On Blue Falls Pond (20 page)

There was a harsh cruelty in the very smallness of the grave that Glory hadn’t been able to bring herself to face. Now it had been long enough that the outline of disturbed earth and mismatched new grass wasn’t a glaring indication of just how tiny that casket had been. She didn’t think she could have stood that, even today.

But there was something beyond her cowardice for not coming here. She never really felt her child was contained in this earth, but was still somehow bound to her heart, following wherever she went.

For a long time she just stared at the headstone. She and Andrew hadn’t settled on a name, so Glory had named her stillborn child alone; Clarice Ovella Harrison. It seemed only right that the child who was never held in the loving arms of either one of her grandmothers had something of theirs.

Glory recalled how oddly Andrew’s mother had reacted when Glory had told her—with cold eyes and mouth sourly drawn. But then, Glory asked herself, how should one behave when your only child had died tragically and your grandchild had been born dead? It had been an impossible time; no one had had the slightest control of their emotions.

She reached out and touched a shaky hand to the small granite stone. Closing her eyes, she traced the letters as a blind woman would read Braille. Then she waited for the calm, the rush of warmth and connection that Granny said she always experienced at Pap’s grave. But the only thing Glory felt was alone and cold to her core. Maybe Granny had such a positive reaction because she had shared most of a lifetime with Pap; Glory hadn’t even had a moment to see the color of her daughter’s eyes.

After a while she gave up hoping for a shift in her emotional state and opened her eyes. The bouquet blurred; summer-grass green smearing deeply into the pure white of the delicate petals, round yellow centers now irregular smudges of color, ribbon an indistinct slash of pink. She felt as if she’d tried to swallow a watermelon whole and it was stuck halfway down. Only when she let herself sob did the pressure begin to lessen. And when she began to cry, it was as if a dam had burst.

The movement of the sun registered as its heat traveled from the back of Glory’s neck to the side of her face. She cried until she was as wrung out as an old sponge, with no hint of resiliency left, ready to shred into brittle chunks.

Only then, when her grief for her daughter had turned her inside out and left nothing, did she turn to her husband’s grave.

In contrast to the small marker Glory had chosen for Clarice’s grave, Andrew’s seemed almost garish in its pretension. Glory had been appalled when Ovella had selected it from the brochure and insisted nothing else would do. But Glory hadn’t had the heart to deny a grieving mother what she felt was a fitting tribute to her son. Glory had left town before it had been erected; it was even gaudier in person than it had appeared in the photograph.

The marker had two large built-in urns that were filled with fresh-cut flowers. She wondered who would have left such lavish arrangements. It couldn’t have been Ovella; she would have left flowers on her grandchild’s grave too.

Glory brushed insignificant things like flowers and monuments away and tried to focus on what Granny had said was important: Make peace, let go. Glory couldn’t deny the soul-cleansing effect of crying over her daughter’s grave.

She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Granny says you and I have unfinished business.” Glancing around, Glory made sure she was alone. She felt a little nuts talking to a grave. But that was how Granny did it, and she was Glory’s only guide in this. “I suppose she’s right.”

She cast about in her mind for a place to begin and realized how difficult it had been for her to speak freely to her husband in life.

“I’ve been away from here for nearly two years. And for all of that time, I ignored the truth of our relationship. But I’m remembering things clearly now. Maybe it was my shame at failing in this marriage that made me mourn for things that never were—or at least hadn’t been for a very long time. Our marriage was rotting deep inside. If I had stayed in Dawson, I might have faced the truth sooner. But that’s neither here nor there now.”

Taking a moment to fortify herself, she plunged into the heart of the matter. “I can never forgive you for telling me to abort our baby. Never. It makes me physically ill to think what might have happened if I hadn’t already told your mother. I want to believe you couldn’t have forced me to have an abortion—but then, I know I allowed you to manipulate me into lots of things that I never thought possible.

“We were still together in the end, but I can’t for the life of me understand how. There must have been a turning point, an understanding; I remember you helping get ready for the baby’s birth . . .”

Her words trailed into the past, she remembered what they had been doing prior to the fire—painting and decorating the baby’s room. They had been nearly finished. The project had dragged on because the smell of the paint had made Glory queasy.

On the day of the fire, she’d hung the curtains—soft moss green with tiny ivory dots. She could remember how rich the fabric felt in her fingers. Andrew had refused any infantile patterns in the décor. Glory hadn’t fought over it, it didn’t matter to her. What mattered was there was a bright, sunny room with a comfortable rocking chair where she could hold her baby, sing to her, to show her how it felt to be loved. She remembered thinking,
This is why I’m here in this world, to love this child
.

