The Sound of Glass (38 page)

“Maybe,” he said, seeming to weigh the word and what it might mean slowly in his head. “What’s making you so philosophical tonight?”

I leaned back on the bench and noticed the nearly full moon, pregnant with possibilities and the power to conduct the music of the tides. I kept my gaze focused on the moon, at the way it sheltered us all from the dark like a mother’s hand, and let it bathe me in its blue glow. “You. And Loralee. This place, too.”

I imagined for a moment Edith at her attic window, looking out at the same moon, attempting to protect a woman she’d never met, and setting off a chain of events she could never have foreseen. And I thought of my own grandmother, lost and alone, making the only choice she believed she had to protect her daughter—
my mother
—and inadvertently damaging so many lives. There were no heroes in their story, but neither were there any villains. And nobody had learned anything.
Yes,
I thought. That was the sticking point. I couldn’t nudge myself past it with the belief that it had all been so pointless. Both Edith and my grandmother were gone. What good could come from resurrecting their ghosts?

“Do you really believe that everything happens for a reason?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “But I also believe in free will. That our lives are what we make them.”

Our eyes met, the glow of the moon filling the space between us, and all doubt left me. He leaned forward for another kiss, and my phone rang. I jerked back, quickly scrambling to retrieve it from my bag, knowing it could only be Owen or Loralee.

I looked down at the unknown number, identifying only the Beaufort area code. When I answered, I recognized Nurse Stelle’s voice immediately, and suddenly it seemed as if the moon had fallen from the sky.

*   *   *

I didn’t remember how we got back to the house, only that we must have run the whole way without stopping. I didn’t even recall digging out my key or putting it in the lock or running up the stairs. My whole memory of that awful night was just of Loralee’s peaceful expression, the hint of one of her glorious smiles still lingering around her mouth.

She looked as if she were still sleeping, and I half expected her to tell me to turn on the television or put on some lipstick. The pretty pink-and-lace nightgown I’d bought for her at Victoria’s Secret lay loose around her neck, making her look like a little girl wearing her mother’s clothes. I felt Gibbes behind me, his hands strong on my shoulders.

The nurse stood and I saw she’d been crying. She’d known Loralee for only a short while, but I suppose Loralee had that effect on most people. She wasn’t somebody one easily forgot. “I already called her doctor, and the coroner is on his way.”

I nodded, not sure I could trust my voice.

She cleared her throat. “I see this a lot, when a patient knows it’s time but they don’t want to upset their loved ones. They wait until everybody’s where they want them to be.” She sniffed and brought a tissue to the corners of her eyes. “I hope it brings you some comfort to know that she didn’t die alone. It was so sudden, like . . . like she knew. She reached for my hand and I held it the whole time, and then she smiled at me, closed her eyes, and went to sleep. It was so peaceful and quick, I didn’t have time to call you. But I think she wanted it that way.”

I walked toward the bed with the absurd notion that if I spoke Loralee’s name, she’d open her eyes. I leaned over her to brush her hair off her face, and one of my tears fell toward the bed, landing with an odd splat.

Looking down, I saw her pink journal cradled against her side, the pen lying next to it as if she’d just finished writing. Carefully I picked up the journal and opened it to the last page. There, right
beneath the one I’d written just a few hours before, in a very shaky and light hand, was Loralee’s final piece of wisdom.
Life doesn’t get easier. We just get stronger.

“Oh, Loralee,” I whispered. How was I going to get through the rest of my life without her? Without her wisdom and advice? And how could I be the mother she wanted me to be for her son?

“Owen,” I said. “I’ve got to go get Owen. I need to be the one to tell him.”

“Let me come with you,” Gibbes said. “You shouldn’t be driving.”

Any courage or knowledge I believed I’d somehow attained fled, leaving behind the old Merritt who would always be afraid of the dark. “Yes. Thank you.” My mind raced, trying to make lists and find order to distract me from the growing numbness. “I’ll call Maris’s dad, tell him that we’ll pick Owen up at the theater and that we’re on our way. He needs to say good-bye.”

I turned to the nurse, not sure what to say, and she took the journal from my hands. “I’ll stay with her until you get back. You’ll need to tell the coroner which funeral home.”

