Words Unspoken (6 page)

“I ate dinner with a client. Want me to fix you something?”

“No, thank you.”

She quickly made a sandwich and went to her room. She tossed the mail from the colleges on the floor and picked up a letter that had arrived today.

Hey, Liss!

How are you, girl? Hanging in there? School’s great. Sophomore year is a blast. You know the ropes, everybody’s happy to see you back. I like my classes too. Calc III, physics. Computer science. We’ll be working on Apples. Okay, I know these things aren’t your cup of tea. Literature, languages … fine.

Please, please come for a visit. You should be here. You’d love it. Girl, you were made for academia. And the guys aren’t bad either. Not bad at all.

You better write me back with the latest gossip from our dear alma mater.

Love you,Jill

She set the letter aside, got out the notebook—the one the therapist had given her and told her to write in when she was tempted to “spiral into despair”—those were the words she used—and began to write.

September 23

They all think I am crazy. I am not crazy, even if I hear voices. I am working this out. On paper. Right here. One day it will be over and done.
The therapist wasn’t all that helpful, but one thing she said is very true.
“Learn to quiet the voices and you will learn to live again.”

This proposition seems logical and the exercises she suggested pertinent.
The difficulty arises when other voices crowd in—specifically my father’s.
I cannot understand his complete inability to face truth. He says we’ve
discussed Caleb way too much. But it has never really been a discussion.
More like an ultimatum. He’ll murder me with his silence, with his plastic smile covering over the horror. He is stuck and refuses to move, and I am stuck with him.

Lissa replaced the notebook in her desk drawer.

Helena had come today. The frames were righted. The wastebasket with the shattered glass in it had been emptied.

We’re building confidence.

She walked to the armoire, took down the framed photo of her with her mother, and stuffed it in a drawer, far below the notebooks. Then she did the same with the photo of her horse. “I’m sorry, Momma. But for now, I have to do this. If I am going to learn to drive again, I can’t have you staring at me.”

These are logical thoughts. I am getting better.

Liar, liar.

________

Ev’s friends called him a prophet. It had actually started as a derogatory term. He recalled the first time it was used, thirty years ago, the day the Russians had launched Sputnik. He’d been talking to his friend Bud, who worked for the license bureau.

“That teen came to his lesson high on something. He cursed me up and down when I told him he’d fail if I had anything to say about it. I thought he was going to drive right into that brick wall. I don’t think that kid should ever get his license. He’ll be dead faster than you can say lickety-split. Or he’ll have killed someone before he turns seventeen.”

When Bud passed the kid four months later, Ev had had a premonition of trouble. Then, only weeks later, the news flashed across the radio stations—a teenager involved in a hit-and-run accident, killing a mother of three.

“Whaddaya think you are, Ev?” Bud had asked him, with a mixture of mistrust and awe. “A prophet or something?”

But it wasn’t hard to see the truth. Two minutes in a car, and he knew who would be a safe driver and who wouldn’t.

This new client, Lissa—he watched her climb into her father’s BMW—would not be a good driver. In fact, she scared him. He rarely felt nervous with the teens. He knew the routine well. He didn’t take them onto the street until he was sure they could handle the car. But she had fooled him. Obviously she had experience driving. In some ways she was poised, mature. Why did a cement statue beside a country road send her into a panic?

He cut the engine of Ole Bessie and got out, walked beside the redbrick school building to where the library was located, at the end of a grassy courtyard.

A thin woman with glasses and a smile greeted him as he stepped inside. “May I help you, sir?”

“My name is Ev MacAllister. I’m Lissa Randall’s driving instructor.”

“Oh, hello. Nice to meet you.” Then she frowned. “I thought Lissa had her lesson an hour ago.”

“We just finished. I let her off here. I, um, I don’t mean to pry, ma’am, but Lissa told me she went to this school. Graduated from here.”

“Yes, she did! One of the top students in her class. She was planning on attending an Ivy League college up East. A fine young woman.” She frowned again. “So you don’t know her story? I thought since you’re teaching her how to drive again, she would have naturally …”

“She mentioned an accident, but she doesn’t seem to want to give any details.”

The woman’s face creased. “Why don’t you have a seat, Mr. MacAllister?” She motioned to an overstuffed chair.

“This is quite a place.”

“We’ve got the reputation for the most complete—and comfortable— school library in the state of Tennessee.” She held out her hand. “I’m Jennifer Rivers. I’ve been at Chattanooga Girls School for twenty-three years, and I’ve seen a lot of students come through this school. Many of them arrive as first graders and leave as young women, ready to face the world. Some more ready than others. But in all my years, I have never known another girl more prepared, more poised and mature than Melissa Randall.”

She cleared her throat. “Until the accident, that is. Lissa was president of the Honor Council. Gave an eloquent speech at graduation—got a standing ovation from her peers. You know, that’s not that easy to do among a group of bright, cutthroat, Ivy League-bound young women.

“She hadn’t decided on her school, and it was getting very late in the game. She could have gone anywhere. She even had one offer for a full scholarship—to a smaller college in Tennessee. But she was undecided. So she went on one last college tour with her mother, the week after graduation. On their way home …” Mrs. Rivers cleared her throat again.

“They’d been up East, driven hundreds of miles, and then they were only a little ways outside of Chattanooga—on I-75. Lissa was driving, and a bad storm came up—you know how it is around here—hail the size of golf balls. The car skidded, and Lissa got it stopped in the emergency lane by an underpass. Her mother offered to drive, but … but she was hit by another car as she was getting into the driver’s seat. Lissa watched her mother get thrown down the highway.”

