The Myth of Perpetual Summer Page 16

  I pick up the locket, hoping it might reveal its secret. The etched lines are time-darkened, making the design easy to see. Tiny flowers. Forget-me-nots. Gran’s favorite. The back side is inscribed with a date, October 13, 1920. Gran’s birthday—her eighteenth.

  The latch is so delicate, I use my pinkie nail to open it, expecting to see a picture of Granddad inside. But there is no photograph, just another engraving. Initials in delicate, swirling script. There are so many curlicues that I have to study to make them out. The middle initial is the largest. LNC and WJG Never Forget. Lavada Constance Neely. I snap it closed with a smile. “So Granddad had some competition, did he?”

  Why on earth did she bring it to the dedication?

  Maybe this time I’ll find the courage to ask her about it.

  The only other thing in this compartment is a small brass key with a fine gold cord through its eye. I replace the locket and pick up the key, then try it on the drawer. It takes some finagling in the old lock, but it finally slides open. The drawer is filled with faded and yellowing black-and-white photographs, some whole, some cut, all of the same young man.

  My gaze moves to the bottom shelf of the nightstand. There, right where it’s been my entire life, is the old black album with James on the front, the one with nearly all of the photos of Uncle George missing. I open it and flip through. The photos from the drawer are the missing puzzle pieces. Gran said Great-Grandmother James destroyed those photos because George was a disappointment. And yet here they are, locked away like Gran’s secret locket.

  LNC. WJG. Could that have been Uncle George? Was George his middle name? Why, after listening to Gran’s family stories for years, do I not know that? Why did she erase Uncle George?

  * * *

  The telephone is ringing when I come downstairs. I don’t hurry, thinking Ross will pick it up in the kitchen. But the ringing goes on.

  I run into the kitchen and give him a nasty look.

  “Hey,” he says, holding his palms toward me. “I’m not here.”

  Right. I snatch the wall phone off the hook—it could be Amelia with news about Walden.

  “Tallulah, dear,” Gran says.

  The questions raised by the pictures and the locket ricochet in my mind. But I hold them. I want to look her in the eye when I ask them. “Yes?”

  “I want to make certain you bring the cream blouse, not the print one. I don’t want to look too flashy.” She’s speaking as if we’ve been chatting regularly every day for the past nine years. As if she doesn’t have a drawer full of secrets in her bedroom.

  “I already have the cream one packed.” I pause, then can’t help a tiny probing comment. “But I couldn’t find your pearls.”

  She’s silent for a beat. “Did I ask you to bring my pearls?”

  “Well, no. I just assumed. You usually wear them with a suit.”

  “And how would you know what I usually do? It’s been quite some time since you left.” Her tone is conclusive.

  I feel Ross’s curious gaze on me and realize how long I’ve been silent. I turn my back to him. “Do you want any of your other jewelry?”

  “No. Thank you.” Her everything-is-hunky-dory tone is back. “You get some rest, and I’ll see you tomorrow. Good night, dear. I love you.”

  I hang up the phone, those last three words echoing in my head and my response locked deep in my heart.

  “Soup’s on,” Ross says. “You look a little rattled.”

  “Just adjusting to feeling like a helpless kid again.”

  He pulls out my chair, reminding me once more that I’m back in the South, where things are left unsaid and men behave like gentlemen.

  He holds up the bottle of wine. “Found this in the back of the pantry. Think she’ll mind?”

  Wine hidden in the pantry? Gran is just full of surprises.

  “Go ahead.”

  As he draws out the cork, he says, “Why helpless?”

  “What?”

  “You said you feel like a helpless kid again. I had the impression your grandmother was the one stable element in your childhood. Which would make me think she would make you feel stronger, more secure, not helpless.”

  I pause to think. “You’re right. For most of my life, Gran and the orchard were my constants. Which made it all that much harder when she refused to let me stay. Of course, Griff was all set with a new life already.”

  He pours my glass of wine, and then his. “It must have felt to you like he got the good end of the stick at the time—if there could be a good end with all that happened. But believe me, it wasn’t a new life, not like you imagine. It was purgatory. He blamed himself for everything.”

  “But that’s ridiculous! He was as much a victim as any of us—more so.”

  He looks me in the eye. “I think you said it right there . . . ‘any of us.’ Don’t you think your grandmother should be included in that number? When horrific things happen, it’s natural to want to blame someone. Maybe your someone was your grandmother.”

  “I thought you weren’t going to analyze me.”

  “If I were analyzing you, it’d be a whole lot more intense. And a whole lot more painful. I’m just making an observation—as a friend.”

  The word friend strikes close to my heart. There is something between Ross and me that I’ve never had with anyone, not even Griff, an understanding that needs no words. I can feel it now, just as I felt it when I was fourteen. When I look back on that time, I wrote it off as a girlish crush, a teenage infatuation. But now? Why do I feel less able—or less compelled—to defend my inner self from Ross than I am everyone else?

  “What are you thinking?” he asks, a bemused look on his face.

  I take a long sip of wine before I answer. “I was just wondering if there’s some mysterious connection between people when one saves the other’s life.”