I nodded numbly, my grief like a fist that had grabbed hold of my lungs, strangling the breath from me.

Gibbes and I said our final good-byes to Loralee and then we left the house. As I stood outside I looked up at the moon again and saw heavy clouds drifting across its face, hiding the light and casting the dark night all around us.

MERRITT

T
hunder rolled across the sky as my cell phone rang and I let it go to voice mail. It was Gibbes again, and although I’d seen him at the funeral and several times since when he came to check on Owen and me, we hadn’t really talked. Maybe it was the New Englander in me, but I didn’t want to talk—to anybody. Judging by the number of people who’d stopped by with casseroles and Jell-O molds, the Southern way to grieve was through food and talking. If it weren’t for Owen, I would have simply sat in the silence and listened to the echo of the doorbell.

I glanced down at my cards and then at Owen across from me at the kitchen table. “Go fish,” I said.

He just looked at his cards as if he didn’t understand what I was saying and then back up at me. “Is it okay if we quit? I don’t feel like playing.”

“Okay, Rocky. That’s fine.” I began gathering up the cards.

“And I don’t want to be Rocky anymore. I decided I like Owen better.”

I smiled. “Good choice. I like it better, too.” I finished stacking the cards, then slid them back in their box. “Would you like to watch a movie? We could call Maris and see if she wants to come over later and have pizza and popcorn and watch with us.”

He shook his head. “No, not tonight. I just . . .” He looked at the new refrigerator, as if hoping it could finish his sentence.

I took his hand, wishing that Loralee were there to tell me the right words to say that could make it better for him. But all I had was me. “Owen, it will get better—I promise. One day you will wake up and that weight on your chest won’t be as bad, and you’ll be able to breathe in a little more air than you could the day before. And then you’ll know that it’s getting better.”

He rested his chin on the table. “You promise?”

I nodded. “I promise.”

“I miss her.” Tears welled in his eyes and I quickly blinked back my own. One of us had to at least pretend to be strong.

“Oh, sweetheart, I miss her, too.” I wished again that she were there to offer some helpful piece of insight or her mama’s wisdom that would make sense out of her not being there.

“Can we go visit her? There’re some pretty flowers she planted in the garden, and I want to bring them to her.”

I sat back in my chair, relieved to have some plan of action. “Absolutely. We can go whenever you want—but let’s wait until the storm blows over, all right?”

He nodded. We hadn’t been back to the cemetery since the funeral, where I’d worn the red dress, and Owen his little-man suit, and Loralee had looked beautiful in her pink suit and with her hair teased and sprayed big around her head just like she wanted. Gibbes had laughed when I’d explained why, and somehow the sound didn’t seem out of place at Loralee’s funeral.

My phone dinged, letting me know Gibbes had left another
voice mail. My thumb hesitated a moment before I dropped my hand back to the table. “You can ride your new bike, too, when you visit the cemetery. I’ll have to come, but I can just hover in the background and you can pretend you don’t know me.”

I was rewarded with a small smile. Gibbes had brought over the blue bicycle a couple of days after the funeral. It had been his when he was Owen’s age, and it was just sitting in his garage. He’d fixed it up, oiled the chain, and pronounced it good as new when he’d delivered it to Owen. And because I was taking my new role as guardian very seriously, I’d gone to Walmart and bought my own bike—in yellow—and helmets for both of us.

Slowly he slid his chair back from the table. “I think I’ll just go up to my room and play with my LEGOs for a little while.”

“All right. Just let me know if you need anything or if you get hungry.”

He nodded, then slowly walked out of the kitchen, his sock-covered feet quiet on the wood floors.

I stood in the kitchen for a long time, wondering what I should do, then headed up the stairs to pull all the paperwork Loralee had left, including guardianship of Owen and handwritten notes about what sort of education she envisioned for him, as well as the funds and accounts that were already set aside for that purpose.

I paused at the top of the steps, then detoured toward Loralee’s room. The nurse had stripped the bed and remade it with a quilt she’d found in the closet. But the rest of the room appeared as if Loralee had never left, with her clothes hanging in the closet, the scent of her perfume still lingering in the air, her makeup and hairbrushes resting on the dresser.

