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Authors: Susan Meissner

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BOOK: A Sound Among the Trees
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Chad’s forehead wrinkled in puzzlement. “Do what to them? You and I moved four times when we were kids. It’s not the end of the world.”

“This is their home.”

Her brother leaned back in his chair. “Yeah, but any house can be a home if you’re with the people you love and who love you. I’m sure I read that on a poster somewhere.”

Marielle shook her head, and another aster fell from her curls. “Well, I don’t live my life on poster philosophy. I’m sure you don’t either.”

Chad nodded, but his thoughts were unreadable. She couldn’t tell what he was agreeing to.

“I didn’t insist,” she continued in a gentler tone. “I could’ve, but I didn’t. This is a lovely house. A beautiful house.”

“Adelaide’s house.”

“And she’s going to be ninety on her next birthday. In the not so distant future it will be Hudson and Brette’s house.”

“I suppose.”

Marielle huffed a breath past a quick smile. “What’s to suppose? She’s old. She’s frail …”

“She doesn’t look frail to me. I’m surprised she didn’t come to the wedding—”

“She likes staying close to the house. And she’s going to be
ninety
, Chad!”

Her brother raised his glass and drained the last of his champagne. He nodded as he swallowed. “You’re right. It’s a beautiful house.” He set the glass down.

Marielle narrowed her eyes. “What?”

“What do you mean, what?”

“What else are you not saying?”

“I’m out of champagne.”

“Coward.”

He smiled. An easy, relaxed smile. Different than the ones from the last few minutes. She waited.

“Funny that you would call me a coward, Elle. Because I think you are very brave.”

“Ha ha. So very funny.”

He lifted his glass toward a passing waiter who held a tray of champagne flutes. “It’s true. You are brave. You fell in love with a guy you met online and dated for just four months, and now you’re living in his dead wife’s house, with the grandmother who raised her, and you’re mothering
her children, and you’ve moved far away from the desert and everything that’s familiar. And you’re okay with all of it.” The waiter handed Chad a new glass, and he saluted her with it.

The gesture felt like an unexpected jab from a trusted ally. She flinched from surprise and the tender sting of her brother’s candor. “That was low,” she murmured. “You’d say that to a girl in her wedding dress?”

Chad set the glass down and reached across the table for her hands. “Hey, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I meant every word. You are brave. Braver than me. I’m in awe, actually. It’s a compliment, Elle. I promise you.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not what it felt like—”

“I’m totally serious. I’m the coward. And you’re the brave one.” He released her hands.

“Tell that to Mom and Dad. That’s not what they think. Or my friends back in Phoenix. They think I married Carson because I was desperate.”

“No, they don’t.”

“They do. They just won’t say it. But they do. I see Mom looking at me and looking at Carson and these two stepgrandchildren I’ve thrown into her lap, and I know she worries I’d grown desperate and that’s why I married Carson. And I’m pretty sure Adelaide thinks it too, and she barely knows me.”

“Marielle.”

He waited until she looked up at him.

“You know what I think?” he asked. “I think you need to stop wondering what everyone else thinks. You love him. He loves you. That’s all that matters, right? Love is enough. I
know
I saw that on a poster somewhere. Love and cilantro. I will make sure to send you some seeds so you can grow your own.”

Marielle smiled as the tense moment evaporated. “And serrano peppers, too.”

“Want to change the subject?” Chad asked.

“Absolutely.”

“Kirby tells me there’s a cannonball buried in the stonework on the north side of the house. Compliments of the Yankees.”

“Oh right. The cannonball. I’ll get Carson, and he can show it to you. I suppose Kirby told you the house is haunted, too?”

“By a ghost named Susannah. A spy, I hear. A spy for the Union.” Chad rose from his chair.

“A spy? Who’d you hear that from?” Marielle slipped her shoes back on her feet and stood.

Chad motioned with his head toward Adelaide’s table. “One of Adelaide’s cronies over there.”

Marielle turned toward the table at the edge of the sun-drenched garden. Adelaide lifted her head at that moment and met her gaze. The two women regarded each other from across the patio. Marielle tipped her head in a silent greeting, and Adelaide slowly returned the nod.