That day, Andrew had come home just as she was arranging the folds of the new curtains:

“What do you think?” she had asked without stopping her work when she heard him enter the room behind her.

Andrew didn’t answer, so she turned around ready to repeat the question. That was when she saw the thunderous expression on his face. Her stomach dropped to her toes.

“What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

He stayed in the doorway, his hands fisted at his sides. “I saw you.”

There was no sense in acting like she didn’t understand what he meant. “What did you see me doing this time?” She quickly reran her day in her mind, trying to remember when she’d been in the company of a man Andrew might consider capable of having an affair with a woman nearly seven months pregnant.

“You were getting in your car in front of Cam Wilkes’s house. Cam was all over you.”

“His wife made these curtains. I was picking them up. As for his being all over me, I can’t imagine what you think you saw.” She spoke dispassionately; she’d learned early on that the more emotional she appeared, the stronger Andrew’s suspicions became. She was tired to her core of these scenes. She supposed she’d find her car keys missing again tomorrow.

“His wife wasn’t home,” he said in a tone that indicated he’d caught her in a lie.

“How do you know that?” Glory’s skin turned clammy. Had he followed her around all day?

“Because I saw her going into the hair salon on the square.”

“Then you drove all the way out to River Road to see what was going on at her house? Or were you following me?” She was losing her battle to keep the emotion out of her voice.

“What was Cam doing home in the middle of the morning?”

“Honestly, Andrew! How do you jump to such conclusions?” She was tempted not to explain, but for some reason she didn’t think this was the time to push him. He’d been irrational before, but there was something in his eyes this evening that frightened her. So she told him the truth that he most likely would not believe. “Cam is on vacation this week. I needed to pick up the curtains. Sandy said she had an appointment but that he’d be home all morning, so I could stop by anytime.”

“So you chose the time when you knew she was going to be gone.”

“For God’s sake, I didn’t know what time her appointment was!” It took everything in her not to shake her fist at him. “I don’t know why I put up with these ridiculous accusations! I’m as big as a cow, what makes you think any man would even think of me in that way?”

“Certain men would.”

She furrowed her brow and gave her head a slight shake. “What are you talking about?”

His aggressive stance relaxed slightly, but she could see the tension still humming in his muscles. “Never mind.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Just watch yourself. You’ve got no business being in a house alone with a man. People will talk. Or do you want to make a fool out of me?”

“Most people wouldn’t give it a second thought! As for being made a fool, you’re doing a fine job of that yourself.”

He stepped toward her, and for the briefest moment she braced herself for a blow. He’d never hit her. But he was getting much more volatile.

Instead of hitting her, he loomed over her and shook a finger in her face. “One of these days, you’re going to push me too far.”

She made herself look him in the eye. No more would she back down for the sake of peace. “I honestly don’t know how much longer I can take this, Andrew.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

She looked squarely at him and said the words she’d been contemplating for months. “I’m seriously thinking about leaving you. I can’t live like this. I don’t want my child to grow up in this kind of environment.”

That dangerous look was back in his eye. But his words were far from what she expected. “Why did you call it your child?”

“Andrew, I’m exhausted. I cannot go another argument over semantics. I’m tired of watching every word that comes out of my mouth. I’ve been faithful to you since our first date, but you obviously want something I can’t give you.”

“You’re not leaving me.”

And just like that it became blindingly clear. She’d been ignoring the obvious for too long. She had to leave him. For her sake—for her child’s. “I’m sorry, Andrew. We need some time apart. Maybe in a few months . . .”

He reached for her with a swiftness that made her flinch. But the violence she anticipated did not come. He wrapped her in his arms and said, “You’re my wife. You promised yourself to me. You can’t break that promise.”

“People break promises all the time. Sometimes it’s for the best.”

He pushed her an arm’s length away from him, his fingers digging into her arms. “How can you even think about walking away?”

“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time.”

“Well, it’s news to me!”

“Really, Andrew? Can you honestly say you’re happy? You come home angry more days than not. How can you want to live this way?”

He thrust her away and paced in a tight little circle. Then he rounded on her and shouted, “I give you everything! You don’t have to lift a goddamn finger! What do you want?”

Her fear of him vanished. Now that she’d made up her mind, the power he’d held over her diminished. There was nothing left to lose. “I don’t have the most important thing in a marriage. I don’t have your trust.”

“And whose fault is that?” he asked accusingly.

