The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

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СКАЧАТЬ eagle protecting her young from snakes. “No. She’s going through enough pain without me adding to it with drama.”

      The screen door banged open, followed by stealthy footsteps in the hall. Then a bony-kneed, big-eyed child drifted by. Billie. Full of contradictions. Defiant and tragic. Fearless and scared. Forced by her mother’s fatal illness to grow up overnight, she wore an expression that clearly said she’d rather remain a child because growing up was such a tragedy.

      The look that passed between mother and daughter was almost beyond enduring. In the face of such devotion, there are things you can’t do. You can’t ask How long before you die? and Will you give your daughter up before or after? You can’t snap pictures for The Bugle, though a photo would be more compelling than that heart-wrenching, hopeful little ad. You can’t think of your empty bed and the empty crib in your attic and the long string of empty years ahead. You can’t think of anything except a little girl who has turned her stare to you, a little girl with eyes so green they remind you of deep rivers and lost love and the unbearable beauty of the human spirit.

      With one last, big-eyed stare, Billie slid past the door and out of sight. Cassie was left feeling as if her bones had been rearranged.

      It took a while for them to settle back into place, and when they did, she was filled with an unexpected resolve.

      “Betty Jewel, what you’re doing is one of the bravest things I know. I want to be personally involved. I want to help you.”

      “Joe always said the biggest thing about you was your heart.”

      It was the kind of generous compliment Joe used to pass around. But Cassie found it shocking coming from this woman’s mouth.

      “You knew him personally?”

      “From Tiny Jim’s.”

      “Of course.” Cassie pictured her husband in the juke joint, mellow with blues and beer, easygoing and approachable, talking about his wife to strangers as if the very telling could make her more real to him. On those long, lonely nights after the last miscarriage when she’d sometimes felt as if Joe were drifting away, as if she might meet him coming around a dark corner and not even know him, had he felt the same way?

      “Cassie, I didn’t mean to upset you.”

      “No. It’s okay. Everybody in town knew and loved Joe.”

      A coughing spell bent Betty Jewel in two, and when she turned away Cassie saw patches of her scalp where radiation had stolen her hair. She wanted to cover her vulnerable baldness with a silk scarf, and at the same time she wanted to take a picture and spread it in on the front page under a caption titled Hero.

      “Can I get you anything? Water?”

      “No. I’m all right.”

      Cassie gathered her purse. “I should go. If there’s anything I can do to help you, please let me know. Here are the numbers where you can reach me. Day or night.”

      As she handed over the card, another fit of coughing bent Betty Jewel double. With her face covered by her hands and her head bowed, she looked like somebody praying. And maybe she was. Maybe Cassie was, too, though she was sitting there with her eyes wide open.

      Should she call Miss Queen? Phone for an ambulance?

      Still bent, Betty Jewel reached into her pocket for a bottle of pills and out tumbled a harmonica.

      B-flat.

      Silver with a pink rose painted on the side.

      The pink rose Cassie had painted.

      A keening built inside her, and she pressed her hand over her mouth to hold it back.

      When Betty Jewel lifted her head, Cassie found herself looking at a woman for whom everything had been stripped away, everything except love.

      From somewhere in the house, a tea kettle whistled and a shaky soprano sang a hymn Cassie remembered from childhood. Rescue the perishing. Care for the dying.

      Long ago when Cassie had played church piano, she would read the verses at the same time she read the music. Not many people can do that. It’s a gift. Like knowing things before they happens.

      Here is what Cassie knew: the harmonica had set events in motion that were beyond her control. She didn’t know the particulars yet, only that her fate was somehow tangled up with this woman.

      “Is that Joe’s?”

      “I didn’t mean for it to come to this.”

      Lord God, Cassie was going to die on the spot. Betty Jewel hadn’t denied it. She hadn’t laughed off Cassie’s question and offered some simple explanation. I found this at Tiny Jim’s juke joint.

      Now the woman was scaring her, but Cassie had never been one to back down from the hard things. Smile and carry on. Did her husband die without warning, leaving her to wish she’d held on to him longer the morning before he went to Moon Lake, held on and said I love you, instead of waving to him from the door and saying I’ll see you tonight. Save your tears for private. In public, smile and carry on.

      There would be no smiling and carrying on today.

      “Come to what?” Cassie struggled to keep her voice low. Somewhere in the house was a dignified old woman who deserved better than a quarrel in her living room.

      “What?” Betty Jewel’s silence ripped through Cassie, as damning as the worst nightmare she could imagine. “For God’s sake! Tell me.”

      “Something happened a long time ago, before Billie was born, something with consequences that reached far beyond what I’d ever dreamed.”

      Betty Jewel’s voice sounded like distant music, a smoky blues song that could haunt a person forever. Cassie fought to hold back terror so fierce it would consume her.

      “I never meant to hurt you, and I certainly never meant for it to come to this.”

      “You and Joe?” The question tore from Cassie’s gut, deep where the fearsome truth dwells. “Tell me this is not what I think it is.”

      “I’m sorry, Cassie.” If Cassie could go deaf on the spot, she would. “Joe is Billie’s father.”

      Look for disaster long enough and you’re sure to find it.

      Nine

      LORD GOD, CASSIE WAS sitting there looking as though somebody had poked a hole in her heart and drained out all her blood. Betty Jewel regretted telling her flat-out that Joe was Billie’s father.

      “Cassie?”

      She jerked as if she’d been electrocuted, then bolted. Betty Jewel struggled from her chair, calling after her. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry.”

      But she was already out the door, tearing off in her fancy red car. Betty Jewel hung on to the door frame, whispering, “I’m sorry.” Now she was the bloodless one. She slid down the door frame and rested on the floor, still apologizing to the woman СКАЧАТЬ