A Gift Of Grace. Inglath Cooper
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the book, kissed her daughter’s forehead. “Sweet dreams. Say your prayers?”
Grace nodded, reciting the verse she repeated each night before going to sleep. Sophie tucked the covers around her and smoothed a hand across her daughter’s silky hair.
“Good night.” She flicked off the lamp and turned to leave.
“Mama?”
“Yes, baby?”
“I’m glad you’re my mommy.”
Tears welled in Sophie’s eyes. “Me, too, sweetie. Me, too.”
CALEB TUCKER SAT on the front porch of the old farmhouse his grandparents had built in 1902. On the floor next to him lay Noah, a yellow Labrador retriever so named for his avoidance of water as a puppy; even rain puddles had sent him flying back to the nearest pair of available arms.
Surrounding the house were four hundred acres of farmland, the soil rich and dark with three generations of nurturing. Pockets of woods thick with century-old oak and maple trees divided hay fields from pasture. Deer slipped into the alfalfa fields just before sunset every evening. Flocks of wild turkeys pecked their way from one end of the farm to the other and back again in an endless loop of foraging.
The land had been in Caleb’s father’s family for three generations, the kind of acreage that in this part of Virginia now required the bank account of a stock-market genius or some thirty-year-old Internet wizard to afford.
The permanence of the land and its need of him held Caleb back from the brink of something too awful to define.
The moon had just started its ascent from behind Craig Mountain. It was full tonight, the pastures east of the house bathed in soft light, the Black Angus cows grazing there clearly outlined.
The day had been long, and Caleb had worked his muscles just short of failure. It was how he ended every day, wrung out, collapsing into the wicker chair and forfeiting dinner in exchange for a Dr Pepper and some cheese crackers, most of which stayed in the pack.
Headlights arced up the gravel drive, his dad’s old Ford truck rumbling over the knoll just short of the house. Caleb’s parents lived on the other end of the farm in a house they had built ten years ago. Jeb Tucker stopped and got out, balancing a plate covered in Saran wrap.
An older version of his only son, his hair had gone steel gray before Caleb had left home for college. Jeb had passed along the defined bone structure of his face as well as his wide, full mouth. Both father and son were heavily muscled from the daily routine of farm life. Like Jeb, Caleb favored Wranglers and Ropers. Dressy for both of them meant putting on their newest pair.
He looked up at Caleb now, his jaw set. “Evenin’,” he said.
“Dad.” Caleb nodded. Noah thumped his tail on the porch floor in greeting.
“Your mother asked me to bring this over,” Jeb said.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“She thinks you’re not eating.”
“Tell her I’m fine.”
“Maybe you ought to tell her. She doesn’t listen to me too much anymore.” Jeb set the plate on the step, then lowered himself down beside it.
Caleb didn’t miss the note of resignation in his father’s voice, and he realized how long it had been since he’d asked how they were doing. “You two okay?”
Jeb looked out across the darkened yard. “No,” he said. “I can’t say we are.”
Caleb let that settle and then asked, “This about me?”
Jeb looked down at the step, traced a pattern across the wood and answered without looking up. “It’s about the fact that none of us has moved on—”
Caleb erupted from his chair, his back to his father. “Don’t do this, Dad.”
“Don’t you think it’s about time we talked about it, son?”
“About what?” Caleb snapped back, swinging around. “The fact that I miss my wife so much that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe for the pain of it?”
Jeb shook his head. “I know you miss her, Caleb. God knows we all do. But the fact is you haven’t moved a step beyond the day she died. It’s like quicksand, and it’s pulling you down. It’s pulling us all down.”
“That’s not fair, Dad.”
“There’s not a damn thing about any of this that’s fair, Caleb,” Jeb said, anger in his voice now. “But you are still here. Still alive. Somehow, some way, you have got to move on.”
“And what does that mean?” Caleb asked, forcing a level note to his voice. “Finding somebody else?”
“Maybe,” Jeb said quietly. “Don’t you think that’s what she would want?”
“I think she wanted the two of us to have a family, raise our kids, spoil our grandkids and grow old together. Those are the things I know she wanted.”
Jeb started to say something, stopped, pressed his lips together, and then said, “That’s what we all wanted for the two of you.”
“Yeah, well, we didn’t get that, did we?”
“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