The Sound of Glass (8 page)

She felt Merritt’s gaze and turned to find her stepdaughter staring at her with thinned lips. “I have a lot to do in the house, and I’m sure Loralee will be busy checking out the area to see if this is a place she wants to consider living. Maybe even going to the library to check out atlases of other states.”

Owen’s shoulders slumped and Loralee wanted to reach over and shake Merritt until her hard shell cracked wide-open so everybody could see the hurt child inside. But she didn’t. Robert had told her how Merritt’s mother had died, and she knew Merritt carried the wound inside her heart, picking at it so it wouldn’t heal. Instead Loralee reached her arm around Owen’s shoulders. “I think we can do both, don’t you?”

Gibbes nodded. “Absolutely. I’ll work around your schedule. I’ll give you my phone numbers before I leave.” Turning toward Merritt, he said, “So disappointed you won’t be able to join us.”

As if realizing she’d thrown cold water over Owen’s excitement, she ignored the doctor’s comment and instead gave Owen a small smile. “As long as Owen gets to go and has a good time, that’s all that matters.” Turning toward Gibbes, she gave him a hard stare. “Let’s get this over with, shall we? The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done.”

“I was assuming you’d need an appraiser to come in first before you’d allow me to take anything. I don’t want you to think I’m cheating you out of your inheritance.”

Merritt lifted her chin. “Despite what you might think, I married Cal because I loved him. I didn’t know about this house or his grandmother or that he would die at age thirty-nine. So whatever you want is yours, because none of it was ever meant to be mine. I’m here because I wanted to leave my old life and all of its bad memories
behind me, and this was the opportunity I needed. I just want to get all this business taken care of and to be left alone.”

Loralee glanced at Owen to see whether he’d heard what Merritt had said about being left alone, but he was busy stuffing cookies into his pockets. She felt her own heart burn a little, and before she did something stupid like cry, she placed a cookie on a plate and practically shoved it into Merritt’s hand.

“I’m sure you don’t mean that, Merritt. We’re just so happy to finally get to know you. Owen’s talked of nothing else since I mentioned moving away from Georgia. Isn’t that right, Owen?”

He heard his name and glanced over at her with a worried look, nodding his head while crumbs dropped from his full mouth. Merritt just stared at her cookie as if Loralee had handed her a dead fish.

Gibbes shoved his hands deep inside his pockets, his eyes narrowed. “You’re not the kind of woman I imagined Cal marrying.”

Merritt sucked in a breath, as if his words had physically assaulted her. “When Mr. Williams told me that Cal had a brother, I wondered what you’d be like, too. Because Cal didn’t just leave this town, or this house, or his grandmother. He left you, too, didn’t he? And I figured there had to be a reason why.”

A tic began in Gibbes’s jaw, but he didn’t say anything, and Loralee thought it might be because he was aware of Owen, who’d stopped chewing and was straining his head forward to listen.

Clutching the paper plate, Merritt headed for the stairs. “Let’s start upstairs and work our way down.”

Loralee picked up the plate of cookies to take back to the kitchen. “I’m going to go clean out the kitchen cabinets and put that new liner paper inside that we got at the Piggly Wiggly last night. I should probably wash all the dishes, too.”

Merritt placed her hand on the thick wood banister where it swirled at the bottom of the steps and where Loralee had placed her pocketbook the previous evening. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know. But it’s my small way of thanking you for letting us stay. For a little while,” she added quickly.

“Thank you.” Merritt put her first foot on the bottom step and began walking up. Her hand must have caught the pocketbook’s strap, because before Loralee could tell her to be careful, her purse had plopped to the ground on its side, with all of its insides spilling out onto the floor.

Multiple tubes of lipstick, her compact, brush, small toothbrush, and tweezers slid to a stop at the edge of a faded blue rug, but four prescription pill bottles and a tube of antacids rolled in the other direction, stopping at Dr. Heyward’s feet.

“I’ll get it,” she said, taking a step forward, but she was too late. Gibbes had already picked up all four bottles, casually looking down at them before meeting her eyes.

“I’ve got ulcers, and a few other pesky issues I’m dealing with right now,” she offered in explanation, waving her free hand in the air. Brushing aside Merritt’s apology, Loralee stooped down to pick up her pocketbook with her free hand and held it up for the doctor to dump in the bottles.

“If you’re going to be staying here for a while and need doctor references, I’d be happy to help. Just let me know.”

