No Way Home (38 page)

“That should be nice for both of you,” he said.

“Yes,” Lillie murmured distractedly.

Carl took a seat and sipped his coffee. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you want a cup?”

Lillie shook her head. “If he would just agree to see me. Even one time…” she said.

“He doesn’t want you to come back. He means that, Lillie. I think that you’re torturing yourself unnecessarily, coming here again and again.”

She was always upset when she came here, but today she seemed more distressed than usual. The doctor blew on the surface of his coffee and studied her anguished face sympathetically. “You know, he’s really doing very well.”

“Meaning what?” Lillie asked bluntly.

Carl knew her by now. She was one of the few mothers he had met behind these walls who actually wanted the truth. But he still had to temper it. There were certain things she was better off not knowing. “Well, he’s studying and progressing very quickly with his courses. He’s physically strong, healthy.”

She looked at him ruefully, as if his words were almost a taunt. “He’s thriving, eh?”

Carl sighed. “He’s a strong boy, Lillie. He’s learned the rules here. He’ll survive. In fact, he’ll do better than most.”

Lillie looked at him with bright, frightened eyes. “Are you treating him?” she asked. “Is there any improvement?”

Carl put his coffee cup down and looked at her directly. “I see him occasionally. But no, he’s not in treatment. He cannot change, Lillie. He doesn’t believe there is anything wrong. If he were ‘treatable,’ he would be in a hospital, not a prison. He doesn’t belong in treatment. He has…adapted perfectly to his environment. Believe me, he’ll be fine.”

“I know what you’re saying,” she said. “There’s only one way people manage to get by in a violent place like this. Much less thrive.”

Carl shrugged and sipped his coffee.

“Oh, God.” Lillie groaned. “Where does it all end?”

“Bottom line?” Carl asked. “He will probably never be granted parole.” He looked solemnly at Lillie. “You should be very relieved to hear that.”

Lillie’s eyes filled up. “I’m numb. I don’t know what to wish for anymore.” She seemed lost in her private anguish.

Carl looked at her kindly. “It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” he said.

Lillie shook her head.

“Now, why don’t you tell me why it was so important for you to see me today?”

Turning off the highway exit for Felton and retracing the familiar roads, Lillie thought as she drove along how it always made her heart ache to be in this place. Even now, after a long, bleak winter, it had its own special beauty. The fields were lavender-hued, and beneath its low bridges, the wide creek twined sluggishly through the town. Smoke rose from the farmhouse chimneys, gray against a gray sky, and it was as peaceful as she had always remembered it.

She drove on, past the cemetery, where the bare tree branches leaned out over the lonely graves. She would stop there and bring flowers for Michele, and for Pink too, before they went back up North. Bessie tended to the graves between their visits. Lillie knew that it was silly to care about that. It made no difference to Michele if there were flowers or not. But Lillie felt better knowing that her grandmother visited. They had buried Pink beside her, and, in an odd way, that comforted her too. No matter what else he had done, she had never doubted his love for his children.

She passed the street that led to her old house, but she chose not to drive by it. She continued on past the sign for Royce Ansley’s old road, but she did not go down it either. She had heard from Bomar Flood when she stopped by the drugstore that Royce had moved to Houston, and had a job as a security guard there. Lillie had testified on his behalf and been relieved that he had not had to go to prison. He lived inside his own prison, she thought. Enough was enough.

Lillie glanced at her watch. Brenda had asked her to come over and see her wedding dress if she got back in time, but Lillie did not feel up to prenuptial gaiety and girl talk this afternoon. She was truly happy for Brenda, who was marrying a young restaurateur from Nashville about ten years her junior. Lillie and Jordan had liked him right away when they met him. And, aside from her professed fear of looking like the groom’s mother in the wedding pictures, Brenda had never seemed happier. Lillie smiled, thinking of her old friend. I’ll go over tomorrow, she thought. Maybe I’ll feel better then.

She slowed the car as she reached the fork that led to Bessie’s house, but at the last moment she turned the wheel and took the other road. She did not want to go back to her mother-in-law’s house. She did not want to face Jordan and the questions he would surely ask. She found herself driving, almost automatically, in the direction of Crystal Lake.

Because the trees were bare, she could see clear through the woods to the surface of the lake. It looked like pewter-colored silk, its shores deserted and undisturbed. Lillie got out of the car and walked through the crunchy ground cover of cold, brittle leaves to the edge of her lake. The damp air seeped through her wool coat, making her shiver, as she traversed the edge until she came to the foot of her jetty. She stepped onto the weathered boards and looked out. All her ghosts seemed to crowd around her.

