Words Unspoken (8 page)

“It wasn’t good, sir,” Silvano stated simply, but with authority. “I’ve read his other work and I’ve talked to Deborah about her editing of his previous manuscripts. Usually they are clean, but this one wasn’t.”

“You should have given Frank some warning.”

“I figured he’s a pro—he can take some serious criticism.”

“Yes, but with the deadline we’ve got, he says he’ll never have time to make all the changes you suggest. It won’t be ready.”

“Mr. Clouse, ultimately it’s Youngblood whose reputation is on the line. You’ve always said we will not keep publishing authors if their work doesn’t continue to meet our high standards. Frank’s a great author, but he’s written a bad book. I’ll work with him, and we’ll get it ready for spring.”

“Spring is too late!” Ed bellowed. “If you can’t get this straightened out in the next few days, I’m going to stick Deborah back on it, and that will not make me happy. You understand?”

“Yessir. I’ll call Frank.”

“Don’t make me regret hiring you, you hear me?”

Silvano felt the burn climb up his face. “Yessir.”

He stalked to his desk, cursing Frank Blanton and Ed Clouse under his breath. Someday this lousy publishing house would wake up and realize just how much he had to offer and then it would be too late for them! Who cared about that dried-up mystery writer, anyway! He had his hands on something much more lucrative. Soon enough, Eddy Clouse would be begging him for suggestions. And his main suggestion, the gut feeling he had ever since he read the first page of S. A. Green’s unnamed manuscript, was
Find the woman, interview her. See what makes her tick.
She’s amazing. Find out why.

________

Katy Lynn came back from the grocery store to an unlocked house. That meant that Gina was home. “Gina! Gina!” she called up the stairs while setting the brown grocery bag on the counter.

No answer.

“Gina, could you come down and help me unload the groceries from the car?”

Still no answer.

Exasperated, Katy Lynn climbed the stairs and marched into her daughter’s room. Typical teenage disorder surrounded her—clothes on the floor, schoolbooks tossed onto the bed. The bathroom door was closed.

Katy Lynn hammered her fist on the door. “Gina! Do you hear me?”

No answer.

“Open the door, now!”

“Go away, Mom. Please just leave me alone.” Gina’s voice was a hoarse whisper. She’d been crying.

Katy Lynn’s tone softened. “Gina, what’s the matter? Can we talk?”

She thought of the ice cream and other frozen goods thawing in the car. She did not have time for Gina’s melodramatic antics.

“Not now, Mom. Please.”

Katy Lynn left the room and went back to the car. She had a fifteen-year-old daughter and a forty-one-year-old able-bodied husband, but she always unloaded the groceries. She wanted to strangle them both. Then she caught sight of the ripped-open envelope and the letter beside it, lying on the kitchen counter. She picked it up and slid the letter out.

Dear Gina,

I need to tell you something that will be hard to hear. I wanted to tell you in person, but my schedule is crazy, and you need to know.

I won’t be coming back to the house anymore. I’ve filed for a divorce.
I’ve gotten an apartment not too far from your school, so you can stay over on the weekends.

I’m sorry to write this to you. Your mother and I have discussed this and think it is best that we divorce.

But I want you to know that I love you. I really do. The problem is between your mother and me—it has nothing to do with you.

I love you, Gina, and we will talk soon.

Dad

The scoundrel! What kind of way was that to tell his daughter about the divorce! He’d promised to come over tomorrow night so they could talk, the three of them.

Katy Lynn ran back up the stairs and banged on the bathroom door, panicky now. “Gina! Gina! Open up. I’m sorry about your father’s letter. That was not how we had agreed on telling you. Open up, sweetie. Let me talk to you.”

Several minutes later, the door opened and Gina stared at her mother with hollow eyes. Without a word she held out her arms for her mother to see. “I feel better now.”

In bright red welts on the insides of Gina’s arms, Katy Lynn read the message.
I hate Dad.

________

One more interminable dinner with her father. Lissa wanted to grab the newspaper from his hands and hurl her plate of spaghetti in his face.
Talk to me, Dad!
She had tried to say this, even scream it, hundreds of times, but it never got past the catch in her throat. The anger proved to her that she was at least alive, that the icy numbness that invaded every inch of her being could sometimes change to fire.

Your father has a different way of grieving, Lissa. You have to give him time and space.

The therapist’s words had seemed wise a year ago, but now they drove her crazy. All she asked for was a minimum of communication without his hiding behind a copy of the
Chattanooga Times
or the
New York Times.

She heard voices in her head, but what did he hear? Nothing! He filled his ears with static—from the radio, the TV, the hi-fi. Now with the new video device he could even program it to record shows and watch them at night. Denial. Her father was in denial. She might struggle with debilitating depression, but he was worse.

At least I am trying, Dad. I am trying. I went to that counselor, I take those little pills. I’m relearning to drive.

Lissa glanced at the back page of the newspaper—an article about a football player from Penn State. She hoped her father would not read that one. Then it would be a conversation about “When you get to college …” and “You need to seriously consider those scholarships …” and “Lissa, you can’t just sit around at that little library table all day. It’s not healthy.”

Healthy or not, the library was where she wanted to be. She felt safe there, surrounded by shelves of books, the books of her childhood and teenage years. Here in this house she felt trapped, imprisoned by her father’s refusal to communicate.

She wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him and yell at the top of her lungs, “I am sorry she died! It was an accident, don’t you know! Even smart, obsessive, perfectionist daughters make mistakes. Say something to me! Forgive me! Or do you just want for me to die too? Is that it, Daddy? Do you want me to disappear? I’ll leave!”

She wondered at times if his obsession with college was in fact a desire to be rid of her, so he would not have to face his daughter—the girl who was responsible for his wife’s death—every morning at 7:27 on the hardwood steps of the house on East Brow Road.