She smiled with relief. “That would be real helpful—thank you. I’ll let you know.”

Merritt continued up the stairs and Gibbes followed, staring at Merritt’s straight back as if he were trying to read something written on her shirt.

Loralee handed the plate to Owen. “Can you please take these back to the kitchen while I hunt around for the rest of my stuff?”

His eyes gleamed and she knew there would be fewer cookies on the plate by the time it reached the kitchen, but she didn’t say anything. When he was grown, she wanted him to look back on his childhood and remember these small things that made him happy.

She knelt on the rug and began picking up the tubes of lipstick,
thinking about Merritt’s straight back and the reason Cal had left his brother and his life behind him and never looked back. She clutched the tube of Passion Pink in her fist, poised to drop it into her pocketbook, and thought of one more thing to add to her journal:
Everybody carries their hurts in different ways, but everybody’s got them. Everybody. Some people are just better at hiding them
.

Using the spindles to help pull herself up, Loralee walked slowly toward the kitchen, her heels tapping across the floorboards as her smile found its way back to her face before Owen saw her.

MERRITT

I
felt Gibbes’s eyes on my back just as surely as if he were pressing two fingers into my flesh. I paused at the top of the elegant stairs. “Where would you like to start?”

“My old room, I suppose. I’m assuming my grandmother didn’t throw anything away, and there are a few things in the closet I’m hoping are still there.”

I led the way to the room Mr. Williams had indicated had belonged to Gibbes and that Loralee was now staying in. I wondered what Gibbes was hoping to find—perhaps an old chess set or baseball glove. Nothing that meant more than recalling his youth. “Judging from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t think much has been thrown out or changed since you lived here.”

I made the mistake of looking at him and saw a glimpse of vulnerability and tenderness there, neither one an emotion I wanted to associate with my brother-in-law. I quickly looked away and pushed open the bedroom door.

The bed had been neatly made, a homemade quilt in the blues and greens of the ocean neatly tucked under the wooden slats on the side of the pencil-post bed. A small corner of Loralee’s leopard-print nightgown stuck out from where it had been folded behind a pillow. On the bedside table next to a roll of antacids was what appeared to be a journal, covered in hot-pink vinyl. I imagined that the pages would be mostly blank, Loralee using them only to record what she wore each day so she wouldn’t repeat an outfit.

A neatly arranged array of cosmetics sat in gilded attention on the dressing table. I was in the middle of squinting at the tubes and jars to see whether there was something I might recognize when I was distracted by Gibbes opening the closet door.

The closet was oddly shaped, and jutted out from a corner of the room like a gaudy piece of oversize furniture, having apparently been carved from the bedroom in an attempt at modernization. I’d noticed this with all the bedrooms, and wondered whether the construction of closets in the last century or so had been the last time the house had undergone any updates.

Loralee’s suitcases had been neatly stacked in the back of the closet, their contents apparently emptied and hung with military precision on the single rod. Multiple shoes, all with high heels, were lined up in rows in front of the suitcases.

But above the rod was a deep shelf the width of the closet with piles of boxes that went up to the twelve-foot ceiling, stacked in three rows of varying widths.

“Looks like she kept everything,” he said out loud, although I wasn’t sure he was speaking to me. Turning around to look at the bed, he said, “I don’t think she changed anything at all.”

“That’s not such a bad thing,” I said, tucking the leopard nightgown out of sight.

He paused to look at me. “Because . . . ?”

I blushed, having no excuse for why I would have blurted that out. I wasn’t one to share my family’s dirty laundry, especially with
this man. We might share the same last name, but he was a stranger to me.

I shrugged, pretending to straighten the pillows on the bed. “When I left for college, my father sold the house I’d grown up in and moved into a small condo. He got rid of everything—furniture, Christmas decorations, clothing. Even sheets and blankets.”

“And your mother let him?”

I felt light-headed for a moment, the bruise of my mother’s loss still as fresh as the day she’d died. “She died when I was twelve.”

He considered me for a moment. “My mother died when I was five. Cal would have been fifteen. It was hard. I don’t think it matters how old you are when you lose a parent; you still feel like you’ve lost a limb.”

I stared back at him, recalling how I’d told my father the same thing after my mother’s funeral. And how ever since I’d limped through my life as if I’d been walking on a phantom leg. I quickly turned back to the closet. “You’re welcome to any of the boxes up on the shelf. Leave what you don’t want and I’ll sort through them to give away or toss. I can’t imagine there’s anything I’ll need.”

