Good Hope Road Page 19

  “I’ll stop by tomorrow,” he said, turning and walking toward his truck, punching a fist into his hand. “Tell Drew I said hi.” Then he climbed into the seat, squealed the tires, and threw gravel against the fence as he left our driveway.

  Tell Drew I said hi. I knew what he meant by that. He wanted to start trouble with Drew.

  Thunder growled again in the distance. The gathering storm was coming closer. Everything left outside tonight would get drenched.

  I ran to the tractor shed, grabbed an empty feed sack, and started picking up mementos among the debris. I hurried across the yard, out the gate, and into the ditch, where more papers had blown in since the day before.

  Drew’s truck topped the hill and rattled slowly up the road, drowning out the faraway thunder. He pulled up beside me, put the truck in park, and leaned out the window. “You look better. Did you get something to eat?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not hungry right now,” I said, not wanting to go back to the house. “It sounds like rain’s coming. I want to pick up as much of this stuff as I can, just in case. All these papers and pictures will be ruined if it rains tonight.”

  Drew turned the truck off, climbed out, and started walking with me, picking things up and looking at them as he talked. “Nate all right?”

  “Sound asleep,” I answered. “I imagine he’ll stay that way for a while, after taking that pain pill.”

  Drew dropped a bunch of papers into my bag. “Some fences got knocked down at old man Jaans’s place. I ran his cows back in and put the wire up the best I could. Looks like his house is still all right. The wind knocked over that old garage of his and made a mess, kind of scattered things around. It blew open the doors to this house, too, and made a mess inside.”

  “That’s too bad, but at least he’s still got his house. I feel really sorry for Mrs. Gibson.”

  Drew looked up the road toward the Gibson place. “Yeah. Place sure is torn up.”

  “She says she doesn’t care about the place being ruined,” I said, trying to blot out the horror of those moments after the storm. “She says all that matters is that her grandkids and her kids are all right, and she wouldn’t care if she lost ten houses as long as she doesn’t lose them.”

  Drew shrugged. “It’s just a house.”

  “I guess. But she’s spent almost her whole life there. It’s got to be hard for her to lose everything.”

  I thought of our own house. The things that had happened there defined who we were. In some ways, I wished the tornado would come back and take the house away—so that all the old definitions would be gone.

  But I didn’t imagine that Mrs. Gibson felt that way about her house. Her home and her yard had been filled with the sounds of people—dinners on Sunday afternoons, Easter egg hunts with bunches of grandkids, church socials on Sunday, old ladies coming by for tea and cribbage. Even from a half mile down the road, we could hear their laughter drifting on the warm Missouri wind, reminders that just a stone’s throw away, life was good.

  Drew’s eyes met mine for a moment before he bent and untangled a picture of a high school cheerleader from the weeds. “Well, all I can say is that when I heard about the storm, I didn’t call to see whether it got the house or not. All I thought about was where were Darla and the kids, and were they all right. Not much else mattered. I guess that’s pretty much how Mrs. Gibson feels.”

  I nodded, surprised. I had never thought of Drew as caring about someone that way. He always seemed so hard, so far out of reach. If you love them that much, why are you fighting?

  I didn’t have the courage to ask. Instead, I made small talk as we came closer to the Gibson farm. “Mrs. Gibson asked me to look around her place for some notebooks of hers. She was really worried about losing them.”

  “All right,” Drew said, but squinted doubtfully at what was left of the house. “It’s going to take a miracle to find anything here.” He picked up a soggy wad of old newspaper, then dropped it in the ditch again. “Did she say what the notebooks looked like?”

  “Just plain spiral notebooks, I think. Sounded like she had things written in them, stories or something.” A sense of guilt came over me. We didn’t deserve to have our house right down the road with pictures still on the walls while Mrs. Gibson’s house was in shreds.

  Pink tinsel glittered near my feet. Tears prickled in my throat, because I could remember the tinsel wrapped around Mrs. Gibson’s porch railing at Easter time. But there wouldn’t be any more Easter egg hunts here.

