Phantom of Riverside Park (41 page)

Their connection was so strong she could read
his thoughts simply by looking. And he could read hers. That was
the thing. Standing all the way across the room from her, David
knew she was processing his withdrawal, screaming a denial, then
finally saying,
okay, that’s it then
.

Elizabeth turned her back to him, and he
wanted to scream,
I didn’t mean it. I take it all
back.

Instead, he let her go. Instead he smiled at
Nicky and said, “When do we get to sing Happy Birthday?”

“Farm life agrees with you Thomas.”

“Can’t say the same thing for you, Fred. Bet
you’re not eating a thing but honey buns since I’ve been gone.”

“You’d be surprised at what I’m eatin’ these
days.” Fred turned his face up to the sun, looking smug.

There were flower gardens all over the
property, better than any park Thomas had ever seen, and all sorts
of benches. Plenty for Fred to have his own bench if he wanted to,
but
no
he had to crowd Thomas and sit on the same
bench.

Still, it was familiar and comforting, this
ritual they had, sitting side by side yapping at each other while
Nicky played with McKenzie’s dogs nearby.

“If you think I’m goin’ to rise to the bait,
you’re mistaken, Fred Lollar.”

“Ain’t no bait, just the facts. Didn’t you
notice who rode down here with me, or are you goin’ blind in your
old age?”

Thomas snorted. “You mean Quincy? She didn’t
look any too happy about the arrangement if you ask me.”

“I ain’t askin’, you old doofus. I’m tellin’.
That there is one mighty fine woman, even if she is pricklier than
a porcupine. She’s been bringin’ me fried chicken ever’ Wednesday
night. Yessir, that woman’s got the hots for me, even if she don’t
know it yet.”

“When’s the weddin’, Fred?”

Fred snorted. “Who said anything about a
weddin’? I’m talking livin’ in sin.”

Thomas smiled. Fred did love a good joke.

As for Thomas, he’d be content to live out
the rest of his days here. Would that be too much to ask? Of
course, chances were looking mighty slim what with David rushing
off like a sore-tailed cat after the party and Elizabeth moping
around the house. With Fred chattering away on his left and the sun
warming his shoulders, Thomas tried to strike up another silent
bargain with God.

Now I know I’ve been pestering You, God,
but I’m gettin’ mighty tired. It’d suit me to head on home right
now, but I can’t leave while Elizabeth needs me. I wonder if You
could speed up that lawsuit a bit? And while You’re at it, I wonder
if it’d be too much to ask if You’d give Elizabeth somebody to take
care of her and Nicky after I’m gone?

o0o

Quincy and Fred spent the night and left
early the next morning. After Elizabeth had bid them goodbye, she
went to find McKenzie in the barn where the two of them sat talking
until lunch, McKenzie spinning yarns about David that Elizabeth
wove into a tapestry of hope. How could she not? A man who believed
in the souls of hawks surely believed in love, didn’t he?

And in the long afternoon after Nicky and
McKenzie and Papa piled into the car and went into town to see a
matinee, Elizabeth went into the library looking for a book to
read. So much wisdom collected in a single place. Maybe if she sat
there long enough she’d become wise by osmosis. And when all this
was over and the time came to say goodbye, she’d be like Solomon,
and nobody would ever be hurt by her actions again.

But what if she made the same mistakes again?
What if she hadn’t learned a single thing from the past?

She went outside so she could breathe.
Perched on a wrought iron chair she shut herself off to everything
except the sound of her breath moving in and out, in and out. She
felt like the same scared little girl who used to run to Mae
Mae.

“What am I going to do, Mae Mae?” she
whispered. “What’s to become of all of us?”

“Elizabeth.”

She nearly jumped out of her chair, for there
was David standing in the doorway and she hadn’t heard a single
thing, not the creaking of the door, not a single footstep. He’d
come without advance notice, and she hadn’t had the tiniest
inkling, not the smallest warning had whispered through her
mind.

“I’m sorry I startled you.” He moved toward
the chair opposite her, then changed his mind and went to stand
beside the stone wall. Nervous.

