And Then I Found You (6 page)

He walked her inside, and asked again—as he did almost every night—if she would come
home with him because he couldn’t stay with her, leaving Dixie home alone to chew
through the couch in the middle of the night. And she—as she did almost every night—told
him about her early morning. They said goodnight, yawns stifled behind kisses.

*   *   *

She had dismissed the idea as frivolous, yet as Kate stood at her window, staring
out over the river and watching the water move, going exactly where it meant to go,
its destination already known, she knew too what her destination was.

The idea to visit Jack Adams in Birmingham had crept into her mind and heart. It didn’t
make any sense, but she was beyond sense now. Life, she believed from living in the
wilderness, was tied together by hints, whispers, and unseen fabric-makers. She imagined
someone far more knowing than she, sewing together a fragile web that she wouldn’t
see it until time was done. She could ignore the whispers and threads, everyone could,
and she often did, but this time she wouldn’t.

If she didn’t go then, she wouldn’t go at all, and seeing Jack seemed the only cure
for
What is wrong with you?

She understood the dangling corner thread of what was wrong: The first day of spring
still possessed mystery not only for the myths, sacraments, and goddesses; not merely
for the promise made at thirteen years old under a willow tree; but also because Kate
and Jack’s lost daughter, Luna, had been born on that day thirteen years before.

She had tried everything to outrun the pain of losing both Jack and her daughter:
moving away; coming home; no dating; too much dating: anything to keep her mind away
from the memory. People talked about heartbreak, but in Kate’s opinion, hearts don’t
break, they merely ache and throb until you learn to ignore that same heart all together.

She still hadn’t read the letter. The one on the side table. The one in the unopened
envelope. The one from Jack Adams. She lifted it, staring at the handwriting and the
return address, which hadn’t changed in the thirteen years the letters had been arriving.
Her routine—to read the letter at sunset on the first day of spring—was purposefully
broken the night before. She wanted something new. She wanted to really
be
with Rowan without intrusion or memory.

Jack’s yearly letters, which were sent on their daughter’s birthday, allowed Kate
to know Jack in his adult years. And yet, despite these thousands of words, they hadn’t
spoken. Not once.

Kate settled into her favorite oversized chair in the corner where the side table
held not only Jack’s letter, but also a small lamp and her bowl of favorite collected
feathers. It was still raining, slanted waterfalls hitting the wide panes of glass.
A South Carolina spring came this way sometimes: damp with fury and chaos and then
just as suddenly quiet. Kate turned the lamp on and slipped her finger under the envelope
flap, ripping through the paper to withdraw the letter.

Dear Katie,

Happy Birthday to Luna.

He always started the letter that way, that exact same way, with a happy birthday
wish that neither of them could say directly—to their daughter or each other.

This will be a short letter. I’m sorry, but if I don’t mail it today, it won’t make
it to you by Luna’s birthday, so I’m keeping my promise and writing. There’s not much
to say. Not much has changed. I want to tell you all the exciting things I’m doing—but
they will sound repetitive and dull, as they aren’t much different than the year before
or even the year before that.

My work: same. The one new thing: I have opened an art studio. Not for my work of
course, because I don’t have any, but for Alabama artists. It’s a small studio in
the arts district of Southside. This is my excuse to indulge in my own addiction without
buying everything I see.

There’s a woman running the studio—Mimi Ann—and she is doing a brilliant job. I show
up for the bigger events and sneak in when I need a fix. It’s worked out well so far.
The studio is called LUNA.

Maybe I should have asked you first or at least told you that I have a studio named
after our daughter, but something held me back. I don’t know what really. Either way,
it exists now and I hope one day you get to see it.

Hope all is well with you.

Jack

Usually the birthday letters were full of information, overflowing with his year.
But this letter was as empty as the one he’d written six years before to tell of his
divorce, which had left him bereft and sharing custody of their two-year-old, Caleb.

