A Gift Of Grace. Inglath Cooper
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threw it on the chair behind her, then started clearing the picnic table of sticky plates and cups, tossing them into a big garbage bag.
Darcy came over and began helping. “They’re gone, huh?”
“Yeah,” Sophie said. “At least I know why they came now.”
“Anything you want to talk about?”
“No.”
“Okay, then. It was a wonderful party,” Darcy said. “Grace had a blast.”
Sophie nodded. “I think everyone had fun.”
Darcy dropped a cup into the bag. “You’re a wonderful mother, Sophie. Grace is a lucky little girl to have you as her family.”
“No,” Sophie said, a sudden catch in her throat. “I’m the one who’s lucky to have her.”
SOPHIE WALKED THE LAST child to the front door. Grace stood beside them, her eyes so heavy she could barely keep them open.
Darcy led her two equally tired daughters to the minivan, waving goodbye as she got into the driver’s seat. Sophie picked up Grace, who immediately tucked her face into Sophie’s neck and closed her eyes.
“Thank you, Mama,” she said, her voice barely audible. “For the party.”
“You’re so very welcome, baby,” Sophie said. “Are you ready for a nap?”
Grace nodded, too worn out to offer up her usual protest against sleep.
Sophie turned to close the door. A truck pulled away from the curb across the street. She glanced over her shoulder, spotting the back end of a familiar white Ford diesel pickup.
Was that Caleb Tucker’s truck?
She stretched her neck but couldn’t get a glimpse of the driver.
But then what would he be doing parked across from her house?
She recalled Darcy’s teasing and could not deny the flutter in her stomach at the possibility of his having thought of her since yesterday.
Grace stirred in her arms. Sophie shook her head at her own foolishness, stepped inside the house and closed the door.
CALEB SHOVED THE 350’s gearshift into Fourth and barreled down Ivy Run Road without regard for the residential speed limit, leaving Sophie Owens’s house behind as fast as he could. He shot onto the 29 Bypass and kept the accelerator to the floor until the city began to fade behind him. Farmland appeared on either side of the truck, alfalfa fields, cornfields. He let up on the gas then, pulling air into his lungs.
On the seat beside him lay a dozen white roses wrapped in green florist paper. The breeze from his lowered window caught a petal and tossed it to the floor.
He kept driving, not letting himself think about where he was headed.
Five or so miles later, the turnoff rose up on the right. Caleb’s stomach dropped. Sweat beads broke out on his forehead, and he gripped the wheel as if to let go would send him flying off to someplace he could not return from.
The cemetery was at the end of the quarter-mile gravel road. A heavy chain with a padlock blocked the entrance.
Caleb had never been given a key, and so he stopped the truck just short of the gate and turned off the engine. He sat there for a few minutes, trying to gather the courage to get out. A crow sat on one of the fence posts, its caw-caw the only sound in this solitary place.
The plot belonged to Laney’s family. Generations of Scotts were buried here with headstones that ranged from rocks with initials scratched in as a reminder of who lay beneath to the ornate dedication that Laney’s parents had insisted she have. Even through the haze that had been his reality three years ago, Caleb had thought she would much rather have been remembered with a simple rock pulled from the nearby field. But then Laney’s mother had her own way of doing things, and all decisions in the Scott family were made her way.
Caleb reached across the seat for the roses and got out of the truck. His palms were damp and left marks on the florist paper.
He stepped over the heavy chain and walked the short distance to the graveyard. A black wrought-iron gate lay at the end of a stone footpath. Caleb lifted the handle. It made a rusty rasp of protest.
Laney’s headstone was in the far right-hand corner of the neatly mowed enclosure. He weaved his way through the other graves, most of the headstones indicating average to long life spans, another arrow of unfairness that Laney should be here with only thirty-one years spent on this earth.
He stopped just short of her grave.
Others had been here today; the grass in front of the headstone was covered with four different arrangements of flowers.
Something inside him had locked up, and he couldn’t remember how to make his arms or legs move. His heart thudded heavily, and the metallic taste of panic stung the back of his throat.
Finally, he bent down on one knee and placed his own offering to the side of the others, recognizing the enormous spray of carnations as favorites of Mary’s. Laney had hated carnations.
The wind threw out a short gust, scattering a few of the rose petals across the grave. It seemed a better idea to him, so Caleb began pulling the white petals from the stems, letting them fall where they would.
When the stems were bare, he sat down on the grass, weakened as if he’d just finished a miles-long run.
“Wonders never cease.”
Startled, Caleb jerked around, ran a hand across the back of his neck. “I didn’t hear you pull up, Mary,” he said.
“I’m sure if you had, you would have left,” she said, walking over to stop just short of the headstone. She wore black, head to toe. Her once-blond hair was now gray. Grief had etched hard lines into her face, and she was so thin, her clothes hung on her.
“I thought you’d already been here today,” Caleb said.
“I had. With Emmitt. I wanted to come back by myself.”
Silence weighed heavy between them. Caleb got to his feet. “So, how’re you doing, Mary?”
She shrugged, tipping her head. “Some days are better than others. And you?”
“Pretty much just like that.”
“I keep expecting to hear you’ve moved on. Found someone else.”
“Expecting or hoping?”
“Why should it matter to me one way or the other?”
“Why should it?” he threw back.
Mary folded her arms across her chest and stared at her daughter’s headstone. “I know you loved her, Caleb, but—”
“But what, Mary?” he interrupted, his voice hard. “But if she hadn’t married me, none of this would have happened? Is that what you were going to say?”
Mary stared out past the cemetery at some point in the distance, not answering for a long while. When she finally did, she said, “Laney deserved more than you had to give her.”
The words cut deep. “I know you lost your daughter, Mary,” Caleb said. “But I lost my wife, too. And I did love her.”
She looked directly at him then, her eyes filled with a piercing grief. “Sometimes, that’s just not enough though, is it?” she said. She turned then and walked away. He watched as she got in her car, backed up and drove off.
He stood there for a long time, then finally dropped onto his knees next to the grave.
He had not come here once since the funeral. Before today, just the thought of doing so had filled him with instant resistance. He couldn’t bear to return to the place where he had left her, this spot out in the country that had marked the end of their life together. Nor could he bear