“Apparently you think it’s mine—which is why this is never going to work.”

He took a swing at the door as he stormed out of the room. It slammed against the wall, the doorknob knocking a hole in the drywall before it bounced back and half closed.

She waited several minutes before she went after him. As she left the nursery, she felt a pang of regret. She’d never sit in here and rock her baby.

Andrew was in the kitchen. His hands were braced on the casing of one of the windows that looked onto the swimming pool. But he wasn’t looking out the window; his head was bowed between his shoulders.

She stopped just inside the kitchen and waited. The baby seemed to be upset by the argument; tumbling and twisting inside her, sticking little feet and elbows painfully under ribs and into kidneys. She couldn’t help but question her conviction, this was her child’s future—she couldn’t afford to make the wrong decision.

At that moment, when her resolve was most vulnerable, Andrew turned to her. Tears tracked down his cheeks. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me.”

When she opened her mouth to speak, he held up a hand to silence her.

“Just don’t do it today,” he said. “Don’t leave like this. Sleep on it—that’s all I ask.”

She hesitated. What harm could waiting until tomorrow morning do? It would give Andrew a little while to come to terms. No matter what happened between them, they would always be linked by their child. She had to do what was best for the baby; had to keep the lines of communication open. It wasn’t too much to concede.

“All right. But I won’t change my mind. We need some time apart—to think about what we really want.”

“I
know
what I want. You and I are meant to be together forever.” There was a chilling finality in his tone.

The last thing Glory remembered of that night was Andrew moving into the guest room and her going to bed alone.

Chapter Eighteen

A
FTER LEAVING THE
cemetery, Glory drove out Laurel Creek Road for the first time since her return to Dawson. The road was narrow and curvy, as were most roads in the area. It dead-ended not too far beyond where her house once stood. She slowed as she neared her old driveway. Butterflies fluttered in her stomach.
I have to do this,
she told herself. What she’d remembered so far was horrible, but was there something else? Had she done something even more horrible in her desperation to be free of Andrew?

Those notes . . . had there been truth in them? She couldn’t believe it of herself, and yet if there was nothing ugly lurking there, why couldn’t she remember? She had almost everything back—except those last hours.

A heavy chain was strung across the driveway entrance between two metal posts. A
NO TRESPASSING
sign was suspended in the middle. Weeds had sprung up between the bricks in the drive. What once had been meticulously maintained was now abandoned.

She pulled off the edge of the road and parked. After shutting off the engine, she clung to the steering wheel. She couldn’t seem to pry her hands loose and get out of the car. Eric had suggested she shouldn’t be alone when her memory returned fully—did he suspect she’d had something to do with the fire, too?

Maybe she should leave this for another day, perhaps bring Granny with her.

No, she wouldn’t drag Granny into this. It wasn’t a burden to be shared; it was Glory’s past, her choices, her actions.

She got out of the car before she could chicken out. The yard was so overgrown that she decided to step over the chain instead of fighting her way through the weeds.

Once over the chain, she approached the site where the house had once stood. There was nothing but a rough patch of ground where the basement had been filled in. The swimming pool gaped drily beyond that. The carriage house remained untouched by tragedy, but not by time. The paint was mildewed, tiny trees sprouted in the clogged gutters, and vines had begun to snake up the walls. The weather vane on the cupola sat tilted as if swatted askew by a giant hand.

Her heart raced and felt as if it sat at the base of her throat. Slowly, she began to walk around the old footprint of the house. Memories rushed over her—garden parties and birthdays, holiday dinners and lazy Sunday mornings—not the ones she was seeking. She came full circle and stood where the steps to her front porch had once been.

Her knees trembled and suddenly felt weak. A buzzing started in her ears and she became light-headed. She crumpled where she stood, sitting hard on the ground.

Drawing on her newly recovered memory of the last evening in her house, she sat very still, waiting for the picture to complete itself. A fierce ache centered in her chest, but she refused to cry. Over and over again she relived those last hours.

Andrew had been surprisingly considerate that evening. It had been his idea that he take the spare bedroom. He’d spoken to her gently, telling her how much she meant to him and how important it was to him for them to stay together. She recounted every minute, yet she could not remember getting out of bed.

She remembered she’d turned in early, physically exhausted by emotional stress. She’d fought not to be swayed by Andrew’s surprisingly nonvolatile temperament throughout the evening. His behavior had been increasingly irrational. More than once, she’d feared that erratic behavior would explode into violence. There was no way she could bring her baby into such a household.

