Grave of Hummingbirds (19 page)

In the end, keeping her secrets from him had gotten her sick. So much anguish choked up inside had turned bad. She’d had long days and nights to ponder her compromise. It must have been torture.

“We would have found a way together. Did you not know me? I would have found a way. I could have . . .” His voice broke. “I would have . . .” He bent forward and, from the depths of a heart he felt could take no more breaking, began to unravel. He cursed the relationship she’d had with Alberto that excluded him, damned her loyalty to Penelope, railed at her for giving him her life at the expense of his son’s.

Ultimately, her sacrifice had cost him both.

A storm gathered without warning, releasing torrents of slanting rain. The yew trees groaned. Gregory welcomed the lashing as the water slammed into his face and pounded his head. Pools of mud collected quickly on the fresher graves. A shivering began that seemed to start outside his body, beneath his feet. It took hold like a seizure, causing his thoughts to spasm and reel, questions to roll and tumble. Sifting through the deluge, he fought for a grip on logic, then pushed it away because clarity made it worse.

She was right. He would never have let her give away their son.

Gregory could hardly see through the pelting rain. Drops, hard as hail, clattered against Nita’s headstone and stung his face.

He might have ended up a different man, a man rooted too early in a place he’d fought to escape. Who knows? Maybe a man she could no longer love.

But look what her understanding of him had done. Her care had laid everything to waste. Her love had sealed her torment shut and allowed it to ravage her from within. How could love do so much damage? How could he have allowed all this destruction?

As suddenly as it had begun, the rain stopped. Shaking, his heart pounding, Gregory opened his eyes. In the shadows cast by the lights from the house, two indistinct shapes watched him, and a third bobbed her head before spreading her wings to lift away and soar effortlessly up, up, over the logging road to the higher crags. Incredulous, Gregory followed her progress, then whirled and reached out to the figures who remained. But they were already turning away.

“No, wait, wait. I’ll come with you.” His words emerged as a breathless plea. “Don’t leave me here.”

Nita looked up toward the house, then she and Alberto moved off.

As Gregory discarded the need to make sense of anything, his breath returned with a shuddering heave, filling his lungs and pushing him to his feet, his heartbeat now strong and steady.

The moon appeared, and his ghosts dissolved in the fractured light of swiftly moving clouds.

Gregory’s arms hung at his sides. A gaping hole inside slowly filled with possibility.

The earth settled.

He wiped the rain off his face with his sleeve.

From a long way away, one of the horses snorted.

Peering up toward the house, he saw Sophie silhouetted at the window. She was looking out over the garden and the small cemetery.

Gregory slowly made his way up the slope toward the barn and stables. The horses nickered when they saw him, and he checked on each of them, taking time to inhale the scent of their manes and shaggy coats.

He’d make an uncertain but inescapable choice that signaled a turning away from the past. Away from Nita and Alberto. Perhaps Gregory was safe to make this choice and still keep them in that part of him that would, could never forget, a place that they would share for as long as he lived.

As he made his way around to the front door, the air moved like a wave above him. It was the festival condor, rising high above the rocky crags to circle the sky.

Gregory stepped inside, and as he climbed the stairs, the house itself sighed, stirring on its worn velvet sofa, and slept.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I
am grateful to you, the reader. You’re the final stop on this book’s journey, the landing where all the long hours of imagining, research, and writing come together. You give the work meaning.

Thanks to my San Francisco State University peers and professors, Maxine Chernoff and Robert Glück, who taught me so much about storytelling and, in the end, found this book a worthy thesis for my MFA. Thank you, too, San Francisco State University, for choosing the work as the winner of the Clark-Gross Award in the Novel.

To my fellow authors at Author Salon, thank you for the hours you devoted to feedback that proved so illuminating.

Love and gratitude to my darlings: Amber-Mae, Hylda, and Bev, for believing in me. It all spins around you—you’re my center. And I like to think this is a book that my father, Maurice Skutelsky, would have been proud of.

Thank you, family and friends, for your invaluable support.

I’m grateful to Caroline Carr, Zach, and the Kindle Scout team for their energy and effort. Caroline, thank you for believing in my work.

Carmen Johnson of Little A, all this is possible thanks to you. Working with editors of your caliber and that of Jerri Gallagher and Janice Lee has been a revelation. The novel is all the better for your generous and gracious input.

Thank you, Samantha Neukirch, for your beautiful illustration, and Adil Dara, for your cover design. You managed to get to the heart of what has affectionately come to be called “Grave.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo © Amber-Mae Skutelsky

J
ennifer Skutelsky was born in South Africa and now lives with her daughter and three immigrant pets in San Francisco. Her first book,
Breathing Through Buttonholes: The Story of Madeleine Heitner
, is listed at the Yad Vashem Library, and her memoir,
Tin Can Shrapnel
, was an Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist.
Grave of Hummingbirds
, her MFA thesis at San Francisco State University, won the Clark-Gross Award in the Novel. With roots in ballet and sculpture, everything she does now revolves around books.