A Gift Of Grace. Inglath Cooper

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      “No, son. You didn’t.” He stared up at Caleb. “You’re a young man. You can still have a good life with someone.”

      “Don’t!” Caleb said. “Just don’t, okay?”

      A few moments of silence ticked past before Jeb stood, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. “We’re going down to your aunt Betsy’s for the weekend. You can get us on the cell phone if you need us.”

      Caleb watched as his dad got in the truck and drove off, standing in the same spot long after the taillights had disappeared down the drive. The moon slipped higher in the sky. An owl hooted in a nearby tree, the sound stirring inside him a fresh swirl of loneliness.

      He flipped on the radio he kept on the porch for company. Static crackled in the air before the dial came into focus. He could only pick up the AM station out of D.C. after dark.

      Vivaldi’s Spring Concerto rose high and tender from the old radio. This music had been Laney’s. His only by association. She had thought it beautiful. To him, it had sounded like a foreign language, noise that he didn’t understand. But he found himself reaching for it now, his connection to her thinning like a frayed rope. The music was a medium through which he could still feel her, remember what it had been like to make love to her, her skin soft beneath his hands.

      He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the wicker rocker. He didn’t listen every night. He couldn’t. Only when he needed the music’s poignant emotion to remind him he could still feel. Because even if all he felt was sadness, at least that was something.

      He tried to focus on the picture he carried of her in his head, alarmed by its lack of clarity and the way it continued to dim like a photograph left too long in the light.

      A soft breeze stirred, and his nostrils suddenly filled with the sweet scent of her perfume.

      “Laney,” he said, his voice a hoarse plea.

      He felt her touch on his shoulders like the brush of a feather. He sat as still as stone, afraid a single movement would shatter the feeling like glass all around him. And then he heard it, the wrenching sound of her weeping.

      His heart twisted, felt suddenly too large for his chest. Tears streamed from his own eyes. He didn’t bother to wipe them away. “Laney,” he said. “Laney.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      JEB FOLLOWED THE GRAVEL ROAD that led back to the house he shared with his wife, the speedometer needle never reaching twenty. What was the point in hurrying?

      There had been a time when he couldn’t wait to get home every day. Couldn’t wait to see Catherine. It had been that way all through Caleb’s childhood. Even after Caleb had left home for college, Jeb and Catherine had known a renewal of sorts in their marriage. He’d come home some nights to find her at the door in a piece of lingerie that made his heart hit the wall of his chest, and they would make love on the kitchen’s old walnut table.

      Now, he couldn’t even remember the last time they had touched each other.

      He blinked hard as if he could shake the gray pall that reality settled over him. But it stayed where it was, so heavy there were times he thought he would simply disintegrate beneath it.

      He loved his wife, but somewhere in these last three years, he had lost her.

      He stopped the truck in the middle of the road, leaned forward with his forearms on the steering wheel, staring up at the night sky. If he could just turn the clock back, figure out how to have what they’d once had. He’d tried to talk Catherine into seeing someone, even both of them together, but she wouldn’t hear of it. She’d always been one to hold everything inside, a deal-with-it-herself kind of person. Only this was too big, too much. For either of them. And their marriage had bent to the will of their grief, of Caleb’s grief.

      With a weary heart, he straightened in the seat, pressed the accelerator on the crochety old truck and headed home.

      ON THURSDAY MORNING, Sophie drove the short distance from her house to the University of Virginia campus with her window cracked, letting in the flavor of the crisp morning. Spring was her favorite season; she loved the trees with their newborn leaves, the tulips popping up from their winter nest. To Sophie, the world felt more hopeful at this time of year, as if all things were possible.

      She stopped at Starbucks for her morning fix, then got back in the Volvo and turned the radio to NPR, only half listening to Terry Gross interview a newly published author. Her thoughts were on the day ahead and the details left to tie up for Grace’s birthday party. After her first class, Sophie planned to pick Grace up from day care and run a few errands, things she wouldn’t have time to do tomorrow.

      Her cell phone rang just as she pulled into the faculty parking lot.

      She glanced at caller ID, ran a hand through her hair and suppressed a groan. She could ignore it, but that would only prolong the inevitable.

      With a sigh, she hit the talk button. “Hi, Aunt Ruby.”

      “My goodness, you actually answered,” was the dry reply.

      “What’s up?” Sophie said, ignoring the barb behind the greeting.

      “Do I need a reason to call and see how you’re doing?” she asked, her voice hoarse with forty years’ worth of cigarettes. “We haven’t heard from you in months. I thought something might be wrong.”

      “Everything’s fine,” Sophie said, not adding that it was these conversations that usually sent a perfectly fine day flying right off track.

      “How’s little Grace?”

      “She’s great.”

      “About to turn three, isn’t she?”

      “Yes, difficult as it is to believe.”

      “Are you doing a party for her?”

      “Nothing elaborate,” Sophie hedged.

      “Oh.” Ruby paused and then said, “I assume we aren’t invited.”

      “Aunt Ruby, it’s not that kind of thing. Just a few of her friends from preschool—”

      “Are you ashamed of us, Sophie?” she interrupted. “After everything we did for you?”

      Sophie let several beats of silence pass, reaching for calm. “Of course not.”

      “What else am I supposed to think?” Ruby said, her voice threaded with quiet hurt.

      Sophie started to protest, to say once and for all that she’d had enough of her aunt’s guilt trips, but stopped herself just short of it as she always did. Because Ruby was right about one thing. She and Uncle Roy had taken Sophie in when she’d had no one else in the world, and the only other option for her would have been a foster home.

      “It’s not a big deal, Aunt Ruby. I didn’t think you’d want to come. That’s all.”

      “You don’t have to justify your actions to me, Sophie. I mean, we hardly know the child.”

      Sophie СКАЧАТЬ