If she were a true lady like Mae Mae she
would have tried to put him at ease, but she guessed she wasn’t.
Not tonight, anyhow. She was a hurt little girl who didn’t
understand why she couldn’t even have this one simple thing: a soul
mate who would always be there to pick her up when she fell.

The bad thing was, she was selfish, to boot.
What woman in her right mind would be thinking about her own
personal loss when her whole family was hanging in the balance?

“Why are you here, David?”

Add rude to her list. This was his house.

“It’s over, Elizabeth. Joseph called to tell
me the Belliveaus have dropped the lawsuit.”

Elizabeth couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move.
She couldn’t do anything except sit with her shoulders slumped as
if the burden were still there, as if she couldn’t quite believe
that it was okay to drop it on the ground and walk away.

“Everything’s going to be all right,
Elizabeth.”

Mae Mae used to tell her that, and it had
always offered comfort, but tonight she was weeping so hard she
thought she might break. She probably would have if David hadn’t
been there to hold her together. Who’s going to hold her together
now?

You are
, Mae Mae said.
You’re
going hold yourself together, Elizabeth Jennings, and don’t you
forget it.

She sat up and wiped her eyes with her hands.
David pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, and she smiled and
said, “Thank you,” and he said , “You’re welcome.”

Suddenly it hit her like the sky falling on
her head that the terrible threat of losing Nicky was truly over.
All at once she felt her blood moving through her body, she felt
her own skin and her own bones. She could hear her heart beating.
She could see the wings of humming birds and the pulsing throats of
robins and the shapes of clouds and the greening of grass. She
could hear the songs of bees and the call of cicadas and the tiny
violin music of grasshoppers as they rubbed their legs together in
summer glee.

All the simple pleasures lost to her the day
they’d taken Nicky presented themselves once more, shining and new,
and she swore that as long as she lived she would never take them
for granted again. She would embrace life. She’d collect dew from
the petals of roses and savor the taste of cold milk poured from a
stoneware pitcher and eat all her ice cream before a single drop
escaped down the cone. She’d absorb great opera and dance to the
rhythms of exotic drums and learn all the verses of the hymns Mae
Mae used to sing.

“You’re so quiet, Elizabeth. Are you all
right?”

“Yes. I was just thinking.”

Words wanted to tumble out of her. She wanted
to tell David everything she’d discovered in the last few minutes.
But she was suddenly shy with him. Their lives had shifted, their
roles changed, and she didn’t know her new lines.

Everything around her took on a surreal
quality, the roses trailing over the stone wall, the magnolia tree,
the sun, even David. She felt as if she were in the middle of a
movie, one of the old black and white classics, posing for one of
the scenes that would be subtitled
The family breaks up
.
If it had subtitles.

Maybe life would be easier if it came with
subtitles, and then when you got confused you could look down and
see something like
She mourns another loss
and then say to
yourself,
Oh, so that’s the why I’m sad
.

She was happy and sad at the same time, and
maybe that’s the way she was supposed to be.

“I know this is a happy time for you,
Elizabeth. It must also be a bit frightening. Change often is. But
I don’t want you to worry. You can stay here as long as you like.
You don’t have to make any major decisions yet. Take some time off.
Travel. You can go anywhere in the world. You can afford it.”

Wait a minute
, she wanted to say.
Stop that
.

David was moving too fast into the future.
She wasn’t ready to leave the present. She wanted to sit and savor
it. She wanted to share the wonderful news with her son and her
grandfather and not think of anything except the tears in Papa’s
eyes and the joy on Nicky’s face.

She wanted to catch David’s hand and hold on,
hold on tight and not let go.

“I appreciate that, David. I really do.”

She touched his hand and noticed how long his
fingers were and how squared-off his nails looked and how the total
impact was one of enormous strength and great capability. She
touched him and held on.

She didn’t know how long they stayed that
way, holding hands and not speaking except with their hearts. Hers
was saying
thank you
over and over again. It was also
saying
I don’t want to leave
while his was saying
goodbye.

