On Blue Falls Pond (2 page)

When he entered the hall that led to the basement classroom, he could hear Scott crying—screaming. A feeling of blind helplessness
whooshed
over him like a backdraft in a fire. He quickened his pace.

With his hand on the doorknob, he paused, heartsick as he looked through the narrow glass window beside the door. His son stood stiffly in the corner, blue paint streaked through his blond hair and on his face. Mrs. Parks, one of the teachers, knelt beside him, talking softly. Eric saw her hands on her knees; Scott really didn’t like anyone other than his parents to touch him.

Scott ignored his teacher, his little body rigid with frustration. It was a picture Eric had seen before. Still, it grabbed his gut and twisted with brutal ferocity every time.

When he went into the room and knelt beside his son, there was no reaction of joy, no sense of salvation, no throwing himself into Eric’s arms with relief. Scott’s cries continued unabated.

Was this behavior an offshoot of the divorce, as Jill insisted?
It seemed implausible, as he and Jill hadn’t lived together since Scott was ten months old. Still, that nagging of conscience couldn’t be silenced.

Mrs. Parks, a woman whose patience continually astounded Eric, said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do but call you.” She pursed her lips thoughtfully and looked back at Scott. “I think he wanted the caps put back on the finger paints. Although I can’t say for sure.” In her hand she held a wet paper towel. She handed it to Eric and got up and walked away. “Maybe he’ll let you wipe his hands.”

Eric took the towel. Scott had become increasingly obsessed with closing things—cabinets, windows, doors, containers—with an unnatural intensity. Anything that he wasn’t allowed to close sent him into an inconsolable tantrum, as if his entire world had been shaken off its foundation.

Jill’s mother said the child was overindulged, spoiled because his divorced parents were vying for his love. Jill’s family
did not
divorce. At first Eric had bought into the theory. But he’d been careful, watched to make sure they weren’t acquiescing to Scott’s every demand.

“Okay, buddy, can I wipe your hands?” Eric asked, holding out the towel.

Scott’s cries didn’t escalate; Eric took that as permission. He got the worst of the blue off his son’s hands, then scooped him up in his arms and carried him, still stiff and crying, out of the classroom.

Scott wiggled and squirmed, but Eric managed to get him strapped in his car seat. By the time he was finished, Eric had almost as much blue paint smeared on him as Scott did. Before he climbed into the driver’s seat, Eric tried to call Jill again. No answer.

Eric then called the station. When the dispatcher picked up, he said, “Donna, I’m going to have to take the rest of the afternoon off; I had to pick Scott up at school, he’s . . . sick.”

Eric hadn’t discussed his son’s possible condition with anyone. It was still too new, too baffling. How could he explain something that was currently such a mystery to his own mind?

Donna made a tiny noise of understanding. “No problem,” she said, with overkill on lightheartedness. “Hope he feels better soon.”

Eric realized he hadn’t been fooling anyone.

By the time Jill called forty minutes later, Scott was sitting quietly on the floor of Eric’s living room, playing with his current favorite toy, a plastic pirate ship.

“What happened?” she asked. “I went to pick him up, and they said you’d taken him home early.”

“More of the same. A tantrum that wouldn’t stop.” Eric rubbed his eyes with his forefinger and thumb.

“You would think a preschool teacher could handle a two-year-old tantrum without calling parents.”

“Jill”—he took a deep breath—“you know it’s more than that. Dr. Martin—”

“Stop! What if
Dr. Martin
is wrong? Dr. Templeton saw nothing out of the ordinary in Scott. Why do you insist upon thinking the worst?” Thankfully, she caught herself before she pushed them into their normal angry confrontation on the subject. Her voice became pleading. “Eric, I don’t want him to be labeled. If they treat him like he’s disabled, he’s
going to be
disabled. He’s just slow to mature. Lots of kids are. He’s just a baby! A friend of Angela’s said she knew a boy who didn’t talk until he was four and he’s making A’s and B’s in school and gets along with everyone. And Stephanie’s daughter has tantrums all of the time. A few more weeks in school and—”

“And what?” Sometimes Eric felt he was fighting the battle for his son on two fronts—against both an as-yet-unnamed developmental disorder and Scott’s mother’s refusal to face facts. “They’ll probably ask us not to bring him back. We need to find a better solution for him. It’s not just the fact that he’s not talking. He doesn’t interact with the other kids. Maybe he needs more structure, like Dr. Martin said.”

