Echoes From The Past (Women of Character) (32 page)

Without a word Darrell walked past
her and out the door. Christie watched him go, she couldn’t stop him. The
wounding inside was too great. The pain she had laid at his feet the final
insult.

A shadow fell across the door.
Garrett.

Christie hunched her shoulders.
Perhaps it was better that he see and understand the real Christie Jenkins.
Angry, scared and perhaps with too much baggage to ever lead a normal life.
Christie felt the weight of her own anger and knew everything she held dear was
crumbling away at her feet. She wondered if this was how Judith felt at the end.

###

Darrell raced down the steps and
out of the barn. Once out in the yard he looked wildly around for Eric. He
finally spotted him playing with Hannah by the house. Darrell hurried over to
his son, his mind still churning over what Christie had said.

"Eric, come on, we’ve got to
go."

Eric looked up at him in surprise.
"Now Dad? We were going to play another --"

"Right now!" he said
sharply. "We’re going into town."

Eric stared at him wide-eyed, and
Darrell lowered his voice, tried to smooth over the anger and hurt riding him.
"We’ll come back later or tomorrow." He made himself smile and he
swallowed the bile in his throat. "Say goodbye."

Darrell gripped his son’s hand and
they walked to his car together. Darrell had the strongest urge to drive right
through town and all the way back to New York without looking back. Christie
had gone too far. She’d always been so smart and now this. When he stopped at a
streetlight outside of Emerson, it suddenly hit him that he wanted to run. He
didn’t want to deal with all this mess she was bringing up. Ellen’s ashes, her
death, the burial. Christie basically had said she loved Eric but the
implication was Eric was his responsibility, totally. Frightening.

Remembering the way Ellen had been
sick, Darrell thought about Eric. His son had seen it all, had seen his mother
fade and then die, and he’d made it out whole. He was a good kid, but Darrell
felt like his brain was being slammed with all of it and he just wanted to cry.

Darrell pulled over to the side of
the road. Looking in the rear view mirror at Eric, he suddenly felt his heart
slow down. After several more moments, his thoughts began to clear. He released
his death grip on the steering wheel. He wondered if this was the reason
Christie left New York, because she couldn’t deal with any of this stress. The
hurt.

Darrell admitted to himself that
it was hurt and the pain of loss bombarding him, ripping him apart. God forgive
him, he’d blamed everyone for the mess of his life except the one responsible.
Himself. Darrell put the car in park and dropped his forehead to the steering
wheel. He had left Ellen when he should have been with her and Eric. And
Christie. Christie had been the strong one and that’s what ate at him and made
him mad.

"Daddy? Will we ever see Aunt
Christie again?"

Darrell lifted his head and met
his son’s eyes. "It’s okay, Eric. Everything is okay. We’ll see Aunt
Christie before we leave again. We’re going to stay in town tonight." He
got a sudden idea. "We’ll get some pizza and see a movie tonight."

Eric clapped his hands and spouted
off a string of new movies. Darrell drove back onto the road. Maybe by tonight
he could pull himself together.

###

Later that evening Christie sat on
the back steps of Garrett's house. She didn’t know how she had ended up there
or how long she sat by herself. It seemed extraordinarily quiet in the near
dusk.

All afternoon she had relived the
moment she had flung those terrible words at Darrell. She had blindly walked
past Garrett, wandering around what seemed like hours. Darrell’s car was gone.
Had she caused such harm that he’d taken Eric and driven out of her life for
good? Christie bit back a sob, knowing it was what she deserved after the
hateful thing she’d said.

The kitchen door creaked open and
banged closed, the sound familiar and hollow, the way she felt.

Christie hugged her legs, her chin
resting on her knees. She saw a jean-clad leg out of the corner of her eye.
Garrett dropped down to the step beside her. He stretched his legs out and one
thigh brushed hers. That slight contact burned but tension rode Christie,
making her stiff inside and out. Her shoulders ached, her head hurt and the
place inside where her heart should be felt like it was bleeding. The intensity
of emotion was overwhelming, and any control of her life seemed to have slipped
away.

"You missed dinner," he
said, conversationally. "I saved you a plate of my famous roast
beef."