  He’s quiet a moment. “I’ve wondered that a million times myself. I’d convinced myself it wasn’t true—until I saw you on my front porch yesterday.”

  I force myself to meet his eyes and I feel it, a bond that has stretched over time and distance. “So you think it’s true now?”

  “Now. Back then. What made me follow you that day? Is fate something we just throw out there to absolve ourselves of responsibility? Or is it a true force? Something that in order to alter you have to beat back and slay like a dragon?”

  I think about it for a moment, more focused on the us of it than the existential question. “I look at life as a long circuitous line of dominoes,” I say. “Take out any one and the course will be altered. And I don’t think it takes dragon slaying to change it. It’s a simple moment, a split second that affects the rest of your life. I think putting it all in the hands of ‘fate’ is cheating. So yes, it’s absolving yourself of the responsibility of your choices. I am where I am because of my choices. Not because of some otherworldly hand moving me around the chess board of life.”

  “And yet, you blame your grandmother for your leaving Lamoyne. You didn’t have a hand in that choice?”

  “Hey! Margo and Gran were sending me away one way or the other. I had only one choice—how I left.” I calm myself down. “Which, as you now see, had horrific repercussions for Walden. And I take responsibility for it.” Every time I think of him, the regret nearly drowns me. I have to figure out a way to make it right. To save him.

  “You’re saying you’re responsible for Walden’s actions? Your decisions are yours, but you’re to blame for his?”

  I wave a hand in the air. “This conversation is way too deep for me right now.”

  “Okay, but here’s one more thing to think about, since you’re hanging everyone’s troubles on choices. You took off on your own, took a path of your choosing. And yet, that path took you away from Lamoyne, away from Griff. Away from me.” The passion in his voice startles me. “Did you have to hide for nine damn years?” He stands up. “And why didn’t you talk to me?” He thumps his palm against his chest. “We were friends. I cared ab
out you.”

  I shoot to my feet, blinded by pain. My losses. “You and your family took Griff from me! He was all I had!”

  He comes toward me, not aggressively, yet there’s a change in him. “Did I? Or did I just shovel up the pieces after he was broken and no good to you or anyone else?” He casts a quick glance toward the ceiling. “Griff’s leaving had nothing to do with you and everything to do with his inability to deal with the shit storm around him. My guess is, he started pulling away long before—”

  “He did! After he met you!”

  “Come on, Tallulah. You’re seriously angry with me because I was his friend?”

  Ross rushes on, the pain in his voice so raw, so true. “If you’d only talked to me, Lulie. I know my mom would have taken you in. That’s the kind of woman she was. But you chose to leave, alone, with no thought of how it made the rest of us feel. We spent those first months calling hospitals and police stations all over the country, every damn time fearing we’d find you raped or beaten or dead. My mother hired a private investigator, but you left no trail. If you’re looking at choices that had an effect on other people, that’s the one!” He pokes the air with his index finger. “Right there. That’s the choice that hurt us all.”

  His outburst leaves my knees weak. Years of well-tended anger becomes a molten pool at my feet, leaving me drained and wanting.

  He runs a hand through his hair and puts a step of distance between us. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that. Not with everything else going on.”

  “You’re right,” I whisper. The walls I’ve so carefully tended are useless when it comes to Ross. “About all of it.” Hot tears roll down my cheeks, but for once, I don’t feel the need to hide them.

  Ross steps to me and holds me close, his hand cradling the back of my head.

  Against his shoulder, I say, “I was so hurt, so angry. I didn’t think about anyone else.”

  “It was a horrible situation. At that moment, all any of us were thinking about was Griff. You were lost in the shuffle because you always looked after yourself and everyone else, too. No one stopped to think about you—and then you were gone.”

  Hearing his acknowledgment lifts a weight from my shoulders—the burden of fostering my own bitterness, convincing myself that I was beyond it when I simply locked it in a trunk and tied it to my back.

  I gather myself enough to pull away. Ross reaches over and plucks a tissue from the box on the kitchen counter and hands it to me.

  As I wipe my face, I say, “Margo was leaving no matter what. I thought the twins would be better off with Lamoyne behind them. I really did. They were young enough they’d be able to forget.” I look up at him. “I’m ashamed to admit it makes me feel good knowing you were upset by my leaving.”

  He smooths my hair away from my face. “Yeah, well, don’t test me by doing it again.”

  “Maybe I wanted everyone to feel bad.”

  “Of course you did, you were a teenager. At least you packed a bag and wrote a note, so we knew you left on your own.”

  I think of the phone calls to hospitals and police. Of Mrs. Saenger hiring a private investigator. I never imagined. “What about Margo? Did she look for me?”

  He looks uncomfortable. “Margo was of the mind that you were forging a life for yourself, living an adventure. She almost seemed . . .” He stops.

  “Just say it.”

  “Envious.”

  “Do you know if she ever came back to see Walden?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She finally got what she’d been wanting for years, to be rid of us. Complete and absolute freedom.”

  “I told you a long time ago, she’s the one who didn’t deserve you, not the other way around.”

  I think of Griff, finally in a stable home with a loving mother in Mrs. Saenger. And yet he still left. Maybe Margo created such a hole in each of us that it can never be filled.