“And Dr. Olfson said it’s too early to be sure. None of the experts can even agree! And you want him locked up in an institution!”

“Stop overreacting. You know that’s not what I meant.” He closed his eyes and willed his anger to subside. “We need to find a better way to help him learn, help him cope.”

She sighed heavily. “Let’s give this school a couple more months. Please. Then we’ll decide.”

“I just feel that time is slipping away. The sooner we start, the better his chances.”

“I
do not
want this whole town talking about Scott as if he’s retarded. He’s not.”

“Of course he’s not! But he’s going to need more help.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I won’t take the risk for nothing. I agreed to send him to school over the summer, isn’t that enough for now?”

“All right.” It was all Eric could do to keep from arguing. It was going to take time to get Jill turned around. “We’ll leave things as they are for a few more weeks. But I think it’s time to start at least looking for options.”

She let it drop, apparently satisfied with her temporary victory. “Since tomorrow is your day, why don’t you just keep Scottie tonight? I have a ton of things to get done. It’d really help me out. I’ll just pick him up out at Tula’s on Friday after work.”

This was yet another tool in Jill’s arsenal of denial—spend less time with Scott so she didn’t have to see what was becoming progressively more obvious.

“Sure. Do you want to say hi to him before I hang up?” Eric spoke to his son every day on the phone, regardless of the empty silence on the other end of the line.

“Sure.”

After holding the phone next to Scott’s ear for a moment while Jill held a one-sided conversation, Eric got back on the line. “I’ll tell Tula you’ll be there at five-thirty on Friday.”

“Okay. You boys have fun.” She hung up.

You boys have fun.
As if he and Scott were going to a baseball game and sharing hot dogs and popcorn. Would Jill ever be convinced their son wasn’t like other children?

Eric hung up the phone and stretched out on the floor next to Scott. He’d taken to only setting out one activity at a time for Scott and keeping the background noise to a minimum, as Dr. Martin had suggested. It did seem that Scott was less agitated.

There was still blue paint in Scott’s hair. Eric decided to leave that until bath time—which would develop into a battle of its own; Scott didn’t like to be taken away from whatever he was doing. Changing activities seemed to trigger more than just normal two-year-old frustration.

For now, Eric tried some of the repetitive exercises he’d read about, just to see if it seemed to make a connection. Dr. Martin said sometimes these children needed to find alternative ways of communication—it was just a matter of searching and working with repetition until you found the right one.

As Eric worked with Scott, the light in the room turned orange with sunset. Scott’s pudgy toddler fingers spun the pirate boat in tireless circles. With a lump in his throat, Eric wondered if he would ever understand what was going on inside his son’s mind.

Jill sat in her living room, listening to the insects drone outside the open window. Absently, she twirled a strand of hair around her index finger. The sun was low, and shadows were gathering darkness in the corners of the room, but she didn’t move to turn on a light. Instead she waited for the gloom to completely encompass her. It wasn’t often she held herself still long enough to allow her thoughts to overtake her. Her life was stressed beyond belief with working and taking care of a baby alone.

Up until a few weeks ago, she hadn’t been alone—not totally. Although even her mother didn’t know it, Jason had been more or less a live-in since spring. He’d insisted on keeping his place—for appearances he’d said.

She still couldn’t believe the jerk had dumped her. She’d left her husband for him—not that anyone knew that. She’d been careful while she was married, and equally careful after. That had been Eric’s price for a quick and uncontested divorce—that she not see Jason publicly until after the divorce was final. He’d said he was keeping quiet for Scott’s sake. And it probably was. Eric was a conscientious father.