One day I’d have to pack up her clothes and shoes and personal effects and decide what to save for Owen, and what to part with. But I couldn’t do that yet. It would almost seem like watching her die twice. I stood in the doorway, unwilling to go in, unwilling to admit that it was empty. My gaze fell on the bedside table, which was
cleared of all pill bottles and rolls of antacid tablets. All it contained now was a small pink clock, a vase of wilted flowers, and Loralee’s pink journal. I’d somehow managed to forget about it, or to push it so far from my brain that I’d pretended to forget about it. The journal belonged to Owen, but Loralee had wanted me to read it, too.

I took a step forward to get it, but stopped. Reading her words, hearing her voice, would probably be more than I could take. I headed back toward my room, leaving the journal where it was. It would be there when we were ready for it.

I sat on top of my bed with Loralee’s papers as well as my notebook of ideas—something Loralee had suggested and labeled for me—and tried to think of practical things, like schools for Owen as well as plumbing and appliances and heating and air systems. And refinishing basements. I’d decided to turn the basement into a rec room for Owen and his friends, a fun boy retreat with a place for gaming (Gibbes’s idea) as well as a Ping-Pong table and something called Foosball (again, Gibbes’s idea; he apparently got all his ideas from his college fraternity days).

But I was too easily distracted by thoughts, the same ones that had kept me up most nights since Loralee’s death. They were a mixture of grief, and uncertainty about my ability to be a good enough mother to Owen, and my indecision as to what to do about the suitcase and the letter in the basement.

I yawned, realizing I was too tired to make any decisions about anything in my current state. I wasn’t usually a nap taker, but I figured it might be my only option, since I wasn’t able to keep my eyes open.

The thunder had been replaced by the steady beat of rain against the roof, as good as any lullaby. I picked up my phone to set an alarm for thirty minutes—assuming I could sleep that long—and saw the voice-mail sign on the screen. I touched the button, then listened to Gibbes’s message.

“Hey, it’s me again.” Pause. “If you want me to get lost, just tell
me. But I’d really like to talk. I miss her, too, and maybe if we . . . I don’t know.” Another pause. “Anyway, I wanted to let you know that I’m going on a fishing trip with some friends of mine, and the cabin we usually stay in is pretty much off the grid, with no cell service. There’s a gas station about three miles away, though, where I can get a few bars. So if you need me, call and leave a message and I promise I’ll check in a couple of times a day. Tell Rocky I said hi.”

I listened to the message three times just to hear his voice, then hit the “end” button. I’d call him back later, if only to tell him that Rocky was back to being Owen. I dropped my phone on the bed beside me and lay back on my pillow, the sound of the rain the last thing I remembered hearing before I dropped off to sleep.

*   *   *

I woke up to evening sunlight from the window blasting me in the face just as a heavy roll of thunder shuddered around the house. I sat up, blinking my eyes and belatedly realizing that I’d neglected to set my alarm. Lightning pulsed outside, followed by another blast of thunder a few seconds later, the sun dimming only slightly.
The devil’s beating his wife
, I thought, hearing Loralee’s voice.

I searched for my phone, vaguely remembering dropping it on my bed before I’d passed out, finally finding it tucked under one of my legs. I was in the middle of a stretch when I looked at my screen and saw that it was after six o’clock, the realization dawning on me that I’d been asleep for almost five hours.

I leaped from the bed, then headed toward Owen’s bedroom, calling his name, wondering whether he was hungry and feeling bad, and if he hadn’t wanted to awaken me to let me know. Yes, he could probably make his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but he wasn’t supposed to. That’s what I was there for.

“Owen?” His door was cracked open, so I knocked and waited for a response. “Owen?” I tried again after a moment, pushing open the door slowly. His room looked like it belonged to a military
cadet, with bedclothes tucked in at neat angles, all of his LEGOs in color-coded bins against the walls, his latest projects displayed on the bookshelf along with Cal’s.

“Owen?” I called again, louder this time, checking in his closet and under the bed just in case.

I ran down the stairs, calling his name, pausing only long enough to hear him reply. But I heard only silence. I looked into all the downstairs rooms before heading toward the kitchen and then into the garden, where all the blooms and leaves bowed their heads from the weight of the raindrops, seeming to me as if they were in mourning, too.