As she and Chad moved away from the table, an aster fluttered from her hair and landed on the grass by her feet.

rom her table at the edge of the patio Adelaide watched Marielle and her brother approach Carson as he talked with a colleague. She saw Carson brighten at her approach and lift his arm as almost an afterthought to encircle her waist. Marielle said something to him; the colleague leaned forward in interest.

“Cannonball!” the man exclaimed.

Carson said something, and then the four of them moved away, toward the back of the house.

“She’s a nice girl, Adelaide. And my goodness, she’s tall,” Pearl said.

Adelaide swiveled her head to face her three table companions, women she had known since their children were in diapers. On her right, Pearl sat in a coral-hued dress and hat. Deloris and Maxine, one in creamy yellow and the other in lavender, sat across from her. A fourth woman, Frances, whose jet black hair warred with the deeply set wrinkles in her eighty-five-year-old face, slowly ate her piece of cake. She was new to Fredericksburg and her circle of friends at First Presbyterian—definitely not one of the Blue-Haired Old Ladies. Maxine had brought her.

“I never said Marielle was nasty and short,” Adelaide said.

Maxine laughed.

“So what does she do?” Frances asked.

Adelaide rearranged the napkin on her lap. “She writes grants for environmental groups.”

Several blank faces stared back at her.

“What exactly does that mean? What’s an environmental group? Is she one of those the-sky-is-falling liberals?” Deloris’s brow crinkled in disdain. “Does she think we’re all melting the North Pole?”

“I seriously doubt she thinks the sky is falling, Deloris,” Adelaide replied. “And I don’t think she spends much time thinking about the North Pole. She’s lived in Arizona all of her life. Her specialty is desert conservation. Or something like that.”

“The desert. Her specialty is the desert?” Deloris’s tone was dubious. “What on earth is she going to do here in Fredericksburg?”

“She’s not going to try to find a job right away, is she?” Maxine asked. “I mean, those children haven’t had a mother in four years. The least she could do is be here at the house for them when they get home from school.”

Three blue-haired heads and one raven-haired one turned to Adelaide, the unspoken observation obvious on their faces. If Marielle wasn’t going to be working, then what would she do all day while the kids were in school? in Adelaide’s house?

“I don’t know what Marielle’s plans are. They’ve only been here for a few days, and I’ve tried to give them as much privacy as I can.” Adelaide brought her teacup to her lips. The liquid inside had cooled. She looked about for one of the waitstaff she’d hired to freshen her cup. No sign of one.

“So how exactly is that working out?” Deloris leaned forward in her chair. “I mean, the privacy thing and all. With your bedrooms on the same floor.”

“Deloris!” Pearl blushed crimson.

“What? They are!”

Adelaide turned back to face her friends. “Holly Oak is plenty big enough for the five of us, Deloris. I am sure we’ll manage to stay out of each other’s bedrooms.”

“I haven’t seen Marielle spend much time with the children today.” Frances cocked her head toward Hudson and Brette, who were on the lower level of the garden near the entrance to their mother’s former art
studio—and the last remaining echo of slave quarters at Holly Oak. Marielle’s parents and Carson’s mother were with them, talking quietly together while the children played with a lop-eared rabbit, Hudson’s new pet.

“Oh, Frances. It’s a wedding reception. Look at all the guests Marielle has had to greet,” Pearl said. “Isn’t that right, Adelaide?”

Adelaide’s gaze traced the sloping lawn to the vine-covered walls of Sara’s studio and her great-grandchildren playing in front of it. She looked first to Hudson and then Brette.

“Hudson and Brette are adapting very well to Marielle’s being here,” Adelaide said absently.

“Did you know Carson and Marielle are taking the children with them on their honeymoon?” Deloris said, turning to Frances. “They’re spending a week in Orlando. At Disney World. Can you imagine? Children on your honeymoon?”

“I think it’s very sweet of them,” Pearl said. “Those children are as much a part of this marriage as the two of them are. I think it’s a lovely thing to do. There will be plenty of time for Carson and Marielle to have trips of their own.”