Even as clean as the divorce had been, Mother had been appalled. Landrys didn’t divorce—especially not what Mother called “good husband material” like Eric Wilson. Luckily, Mother didn’t know the full story about Jason, or Jill would never hear the end of it.

She had hoped living together would bring Jason closer to commitment. But the entire thing had skidded in the wrong direction. The fewer complications for them to be together, the less interested he became.

Well, she thought with a sigh, that was over. She wouldn’t think of Jason anymore.

She shifted on the couch, drawing her feet up under her and grabbing a pillow to hold over her midsection. That’s right, she’d waste no more time and energy on Jason. Her baby was her whole world now. Why did Eric keep insisting there was something wrong with him? Lots of children developed more slowly—lots of very
intelligent
children. She would not let Scott be the kid who was stared at, the one other children made fun of. She simply wouldn’t allow it. She would do whatever it took to ensure his place in this world was not one of ridicule and hurt.

She closed her eyes and briefly, ever so briefly, wished things were as they had been during those first months after Scott had been born—when she and Eric had marveled at his tiny perfection and she had felt safe.

It was sunset as Glory wound her way into Cold Spring Hollow. She’d driven twenty-five miles out of her way to avoid passing through Dawson; approaching the road to the hollow from the north instead of the west. It was foolish, but she somehow felt she’d be better fortified to face the town after spending the night with Granny.

In the shadows of the wooded hollow it was dark enough that her headlights came on. Glory slowed for a hairpin curve. After the road straightened back out, she saw three deer standing nearly close enough to reach out and touch. They held their bodies poised for flight, their dark eyes wide and their ears twitching. But they remained in place, studying her as closely as she studied them.

She felt a peculiar kinship to them, with their wary eyes and nervous posture. She imagined she had a similar air about her at the moment.

The narrow gravel road that led to Granny’s house cut off to the right. Glory made the turn and felt more settled already. Normally, Granny would be on her porch with a cup of tea about now, impervious to the swarming mosquitoes as she sat on her beloved swing.

Before Glory’s grandfather died, he and Granny used to sit on the porch every evening, at least for a short while, even in the winter. Glory remembered spending the night, lying in her bed and listening to their quiet voices drift up to her bedroom window. There was something about listening to them, to Granny’s soft laugh and Pap’s gruff chuckle, that soaked contentment deep into Glory’s bones.

Granny’s house came into sight. Glory’s heart skittered through a beat when she saw it sitting dark and silent under the canopy of trees. It looked deserted.

Finally, in the deep shadow of the L-shaped front porch, Glory saw movement of the swing and drew a breath of relief.

By the time she’d put the car in park and gotten out, Granny had moved to the top of the front steps, leaving the swing to jiggle a jerky dance after her departure.

She stood there, her silhouette in the twilight tall and wiry, looking as strong as the ancient willow down by the old millpond.

Glory got out of the car quickly and ran up the steps. She paused on the tread before the top. The instant she opened her mouth to say hello, the tears that she’d thought were spent spilled forth.

Granny opened her arms and pulled Glory’s head against her chest. “It’s all right, darlin’, you’re safe in the Holler now. You’re home.”

As Glory cried in the comfort of her grandmother’s arms, she knew coming home was going to be even more painful than she’d imagined.

Chapter Two

W
HEN GLORY WOKE
early the next morning, she studied the lavender floral wallpaper in the bedroom. She’d awakened in this room countless times over the years, and nothing in it had changed as long as she could remember. Andrew—she tried to think of her husband without the shadow of sadness—had always called Granny’s decor “early Cracker Barrel.” But Glory liked the homeyness of it, the fact that Granny’s possessions had memories attached.

The dresser still held a collection of tiny ceramic animal figurines from Granny’s childhood. The mirror on the wall above was streaked with gray where time had worn away the silvering on the back. There was a watermelon-size brown water spot on the ceiling paper in one corner. Pap had fixed the roof twelve years ago, but Granny said the paper had plenty of life left in it, that people should have their eyes closed when lying on the bed, anyhow.

