• • •
This was crazy!
It had to be here, right on the far end of the plot. The lush grass was just as smooth as if it had never been disturbed, but there was no marker that read:
REBECCA LOUISE HANSON
.
The marker for Grandpa and Grandma was there, so this had to be the right plot.
Nelda’s heels sank into the spongy turf as she walked around the plot where her ancestors were buried. Hansens all—Hansens with an
e
. There were at least ten graves in the plot, surrounded by a low stone divider. A large marker proclaimed the Hansens one of the first families to settle this rich Iowa farmland.
Puzzled, Nelda scanned the names on the row of small headstones set on a concrete base level with the neatly manicured lawn, then read them again to be absolutely certain what she was seeking was not there.
Her heart pounding, Nelda stood clutching a slender parcel of flowers while she fought for control. Unbelieving, she stared at the spot where her daughter should be buried, choked back tears, and blinked against the glare of the sun. A weak breeze ruffled her curly dark hair, and she pushed it back from her forehead.
As she looked across the lawn dotted with markers toward the custodial building, a man came out the door and bent to work on a large power mower. The scolding of a blue jay from its perch in an evergreen tree reached into Nelda’s consciousness, its squawk almost surreal in the stillness.
In a daze, she walked toward the workman,
trying to push aside the thought that she was losing her mind. Becky had to be there, in that spot! Her grandfather had given her the plot, and he had bought the small stone for the grave.
She reached the man as he stood to wipe his hands on a greasy rag.
“Mornin’, ma’am.”
“Morning.” Nelda was so breathless she could barely speak. “I’m Nelda Hanson. I’m terribly confused. My relatives are the Hansens down there.” She lifted her arm to point at the large granite monument. “I haven’t been back here for a long while.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “She was buried in that plot, but she’s gone. My daughter . . . Rebecca Louise Hanson. It would have been her birthday today.”
“Well . . .” The man continued to wipe his hands, obviously uncomfortable at witnessing Nelda’s distress. “Well . . . now, I’ve been working here only a couple of years. What’s the name again?”
“Rebecca Louise Hanson . . . with an
o
. All the Hansens down there are spelled with an
e
. We put her there . . . she was only six months old.”
“Was there a stone on the grave?”
“A small one.” Nelda felt as if she were in a hollow tunnel, her own voice echoing distantly in her ears.
“Well . . . maybe if you looked around . . .”
“Where else would I look?” She felt the hysteria rising again.
“Well . . .”
Distraught, she was sure if she had to stand
before this blank face another minute, she would scream with exasperation.
“All the records are down at the city office, but—wait a minute—hey, Walter.” A man wearing overalls emerged from the utility shed.
Nelda looked at him as if he were a lifeline, her anxious eyes clinging to his weathered face.
“Do ya know anythin’ about a Rebecca Hanson . . . with an
o
. . . bein’ buried down there with old Eli Hansen and his bunch?”
Sharp blue eyes raked Nelda’s face. “You mean Lute Hanson’s little girl?”
Nelda’s heart plunged wildly. “Yes, yes. Lute’s and . . . mine.” The voice that erupted from her throat was cracked and breathy.
“Well . . .”
Dammit! Couldn’t they say anything, but
well
? She clamped her mouth shut to keep from yelling at them.
“Lute had her moved a long time ago. Right after old Eli died.”
“Moved her?” She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and gasped. “Where?”
“Over yonder in the new part.” The man in the overalls raised his arm. “It’s been a long time. Five or six years . . .” Nelda murmured her thanks and started walking in the direction of his pointed finger.
“It’s a long way,” the other man called after her. “Clear up against the fence at the far end. Maybe ya ought to drive up there.”
His words were soon lost to Nelda as she
hobbled quickly in her thin-soled sandals over the bumpy, narrow, cobblestone lane past Sorensons, Andersons, Jacobsons, and Olsons, some with an
e
and some with an
o
. She absently noticed how well the grounds were kept, how quiet and peaceful it was. It was fitting that the only sound was a mourning dove cooing its lonely call.
At this end of the cemetery the walk curled around carefully plotted flower beds of colorful petunias backed with a border of chrysanthemums. The trees were young and vigorous, and the snowball bushes thick with glossy leaves.
Reaching the last section, she walked along until she saw a long, low marker of dark granite with simple straight lines. It had the look of eternity about it, and carved in the stone was the name:
HANSON
.
Nelda stumbled toward it. Two smaller markers were set in the ground to the side of it. One read:
REBECCA LOUISE HANSON
, daughter of Lute and Nelda Hanson. The next line was a date span of only six months. A box overflowing with sunny yellow marigolds sat snugly against the small marker.
The words on the other marker hit her like a dash of cold water.
LUTE HANSON
.
Lute! Nelda felt her strength draining. She swayed closer, then realized that only the date of his birth was carved in the stone; a blank space was left for the other date to be filled in when he was buried here. Relief made her knees weak.
Nelda stood with her head bowed, a strange calm replacing her panic of moments before. After a few
minutes she knelt down beside the grave, losing herself in silent reflection.
Becky would have been eight years old today and in the second grade at school. Would her hair have been brown and curly like mine, she wondered, or blond and straight like Lute’s? She’d had Lute’s blue eyes, and the little fuzz on the top of her head had been blond, but it might not have stayed that color as she grew older. She had been such a sweet, good baby, crying only when she was hungry or wet or tired.
Oh, Lord, it had hurt so when she lost her little one.
