Summer of Joy (21 page)

Tabitha jumped up to fetch the blankets. Her eyes were shining and she was smiling as if Santa Claus had brought her a late gift. The boy looked a bit stunned at being showered with attention by such a beautiful girl, but not at all unhappy. Sometimes the chemistry of attraction worked fast between young people. It could be David should plan to sleep light whenever his head finally did hit his pillow this night. Or morning now.

Finally Tabitha reluctantly followed Jocie up the stairs, and David and the young man were alone. David stretched out his socked feet toward the stove. Outside the wind was picking up, blowing snow against the windows. It sounded cold and his feet were cold, but not as cold as the day he’d baptized Wes. Forevermore he would have a reference for cold. Cold, yes, but not that cold.

He settled his eyes on the boy. “All right, Robert. It’s time to tell your story about why you’re here. I’m guessing your last name’s probably Green.”

“Yes sir. Robert Wesley Green Jr. I guess you could see the resemblance the same as Miss Curtsinger.”

“You look like Wes. No doubt of that. Even Jocie knew who you were.”

“She did?” Robert looked troubled. “Miss Curtsinger told me whatever I did not to tell Jocelyn—Jocie—who I was. That things might get really messed up if that happened.”

“I’m a little confused here. Just what has Zella got to do with all this?”

So Robert told him about getting Zella’s letter back in the summer. “I was so excited. I just had a feeling about it all. I wrote back to her saying I wanted to come down as soon as possible to see if the Wesley Green she knew could be my grandfather, but she’d said in her letter that he’d been in an accident and might not be strong enough to have some unknown family member just show up without warning. So I waited to hear from her. Then my school started and I couldn’t miss classes.”

“Did she say how she found you?” David stared at the gas flame in the stove and waited for his answer.

“I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. I was just glad she had if this turned out to be my grandfather. So I waited until a few weeks ago and then I wrote again. To see if she thought it would be all right if I came now.”

“And she wrote back and said you should come?” David looked over at the young man. At least they knew now why Zella had been so on edge around Wes. It was a wonder she hadn’t already dumped the problem in David’s lap, but sometimes Zella thought she could handle and rearrange everybody’s life for the better.

“No, she was pretty surprised when I showed up at her door.” The boy smiled a little.

“I can imagine,” David said.

“But since I’m on break until the second week of January, I thought now would be as good a time as any. I’ve seen pictures of him, you know. I was pretty sure I’d know him if I saw him. I never thought about anybody recognizing me even though Dad has always said I looked like his father.” Robert Wesley shifted in his chair and looked uneasy as he pushed out his next question. “He’s not in trouble, is he? My grandfather, I mean.”

“Not that I know of. Why?” David peered over at him.

“Just something Miss Curtsinger asked in her letter. If the police had ever contacted us or anything.”

“That’s just Zella.” David waved his hand in dismissal. “She likes things she can understand, and she’s never been able to understand Wes.”

“I guess maybe Dad’s the same way. He didn’t really want me to come. Said it wouldn’t be our Wesley Green. That I’d just end up disappointed. He’s always said my grandfather had to be dead. That he wouldn’t have stayed away so many years if he hadn’t been dead.”

“No, not dead in body. In spirit for a while, I think.” David massaged his forehead, hoping it would help him think more clearly. He had no idea what Wes was going to think about this boy showing up to claim kinship. Would it make him run again the way he’d run so many years ago? “I suppose you know why he left.”

“Right. The wreck where Dad’s mother and sister were killed.” He waited for David to say something, but David stayed quiet and after a moment the boy went on. “Dad said he and my grandfather both had a hard time accepting their deaths. That instead of leaning on one another, they drew apart to suffer alone. Of course Dad had just gotten married and he had Mom to help him. Still, he was surprised when my grandfather bought a motorcycle and rode off. That’s the last he’d seen of him or heard anything about him until Miss Curtsinger’s letter. That was over twenty years ago. How long has he been here in Hollyhill?”