There wasn’t a clock in the room, and Glory had left her watch in the bathroom after her shower last night. It was early; the sun had yet to send its bright shafts of light over the hills and into the little cove that cradled Granny’s house. Birds twittered, coaxing the new day.

The quiet noises of morning in the hollow wrapped her in warm contentment. She stretched and wished this moment of peace could extend beyond these sheltered walls, that it could endure the battering of reality beyond her bedroom door.

Then she heard hushed voices downstairs. Sliding from the bed, she went to the window and moved the lace curtains enough to peek out. A white SUV that appeared pale purple-gray in the early light and had an emergency light bar on the top sat in front of the house.

She dashed out the door of her bedroom and down the stairs. The voices came from the kitchen. She was at a dead run when she burst through the door.

Her bare feet skidded to a stop on the linoleum when she saw Granny sitting at the table drinking coffee with a man in a blue shirt who was just turning toward the sound of her panicked footsteps.

“You’re all right!” Glory said, the adrenaline draining from her muscles, leaving her legs feeling like jelly.

“Right as rain, darlin’.” Granny’s eyes smiled over her blue willow cup as she sipped coffee. “You look a bit peaked, though.”

“I thought you were sick . . . or hurt. . . .” Glory’s gaze cut to the man sitting at the table with Granny, looking at him fully for the first time. Her mouth went dry.

Granny said, “You remember Eric Wilson.” Her words sounded as if they came from somewhere in the depths of a cavern.

Suddenly, Glory smelled smoke—the sharp, biting combination of burning wood, plastic, and human hair. It made her stomach lurch, her eyes sting, and strangled her breath.

Eric stood in what appeared to Glory as slow motion and extended his hand. “Hello, Glory.” His voice seemed to be resonating, slow and muffled, from underwater.

She stood there stone mute, pulling at the bottom of the T-shirt she’d slept in, trying to draw air into her suddenly starved lungs.

Still sounding deep in a cavern, Granny cleared her throat; Glory recognized the gentle prod into politeness, but could no more respond than she could erase the impressions that flashed in an incoherent parade through her mind.

Darkness. Rain on her face. Flashing red lights. The cold ground under her back. The blurred image of a fireman leaning close and ripping his breathing apparatus away. The sound of his shouting her name.

She blinked, and the fireman’s face came into clear focus: Eric Wilson. But he wasn’t in her mind; he was standing right in front of her—and moving quickly in her direction.

His hands were on her arms, big and warm and secure, as she felt her knees begin to give way.

He held her erect as she stared at him, her memory-evoked emotion battling the flesh-and-blood man. With numb lips she said, “It was you.”

“Let’s get you in a chair,” he said, as he moved her with the confidence of a trained rescuer in the direction of the seat he’d just vacated.

Granny was on her feet, hovering close as Glory sat down. “Good lands, girl, are you all right?”

Before Glory could answer, Granny was at the sink getting her a glass of water. When she placed it in Glory’s hands, the liquid in the glass shook like it was in a paint mixer.

She took a tentative sip, more to buy time than to quench thirst.

Eric knelt in front of her, concern in his whiskey-colored eyes—just like . . .

“It was you,” she said again, her words not much more than an exhaled breath.

“What was me?” he asked gently.

Glory felt Granny’s bony hand fall on her shoulder and squeeze slightly.

“You brought me out of the house . . . the fire.” She could hardly believe four therapists hadn’t budged a single image from her memory, yet one glance at Eric Wilson’s face had catapulted something right to the forefront of her mind.

Eric cast a worried glance at Granny. Then he said quietly, reverently, as if he suddenly saw the magnitude of what was happening to her, “Yes.”

Glory locked gazes with him, trying to budge another memory loose.

None came.

After a moment, she began to feel reconnected to her surroundings. “I didn’t remember that until just now. I haven’t been able to remember. . . .”