“Well, it just seems odd to me. Especially taking them out of school for four days when there’s only a month left.” Maxine said, but Adelaide had slowly disengaged from the conversation. Her gaze lingered on Brette, off in the distance playing on the front step to the studio, bending down to touch the rabbit, and squealing as it hopped away from her.

Frances pushed her plate away. “I suppose they need this time alone together to bond as a family. That’s what I heard on the TV. When two people marry and there are kids already, it’s like a new family is being forged out of untried steel.”

Adelaide watched Brette run to Marielle’s mother, Ellen. The woman reached down and adjusted the bow in Brette’s hair. Brette said something and Ellen laughed. Ellen knelt down and hugged the girl, and Brette’s
slender arms easily went around Ellen’s neck. Adelaide marveled at the intimacy, and it took her several seconds to remember Brette didn’t meet Ellen for the first time last night as Adelaide had. Brette met Ellen at the wedding. Brette stayed in Ellen’s house. Ellen had bought her a bracelet made by Hopi Indians.

A name on the periphery of her consciousness tugged at Adelaide as she watched Brette disengage from Ellen’s tender embrace.

Caroline.

“So you haven’t heard from Caroline, then,” someone at the table was saying.

“Frances,” another voice said, in quiet reproof.

Adelaide turned back to the table. “What was that?”

“I just asked if you’d heard from Caroline.” Frances replied as the other women stared at her.

Adelaide lifted her teacup and nearly raised it to her mouth before remembering it had grown tepid. She set the cup back down. “No. I haven’t.”

Pearl patted Adelaide’s hand.

“What?” Frances looked about the table, from old woman to old woman. “Isn’t that her daughter’s name?” Frances faced Adelaide. “Isn’t that your daughter’s name? I was told that was her name.”

Adelaide licked her lips. “That is her name.”

Maxine leaned across the table. “And I also told you not to bring it up!” she growled in a half whisper.

“You told me she probably wouldn’t be at the reception. That’s what you told me. You didn’t say I couldn’t say her name!”

“I most certainly did say that,” Maxine muttered.

Pearl clucked her tongue.

“What? Why can’t I ask where she is? Is she in prison somewhere? Is she living in a commune in San Francisco?” Frances directed these questions to Pearl.

An uncomfortable silence stretched across the table. Again, Adelaide’s gaze sought her great-granddaughter’s form, now in the dappled shade of a crab apple in bloom at the garden’s westernmost edge. “She could be in either of those places, I suppose,” Adelaide replied.

“What?” Frances blinked.

“Adelaide, we don’t have to talk about Caroline,” Deloris said.

“What did she say?” Frances turned to Pearl. “Did she say she’s in both of those places? They have communes in the prisons in San Francisco?”

“Honestly, Frances!” Pearl exclaimed.

“What?” Frances’s voice rose in multiple decibels.

“I don’t know where Caroline is,” Adelaide turned to address Frances and her glistening black hair. “I don’t see her very often, Frances. It’s been four years since I’ve seen or heard from her. And I haven’t known where Caroline is in decades.”

“You haven’t seen her in four years?” Frances echoed, eyes wide.

“The last time I saw her was at Sara’s funeral. I don’t know how she heard Sara had died, but she did. She came to the funeral and then she left, and I haven’t heard from her since.”

Frances’s mouth was an open O. For a second she said nothing. Then she spoke, and this time no one shushed her.

“Why? Why don’t you know where she is?”

Adelaide shrugged. “That’s how she wants it. That’s how she has wanted it since she placed her infant daughter in my arms and disappeared. Before then actually.”

“My word! How long ago was that?”

“Sara would’ve turned thirty-eight on Tuesday.” Adelaide rubbed an age spot on her arm. “And Caroline is sixty-four.”

No one said anything for a long stretch of seconds.

“Did you quarrel?” Frances’s tone was incredulous. “Could the two of you not make it right between you all these years?”

BOOK: A Sound Among the Trees
5.05Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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