Kate understood that most people would think it strange that she and Jack hadn’t talked
since the day they’d said good-bye to their daughter, and yet through yearly letters
they both knew the facts about one another’s lives. No blueprint existed for this
kind of relationship—the one between a man and woman who had once been in love and
then placed their child out into the world with a hand-chosen family.

Katie was thirteen when she fell in love with Jack, the day she made a vow under a
willow tree, and yet now she knew nothing, absolutely nothing, about her own daughter,
who was thirteen years old. Did she have copper hair or green eyes? Where did she
live? Did she have a best friend? Was she into sports? Did she love her parents?

As Jack had once said in one of his letters: of all the awful parts of missing their
daughter, the not-knowing was the absolute worst.

four

ARIZONA

1996

When the Arizona heat felt like a cloak she couldn’t shake, Tara’s words about Jack’s
date wiggled into Katie’s mind, twisting her thoughts with anxiety. That hundred-degree
day, preoccupied, Katie was hiking through the shallow trail of a dried river with
four young girls when she heard the scream. Dropping her backpack, Katie was at the
girl, Anne’s, side in one jump. “What?”

Anne was thirteen years old, and so skinny she seemed to be made of the dry sage twigs
that covered the desert, her long hair tied with a frayed shoestring. She was bent
over, holding her ankle, screaming without words. Anne was a quiet girl, and Katie
knew her terrible story: how her mom had tried to raise her alone when Dad left; how
her mom found Anne selling pot and drinking bourbon straight from the bottle. The
mom had then sold everything they owned to get Anne into this program and try to save
her from the lifestyle that was sucking them both into a black hole of desperation.

“Anne,” Katie took the young girl’s face in between both her hands. “What is it?”

“Snake.” She pointed to the rattlesnake’s tail disappearing into the brush.

Katie had been trained for this, and she knew what to do. But she also tasted guilt
in the back of her throat. If her thoughts hadn’t been braided with anxiety about
Jack Adams, about a place she couldn’t see, she would’ve been alert. This was her
fault. The one thing Katie was meant to do was keep these girls safe.

Katie tied a tourniquet from the first-aid kit, quieted the other girls and used her
satellite radio to call transportation to take Anne to the hospital. The waiting was
interminable, but the three other girls rallied and made jokes, trying to keep Anne
calm. Katie checked vital signs, secured the tourniquet, and marveled at the other
girls’ ability to surround Anne. This was a family, an odd and mismatched family sewn
together by the threads of abuse and sadness, but together forming something strong.
And Katie had failed them.

The crisis passed and Anne was back in the field. Katie told Winsome Wilderness that
she needed a few weeks off.

Shawn O’Neal, the owner of Winsome, assured Katie that the snakebite wasn’t her fault.
It was nature. It was normal.
But Katie told Shawn it was her fault. She hadn’t been alert. She hadn’t noticed
the danger. It was Shawn who had taught Katie that nature carried messages inside
every plant, feather, and animal. Anne’s bite wasn’t an accident. It was more than
the snake and less than the snake. It was what the slithering, biting reptile was
telling Katie: something is wrong.

*   *   *

Jack had written to her about the new house he’d bought, a Tudor style home built
in the 1920s. He’d told her he loved the way it sat on top of Red Mountain and overlooked
downtown Birmingham like a guardian. He bought it for a
steal,
as it needed a total renovation. He spent his limited free time polishing the hardwood
floors, painting the trim with a small brush, replacing windows, and chipping away
at the rot.

It didn’t bother Katie that Jack hadn’t consulted her about the house. She believed
it showed that he respected her work and her autonomy by seizing the opportunity for
both of them, while he could. She’d taken this fact—that he bought a house—as a hint
that he was building a life for them, a life that included a house and settling in.
And that’s where she found him after the long flight to Birmingham.

Jack was expecting her. He stood waiting on the front porch, then hugged her as if
she might float away. Inside, he showed her through the partially renovated house.
They stood in the living room where his windows, grimy and paint-edged, looked over
the city. “Look at that view. Who could resist, right?”

She gazed at the night sky, which dominated the view. Resting underneath the moon,
the Birmingham lights faded like a world below opaque glass. “Beautiful,” she said.