She hesitated for a moment and then she walked out to the end of the jetty and sat down. The boards beneath her were cold and damp and she wrapped her coat more tightly around her. You shouldn’t be sitting here, she thought. You can’t afford to catch a cold. You’re pregnant.

It had been more than a suspicion on her part when she went to the doctor in Manhattan. She had experienced it twice before, and she recognized the first slight symptoms. Today, before she left for the prison, she had stopped at a phone booth and called the office in New York. The doctor had been delighted to make it official, removing any doubt, any hope, she might have had that it was not so.

A hawk circled in over the lake and then swooped up and soared out of sight. Lillie watched it go, envying its flight. She felt weak, and earthbound, and unable to face what lay ahead of her. Jordan would be happy to hear it. She knew that. They had agreed that they would try to have a family, but even as she had agreed to it, a secret voice inside of her was whispering no, never again.

Lillie sighed and looked despondently out at the soothing, familiar waters of Crystal Lake. She had always treated those waters as if they were a crystal ball, holding the answers she needed. But today they were dark and opaque under a lowering sky. “Grayson. Oh, Grayson,” she whispered. He was all she had thought of since she first suspected she was pregnant. Living out his life in a jail cell, cursing her, if he thought of her at all.

She went back over her conversation with Dr. Lundgren in her mind. She had told him she felt responsible for what had happened to Grayson. That she was somehow to blame. And she confided to him her greatest fear—that she would have another child and that she might bring about this same sort of nightmare all over again.

Carl had answered her kindly. “You have a different husband,” he said, “and these are very different circumstances. We can never completely understand how these disorders come about, but I don’t think you should be fearful. I’ll give you the best advice I know. Don’t try too hard to be a perfect parent with this new child. When you feel afraid, ease up a little. Give yourself a break. Get some pleasure out of the experience. Nothing you can do will change the course that Grayson is on now. I know this sounds brutal, but he can’t be saved. This is clinically true. Believe me. Send him money for his expenses in here, write to him if you want. Maybe he’ll relent and see you one of these days. But there is little else you can do for him. Go ahead with your own life, Lillie, and don’t be afraid.”

Lillie sighed and shook her head. It was easier said than done. She could never convey to the doctor, or to anyone, how terrified she felt, how undeserving she felt of having another child. One of her children was dead, and the other was living out the rest of his life in prison. She had no right to try again, no reason to believe that she would do better, that her child would not suffer from her mothering.

Lillie shivered in the damp air, and she knew she should get up and go back. Go back and tell Jordan the news, that they were having a baby. That he too was being given another chance.

She could not help but remember the first time she had told him that she was pregnant. That first, frightening time, she recalled, they had been so young and so naive. He had tried to be brave and reassuring, and had said it was perfect, because they wanted to be married anyway. And then Michele had been born, so beautiful and so sick.

What would she think of all this if she knew? Lillie wondered. And almost as if in answer to her question, an image of Michele, bright-faced and laughing, pierced her gloom like a sunbeam over the lake. No, Lillie thought almost angrily, you were sick, and you suffered so. But the happy image refused to fade. And it gave off a glow that warmed Lillie from inside. She does know, Lillie thought. She’s up there on some heavenly cloud and she does know. And she’s happy for us. Lillie pressed her lips together and held back the tears. There seemed to be no end to the tears she could shed over her lost girl. Her perfect, wonderful girl, with her kindness and her loving heart. That was your child too, she reminded herself. How dare you deny her? You made a child who was as good as could be.

The sound of a car door slamming echoed out over the quiet lake. Lillie turned around and saw a pale-blue Ford through the bare trees. Bessie’s car. Jordan had come looking for her.

She got to her feet, feeling a little guilty, knowing that he would have been worried about her. He hated for her to go up to the prison alone, but she always insisted on it. And now, when she hadn’t come home right away…She peered through the trees and then she spotted him coming down the path, the collar of his leather jacket turned up against the chill. Jordan saw her at the same moment and waved. Lillie waved back. The worried frown on his face was replaced by a smile.

“You found me,” she called out.

“I saw the car,” he called back.

He was coming toward her, making his way around the lake, his jacket open, his graying hair disheveled by the breeze. His face was alight as he rushed to reach her, to get to her. He always knew where to find her. He always had.

Here comes your father, she thought. And for a second she did not know whether she was speaking in her heart to Michele or to the baby inside her. Both, she decided. She placed her hand gently over the child within her. Here he is, come to get us and take us back home.

And as she walked down the jetty, she could not help but smile at the sight of him. He was so eager to protect her, envelop her. He would cherish this baby, this second chance. They both would. Believing it would be all right was half the battle.

“I was worried,” he said. “You were late.”

“Don’t be worried,” she said. She reached out her hand to meet his. “Darling, come closer. I’ve got some good news.”