Sweetheart, don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the details. Just take it one day at a time.

Momma had understood, had read her mind as if Lissa had handed her a documented version of her diary. Momma had recognized and admitted that her daughter had a screw loose in her overactive brain. Intellect cost something. It cost Lissa sanity. And friends.

I did not ask to be born smart! They all thought it was easy for me to succeed, to make the grades, to be the best. No, it was hard, it was torture.
All I wanted was to be normal.

Lissa took a bite of spaghetti.

Never good enough, never good enough. Failure. Failure.

If only her father would talk to her, she might stop hearing those other voices in her head.

CHAPTER FIVE

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25

In the predawn light, Ev sat on the porch, a cup of steaming coffee in his hands, rocking back and forth, back and forth. Together with the Almighty, he awaited the sunrise. In September it peeked over the oak tree at the far end of the property. He preferred December, when it rose in the open vista of the front yard, illuminating Lookout Mountain far in the distance.

In the stillness of the dusky morning, Ev began his day. He called it the journey inward, the preparation for everything that would open up during the next twenty-four hours. He settled his mind, took a sip of coffee, and watched the sky shed its darkness—a yellow streak, a pinkish-orange ray of light.

Ev spoke out loud. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Lord, this is a particularly beautiful sunrise. Thank you for giving me eyes to see it. Thank you for another day. You made it; I will rejoice in it.”

He forced his mind clear of other thoughts and waited. Stillness, he had learned, did not come naturally. He practiced it. Sometimes, as he waited, he heard the Lord’s voice coursing through his spirit almost audibly. Other times he heard nothing, but he felt filled up and satisfied and understood.

Eventually he voiced his concerns for the day. “Lord, it’s about Lissa. You’ve known it for all of time, that in this September of my life she’d show up on the curb and need to learn to live. I do want to help her. But I’m getting older, and my heart is weak, and I don’t like to feel afraid. You know why I feel afraid. You know I don’t like it a bit. I’m betting that you have something up your sleeve. So be it, but I’m warning you, Lord. It may not come without a fight.”

He gave a long sigh, letting his breath out as if he were practicing yoga. Another sip of coffee.

Then he moved through the other people on his list. First of all, Annie. Always Annie. Then the kids and the grandkids. Then the others, the students, the prisoners, the little girl they sponsored in Ethiopia, the patients at Good Shepherd Rehabilitation Center, the young couple at church who were getting a divorce. Mrs. Avery, the neighbor who needed help with her car. On and on, a stream-of-consciousness conversation with the Almighty. Ev prayed, eyes opened to the dawning day.

________

The cup of espresso sat in the middle of Eddy Clouse’s desk, the innocent alibi in case someone came in earlier than expected. On the other side of Eddy’s spacious office, Silvano poked through the file cabinet that he had unlocked with a paper clip and a magnet—a little trick he had learned as a schoolboy.
G.
He shuffled through the manila files—Golding, Good, Gould, Grandfeld, Grant, Green. Green! S. A. Green.

He took the folder from the file cabinet and hurried to the photocopier in the back room, which he had already turned on. Immediately he began placing each paper from the Green file under the heavy top. The whirling of the machine magnified the beating of his heart, and he glanced over his shoulder, feeling a mixture of guilt and excitement. Again and again he pressed the start button until soon thirty pages were neatly stacked in the receiving tray. He clicked off the copier, then the light in the little room, and pulled the door shut. With the photocopies safely tucked in an envelope under his arm, he stuffed the
G
folder back into its rightful spot between Grant and Groenburg in Eddy’s filing cabinet, pushed the drawer shut, removed the now lukewarm espresso from the boss’s desk, and walked into his own office, where he stashed the envelope at the bottom of his slush pile.

Fatto!
Mission accomplished. A self-satisfied grin formed on his lips. Tonight he’d have some very interesting reading to do. He could hardly wait.

________

Lissa waved good-bye as the third-grade class left the library.

Amber ran over and gave her a hug. “I’m going to read the rest of the book tonight! I can’t wait, Miss Randall.
Misty of Chincoteague
is my favorite book of all time!”

“I thought you said that about
A Little Princess.”

Amber furrowed her brow. “Well, Sarah is my favorite people heroine, and Misty is my favorite horse heroine. That’s it!”

Lissa chuckled a little. “Then I won’t dare mention
Born to Trot.
You know that Marguerite Henry wrote that one too?”

“I know. I’ll check it out next week. But first I have to finish
Misty,
and then
Sea Star
and then
Stormy, Misty’s Foal.
Did you know there were three books about
Misty
?”

“I do know, and I’ve read them all! Now run on—your class is already out in the hall.”

Lissa watched the child leave and felt a chill shoot down her back and legs and then that old familiar ache in her heart. Ten years ago she had been Amber, excitedly choosing books to check out of this library each week, listening happily to Mrs. Rivers’s suggestions:
A Wrinkle in Time, Tom Sawyer, The Secret Garden, A Little Princess.
And the
Misty
books— all three of them. In the third grade she had fallen in love with reading, and that had been the only love story of her life. Until Caleb.

________

Stella Green read the letter from Ted Draper, written on stationery with the heading
Goldberg, Finch and Dodge
. She folded the paper in two with a frown and absently scribbled on the back. She didn’t much like the tone in his letter. Self-confident. Overconfident. But she trusted Jerry Steinman. He’d kept every one of his promises to her, especially about the foundation. He’d faithfully and fiercely guarded her desire for anonymity. He’d completed the business triangle—Ed Clouse, Jerry Steinman, and Stella. Too bad he’d decided to retire. She let out a sigh and traveled back more than thirty-five years to when the happy, complicit partnership had begun.