His gaze remained upon her, making her feel the need to retreat. He said, “I’m sorry.”

It was a phrase she’d heard a thousand times since the fire. But this time it ignited a fury in her that she couldn’t quell—a fury born of months living with an aching void that reached to the center of her soul, a fury reignited by the horrible memory that had just assailed her.

Her voice was cold when she said, “Sometimes I am too. Sometimes I wish you hadn’t done it.”

“Glory!” Granny’s sharp, shocked tone cut through the emotional haze that swaddled Glory’s brain.

Eric didn’t appear surprised—or shocked—by her words. He stood slowly, but didn’t move away from her.

Granny said, “That’s the hurt talking.” Then she said to Eric, “She just come back last night. It’ll take some time for her to sort her feelings out.”

Glory worked to free herself from the grip of anger. She kept her gaze safely on the floor at her feet, and said, “Yes, that’s right. I shouldn’t have said that. I do appreciate you risking your life to save our—mine.”

When she forced herself to look at him again, she saw an edgy look in his eye that surprised her.

Well, I was pretty damned rude
.

He shifted his weight, and said, “I’d better get going.” Then he moved to the corner of the room and knelt.

For the first time, Glory saw a small boy sitting in the corner. He held his fingers in front of his face, closely examining a string from Granny’s throw rug. The child’s unwavering focus on the string seemed unnatural—especially since Eric was kneeling right in front of him.

“Scott, Daddy’s going to work now.”

The toddler continued to examine the string.

“Scott.” Eric put his hand under the boy’s chin and raised it, gently forcing him to look up. “Daddy’s going to work. I’ll be back to pick you up this evening.”

He kissed the top of the boy’s head, got up, and said good-bye to Granny.

Glory stopped him halfway to the door. “You aren’t leaving him here, are you?”

He turned with a furrowed brow, and said, “Yeah. Is there a problem?”

Glory’s gaze cut to Granny and back to Eric. “Well, yes. Granny’s sight . . . you can’t expect her to watch a toddler.”

“I told you, Glory, I can still see fine. I always watch Scott on Thursdays and Friday afternoons.” There was a snap of fire in her voice and a flash in her eye that clearly broadcast Glory’s transgression.

“Of course.” Glory tried to brush away the crackling annoyance in the air. “I’ll be here to lend a hand today anyway.”

Eric lingered in the doorway.

“Go on, now. You’ll be late,” Granny said.

Eric cast one last look toward his son, then nodded and left.

Glory sat watching the space in the doorway he’d just vacated. Instead of this unexpected breakthrough in her memory fostering anticipation for healing, an icy fear settled in her chest.

“So you remembered something.” It was a statement, not a question that Granny uttered as she sat back down at the table across from Glory.

Glory gave her head a slight shake. “Not much really. Just that I remember seeing his face.” How could she explain the cascade of emotions that ripped through her in that split second?

As she thought of Eric’s face again, she tried to grasp at something just beyond her flash of memory, lurking in the rainy shadows of that night. She’d sensed it before, when the terror scratched at the back of her brain in therapy sessions. But now she was met with the same blank wall as always. Maybe that flash generated by the surprise of seeing Eric was all she’d ever get.

“After . . . he came to check on you, you know.”

“What?” Glory’s gaze snapped to Granny’s face. “Eric Wilson? When?”

“While you was in the hospital. Ever’ day.”

Glory’s brow knotted. She remembered the stay in the hospital—every excruciating detail. “You must be mistaken. I never saw him.”

“No, you didn’t. Not after that first time . . . the night of the fire. He came into the emergency room and you . . . well, you were upset.”

Try as she might, Glory didn’t remember anything more of that night. Even the smells and sensations that had momentarily been so vivid and immediate that they robbed her of her strength were dulled until she could almost pretend the whole glimpse of memory hadn’t happened.

But her knees were still rubbery and her body drained. And she could still feel the security of Eric’s grip as he’d guided her to this chair. It
had
happened.