"I didn't know you could
cook," she said, still strangely out of sync with her surroundings.

"I haven’t always had
Ruth."

Christie ducked her head and
traced her finger over a knot of wood on the step. "There's a lot of
things you don't know about me, Garrett," she said.

"There's probably a ton of
things you don't know about me either." He gently tilted her chin up.
"I know I want to learn more about you, Christie."

"I find that hard to believe
after what you must have heard earlier."

Garrett dipped his head and rested
his forehead against hers. The gesture was so simple and trusting Christie
wanted to cry. His hand moved to her shoulder, pressed a moment and then fell
away.

Christie traced imaginary circles
on her up-drawn knees. "He didn’t deserve what I said to him. He’s left,
hasn’t he?" She tilted her head back against the wooden post supporting
the handrail.

"Darrell decided to spend the
night in town. I called a friend who owns a local motel. He and Eric will be
back tomorrow."

Suddenly she noticed how the stars
hung brightly in the cloudless sky. "He’s coming back?" Christie took
in a great gulp of air. "Thank God. I’ve made such a mess of things,"
she said in a rush. "I snapped that day after the custody case. I threw
clothes in a duffel bag like I was a crazy woman. I just knew I had to get out.
I must have called work, took a leave of absence. I left my apartment, told the
landlord he could have everything in it." Christie looked at him,
dry-eyed. "I walked out. At the time it felt like it was the only thing I
could do."

Her lungs hurt. Tension gripped
her so tightly it was unbearable, physically and mentally. "All this time
I lied to myself. I realized it when I said those terrible things to Darrell.
He might have left my sister but at least he said goodbye. I didn’t do that. I
never abandoned my sister physically, but I did emotionally, before she died. I
was so angry and tired."

"Caring for a terminally ill
person takes a toll on anyone. There’s no need for you to be making
excuses."

"I was an honor student in
law school. I quit so I could be home at night with Ellen. There was one moment
when it all was just too much." When she looked at him she knew the tears
hung on her lashes. Every part of her body trembled and she felt so exhausted.
"I wished it was over. In my heart I wished she would die. I accused
Darrell of wanting her dead. It was me ... me, Garrett. She died two days
later."

Garrett's arm encircled her
shoulders, assuring her without words that she wasn't alone. She felt a tremor
in her hands as something inside began to crumble. She tried to hold it back
but her shoulders started to shake.

Garrett tightened his arm around
her. "Let it go. You’ve been holding it inside too long."

Tears spilled down her cheeks. The
tighter Garrett held her, the faster the tears ran. She couldn't stop them.

Breath rasped through her throat,
coming from deep within, and suddenly an upheaval of emotion let loose in her
and the tears were released in a torrent.

Christie couldn't stop the
sobbing. She gripped her hands tightly and held her arms between her knees, her
shoulders shaking with the force of her anguish. She touched her forehead to
her up-drawn knees as spasms wracked her.

Vaguely she knew Garrett's arms
continued to hold her close. Christie released the pain she hadn't given voice
to since the death of her sister. She had never grieved. The dam of emotion,
the unspoken abandonment had remained hidden, bottled up and waiting to
rupture. Christie tried to take deep breaths, but the choice over controlling
her emotions had been taken from her. For the first time in her memory,
Christie abandoned herself and depended on another person to keep her safe.

Ellen was dead and Christie was
very much alive. It was a fact, something she couldn't run from any longer. She
had tried so hard to avoid the hurt, but like a runaway train she had found the
end of the track and now she lay in a crumpled, smoldering heap.

After a while, the sobs lessened,
and Christie sat up, pulling away from Garrett. Shakily, she accepted the
handkerchief he pressed into her hand. She felt incredibly weak.

"God, I’m sorry," she
muttered unsteadily, gulping. She wiped her burning, irritated eyes with the
cloth. She gave a small laugh, but it sounded like a hiccup. "I’m a
mess."

"That's been stored up a
while." He tipped her chin up with a finger, took the handkerchief back
and wiped her cheeks.

Feeling vulnerable, Christie said,
"It's kind of scary, getting hit like that. I couldn't stop it."