But, she’d thought, Andrew came from a powerful family. Power was hard to fight in a small town, especially when the powerful want certain things kept in the dark. Outwardly, Andrew could be very charming and persuasive. Beneath that veneer was a man obsessed. What might he truly be capable of? It wasn’t beyond comprehension that he would convince everyone she was the unstable one; she might lose custody of her child.

Her troubled thoughts had kept her awake for hours, but, sometime after midnight, she’d fallen asleep. The next thing she recalled was opening her eyes and seeing Eric’s smoke-stained face in the rain.

Sitting there before the ghost of her home, Glory closed her eyes. Eric said she’d been near the back door—so clearly she’d gotten up at some point.

Stop trying so hard. Relax. Let go. Breathe.

Beginning at the top of her head, she went through the exercise of relaxing each muscle, moving down her body until she reached her toes. She kept her mind free of thought, drifting on a sensation of near weightlessness.

A hand fell on her shoulder.

With a scream, she jerked away and shot to her feet, turning quickly.

Eric stood with his hands before him and an apologetic look in his eyes. “It’s okay. It’s me.”

Adrenaline buzzed through her veins, and her knees felt rubbery. “Why in the hell did you sneak up on me?” Hand on her chest, she dragged in a breath.

“I didn’t. I called your name twice. I was beginning to worry that you weren’t conscious.”

Now that she’d had a moment to gather herself, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

“I was driving by and saw your car.”

She tilted her head in doubt. What purpose would Eric possibly have to be here in the middle of the day?

He sighed roughly and ran a hand through his hair. “All right. I’d seen your car at the cemetery earlier and thought you might come out here. It’s so isolated, I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Crossing her arms over her chest, she said, “What if I want to be alone?”

He glanced at the place where her house used to stand, then toward the carriage house. “Sorry. I didn’t think . . . I just want to help you, Glory.”

“I know.” She made herself put words to her most unsettling suspicion about his interest in her. “But you can’t save me. It’s not your job to fix me. I know you feel it’s your duty to keep everyone safe—”

“Is that what you think? That I’m feeling somehow responsible for you—you’re an obligation? You think I made love to you just to make you feel better? Jesus, Glory! I thought we knew each other better than that.”

“Do we?” She searched his face. “I’ve seen something in your eyes when we talk about my remembering the fire. You’re hiding something from me.”

In the second of hesitation that followed, Glory saw it again.

He said, “You’ve asked me more than once about that night, and I’ve always answered you.”

“Yes. Yes, you have. But I’m sensing there’s something more.”

Eric held her gaze for a long moment, as if he wanted to make sure she understood the depth of his sincerity. “I care about you. I don’t want to see you hurt. I have a feeling you suffered enough at Andrew’s hands.”

She was startled by the boldness of his statement. “What makes you say that?”

“I knew Andrew better than most people think. He required unquestioning loyalty and had some pretty serious control issues in high school—I saw things that told me he hadn’t changed.”

“What kinds of things?”

“I saw the way he was with you . . . dominating, suspicious of your every move.”

She was stunned to realize Eric had even been aware of her relationship with her husband. “How could you know that?”

“Because I looked in his eyes the day you and I were talking in the drugstore after Scott was born. Because he was still the same as when we were younger. Andrew required total, 100 percent devotion—and no one dismissed him without repercussions.”

A shiver of confirmation slithered down her spine. Andrew had said he wouldn’t let her go—and in her deepest heart she had understood there would be no way out. With a dry mouth, she asked, “What do you mean, ‘repercussions’?”

“Things seemed to happen to people who slighted him . . . or left him.”

“What kinds of things?”

“Listen, I’ve got no business saying all of this to you—”

“It’s too damn late now! Tell me!”

He looked around, then said, “We need someplace to sit down. Let’s go sit in the car.”

“All right.” She followed him with a mixed sense of dread and validation; she didn’t want to believe she’d been married to a bad person. And yet . . . For years she’d been convinced she had been doing something to make such trouble in their marriage. Everyone—their friends, his business associates, the whole damn community—had such high regard for Andrew.

It was nearly four o’clock, but still warm even in the shade where the Explorer was parked. Eric put all of the windows down, then got out and opened the rear hatch, returning with two bottles of water.

“Here.” He handed one to her and opened the other himself. “It was hot this afternoon, and you’re starting to look a little dehydrated.”

There he was, trying to save her again. Still, she took the water without comment. He was right; she’d dumped most of her body’s moisture into her tears at the cemetery. After taking a drink, she said, “You think Andrew was a monster?” She couldn’t believe such words had left her lips.