Granny’s words sank in. “Oh, God, what did I say to him?” Had she screamed and ranted and laid blame on the man who’d saved her? In those first days, Glory was now ashamed to admit, she had blamed the doctors for not saving her baby. Had that grief-fueled fury spilled over to the firefighter who’d saved her too?

For the briefest second, Granny’s lips pursed. “You weren’t in your right mind, ever’body knew that.”

Glory’s gaze followed Granny’s as she glanced over at the little boy who had not moved one inch from where he was sitting ten minutes ago.

Granny said, “That’s Eric’s way; he didn’t want to take the chance of upsetting you again. So he’d stop by regular on his way home from work to check with me or your mama.” She seemed to measure her words before she went on. “He came to the funeral. Stayed at the back of the crowd, out of your sight. ’Course he and Andrew played football together in school, so he had every right to be there. But he kept to hisself, so’s not to make it harder on you.”

Andrew’s funeral. Although it had been just under two years ago, it was as if trying to recall a movie she’d seen so long ago that the details had run together, the cast had become indistinguishable, and the plot become tangled with every other movie she’d ever seen. Eric Wilson could have been standing two feet in front of her that day, and she wouldn’t have seen him. She’d floated through the endless hours of calling and the funeral on a silken gray cloud of disconnection—thanks to the little pills her mother had fed her at regular intervals. Pills not prescribed by Glory’s own doctor, but by her mother’s new husband, Karl Gustafson, M.D.

Clarice, Glory’s mother, had landed the doctor not long after she’d sold her mobile home and transplanted herself to Florida. It was a move she’d been talking about for years—the final step that would forever eradicate the shadow of the hollow that tainted her in Dawson. As Glory had grown up, her mother had spoken of Florida as if it were a magical place where she could realize her full potential without people’s preformed notions holding her back—Glory thought maybe it was the influence of all the Disney World commercials. Nonetheless, Clarice had finally made the move, and her dreams
had
come true.

It had been with some relief that Glory had dropped her mother and Karl at the Knoxville airport two days after the funeral. Although Karl had to get back, Clarice had offered to remain in Dawson as long as Glory needed her. But Glory wanted nothing more than to be left alone with her grief. The last thing she needed was her mother hovering, examining each tear and every mood swing, assessing what drug Karl might prescribe to make it go away. Glory had wanted to wrap herself in her pain, feel every nuance of it, not blot it out in a pharmacological haze. She felt that she’d earned the right to retreat into her own suffering—at least for a while.

Apparently she’d closed her eyes to more than her mother’s good intentions. The man to whom she owed her life had been relegated to hiding in the shadows.

“I had no idea,” Glory finally said.

“He didn’t want no gratitude, said he was doing his job.”

Glory knew that Eric and Andrew had known one another; they’d graduated from Dawson High together, five years ahead of her. But it seemed like a strained friendship in the few instances that she’d been present when they’d run into one another, as if hostility rippled beneath the sportsman’s camaraderie, as if they had been enemies forced into alliance. Once she’d asked Andrew about it. He’d told her it was her imagination. But she saw bitterness in his eyes and couldn’t help but think something had transpired between the two men that set them at hidden odds.

Glory shook off those thoughts, not wanting to delve any deeper into the murky past just now. She turned her gaze back to the little boy, just briefly; she didn’t like the twinge of jealousy she felt when she looked at those chubby cheeks blushing with pink health.

“How’s your eye this morning?”

“Cain’t even tell anything was wrong.”

“When do you go back to the doctor?”

“Monday. But I don’t see the need. It’s doin’ just what Dr. Blanton said; I’m seein’ again. Nothin’ he can do anyhow. No sense in paying him just to peek in there with his little light.”

Glory had no intention of letting Granny miss that appointment. But she decided to fight that battle later. She had three days until Monday. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to continue to babysit? What if you have an episode while he’s here? How will you handle a two-year-old if you can’t see?”