"You've got to vent your
emotions. Especially someone as strong as you, Christie."

"Yeah, right. I don't feel
strong." She held out a shaking hand for him to see. "Right now I’m
as weak as a baby."

"You supported your sister
and nephew, offered them all the love inside you. You should be proud of what
you've done. A lot of people would have run from that responsibility."

"I did run away," she
admitted in a low voice. "Don't you see, Garrett, I failed. I promised
Ellen I'd give her my bone marrow and she'd get better, but it didn't work. We
tried so many treatments; holistic, vitamin therapy, acupuncture, but her
illness was too far advanced. I promised her I'd take care of Eric as if he
were my own, and I couldn't do that either."

"Christie, you did the best
you could. I didn’t have to be there to know that. In the end, it wasn't up to you.
It was her time. Eric is with Darrell, and you know that’s where he should
be."

"Yes." The admission had
always been difficult, but now a bit of peace stole into her.

"I'm not making excuses, but
I’ll bet any psychologist would say those thoughts of despair near the end were
natural. A culmination of trying to hold everything together and being so
tired. We all have crazy thoughts from time to time but we don’t act on them.
You wanted your sister’s pain eased and you knew death was the only way. You have
no reason to be carrying this guilt. You're a caring, nurturing woman. Your
sister knew it. All that’s left is for you to admit it."

"It’s been haunting me and I
didn’t even know it. I blamed Darrell. I controlled my life, every aspect of
it, but I couldn't keep her from dying."

"It's not your job. You're
not God."

Christie felt as if breaking that
damn of emotion had released her in some way.

"You don't have to leave, you
know." He touched her cheek with his hand. "Let’s talk for
awhile."

###

The next afternoon Christie lifted
the slip dress from the bed, the one she had worn to Garrett’s party. She
wriggled into it, smoothed it over her hips and stepped into the matching
sandals. Slowly, methodically she pulled her brush through her newly washed
hair. Walking across her apartment, she stood at the large window overlooking
the house and parking area.

Darrell and Eric had not come back
and it was almost four o’clock. Was this to be their final goodbye; angry,
bitter words? Had she so alienated him that he wouldn’t come back to say a last
farewell to Ellen? She had jeopardized her relationship with her
brother-in-law, and therefore Eric. How could she have been so selfish? Should
she just have dropped the whole idea of scattering the ashes? Maybe if she had there
wouldn’t be a rift between her and Darrell now.

She lifted Ellen’s keepsake urn
and thoughtfully ran her fingertip along the wooden edge of the book. The time
had arrived to scatter her sister’s ashes, but she looked outside again, hoping
to see Darrell.

Clasping the book close, Christie
left her apartment and walked outside. The air was comfortable, not too warm or
cool. The sun was moving low in the sky and it felt like the right time to say
goodbye.

She found Garrett and Hannah
waiting for her outside. He had showered, she could see damp, curling tendrils
of blond hair along his collar. He wore a dark gray shirt and dress jeans as
black as the boots on his feet.

"Ready, Christie?" he
asked quietly. He stood beside his truck and opened the door. "Hop
in."

Christie shook back her hair.
"I’d like to walk, Garrett."

He closed the door. "Sure.
I’ll keep you company."

"Me too, Daddy." Hannah
took Christie’s hand.

Christie smiled at her niece,
squeezing her hand lightly. They followed the path that ran beside the
paddocks. There was no hurry. The moment had finally arrived, a chapter of her
life so long open, now about to close. A final goodbye to Ellen.

She looked up at Garrett.
"Your Kentucky is so beautiful, I know Ellen would have loved it here.
This is the perfect ending." She hesitated, then blurted, "Have you
heard from Darrell at all? Has he called?"

Seeing the compassion in his eyes
she knew the answer before he shook his head no. "He did say he’d be back
today."

Christie looked at the path ahead.
"Today is almost over."

"Give him a chance," was
all he said.

With sudden clarity, Christie knew
that was the answer. "You’re right," she said. "I’ve never given
Darrell a chance. I never considered how he felt when Ellen got sick. I
jealously guarded my pain and my sister. I shut him out." She put her head
down. "I wish I could tell him I’m sorry."