Why had Lute moved Becky here? It must have been a blow to his pride to have a grave space and a marker for his child provided by someone else. But what else could she have done?
With her toes and knees cushioned in the soft grass, Nelda placed the gladiolas, still swathed in protective green tissue, on the ground. They were the only pink flowers the florist had. Peeling away the wispy layers of paper, she realized that the stems of the flowers were far too long for the glass vase she had brought for them.
Nelda dug into her shoulder bag to find a nail file. Then, as she sawed away with the crude cutting tool, memories flooded her mind. Her senior year of high school here had been the happiest year of her life, especially after meeting Lute. They had spent every spare minute together, going to the basketball games, riding the roller coaster and roller-skating at Bayside Park. They had sat in his old pickup truck
at the Lighthouse drive-in and devoured root beer floats. And on special occasions, when Lute could afford it, they had gone to a dance at the Surf Ballroom.
Nelda-and-Lute. Their names had been linked into a single phrase by their classmates. Of course, they accepted without question, that Nelda and Lute would spend their lives together. How wrong that prediction had been.
Absorbed in her task and her memories, Nelda was completely unaware anyone was nearby until out of the corner of her eye she glimpsed large scuffed boots and the legs of faded work jeans.
She scrambled to her feet to face the man standing silently on the other side of her child’s grave. She felt as if every drop of blood in her body had drained to her toes. Speechless, she opened her mouth to draw in a gasp of life-saving air.
Lute?
Could this big, muscular man be the lanky boy she had married when she was sixteen and he was eighteen? It could be no one else. His thick blond hair glistened in the sunlight. It was trimmed close at the sides, the top combed back. He had not adopted the flattop or the ducktail hairstyles so many men were wearing nowadays. His shoulders looked a yard wide in the short-sleeved, faded work shirt. In one hand he clutched a bouquet of flowers. Bright blue eyes were fastened to her face.
“Hello, Lute,” she whispered, unable to speak normally.
When he just stood there staring, saying
nothing, she had to stifle the wild impulse to reach out and touch him, to verify his physical presence. Finally, he spoke.
“What brought you here?”
She lifted her shoulders, trying to encompass a world of explanations with the silent gesture. She wished he would stop looking at her.
“Why did you move her?” she asked, startled by her own bluntness.
“Why not?” he replied evenly, as if she’d posed the most commonplace question in the world. “She was my daughter. As soon as I had enough money, I bought a plot of ground and buried her in it. I sent your grandpa’s estate lawyer the money for the marker.”
Even his voice was deeper and stronger than she remembered. This man didn’t resemble the soft-spoken boy who had stood valiantly beside her when she told her grandparents that she was four months pregnant.
“You could have notified me.”
“You could have notified me when my baby died. Didn’t you think I’d be interested?”
“How can you say that? I knew your mother would let you know.”
“I say it because you never made any attempt to communicate with me. You shut the door firmly in my face just as if the baby you carried wasn’t mine.” His face was suddenly harsh and powerful, his jaw jutted in angry determination, the mouth curved downward, reflecting his contempt for her.
Stunned by his outburst and grasping in a flash
of sudden clarity how badly they’d each misread the other’s withdrawal, Nelda sprang to the defense.
“I was sixteen, and I was sick—”
“You didn’t protest once. If you had come with me when I begged you to, things might have been different. Your daddy considered me white trash and shoved me out of your life not ten minutes after we were married, and you let him.”
“It wasn’t what I wanted—”
“—Five days later I got the divorce papers.”
“You signed them fast enough. Daddy said you were glad to be rid of me.” Relived anguish tore at her heart.
“And you believed him. I don’t suppose he told you that I had tried to call you. He knew that I was in the Navy and said that if I called again, I would hear from my commanding officer. I was a kid then, too, and his threat scared the hell out of me. He said the only thing I had to give you was a baby in your belly and an
o
in your name.”
“Oh, Lute. I’m . . . sorry.”
Nelda almost reeled from the force of his bitterness. His words hit her like stones. She knew her face had paled, and she looked away from him. Her gaze fell on the grave of their child, and all the sweet, bitter memories came rushing back. During the dark days of her pregnancy and after Becky was born, she had held out the hope, even after Lute had signed the divorce papers, that he would come to her, that their love was strong enough to overcome her father’s objections. Then after a while she’d had to reconcile herself to the fact that their time together was over.
“Are you trying to make me feel guilty, Lute?” Fairly quivering with torment, Nelda looked directly into his eyes. “I’ve never blamed you for anything. Even at sixteen, I knew the chance we were taking when we made love. I’ve never regretted it for a second. You and the baby were my life. For the first time I had something of my very own, something that had nothing to do with my father.” Tears filled her eyes, and she tried to blink them away.
Not since Becky’s death had she felt such crushing anguish. She wanted to hate Lute for being here, for bringing back the heartache she had tried so hard to overcome, but hate wouldn’t come. Instead, she remembered his tenderness when she told him she was pregnant, and how he had held her and promised to love her and take care of her and their baby for the rest of his life. A big promise for a skinny boy of eighteen with only his mother and a not-too-reliable father for a family.
Then she remembered their wedding day. How awful it had been! Her father had made what should have been the sweetest, most sacred moment in her life . . . dirty and degrading. He had ranted and raved, calling her a slut and Lute a randy whoreson. He had said that
h
e would be disgraced if it became known that his daughter screwed around in a haystack like a common whore.
Nelda put her hands on each side of her head in an attempt to squeeze out the thoughts.