  “I wish I could apologize to your mother, for causing her so much trouble.”

  “I guess that’s the thing. We never know if we’re going to get that opportunity.”

  His tone holds a warning. And I am willing to take heed.

  14

  As I hurry Ross out Gran’s front door, he says, “Heading to a fire?”

  “I want to make sure we’re back in New Orleans as soon as possible. In case Amelia gets me in to see Walden.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up for today. She said—”

  “I know, I know.” I keep moving toward the Mercedes. I didn’t sleep at all well, my mind a revolving kaleidoscope of the people in my life and the damage I might have prevented, of cut-up photographs and old lockets. “Sorry for being so edgy.”

  Ross puts Gran’s bag in the trunk while I climb into the passenger seat. I put on my seat belt because Ross’s fancy car nags with an incessant chime until you do.

  Ross gets in the back seat.

  “You’re kidding,” I say.

  “Drive to the motel first. I’ll drive from there.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Humor me.”

  With a sigh, I throw open the door. The seat belt—such a nuisance—grabs my hips and refuses to let me out. I give a growl of frustration and unclip it.

  As I’m buckling myself in the driver’s seat I say, “Perhaps you’d like me to cover you with a blanket? You know, in case someone gets close enough to see you hiding back there. Which, I might add, will cause more tongues to wag than if you’d just sit up here and drive.”

  “Nah. The side windows back here are tinted.”

  “I was being facetious.”

  I ignore his sniggering.

  We’re halfway to the motel when I hear the blip of a siren. I glance in the rearview and see the cherry on top of a police car rotating. Out-of-state license plates were always targets in Lamoyne.

  I hear another chuckle from the back seat. “Bet you wish you’d covered me up now.”

  “Oh, shut up. And sit up like a normal person.”

  I finally see his head in the rearview. He’s grinning.

  The officer taps on the window.

  I reach for the crank, then remember the Mercedes has power windows and fumble for the toggle.

  “I’m sorry, Officer. I just realized I was speeding. I promise to slow down.”

  Ducking low, the policeman looks at Ross in the back seat, then back at me. His hand moves to rest on his gun.

  “Are you all right, miss? Any trouble here?” He tilts his head toward the back seat.

  “I’m fine, thank you. My friend just thinks it funny to ride in the back.”

  He eyes Ross for a second before he says, “License and registration.”

  He’s wearing sunglasses, so I can’t see his eyes. I glance at his nameplate, Officer Murray. He has a dimple in the center of his square chin.

  “Tommy? Is that you?”

  He slides off the sunglasses and studies me for a moment. “Tallulah?”

  “Yes! Gran’s in the hospital—”

  “I know. I’ve been visiting.” He’s speaking in his regular voice now, slow and thick with accent instead of his serious-officer voice. “I would have contacted you, if I’d known how.” There’s a hint of condemnation riding in the last words.

  “It’s kind of you to visit her.”

  “I keep an eye on her.”

  “Like in a police kind of way?”

  “In a friend kind of way—for Griff.”

  I get a tingle of excitement. “Have you heard from him? Do you know where he is?”

  His eyes shift away, just for a second, the way they always did when he wanted to avoid a subject. It strikes me that I once knew Tommy as well as I knew my own brother. I never counted him among the people I left behind. Maybe I should have.

  “I don’t know where he is. And I do need to see your license and registration.”

  He’s developed a by-the-rules attitude he certainly didn’t have back then. I dig in my purse a
nd produce my driver’s license.

  “San Francisco?” Tommy is writing on his ticket pad.

  “Yes.” I wonder how much of Walden’s defense fund this ticket is going to take.

  “Are you staying at your grandmother’s house?”

  “As soon as I pick her up we’re heading to New Orleans.” I’m certain Tommy and everyone else in Lamoyne knows about Walden, but I don’t want to get in a conversation about him. I want to get on the road and see him.

  “Registration?”

  “You remember Ross Saenger,” I say, hitching a thumb over my shoulder. “This is his car. We drove up from New Orleans yesterday.”

  “So, you two . . . ?”

  “No,” Ross says quickly. “Strictly on the up-and-up.”

  “Ross would prefer the whole town think he spent last night in the motel—for my honor and Gran’s sense of propriety.”

  Tommy grins. “I swear not to blow your cover.” He hands back my license and steps back from the car, tapping the top. “Slow down. The next guy who pulls you over might get caught up in a different kind of nostalgia.”

  The truth in that statement gives me pause.

  “Tell Mrs. James I hope she’s feeling better.”

  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I thank him and start the car.

  As I drive away, I wonder why he insisted on seeing my license and the registration after he knew who I was and had decided not to give me a ticket.

  The rest of the way to the hospital, that just keeps nagging me.

  * * *

  It’s early and a Sunday morning, so the visitors’ parking lot at the hospital is nearly empty, except for an old truck that looks like Mr. Stokes’s. The beekeeping equipment sticking up from the bed confirms it’s his even before I see him behind the wheel. My spirits lift at the sight.

  By the time I pull into a space and get the car turned off, he’s there, opening my door for me. He hasn’t changed a bit. “Miss Tallulah, glad you come home.”