Mrs. Rivers took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. “She got the car stopped; they were fine. Lissa kept them from wrecking, and then her mother gets killed walking around the car. How tragic is that?”

Ev nodded and found himself staring at his shoes. One of the white laces was coming untied. He let out a long sigh. “Now I understand.” He did in fact remember reading about the accident in the paper when it had happened. “Thank you for telling me.”

“After that, Lissa just seemed to give up. She’d always been a very private person. You know—very bright, almost too bright. I’m afraid something snapped. She quit seeing friends, tore up her driver’s license, stopped riding her horse. A lot of people around here really love Lissa. We certainly are hoping she’ll pull out of it.”

“Yes, well, I’m hoping to help her. Looks like you are too.”

The librarian gave a tight grin. “Yes. Good day, Mr. MacAllister.”

“Good day, Mrs. Rivers.”

“You’re deep in thought, boyfriend. Anything bothering you?” Annie’s playful tone jostled Ev out of his reminiscing.

He set down his glasses on the coffee table and turned to his wife. “Hello there, young lady.”

She came and pecked him on the lips.

“Nothing too much. Just a client.”

“Want to tell me about it?”

Annie plopped down beside him on the sofa. No-nonsense Annie. What would he do without her? He told her what he had learned about Lissa.

Annie shook her head, wrinkled her brow. “A terrible shame. I vaguely remember reading about it.” She patted Ev’s hand. “You’ll know how to handle her. You always do.”

“Hmm. Yes. I don’t know why this one seems so heavy.”

Annie took his face in her hands, as if he were a child. She brushed his hair off his forehead and kissed him softly.

His sixty-five-year-old wife, the one who had worn pants to class in college when all the other girls were in cashmere sweaters and wool skirts, hadn’t changed. He reached for her, ran his rough hand over the smooth cheekbones, touched the slight wrinkles beside the laughing eyes, the eyes that read right into his soul.

“I say you need to be thinking about retirement, young man.”

“Why would a young man think about retirement?”

“Maybe his eyesight is going.”

“Nope.”

“Maybe his joints are aching—too much sitting in that old car.”

“Joints are fine, Annie.”

“Maybe his heart is getting just a little too soft around the edges.”

“Quit trying to read my mind, girl. Anyway, you think we’ve got enough money coming in for me to just quit my job?” He winked at her.

“From my latest look at the finances, we’re doing just fine. It’s about time for you to buy that motorcycle and ride off into the wild blue yonder with your girlfriend.”

He gave her hand a squeeze. “Someday soon.”

They sat for a long time with her head resting against his shoulder, her hand fiddling with the crease in his pant leg. The truth was he knew exactly what was bothering him, and Annie would figure it out before long.

Tate.

CHAPTER FOUR

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23

Janelle held the ink pen in her hand and stared at the empty page. She tried to think of something to write and winced, remembering all the times she had filled every inch of the blue aerogram with tiny cursive, explaining in detail all the events of the past days. Exclamation points. Requests for prayer. Questions. News of the children. The economic letter that folded into an envelope could never hold all the news that she scribbled home quickly at the end of a full week.

Now the page was bare. What to tell?

Dear Mom and Dad,

Well, the rentrée is over. Kids are back in school. Fourth grade for Luke.
Sandy was pretty nervous about starting first grade. She has the hardest teacher in the school. They’ll have to buckle down and study a little! But they’ve started the year well and are happy to be back with their friends.

She set the pen down. She’d skip the news about Sandy’s squabble with her best friend and Luke’s disappointment in not making the soccer team.

We will have our first planning meeting for the church Christmas play next week. I’ve got quite a bit of preparation left to do.

She set down the pen again. Normally she enjoyed the project. Not this year. It exhausted her just to think of the play. She stared at the letter. Her writing was large and uneven. Like her heart. She sighed, stood up, and went to the door.

A walk to the cemetery. Again.

The bright sun warmed her. The crisp breeze of the morning had melted into a fiercely sunny afternoon. She liked that about the south of France—the Midi, as the French called it. The blinding sun pierced her with its intensity, as if forbidding any shadowy thought. She breathed in the scent of lavender, sweet as perfume, that greeted her as she passed the green plants with their skinny stalks holding fragrant pale purple flowers. She leaned over to smell the basil in her herb garden, the healthy green leaves ready to be plucked and washed and slivered onto vine-ripened tomatoes.

She left the yard and walked down the cobbled street, past the olive trees and the vineyards. She loved this time of year—usually. The vines laden with fruit. The deep violet color of the Muscat grapes, hanging pregnant from the vine.

I am the vine, you are the branches … You will bear much fruit, bear much fruit, bear much fruit. I am the vine… .

What fruit, Lord?
She felt a sting in her eyes as she observed rows and rows of vines, carefully tended. In a week, two at most, it would be time for the
vendange
. The harvest was coming late this year. Janelle stooped over and plucked one ripe grape from its bunch. She started to plop it into her mouth, then changed her mind. Even Muscat grapes tasted bitter to her this year.

She entered the ancient cemetery, where stone markers testified to hundreds of years of burials—hundreds of years, and this one only 738 days old. When would she stop counting? She knelt on the ground and touched the petals of the red geranium.

“You should be starting kindergarten,” she whispered.

Things will get better once the
rentrée
is over,
she told herself.
This is always a hard time of year.

The day dragged on, a long lazy afternoon, punctuated at times by a gust from the mistral. At three o’clock she made a cup of coffee and stared at the half-filled aerogram until her eyes went blurry. What was the matter with her?

Go home! Go home!

The phone rang, startling her out of the torpor. She answered automatically.
“Oui, allô?”