“What’s that?” he asked.

I stepped toward him just as he raised his hand to point at an unmarked corrugated box. I caught myself before I uttered a sound, but my body, honed by instinct, flinched as I covered my face with my arm.

He dropped his hand quickly, his eyes searching mine.

“Sorry,” I said, stepping back and lowering my gaze, suddenly aware of how much his eyes resembled Cal’s.

He didn’t say anything, but I felt him watching me. I walked toward the door and flipped on the electric switches, the overhead light and fan turning on. “It’s so hot in here,” I said, waving my hand in front of my face.

“You’d probably be a lot cooler if you weren’t wearing long sleeves.”

I looked down at my blouse, wondering how long I’d been dressing in beige. And why I still did.

The surge of anger was unexpected, and I knew I had to get out of the room. Ignoring him, I said, “Put the boxes you want in the hallway so we can keep it all together. I’m going ahead to Owen’s room to make sure it’s presentable.”

“Oh, it is,” he said, turning back to the closet.

I found his matter-of-fact attitude annoying. “How would you know?”

“In my experience, most children who’ve lost a parent tend to go overboard with their best behavior so their other parent doesn’t leave, too.”

I thought for a moment, remembering how I’d been after my mother’s death, trying to be the best student, the best daughter, the best housekeeper so that my father wouldn’t notice my mother’s absence so much. And it had worked for a long time, too. Until he’d met Loralee.

“But you probably already know that.” He reached up into the closet to pull down whatever it was he’d seen, allowing me to stare. He was so different from Cal, and I wondered why I’d thought I’d seen my dead husband when Gibbes had appeared at my doorstep the day before. They had the same sandy-colored hair and deep-set eyes of golden brown, and they both walked with the same confidence. But whereas Cal had been built like a football player, broad and strong, Gibbes was taller and leaner. So much alike, yet so different. I recalled Mr. Williams saying how Gibbes favored their mother and Cal their father. It made me wonder whether other things besides physical traits could be inherited, too.

I hovered in the doorway, eager to get away yet not wanting him to get the last word. “You don’t know anything about me.”

He didn’t even glance at me. “I know enough,” he said dismissively.

I bit my lip and breathed deeply, mentally reciting what Cal told me was the first thing they learned at the academy:
The triangle represents the three components that fires need to exist: heat, oxygen, and fuel. If one of these components is missing, a fire can’t ignite.

“Are you all right?”

I was embarrassed to realize I’d closed my eyes, as if I could hide inside myself and not be noticed. Another habit I’d picked up during my marriage. “I’m fine.”

“Why don’t you sit down?”

“I said I’m fine. I really just want to get this over with.”

“Is it the New Englander in you that makes you so stubborn, or is that just you?”

Too angry to respond, I headed toward Owen’s room and had reached the threshold when a crash came from the room behind me. I raced back to see the unmarked box from the closet shelf lying on the wood floor on its side, its top flaps opened like lips, regurgitating a stack of yellowed newspapers.

Gibbes squatted in front of the box and righted it. “It was heavier than I thought. Doesn’t look like anything broke.”

Curious, I stepped forward. “It’s just newspapers?”

He nodded. “Yeah—and they’re not mine. It’s the only box I didn’t recognize, which is why I tried to pull it down from the shelf.”

He began picking up the scattered newspapers and restacking. I leaned down and scooped up one that had slid nearly to the door. Glancing down, I read the date on the front page.
July 26, 1955.

“This one’s pretty old,” I said, handing it to him and watching as he added it to the stack.

“They’re all pretty old,” he said as he stood, flipping through the pile. “They all seem to be from the same year.” He pulled out one from the bottom. “From July and August.” He shrugged. “Must be somebody’s graduation or wedding or something my grandmother wanted to put in a scrapbook and never got around to.”
Leaning over the box, he dumped the newspapers inside, then bent over to fold the lid flaps before hoisting it into his arms.

“If it’s all right with you and Loralee, I think I’ll just stick this in the corner of the room along with anything else we find that can be thrown out. That way they won’t be confused with the boxes of stuff I want to keep that I’ll be stacking in the hallway.”

“Fine with me. And Loralee won’t mind—she’s only here for the week.”

He shot me a look that made me want to close my eyes again. “You seem pretty sure of that.”

“Of course. She told me they’re just here for a visit, and I’m sure she’s eager to find a new home for her and Owen.”

He studied me for a moment before walking to the corner of the room and dumping the box on the floor.