  It was hard to imagine not having Mrs. Gibson down the road anymore. She had always been there, a constant in an unpredictable world. We never knew what would await us at home as we stepped off the school bus and walked down that gravel road, but we knew Mrs. Gibson would be sitting on her porch. She’d watch the bus as if she expected her kids to still be getting off.

  At Easter, her place would be alive with lilies. At Halloween the porch would be lined with pumpkins. At Thanksgiving she’d set a big wooden turkey by the door. At Christmas she would wind pine garlands and red ribbons around the porch railings. The Gibson place was the same year after year. It looked the same. It sounded the same.

  And now, suddenly, it lay in ruins, without a word to say. Not a sound. Not a whisper. Not the tinkling of the wind chime, or the squeaking of the screen door, or the swish of sheets on the clothes-line. Not even the low flutter of leaves on the old trees.

  I never realized how I loved the flutter of cottonwood leaves. Looking at the twisted remains of the stumps, I felt tears spill onto my cheeks.

  “Jenilee, you all right?”

  I nodded, wiping my eyes impatiently. “I was just thinking about how quiet it is. Nothing sounds the way I remember.”

  “Hard to get used to the quiet,” he agreed, squinting at what was left of the trees in the orchard. “I remember thinking that when Darla and the kids moved out. Seemed like I missed the sound of them as much as anything.”

  Then why did you let them go? I reached across the space between us and laid my hand on his arm. Is it just Daddy you want to keep separate from them, or is it all of us? “I’d like to meet them someday.”

  “It’s hard to picture how it could happen. Anytime soon, at least.” The words were little more than a sigh. “It’s pretty much of a mess. It’s not … like things are supposed to be. Guess we Lanes don’t do the family thing too well.” He turned and headed off across the yard, looking beaten.

  I watched him go, wondering what he was thinking. Drew could remember how it was when Grandma and Grandpa were alive better than any of us could. He knew what a normal life felt like, what it was like to be taken care of and not be afraid. Maybe that was why he, of the three of us, had the hardest time living with the way things turned out.

  Drew and I searched the area around Mrs. Gibson’s place without talking. Drew dug out her old wooden feed bin from under the fallen-down barn, and we started filling it with items that could still be used—a few dishes, some old picture frames, a toy horse model with only three legs, some pots, pans, and other cooking stuff, a photo album, a recipe box, some quilts, anything that we thought she might want. It was strange to be digging through the bits and pieces of her life—seeing all the things that were once in her house.

  Walking by on the way home from the school bus, I had always wondered what was inside.

  Drew closed the feed bin as the sun descended and the air turned still. “I don’t think there are any notebooks here, Jenilee. I found some old-time pictures of the Poetry baseball team, and one of a parade in front of Poetry School. They’re probably hers.” He put them in the feed sack, then stood up and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Getting too dark to look anymore. I think we better head on home.”

  “Look at this,” I said, clearing dirt from the twisted framework of a stained-glass window. “The dove is still in one piece. I bet the rest of it could be fixed. Can we carry it home?”

  Drew shrugged. “Guess so.” He looked at the caved
-in cellar door. “Any point in pulling that cellar door out of there? We could put her stuff down here so it won’t get wet if it rains.”

  I shivered, remembering. “No. There isn’t anything down there.” The dark, damp feeling of that place came over me, and I turned away, in a hurry to be gone. “Let’s just close the lid on that old feed box. It’ll keep the rainwater off.”

  “All right,” Drew said, then closed the feed box before lifting the heavy stained-glass window frame. “You sure you want to take this home?”

  “Um-hmm. It ought to be fixed. It’s too pretty to leave in the dirt.” I remembered that window in the peak of the house, how it glittered in the afternoon sunlight, making the dove seem to come to life. I wanted to be like that dove, white and pretty, wings spread, high above everything.

  Distant thunder rumbled as we started toward home. I shivered as a cool puff of breeze fluttered down the gravel road.

  Drew squinted at the churning black clouds on the horizon. “Rain’s coming.”