“About ten years,” David said. “I don’t think he meant to stay, but the years just sort of piled up on him. He works for me putting out the local paper.”

“I thought Miss Curtsinger said you were a preacher.”

“I am. Preacher. Newspaper editor. General problem solver.” David smiled. “Although I don’t always do so good at that last one.”

Robert Wesley didn’t smile back. Instead he looked worried. “Do you think I’ll be a problem for my grandfather? I mean I don’t want to be a problem. I just want to meet him. To find out he’s okay so I can tell my father. Dad said they didn’t part on very good terms. Dad has never actually said so, but I know that’s been eating away at him all these years.”

“At your grandfather too, although he doesn’t talk about the past. He’s always told Jocie he fell out of a spaceship from Jupiter.” David looked toward the kitchen where the wind was rattling the kitchen windows. He hadn’t gotten around to replacing the putty in them again last summer.

Robert smiled. “Dad said his father was always a great storyteller. When I was a little boy, I made up an imaginary grandfather. We went for walks together. He told me stories. He listened when things went bad.”

“It wasn’t imaginary for my Jocie. The two of them have a special relationship.”

“It sounds like my grandfather has a good life here, and I don’t want to do anything to spoil that for him,” the young man said. Then he looked sort of wistful as he went on. “But do you think there’s any way me and my grandfather might still have a special relationship of our own?”

“I don’t know, Robert. I guess that’s up to you. And to Wes.”

25

T
he next morning Tabitha was out of bed early, taking a shower, brushing her long honey-brown hair till it shone, searching for the green sweater that matched her eyes.

Jocie looked up at her from where she was changing Stephen Lee and said, “He didn’t come here to find you, you know. He came to find Wes.”

“Wes? What are you talking about?” Tabitha pulled the sweater over her head and yanked her hair free as she turned away from the old dresser mirror to look at Jocie.

“Robert. Robert Green probably. Wes’s son, grandson, nephew, or something.”

Tabitha frowned. “What makes you think that? Did you sneak out in the hall and eavesdrop on him and Daddy last night?”

“Nope. All you have to do is look at him.”

“I looked at him,” Tabitha said.

“Yeah.” Jocie picked up Stephen Lee and kissed his cheeks before she said, “I guess your mommy must have been swooning too much to use her eyes.”

“I wasn’t swooning.”

“Don’t get me wrong.” Jocie looked at Tabitha. “I don’t care if you were swooning. He is sort of cute.”

Tabitha came over to sit on the bed. Stephen Lee reached for her and she took him. She thought maybe that had been the best thing about Robert. He hadn’t batted an eye when she’d said Stephen Lee was her baby. He’d still looked at her as though he thought she was pretty. But he might have thought she was married and her husband was just off in the army or somewhere. She’d have to find a way to tell him that wasn’t the way it was. “And you think he looks like Wes?”

“He does look like Wes. Taller and lots younger and his hair doesn’t stick out in every direction, but you could put pictures of their faces on top of one another and the eyes and mouth would be the same.”

“You make that sound like a bad thing.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Jocie stood up and went to the dresser to brush her own hair back away from her face. She didn’t look at Tabitha in the mirror.

“Well, it doesn’t make any difference to me who he came to find. He came and now maybe I can find him. You think he’s awake already? He and Dad talked a long time last night.”

“He’s up.”

“How do you know?”

“He and Dad went out awhile ago. To try to get his car out of the ditch. But the snow’s drifted some.”

“Have you been outside already?” Tabitha asked. Jocie had been dressed and gone from the room when Tabitha woke up that morning.

“Yeah. I went out real early. I wanted to see the snow before anybody messed it up so I could get some good pictures for the paper. Of course Zeb had already made footprints all over. He must have some malamute or something in him the way he was jumping around and rolling in the snow. Maybe I could teach him to pull a sled.”

