The Blue Bottle Club (24 page)

"I understand, Granmaddie," Dee interrupted. "In those days bearing a child out of wedlock was a horrible taboo. If people had known, it would have marked your life—and Daddy's—forever."

"I told Nick that his father had been killed in a fire—and technically that was true. Whitman Hughes died a year after Nick's birth when his Malibu beach house burned to the ground. But as he grew up, Nick fabricated a whole story around that one idea—that his daddy was a hero who gave his life to save others."

Dee grinned. "Guess we know now where I got my love of fiction."

Addie nodded and patted her cheek, then turned back to Brendan. "He was so set on it, I didn't have the heart to tell him otherwise. I just played out the role of the widow raising a son on her own."

"It must have been terribly difficult," Brendan said. "Even today, being a single mother is one of the most challenging jobs on earth."

"I had a lot of help." Addie smiled and nodded. "I couldn't have done it without Grace—or without God."

Brendan let that last comment sink in. Addie Lovell had been through some terrible tragedies in her life, not the least of which was the knowledge that her own father had declared her dead.

But she could still see the grace in it all, the ways God had led her and protected her and brought love into her life.

Addie reached over to the table and picked up the cobalt-blue bottle. "So many years ago, we put our dreams in this bottle. We fully expected them to come true, every one of us."

"But your dreams didn't exactly come true," Brendan said carefully. "You wanted to become a great actress, and—"

"There are all kinds of dreams," Addie interrupted with a distant gleam in her eye. "There are the dreams we hold in our minds, our plans for the future. And the dreams we cherish in our hearts, the secret dreams we tell no one. But even deeper than either of those are the dreams that fill our souls, the dreams even we don't know about. The dreams God gives us as a gift."

Brendan comprehended Addie's
words,
but she had the unsettling sensation that the
meaning
of those words lay beyond her, just out of reach. And something in her wanted to understand. Usually in situations like this, her ego got the best of her and she pretended to understand whether she did or not. But this time Brendan's desire for Addie's wisdom overcame the compulsion to maintain her image. "Could you explain that? I'm not sure I understand what you mean."

Addie fixed a bright eye on her, and Brendan felt as if the old woman could see straight into her soul. "Good for you, girl," she murmured. She gave a chuckle and went on: "The dream
itself
is the gift, you see—not necessarily the fulfillment. The dream, the longing for something outside ourselves, something greater and finer and nobler, is put into our hearts and souls by the God who loves us. The dreams we're aware of keep us reaching, give us hope, provide a goal to strive for. Whether or not they're ever fulfilled, they serve their purpose. Dreams are like love, child. Love is never lost, even if it goes unrequited. For the very experience of loving makes us tenderer, better people, more capable of receiving and appreciating God's love."

"You keep talking about God," Brendan said. "I don't mean to sound like a skeptic, but how exactly does God come into the picture? It seems to me that you might blame God for the fact that your dreams of becoming a great actress were never really fulfilled."

"No need to apologize for being a skeptic." Addie uttered a lighthearted laugh. "The good Lord loves skeptics—why, they're some of God's greatest triumphs." She gave Brendan a wink. "Sometimes I think the Almighty made people like you just to keep people like me on our toes. But don't you see, dear, it's the dreams we're
unaware
of that are the most important ones. God sees into our hearts and knows our souls inside out. Our conscious dreams may go unfulfilled, but the Lord's dreams—those deeper ones—are always realized. We just have to keep our eyes open to see the miracle when it happens."

She moved closer to Dee and reached out for her hand. "Take my life, for instance. Most folks, looking in from the outside, would say that it was a failure. I lost everything—my family, any chance at a real career—because of one stupid mistake I made when I was too young to know what was good for me. But the Lord has a way of taking the curse and turning it into a blessing." She squeezed her granddaughter's hand, and tears filled her eyes. "The way I see it, God restored it all, with more to spare. Gave me Grace, who saved my life and helped open my eyes to the goodness and mercy in life. Gave me Nick, whose presence made me grow up and understand what real love is all about. Gave me this wonderful granddaughter, and peace in my latter years. All the stardom in the world couldn't have been worth what I've received instead. It's been a very good life. And you can bet that when I go to meet my Maker, I won't be asking any foolish questions about why things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to be."

That night, in her house on Town Mountain, Brendan lay awake gazing out at the lights of the city. The story of the four women who had hidden their dreams in a bottle was turning out to be more, much more, than she had bargained for. It would make a great human-interest series, of course—her instincts hadn't failed her on that point. What she hadn't counted on, however, was the impact the story might have on her personal life.

Brendan had never given much thought to the deeper dreams in her own soul. Her career had always been everything to her, and when it had begun to lose its luster and vitality, she had panicked. Her entire identity was tied up with being the television reporter, the face in front of the camera. Who was she, apart from the persona of Brendan Delaney from station WLOS?

The unwelcome fact was, Letitia Cameron and Adora Archer had caused her to do some serious reevaluating, and she wasn't sure she liked what she saw. When the camera quit rolling and the story was wrapped up, was there anything of significance in Brendan's life that would sustain her?

She turned over in bed and willed herself to go to sleep, but she couldn't free her mind from the tangle of emotions that had been generated by all Addie's talk about God. If the old woman was right—and Brendan wasn't conceding that, mind you—then perhaps God had something more planned for her than a thirty-second spot on the eleven o'clock news and a bit of status as a local celebrity.