The fact was, she was in a safe place and she
wanted to stay there forever. She didn’t want to make decisions
that affected two other lives. She didn’t want to be responsible
anymore. She wanted to lay down her burdens, hand over the reigns,
climb into David’s lap and say,
here, it’s all yours.

“I can never thank you enough for all you’ve
done for me and my family, David. We’ve intruded in your life long
enough. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

She left him then, just walked into the house
not looking back, not daring.

Up until the time Elizabeth stood in the
doorway with her packed bags all around her, David had fooled
himself into thinking she’d change her mind at the last minute.
He’d never in his life been the least bit fanciful, and yet for the
last few hours he’d done nothing except imagine miracles for
himself.

None of them had come true, of course, and
now he was standing beside Elizabeth with his heart hurting and his
hand clutching a piece of paper that would make this separation
final.

She was leaving to start her life anew. Fresh
starts are easy for the young. There’s so much time ahead of them.
They’re like kites with a full spool of string, spinning out toward
the sky in gleeful abandon, oblivious to the currents that can send
them crashing toward the earth.

He pictured Elizabeth flying away from him,
slowly at first, still attached, occasionally dipping back toward
the farm to see if he were still there, then higher and higher
until she broke loose and he could see nothing but the empty spool
lying on the ground.

“You take care of yourself now, Elizabeth,”
he said. “Call me if you need me.”

“We’ll be fine.”

“Well, then...” He couldn’t bring himself to
say goodbye. Instead he thrust the annulment papers into her hand.
“Here are the papers I promised.” He couldn’t even bring himself to
say annul. “You can look over them when you have time. All they
require is your signature. I can take care of the rest.”

“Thanks,” she said, then slid them into her
purse without so much as a glance.

They stood staring at each other as if their
feet had taken root, and might have stood that way until a
lightning bolt split them apart if Nicky hadn’t run down the stairs
and held up his arms.

“Give me a ‘bye hug,” he said. Then he
squeezed David hard around the neck and made humming sounds.

“‘Bye, pal. You be good. Take care of your
Mommy.”

“Okay.” Nicky leaned back and cocked his head
to one side, thoughtful. Then he thrust Bear into David’s hand.
“He’ll make you all better. Don’t squeeze him. He’s real.” Leaning
close he said in a stage whisper, “Will you still be my guard John
angel?”

“I’ll try.”

Papa shook hands, then he and Nicky climbed
into the red Cherokee and left David standing in the bright
sunlight with Elizabeth. It occurred to him that he had lived too
long in shadow, too long with survivor’s guilt, too long with fear.
While he’d sought absolution for sins he hadn’t even committed,
redemption had slipped through his fingers.

“Goodbye, David.” Elizabeth stood on tiptoe
and kissed him with a tenderness almost beyond bearing. “You’re my
guard John angel, too,” she said, and then she followed her son
down the steps while David stood on the porch and watched her drive
away.

“I can’t believe you let her go.” McKenzie
appeared at his side. “You love her, David. Why didn’t you try to
keep her?”

“The point is not to hang on, but to let go.
She has to love me back, McKenzie. Of her own free will.”

o0o

Elizabeth focused on the road and what she
was moving toward rather than what she was leaving behind. The land
flattened out and opened up so wide you could hardly tell where the
earth left off and the sky began. A few gray clouds scuttled about
trying to find enough support to set up a cloudburst. It looked
like the sky might be gearing up to cry.

She just kept on driving. Women have always
known how to stay busy to keep from weeping. Mae Mae had told her
that once. She’d said that the only way she’d survived Papa being
off at war was to start scrubbing floors the minute she got up.
When that work ran out she’d move on to the next thing until it got
dark and she was so tired she was practically asleep on her
feet.

“Then I’d fall into bed and start all over in
the morning. That’s how you survive the bad times, Elizabeth. You
just keep moving.”

She looked across the seat at Papa who had
walked beside her every step of the way from the time she’d left
Tunica in disgrace to the time the Belliveaus had taken Nicky to
the time they’d packed up their belongings and moved down to
David’s farm.