  I ducked my head, trying to ignore the clouds. “I hope not.” I was thinking of all the pictures and belongings that were still lying everywhere, and of all the people in Poetry staying in tents.

  “Looks like it might already be coming down over south of Poetry. We better step it up.”

  We hurried home as thunder growled and lightning whipped the sky. Drew put the stained-glass window in the garage, then ran out to pull his truck into the driveway and close up the barn.

  I went inside to check on Nate.

  “Nate,” I whispered at the door to his room, “are you hungry? I’m going to warm up some canned chili.”

  Nate shook his head and pulled the covers up, murmuring something before he drifted back to sleep.

  I closed the door to his room, walked through the house, and lit the oil lamps we always used when the power was out. The house was already getting dark as the storm blotted the last of the evening sun.

  Heavy drops of rain began pelting the windows as Drew came in the front door and fought the wind to pull the screen shut behind him. He set the feed sack full of papers on the floor and came across the room dripping.

  Pulling his cell phone and keys out of his pocket, he set them on the table. “I’m gonna go clean up.”

  “I’ll put some chili on,” I said, shivering in the gust of cool air, then jumping as lightning lit the windows and thunder boomed so loud it seemed to rattle the house to its foundations.

  Drew frowned at me. “You’re nervous as a cat.”

  I nodded, rubbing my hands up and down my arms. “It’s just the storm.” I’m glad you’re here, Drew. “It just seems … strange to be back here in a storm again.”

  Drew looked around the room, as if he were seeing it for the first time, the way a stranger would have seen it—the paneling with holes in it, the threadbare curtains, the stained orange shag carpeting, the windows with bushes grown so high that little light came through, the torn recliner, the couch so faded the forest print barely showed anymore.

  There were empty spots on the walls where pictures used to hang. I wondered if Drew noticed that Daddy had taken down all the photographs of him.

  His body stiffened. He shook his head as he disappeared down the hall, muttering, “Home sweet home.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Drew’s cell phone rang on the table. I wiped my hands on a kitchen towel, grabbed it, and pressed the button, worried that the noise would wake up Nate.

  “Hello,” I said, suddenly realizing that I shouldn’t be answering Drew’s phone at all. “Just a minute. I’ll get Drew.” What if it was the hospital? What if they were calling about Daddy? “Is this the hospital?”

  “No,” said a woman’s voice. “Is this Drew’s sister?”

  I stopped in the hall. “Yes, this is Jenilee. Who’s this?”

  A pause followed, during which she seemed to decide what to say. “This is Drew’s … This is Darla. Has Drew told you about me, about us?”

  “Yes.” Breath fluttered in my chest. I knew Drew wouldn’t like my talking to her. I tried to think of something harmless to say. “Nate said you sat with him in the hospital yesterday.” Drew was wrong to be mad about that. “I just … I wanted to say thank you. That was nice.”

  “That’s … that’s why I was calling, really.” I could tell by the tone of her voice there was more to it than that. “I stopped by the hospital this evening, and they said you’d taken Nate home. I just wanted to check on him. Nate and I got to know each other a little bit yesterday. I was just thinking about …” She stopped again, then finished quickly with, “I was just thinking about Nate. Could you tell him I asked about your father, but they wouldn’t give me any new information because I’m not family?”

  But you are family. You have Drew’s children. “I will. I’d let you talk to him, but he’s sleeping now.”

  “That’s all right. I don’t want to tick Drew off. I just …” She paused, and the sound of a child’s voice drifted through the line in the background. I heard the word Daddy. Darla covered the phone and whispered something, then came back on, her voice choked. “Anyway, I just wanted to check on Nate. Tell him I’m thinking about him. I wasn’t trying to make any trouble between him and Drew. I was just trying to help. I guess I should … let you go.”

  I didn’t want her to go. “I can hear the kids. They’re really cute.” I want you to know that Drew’s not like Daddy. He’s nothing like Daddy. “Drew showed me a picture.”

  “Drew showed you a picture?”