“The city can look that way from up here, but…”

“No, I’m talking about the moon.” She pointed to the sliver of light that settled
into the night sky like a lopsided, but radiant smile.

“Not much of one tonight,” Jack said.

“There will be even less tomorrow night,” Katie said and then turned to him. “But
then it starts all over again, growing.”

“You’ve become an astronaut in your spare time?”

“Absolutely. Actually, you think I’m in the middle of nowhere Arizona, but I’m working
for NASA.” She snuggled closer to him, but his subtle move away from her was obvious.

He took a deep breath. “Katie, you can’t just walk into my home and pretend you haven’t
been gone for over a year.”

“I’m not pretending anything,” she said, taking his hand. “I needed to see you. I
only want another few months and I’ll be ready to leave.”

“You said that eight months ago, and then six months ago, and then again last month.”

She cringed again. “I know. But doing what I do, loving what I do, well, that doesn’t
mean I don’t love you, Jack. I know you know that.”

“I don’t doubt your love, but I doubt your ability to ever stop long enough for us.”

“For us to what?”

“To be us. To build a life. For God’s sake. We’ve been together for over eight years
and now five of those have been in separate states. One day we’ll have to be in the
same place to have a life.”

She pointed out the window. “You know the first thing I was ever scared of was the
moon not being in the sky.” She looked at him. “And the second is that you won’t be
in my life.”

“I’m not in your life, Katie.”

She wrapped her arms around his waist, pulling herself closer, body on body. “Yes,
you are. You’re with me every single day. Every second. I want you next to me seeing
what I see. Everything. All of it. When a hawk feather floats to the ground, or the
moon springs from behind cloud cover, or when I hear—far away—a coyote call. All of
it, I think of you. Always.”

“Thinking about me doesn’t matter if you won’t leave.”

“Not yet,” she said and buried her head into his shoulder. “I’m not ready.”

“You’ve been gone for over a year, and the truth is that you won’t leave to be with
me.”

“I will,” she said.

“I’m dating someone,” he said quietly.

She pulled back, tripping on a plank of unfinished floor. “What?”

“I told you that in a letter months ago.”

“You didn’t tell me anything. All you said was that by now we should be dating other
people. I thought you meant … in theory, not reality.”

“Of course you did because you didn’t even ask, Katie. You assumed that the way you
wanted it was the exact same way I wanted it.” He paused. “Her name is Maggie.”

“Do you love her?”

He looked away and of all the First Things in her life, this one was the worst: Jack
looking away from her as he spoke about another woman. “I don’t know.”

“How can you
not
know if you love someone?”

“Because the way I love you overshadows everything else, Katie.” He did look at her
then. “The way I love you blurs all the ways I could love anyone else. But you know
what? I want to love her. I
want
to love someone else. Because this is terrible.” He waved his palm between the two
of them. “Having you and not having you is terrible.”

Katie kissed him again. Jack hesitated, somehow giving in and pulling away at the
same time, his hand behind her head for a deeper kiss, but his feet taking a step
back. Katie held on, sliding closer until the entire length of their bodies touched.
She lifted her foot and stepped around him, her leg wound around his. The simple movements
of hands sliding beneath fabric, removed shirts and his jeans. Her skirt puddled on
the floor. At last she was where she wanted to be, the fleeting and forever moment
of skin on skin, legs wound around, her hair a waterfall over his face. The only world
that mattered—the one between their touch—returned.

*   *   *

She cried as she left Jack the next morning. She promised to give her three-week notice.

But she didn’t because that was when the wounded and twelve-year-old Lida Markinson
showed up.

Lida had been living with her aunt outside Chattanooga, Tennessee. She’d been four
years old the day her mama dropped her off at Aunt Clara’s, and this was the only
memory Lida retained of her mama—seeing her walking off in her pale yellow sundress
and waving. Mama had told Lida that she was going to do some errands and she’d be
back soon.
That’s if soon is never,
Lida had told Katie as they sat around a campfire.