“Not likely. That dog only does what he wants to do when he wants to do it.”

“That’s because he’s so smart,” Jocie said.

“Yeah, whatever.” Tabitha carried Stephen Lee over to the window to peer out. Her room faced the back and she couldn’t see the road from there, but she could see the snow. Lots of snow on the ground and some still swirling in the air even though the sun was shining in a bright blue sky. “You think they’ll be back, don’t you? I mean, they won’t just head for town.”

“Not without breakfast. Plus I doubt if anybody will be able to head for town until the snowplow comes out. And who knows when that will be? Dad took the shovel to dig out the worst drifts between here and Robert’s car. Oh, and the phones are still out too.”

“Thank goodness we have electricity,” Tabitha said.

“Yeah, speaking of which, I’d better go down and make sure Aunt Love doesn’t forget the biscuits. You want me to take Stephen Lee while you finish primping?” Jocie reached for the baby. “You know he probably thinks you’re married.”

“Then I’ll just have to tell him I’m not.”

“What are you going to tell him about Stephen Lee?” Jocie asked as she swung the baby up in the air and made him giggle.

“That I made a mistake.”

“Stephen Lee isn’t a mistake.”

“No, but Jerome was.”

“Maybe Robert is too. What if he’s the one who’s married instead of you?”

“Go, save the biscuits.” Tabitha grabbed a pillow off the bed and threw it at Jocie.

Jocie laughed as she ran out of the bedroom. Tabitha could hear her singing to Stephen Lee all the way down the stairs. “To know, know, know him is to love, love, love him.”

That’s all Tabitha wanted. To get to know him. She wasn’t going to fall in love that easy. She couldn’t. She had responsibilities now. But it was fun to talk to a person of the opposite sex again. She was practically living a cloistered life in Hollyhill. There were boys, but none she was interested in. And none who seemed the least bit interested in her even if she had been interested in them. That was probably best until Stephen Lee got older. But still it wasn’t half bad to feel that funny flip of her heart again when a boy looked at her. It meant she wasn’t dead yet. She hadn’t been too sure a few times in the last couple of months.

Jocie wanted to walk to town, but her father wouldn’t let her. Said Wes hadn’t known about Robert for twenty-one years and that a few more hours wouldn’t matter. Of course her father didn’t understand why she needed to talk to Wes. She didn’t understand why she needed to talk to Wes.

Robert was a grandson. Jocie’s father told them that at breakfast. He said Zella had tracked him down somehow after the tornado last summer, but she’d kept it a secret. Guess Wes would know now why Zella had been acting even weirder than usual the last few months.

Later Jocie’s father pulled her aside. “It’s not a bad thing. Robert Wesley showing up. Wes will be proud to have a grandson like him.” But her father hadn’t looked all that sure of what he was saying. He had looked sure when he’d told her that under no circumstances was she to walk to town and go see Wes until after he’d had a chance to talk to Wes himself.

So she had to wait. They all had to wait, trapped by the snow. Robert didn’t seem to mind all that much. He was enjoying Tabitha making eyes at him. They’d already exchanged addresses. Tabitha must have found a way to tell him she was single and available.

Aunt Love and Jocie’s father liked Robert too. And what was not to like? He smiled all the time and had polite cornered. And he was smart. Studying physics and science at a university up in Ohio. Even that was like Wes. The being interested in science and how things worked.

Jocie got her notebook out and tried to write down what was bothering her, but she didn’t know how to put it into words. She ended up just writing what her father had told her.
Wes loves me. He may not really be my grandfather, but
he loves me.
Then she put the notebook up and pulled her boots back on. She couldn’t walk to town, but she could walk somewhere. If she didn’t move or do something, the spiders crawling around inside her were going to eat her alive.

She wasn’t outside even long enough to decide whether to walk back in the old apple orchard or down the road before Robert followed her out. Jocie was surprised Tabitha wasn’t running after him.