Addie's words churned in Brendan's mind, haunting her with the prospect of some deeper truth that still eluded her:
It's the dreams we're unaware of that are the most important ones. God sees into our hearts and knows
our souls inside out. Our conscious dreams may go unfulfilled, hut the Lord's dreams—those deeper ones—are always realized. We just have to keep our eyes
open to see the miracle when it happens.

When sleep finally claimed her, Brendan dreamed—a troubling image of herself as an old, old woman, lonely and isolated, boring everyone who came near with incessant reminiscences of the glory days long past, when she had been a famous reporter. People listened politely, as most folks were wont to do with the elderly, but she could see that their minds were elsewhere, and at the first opportunity, they made good their escape, returning to their own lives, to more important concerns, and leaving her alone once again.

She awoke just as the first threads of dawn crept over the mountain, jerking to consciousness to find her heart inexplicably heavy and her pillow soaked with tears.

Brendan lay there with her eyes closed, holding very still, trying to recapture the image of the dream. But it, like Addie's truth, eluded her. All that was left was the dull weight in her chest and the nagging suspicion that she was missing something important in her life.

24

THANKSGIVING

November 24, 1994

B
rendan sat next to Dee Lovell and gazed around the massive oak dining table at the odd collection of guests gathered for the celebration. At the head of the table, Addie reigned resplendent in a flowing pantsuit of deep turquoise velvet with an enormous peacock feather adorning her platinum hair. To her right, subdued as Addie was bright, sat Letitia Cameron, clad in khaki slacks and a rag wool sweater, with Gertrude Klein, the ever-watchful Doberman, flanking her far side. Across the table, dear old Dorothy Foster beamed over them all as if she were solely responsible for this glad reunion.

"Quite a little family we have here, isn't it?" Dee whispered.

Brendan nodded, and unexpected tears stung at her eyes. Clearly, Dee included her in the "family" designation, as if she belonged. But despite the warm welcome she had received from everyone around the table, Brendan couldn't help feeling like an interloper, a fraud who had wormed her way into their hearts and lives under false pretenses.

Never had she felt so much an outsider as when they clasped hands and each woman around the table prayed, expressing the thankfulness in her heart. Addie and Letitia both offered tremulous gratitude for God's intervention in restoring their friendship. Gert and Dee gave thanks for the Lord's work on behalf of their loved ones, and Dorothy Foster thanked God for bringing Brendan into their lives and using her to accomplish the Almighty's purposes. When it came Brendan's turn, she hadn't the faintest idea what to say. Her heart was full, certainly, but filled with as much confusion and apprehension as thankfulness. She muttered something about being grateful for having friends to share this day with, and when she looked up, everyone was smiling at her as if they were privy to some inside joke she didn't get.

The truth was, Brendan was thankful for being invited to this gathering, and especially grateful for the way Dee went out of her way to make her feel included. But still she stood on the outside, looking in on a perspective of faith she couldn't fully understand.

These women—all of them—believed firmly that God had been at work in their lives for the past sixty-five years: leading them, guiding them, intervening to help them fulfill their dreams, or if not to fulfill them, at least to give them new and better futures than the ones they had envisioned for themselves. And just as surely, they believed that she, Brendan Delaney, self-confessed agnostic, was the instrument of the Almighty that had brought God's will to fulfillment in this reunion.

As dinner progressed, the old women chattered among themselves like geese on a riverbank, leaving Brendan and Dee to conversation of their own. Once she no longer felt as if she were on display as the Miraculous Hand of God, Brendan began to relax a little and actually started to enjoy herself.

For one thing, she truly liked Dee Lovell. The young woman was bright and intensely creative, with an amazingly incisive sense of humor. After their first meeting, Brendan had bought the novel, A
Sense of Place,
and read it in a single weekend. The words, the emotions of the book, gripped her. She felt as if she had been immersed in the depths of Cordelia Lovell's mind and heart and come out of the waters a new person.

The novel was the story of a career woman, just divorced after a painful and abusive marriage, who had a bright future ahead of her but did not feel as if she fit anywhere. The woman's struggle to find her place, a spiritual and emotional refuge for the healing of her soul, led her to purchase and renovate a run-down old Victorian house. Her labor to save the house from being condemned paralleled the renovations of her own heart, and by the end of the novel she had discovered herself and cultivated a "sense of place" that not only redeemed her, but brought peace and healing to those around her.

It had been a long, long time since Brendan had experienced that kind of connection—either with a book or with another person. But reading A
Sense
of Place
left her with the satisfying feeling of looking down the darkened corridors of her own life and finding hope and light there and with conviction that she and Dee Lovell could be friends—good friends. For the first time in ages, Brendan admitted to herself that she
needed
such a friend. It was a moment of epiphany for her, and a moment of painful self-examination.

Brendan had never had the time or energy for close relationships. A few years back she had been engaged to a handsome anchorman whose lifestyle dovetailed perfectly with hers. She and Steve had so much in common, she told herself—both of them reporters, both able to understand the crazy schedules and incessant demands of the job. But in the end, the relationship turned out to be less about love and more about convenience. The job always came first, and they spent time with each other when nothing else pressed in to sidetrack them. When Steve received a job offer at Turner Broadcasting in Atlanta, there was no question that he would take it, no question that Brendan would stay behind at WLOS. They parted amiably, wishing each other good luck. Brendan hardly noticed when he was gone.

Now, for some reason she couldn't quite comprehend, Brendan had begun to feel the need for people in her life—not fans or coworkers, but people who cared about her for who she was, people who could fill the place of the family she had lost. When the invitation had come to share Thanksgiving with Dee and Addie and the others, she didn't hesitate to accept. And it wasn't for the sake of the story, either—it was for the sake of her soul.