leave and then return, that once you live in Asheville, you always come back.
The city affects people that way—captivates them, draws them in, makes them its
own. Asheville chose Cally as much as she chose it.

Though she loved the little city, she had
nearly forgotten about it during those long years in California. Her grief over
leaving her grandparents had eventually faded, and with its passing, the
peaceful days of her childhood spent with them retreated to a dusty corner of
her mind. She had left them locked away there to appease her mother, who
refused to talk about anything related to their old life in the mountains.

Of the few memories Cally retained from her
childhood, the night they left Asheville remained the most vivid. Rita packed
only those belongings that would fit into the back of their beat up VW Beetle,
secured Cally in the passenger seat and headed west.

“Where are we going?” Cally asked.

Rita gave no response. She stared into the
night and drove silently for several minutes while her daughter waited. When
she spoke, her voice sounded different. Had Rita been willing to name it, she would
have said terror, bewilderment, disbelief—maybe all of them—had taken hold of
her. But she would not name the pandemonium raging inside her, not to her
child, not even to herself. “We’re never going to talk about this place again,
do you hear me?”
 

That night, the mother
Cally had known all her life vanished, and Rita would never seem the same to
Cally again.

Cally attempted the next day, as they
continued west, to get Rita to take them back home. “Momma, I want to see Gamma
. . .”

Rita glared at her. “I told you we were
never going to talk about it again, Cally.”
 

“But, Momma, I want to see her so bad my
heart hurts!” She broke into ragged sobs.

“I said NO!” Then the new mother lifted her
hand off the steering wheel, swooshing the back of it menacingly close to
Cally’s face as if to strike the little girl who instinctively crouched against
the car door.

“You listen to me, Cally,” Rita hissed. “I
told you last night we are never going to talk about any of those people back
there again. I just can’t bear to do it.” Her voice softened as she saw the
fear and misery in her child’s eyes. “Cally, we can’t . . . I just can’t talk
about them no more, please . . .”

“I miss them, Momma. I miss them so bad.”
Cally finally acquiesced and stopped asking to go home. Even at 7 years old a
child can understand when something changes forever. She may not know what, she
may not know why. But she can know something special is gone and will never
return.

“I know,” said Rita. Then she turned her
attention back to the road stretching out before her—dry, dusty and
barren—hoping with each mile she and her child would survive what laid behind
and what lay ahead.

By the time they reached Los Angeles, Rita
had tucked all her feelings about what had happened in Asheville away in a
chamber buried somewhere deep inside herself. She spent the rest of her life
keeping the door to that chamber tightly closed, using alcohol, mind-numbing
work and a series of irrelevant men as guardians to her secrets. In the
process, she would also close out her child, who nonetheless held as closely to
her as Rita would allow.

Rita’s untimely death at age 54 shocked everyone but
surprised no one. Her decades of heavy drinking resulted in cirrhosis of the
liver which buddied up with diabetes and heart disease to create a direct path
to an early demise. Cally had begun preparing herself to deal with a sickly and
aging mother while still in high school many years earlier. It never occurred
to her Rita might go suddenly rather than lingering on to suffer the
indignities of a deteriorating body and mind. Being hit by a bus after
stumbling half-drunk into the street proved a much better way to go, really,
and Cally felt only a bit guilty for being relieved when her mother died in
exactly that way.

In the days and weeks following Rita’s
death, Cally did her best to take care of tying up the remaining aspects of her
mother’s broken life. She arranged for the funeral and notified the few people
who called Rita “friend,” all the while dealing with the cleaving pain of
having no relatives to call with the news.

Much of what she found
in her mother’s cramped and cluttered studio apartment went directly into the
trash. Anything with value she packed up and carted off to Goodwill.
There are no
memories for me here. Nothing to keep. Nothing to cherish.
Those thoughts
predominated, leaving Cally in despair as she moved methodically through her
mother’s house, cleaning out all remnants of a barren life.