“Owen?” I called, hearing my own rising sense of panic.

I moved quickly through the house again, calling his name, then out the front door and to the side of the house. “Owen—please! Answer me!” I used the gate to cut through the garden, moving rapidly toward the basement door, feeling the emptiness of the room before I’d hit the last step. The suitcase and plane model seemed to mock me, using Cal’s voice:
Coward
. I backed up, then quickly retraced my steps.

I ran upstairs, checking in the attic and the bathroom this time, calling Owen’s name again and again. I felt the rising panic begin to bubble over into my reasoning, and I found myself questioning Loralee’s decision not to get Owen a phone yet because he was only ten.

I was about to run downstairs again when I backtracked to Loralee’s room. I hadn’t checked in there, knowing Owen’s reluctance to enter it was as strong as my own. I stood on the threshold. “Owen? Are you in here?”

I waited, hearing the sound of the rain against the window and the soft ticking of the pink alarm clock by the side of the bed. I was about to turn away when I noticed that the journal was missing. I entered the room and got down on my hands and knees to look behind the nightstand and under the bed and came up empty.

Where could he have gone?
Wherever Owen was, I had to assume
the journal was with him. In desperation I called Maris’s mother, although in my heart I knew she would never have brought Owen to her house without speaking with me first. The whole family had come to Loralee’s funeral, and I knew their offer to call them for anything had been sincere.

Tracy hadn’t seen or heard from Owen, and neither had Maris, but she promised to let me know if they did, and asked me to let her know if I needed her to go out and start driving around looking for him.

I thanked her, not ready for my thoughts to go in that direction yet, not wanting to think of a lost Owen wandering the streets of Beaufort in the rain, his mother’s journal tucked against his chest. I started to call Gibbes, but stopped, remembering that he wasn’t available, and suddenly felt completely helpless and alone.

I closed my eyes.
Think
. The cemetery. I’d check the cemetery first, and if I didn’t find him there, I was calling the police. He wasn’t a runaway. He wasn’t a troubled child. He was simply . . . gone.

I grabbed my purse and headed toward the detached garage with the sagging roof. It was big enough for my car and our new bikes, keeping them out of the heat of the sun and the elements. I slid into the driver’s side, my gaze scanning the walls of the garage, which were mostly coated with layers of cobwebs, except where Gibbes had cleared them off to make room for the two bikes and two hooks for our helmets. I stopped. Owen’s helmet and bike were gone. He was somewhere on his bike, in the rain.

Terrified now, I backed out of the garage and sped over gravel to the street and headed toward Saint Helena’s churchyard. I was looking for his bike now, which might make him easier to spot, and found myself saying prayers I hadn’t said since I was a little girl.

The sun was on its final descent, and although the rain had stopped, heavy clouds hung dark and threatening as I parked my car along the street outside the church and raced in through the gates. Raindrops clung to the junipers, sycamores, and sculpted myrtle
branches that hovered over the graves, a storm-scented wind shaking them loose until they fell like tears onto the stones and sodden earth.

The last rays of sun escaped through the winding paths between graves as I found my way to the mound of dirt marking the interment site. It was still covered with wreaths and bouquets, the ground raw and fragrant like the suitcase had been when Gibbes had pulled it from the hole.

No bike, no tracks, no sign whatsoever that Owen had been there. The full panic that I’d managed to hold at bay so far threatened to engulf me, to take me back to the helpless woman I’d been while married to Cal.

Think. Think.
Loralee would have known what to do.
But Loralee isn’t here.
I stumbled blindly out of the cemetery, watching as dark clouds obliterated what was left of the sunset and everything turned to gray.

I made it back behind the steering wheel before the sky opened up and rain pelted down, thudding against the metal roof and windshield. My hands were shaking as I picked up the phone and hit “redial” to call Gibbes’s number. It wasn’t until his voice mail picked up and I heard his voice that I remembered he wasn’t there. That he was “off the grid” and would be checking in only a couple of times a day.

I threw my phone onto the passenger seat, then pressed my forehead against the steering wheel hard enough that it hurt.
Think. Think
. Lightning flashed, illuminating the world for a brief second, the limbs of the oak trees lining the road stark against the angry sky.