“You don’t look anything like him, you know. Except for the eyes. And the color of your hair.” I bit my lip, but it was too late to call the words back. As a child I’d always spoken before I thought, something my mother had tried to curb but my father had found amusing. Cal was the one who’d finally made me stop. Until now.

“So I’ve been told. I hadn’t seen him since I was ten, but everybody always said that he looked like our daddy, although we both had our mother’s eyes. Which always made me happy, since I didn’t remember her eyes at all.”

He couldn’t completely hide the hurt in his voice and looked away.

“What happened to your leg?”

My hand immediately went to my skirt, where I tugged on the hem as if I could make it longer, which was pointless, since he’d already seen the scar.

“I was in an accident when I was a little girl.”

If I’d hoped that would stop his questions, I was wrong.

“An accident?”

“A car accident.”

I turned and led the way across the hallway to Cal’s former room, effectively ending a conversation I had no intention of having.

I hadn’t yet walked inside this room, somehow sensing that Cal wouldn’t have wanted me there, as if to see his childhood possessions would make him seem less the man he wanted to portray himself as to the world. But Cal was dead. I’d seen him buried and could still feel the grains of dirt that clung to my palm after I’d opened my fist, unable to dislodge them, just as I was unable to free myself of my memories of him. I just couldn’t stop imagining him around each corner, waiting for me to say or do the wrong thing.

After pausing briefly on the threshold, I walked into the middle of the room, forcing myself to breathe normally.

Gibbes had been right: Owen had left the room spotless. The bed would have made even Cal approve, the bedclothes pulled so tight a quarter would have bounced off them. I imagined the corners of the sheets under the bedspread were folded with military precision.

Gibbes walked past me, then squatted in front of a clear plastic boxlike structure tucked back against the wall.

“It’s a terrarium,” a voice said from the doorway.

We turned to see Owen, with his starched pants and buttoned-up shirt, watching us openly. I knew he was only ten, but he was like a little man, with his grown-up clothes and big words. I had no experience with children, but something in me wanted to rumple his hair and buy him a pair of faded jeans with patches on the knees.

“What’s a terrarium?” I asked, although I already knew. I thought it had probably been a while since anybody except his mother had cared enough to show any interest in his hobbies. He looked so fragile all of a sudden, as if he were a small leaf hanging precariously from a tree branch.

He looked from me to Gibbes and then back again, as if waiting for one of us to tell him I was joking. Taking a step into the room, he said, “Technically, a terrarium is a miniature ecosystem for plants.
You’re not supposed to put bugs or animals inside them, but I like to collect interesting insects and spiders and watch them through a magnifying glass. But I always make sure I let them out after a few hours.”

“Do you like catching and observing Lampyridae?”

He looked at me with surprise.

I cleared my throat and thought back to the many summer mornings in our brightly lit kitchen, where my father and I would peer into my own insect cage and he would teach me the proper names of the winged and six-legged critters I’d collected from my mother’s garden.

“Lampyridae is a family of winged insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They’re called lightning bugs because their bodies use bioluminescence to attract mates or prey.” I gave him a crooked smile.

He smiled back, and I noticed how his front teeth slightly protruded over the others and he’d probably need braces at some point. Just like I had.

“Did our daddy teach you that?” Owen asked.

Something sharp and deep tugged at my chest. “Yeah. I guess he gave that to both of us.”

“Did the kids at school laugh at you because you knew all the scientific names for insects?”

I frowned for a moment, remembering. “They did at first. And then, when I picked up a big spider from Terri Zerbe’s backpack and took it outside, the kids thought I was pretty cool.”

“Really?” His face was so bright and hopeful that I had to laugh.

“Really. Believe it or not, most people are afraid of large bugs, especially spiders—although technically they’re arachnids and not bugs. My husband was a big and strong firefighter, but he was afraid of even the tiniest of spiders.” My smile faded as I recalled how angry Cal had been when I’d calmly scooped up a little house spider and set him out on the windowsill. Cal had crushed it with a
flowerpot, and I’d learned quickly to never allow myself to acknowledge his fear.

I looked up and caught Gibbes watching me carefully, and for a moment they were Cal’s eyes, and a small fissure of fear threaded its way down my spine.

Unaware of the undercurrent of tension in the room, Owen said, “Spiders are pretty cool, but I like the fireflies the best. Sometimes I catch enough that when I turn out the lights in my room, it’s like having a night-light.”