  “Yes … ummm … he did. Why do you sound so surprised?”

  She gave a quick, sarcastic laugh, her voice turning bitter. “Well, you just wouldn’t know Drew gave a crap about his kids. He hasn’t sent a dime to support them in two months. I’m having to go to court to sue him for child support. He walked away from them like they don’t matter at all.”

  Anger and disbelief boiled inside me. He walked away from us, too.

  I didn’t say it. I knew it would only cause more problems. “He said his kids were the first thing he thought about after the tornado.”

  “Funny he would say that,” she bit out.

  I stood silent for a moment, gazing out the window as lightning gashed the night, illuminating the yard, overgrown with Mama’s dead flower vines. How can I explain this place to her? “It’s hard,” I said. I could hear her crying softly on the other end of the phone. “It’s hard to explain to anyone else, to anyone who didn’t grow up here. From here, it’s hard to picture … it’s like …” I tried to form my feelings into words. Drew’s words came out. “It’s like we don’t know how to make a right kind of life.”

  Silence answered the other end of the line. Finally she whispered, “He’s never said that. He never talks about any of that.”

  “He said it this morning.”

  “Why can’t he say it to me?” she pleaded. “If he feels that way, why can’t he say it?”

  The lock clicked in the bathroom door and I jumped, catching a quick breath. “He’s coming out of the bathroom. Do you want to talk to him?”

  “No,” she rushed out, sounding as nervous as I was. “We’ll just fight.”

  “O.K. I should go.” If he sees me here on the phone, he’ll be mad. If he knew what I said …

  “Will you let me know how Nate is? How things are?”

  “O.K. Bye.” I hung up the phone and set it on the table like a hot coal. Why did I promise that? It’s Drew’s place to talk to Darla.

  The bathroom door opened, and I stepped back to the stove, my hands trembling as I dished up bowls of chili. I glanced over my shoulder, making sure the phone was back in place.

  Drew came across the living room, and I looked guiltily into the chili pot, feeling like he would see right through me, wondering why that filled me with dread. Was I afraid that if we pushed him too much, if we asked too much, he would leave again?

  Would he?

  “When did you learn to cook?” He looked over my sh
oulder into the pot.

  “A long time ago.” Eight years ago, when you left us and Mama was too sick to cook. Did he have any idea what the last seven years had been like? Old resentments crept to the surface like sludge rising from the river bottom. I set the bowls on the counter and tried to concentrate on getting glasses from the cabinet.

  My hands started to shake, and the dishes rattled. A glass fell from the shelf and shattered.

  I braced my hands on the counter. “Drew,” I heard myself whisper, my voice a million sharp pieces. “How can you leave people behind the way you do?” How could you leave us and never look back? How can you leave your own children behind?

  Part of me was afraid to know the answer—afraid he would say something like, Life ain’t easy, Jenilee. Anybody tell you it was supposed to be?

  I heard Drew set spoons on the table and pull out a chair. “I told you, I was in a lot of trouble when I left here.” His voice was flat, emotionless. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “It was a long time ago.”

  I picked up pieces of glass, tossing them into the trash, anger making me bold. “You’re doing it again now. You’re leaving your kids.”

  He cleared his throat indignantly. “Where’s that coming from?”

  “Darla called,” I blurted, hurling bits of glass into the trash can. “She said you haven’t paid child support or seen your kids in two months.”

  He slammed his hand on the table, and a spoon clattered to the floor. The legs of his chair squealed on the linoleum as he stood up. “Darla called to give you her sob story, and you took her word for it, is that it?” His voice roared through the house like thunder.

  For the first time in my life, I wasn’t shaken by it. I didn’t care. “Darla called to check on Nate. We talked. That’s all.”

  “And you just took her word for it?” he boomed, pacing the kitchen behind me. “Drew’s a jerk, and Darla didn’t do anything wrong.”

  I spun around, glaring at him. “How am I supposed to know, Drew? You don’t want to talk about it. All I know about you is what I can remember from before you left.”