He huffed. “That’s not what I said at all. Andrew had his good points. He just had one serious . . . character flaw in my opinion.

“We were friends in high school.”

“I remember,” Glory said, not wanting to feel like she didn’t know anything at all about the man she’d married. Eric and Andrew had been several years ahead of her, but everyone knew them—every girl who’d passed through puberty dreamed of dating them. “But you two seemed, I don’t know, strained over the past years.”

Eric nodded. “Andrew needed to be in control of every relationship—romantic and otherwise. It wasn’t hard for him to do because everyone looked up to him, everyone wanted to be his friend.”

“So what happened to make you see?”

“There were a lot of little things. None alone would mean much, but over the years, when you put them all together . . . well, it became pretty clear to me.”

“Such as?”

He looked uncomfortable, as if he didn’t want to go into detail. He rested his elbow on the car door and rubbed the back of his neck. “Such as, everything had to be Andrew’s idea . . . socially. If someone else brought something up, Andrew managed to change things around enough that he could claim it was his idea. He was actually so good at it that no one seemed to notice or care.”

“You said there were things about his romantic relationships . . .”

Eric shifted uncomfortably. There were things that he’d rather not reveal to anyone, least of all Glory.

He said, “More of the same; he had to be in control. Sometimes when he dated a girl, I got the feeling that she didn’t actually
want
to be with him. At first I thought they stayed because he was the most popular guy in school, but sometimes it seemed like something . . . I don’t know . . .
darker
was going on.”

Glory made a little sound in the back of her throat that told him she knew exactly what he was talking about.

He went on, “And sometimes he was . . . paranoid. There really wasn’t a better way to describe it. He’d get an idea in his head that a girl was cheating, or that some guy was gunning for his position as team captain in football or basketball, and nothing, I mean nothing, would convince him otherwise.”

Eric wanted Glory to know he understood her difficulties in her marital relationship. He
didn’t
want to tell her the worst, the most damning of his suspicions. If he told her about Emily MacRady, he’d have to admit his own contribution to Andrew’s being able to get away with a very dangerous act of revenge.

Glory was quiet for a long while. When she spoke, her voice was so soft that he had to strain to hear. “There were days when I thought I was crazy. Everyone thought Andrew was perfect, that we had the perfect marriage. I thought there had to be something wrong with me—I wasn’t trying hard enough, you know?”

“That was another thing Andrew was good at, making other people think problems were their fault.” He wanted to reach out and touch her, to tell her Andrew was a bastard, and she was just one of his silent victims. But that wasn’t what she needed. She needed time to think.

He was about to suggest he follow her to Tula’s to make sure she got home safely, when she said, in a voice so distant he wasn’t sure if she was talking to herself or speaking to him, “I was going to leave him.” She continued to stare out the windshield. “I’d told him the day of the fire.”

Eric’s gut turned over. That was
not
what he wanted to hear. It opened up a whole realm of nasty possibilities—possibilities he should have dealt with eighteen months ago.

Glory had declined Eric’s offer to drive her home. He’d been a true friend this afternoon, something she valued as much as his intimacy as a lover. He’d instinctively known that while she needed the comfort of his nearness, she also needed to deal with her thoughts and feelings privately.

Bits and pieces of the past had filtered into her consciousness all afternoon. Now she’d pieced together most of what happened the day of the fire. Even her time in the hospital afterward was becoming clearer.

After Eric put her in her own car and kissed her cheek good-bye, she knew there was one more stop that she had to make before going back to the hollow.

Several minutes later, she pulled up in the circular drive at the elder Harrisons’ spacious home. Ovella wouldn’t welcome an unannounced visit—especially since they had planned a specific time on Sunday. But it wasn’t Ovella she needed to see.

While Ovella had had severe reservations about Andrew’s marriage to Glory, Walt had been the polar opposite. He’d welcomed her as a daughter; in fact, he willingly filled in for the father she’d lost as a young child—he even walked her down the aisle.

It wasn’t quite five o’clock, and Walt’s car wasn’t in the drive. Glory got out of the car with a prayer that Walt’s car was in the garage and he was home.

She owed him. That had become especially clear this afternoon as she’d remembered that he had been the first person to show up at the hospital emergency room. It had been Walt who had held her hand and grieved with her when the doctor told her that the baby had no heartbeat. Even after Granny had arrived, he’d stayed. Even after he’d heard his own child was dead, he’d stayed. He’d stayed with Glory until the grandchild he’d been so anxious to have was delivered, stillborn.