She worked in spits and spurts, knowing she
need not rush. She could afford to pay the rent on the place until she got it
emptied out. After devoting her life to keeping her mother as close as
possible, refusing to let Rita drift away, it never occurred to Cally she could
hire someone to clear out the apartment rather than doing it herself. This
chore, awful though it was, represented her last physical connection to Rita.
So she dragged herself through the task with no expectation other than
eventually finishing it.

Cally loaded the last box for the thrift
store into her car and then felt compelled to do one more walk-through before
locking the door for the final time. She peeked into the medicine cabinet,
checked out all the cupboards and opened the closet door to take another look.
Strong, late-afternoon sunlight streamed through the picture window
illuminating the usually dark space, and light bounced off something stuck far
back in the corner.

Cally stooped down and pulled a battered
wooden cigar box from a depression in the back wall. A flood of memories rushed
over her as she pulled it close to her chest and began sobbing uncontrollably.

She clutched the box and savored the thought
of what she knew she would find inside. The earthy, musty fragrance of old
tobacco would be there along with the rough finish and the yellowed
inscription:

Lewis’ Single Binder 5 Cent Cigar

spelled
out in fading letters. And it would have treasures in it. It would hold
memories. This old box had always contained her mother’s most cherished
possessions. Cally instinctively knew it still did.

She cried herself to sleep there on the
floor of her mother’s vacant apartment. She woke to an incredible sunset, the
sky streaked with clouds tinted purple, pink, orange and gold, and Jacob’s
Ladders glinting off the distant ocean. Her arms remained tightly wrapped
around her unexpected prize.

Cally stood and opened the west-facing
windows, letting in the cooling evening air, then sat leaning against the wall,
cradling the cigar box. After several minutes, she lifted the lid with shaking
hands and began sorting through the items one by one, taking her time with
each.

Some of them she remembered. A tiny bracelet
given to her mother as a child, which she herself had been allowed to wear on
very special occasions; some old greeting cards from Rita’s boyfriends; a
decrepit rabbit’s foot on a thin ball chain; a report card with an “A” in
Reading and scrawled beside it in Rita’s hand “my first A!” She remembered her
mother showing her the report card and admonishing Cally to “do good in school,
like I never did.”

She did not expect what she found next. She
pulled out a picture she had never seen before—a barely recognizable Ellie as a
happy and vibrant girl, her face aglow with a huge smile. Her frothy hair stood
atop her head, secured there with a fancy scarf tied rakishly over her right
ear. She wore a simple cotton dress with a fitted bodice and pleated skirt.

As she stared at the picture, Cally reached
back in time trying to connect with her grandmother. She did not know this
exuberant young woman, the teenaged Ellie in the photo. She had known only the
matronly Ellie, the subdued woman who smiled but never laughed out loud, the
one who rocked a tiny Cally to sleep at naptime, and who later taught her to
crochet doilies and bake brownies.

The next item surprised Cally even more.
Tucked behind the picture she found an aged, folded note with her name penciled
on the front. A strange sensation flooded over her as she reached for it. She
felt spacey, her breath quickened, and her heart began pounding. The corner of
the room seemed to fill with a misty, white light with no obvious source.
It’s so fragile
. This thought rolled through Cally’s head
as she opened the note carefully so as not to damage it. It read:

There is
always something waiting for you

where the home
fire burns.

I love you
dearly and forever.

Gamma

Emotions engulfed Cally in huge waves—grief,
joy, rage, disbelief, confusion.
Where
did this come from? Why didn’t Gamma give it to me herself? Why did Mom hide it
away all these years? I’m so glad I found it. It’s a miracle I didn’t leave it
behind . . .

And then, gratitude and love surfaced,
filling every cell in Cally’s body. Her heart overflowing with thoughts of her
mother, who, for reasons Cally could not comprehend, had both hidden and
preserved this precious gift from her grandmother, she spoke aloud through her
wracking sobs: “Thank you, Mom. Thank you so much for keeping this for me.” The
light in the corner glimmered brightly before receding. Rita’s final gift had
been found. Cally waited until her crying subsided, then gathered up the box
along with all its treasures and left the little apartment for the last time.