And Then I Found You (7 page)

Lida’s aunt loved and took care of Lida until the whiskey became more important than
mostly anything, including Lida, including food, including shelter. Lida soon learned
to fend for herself, which sadly and awfully usually included allowing the local boys
to do as they pleased so she had a place to sleep and eat. The same whiskey that made
her aunt fade into another world allowed Lida to not care what was being done to her
or about her. Until her grandmother came to visit from Atlanta and found the conditions
in which Clara allowed them to live.

Appalled and scared, Grandmother Garrison made the pleading phone calls to anyone
and everyone she knew in the substance-abuse world and found a place for Lida at Winsome
Wilderness.

The history, blurry at best, seemed to be that Lida was born to her sixteen-year-old
Mama, who believed that of course she could raise a child on her own. Wasn’t love
all a child needed? Love her and all would be well, that’s what Mama also told Aunt
Clara.

Well, love, it seems, wasn’t all Lida needed. Food, shelter, and safety were up there
on the list also. And, in the end, didn’t Lida know exactly where to find love? In
any shack, corner bedroom, or empty barn available.

Lida arrived with her auburn hair hanging in strands of tangled rope down her back,
her freckles fading into her skin, and Katie saw an almost alternate, opposite-world
image of her own self, as if Lida was the girl whom she would have been without the
love of her family. Shawn had warned all the field guides about identifying with any
one child. But who could help it? Who can tell love what to do?

So Katie loved Lida Markinson and wanted, more than she ever had, to find a way to
heal a wounded spirit.

*   *   *

Norah was the one who sent a copy of the wedding announcement. Jonathon Gray Adams
had married Margaret Lauren Campbell.
Jack and Maggie,
the small print stated at the bottom of the announcement. It had been a small wedding
on the bride’s parents’ farm in central Alabama, no invitations, only announcements
after it was all over.

Katie read the card what seemed like a hundred times, and then Lida found Katie throwing
up behind a sage bush, and asked the one question that changed everything. “Are you
preggers or something?”

It was impossible.
It was impossible,
those were the words Katie told herself, like magic words, like a mantra, like an
enchanted wish.

She’d still believed that Jack, as mad as he’d seemed when she’d told him she was
staying to see it through with a young girl named Lida, would wait, but he hadn’t.
He hadn’t waited at all.

On an awful and bitterly cold November day, Katie was in Timber for a two-day reprieve.
From the crowded apartment, she finally called him. Her resolve had long since dissolved
and as soon as he answered, she was already crying. “I miss you so terribly,” she
said.

He was silent for a long while and Katie thought he’d hung up on her. Then he spoke.
“I can’t talk to you, Katie. If I do, I’ll ruin everything.” His voice cracked and,
with hope, she jumped into that small space.

“Please talk to me.”

“I can’t. I just can’t. I’m married.” He said each word as if it stood alone, as if
it explained everything there was to know.

“How did this happen? I mean, I was just there and told you I’d come back. How could
you.”

“I told you. I did tell you.”

“No.”

“I did tell you that I was falling in love with Maggie. And when you said for the
millionth time that you weren’t coming home, I vowed to myself that it would be the
last time I heard you say those words. That’s when I decided I was never going to
beg you again. That’s when I decided to ask Maggie to marry me.”

“Why didn’t you wait? I love you. This is crazy.”

“I think I’ll always love you, Katie, but I don’t want that life of being alone waiting
and waiting. I want this life where love is right here, right next to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know, but don’t make me say things that will hurt you, Katie. Please. I don’t want
to think about you hurting.”

“Say it,” she said. “Say you love her more than me.”

“No,” he said quietly.

Everything in her that hurt and ached spoke these words. “When you kiss her, when
you touch her, when you’re with her, you’ll only think of me.”

“Oh, Katie. Don’t do this.”

She hung up on him because she didn’t have the words she needed—the exact right words
that would convince him that he was making a huge mistake. Why couldn’t he know what
she knew? That they were perfect together. That he was in the absolute wrong place.
That he’d needed to wait the littlest bit longer.

As the days stretched forward, Katie’s nausea grew worse. She fought through the desperate
need for sleep that fell over her like smothering and invisible gauze. Her T-shirts
stretched across her swelling breasts. And then came the slim, slow knowing, like
a cracked door in a dark room.

five

BIRMINGHAM, AL

2010

Phone calls made and suitcase packed, Kate headed for Alabama. She’d told Rowan that
she was going to check out a boutique, and her stomach flipped at the half truth,
or half lie. The six-hour drive crept through South Carolina, toward Georgia, and
then west to Alabama. Except for the Atlanta airport and the snakelike highways through
the big city, which would spin her into another direction with one wrong turn, the
drive was a view of spring’s birth, taking Kate through the dormant cotton fields
and farmland. The radio stations faded in and out until Kate finally shut off the
radio and rolled down the windows, allowing the passing wind to be the music.

What she didn’t tell Rowan was a lie of omission, which according to their Baptist
preacher was as large a lie as one of commission. Either way, unannounced, Kate was
on her way to Birmingham to see Jack Adams.

Kate knew that if she’d called Jack to tell him she was coming, she wouldn’t have
gone at all. There was something about overplanning that would have killed the trip
before she even put her keys in the ignition. So, she drove with her windows open
while her thoughts were as cluttered as the roadside trees drooping with their too-many
blossoms. Memories scraped against one another, vying for attention.

When she arrived, Kate smiled at Jack’s house as if it were a person—an old friend—which
in many ways it was. The last time she’d seen the house, the front door had been a
plywood board and the rick-a-rack trim unpainted. The windows had been cracked, their
wooden mullions peeling old paint. Now double doors dominated the front, dark, carved
oak with wrought iron dividing their bubbled glass into intricate patterns. The windows
of the house were wide and long, divided also by thick iron into oversized rectangles,
which looked out onto the street with a wide and curious gaze as she parked her car.

Even in the day of Facebook and Twitter, of social networking and cell phones, where
everyone knew everything about everybody, Kate knew very little about Jack’s life.
He worked as a lawyer in downtown Birmingham. He was divorced. He lived with his son.

Kate drove into a parallel parking spot on the street and her body remembered everything:
the comfortable ease that nestled next to the jittery desire. All this time, all these
years passed, and she’d believed the feelings gone, or at least diminished beyond
recognition. Yet there she was within a hundred yards of his house, and the exact
desire returned as if it had waited patiently at the end of a long road.

The front door opened. Framed by doorway and sunlight, a young boy emerged with a
baseball in his hand, a hat on his head, and a large bag slung over his left shoulder.
Kate gripped the steering wheel, holding her breath. The boy—he had dark hair and
was small—looked younger than the eight years she knew him to be. He hollered something
over his shoulder and his mouth formed a single word, “Dad.”

Then there was Jack. He came through the door, placing his hand on top of his son’s
hat and twisting it straight. Kate took in a quick breath. He still moved with the
ease of an athlete. The baseball cap on his head bore the same emblem as his son’s,
a hornet or bee, Kate thought. Jack grabbed the bag from his son and took two steps
down the walkway toward the back driveway.

In her stomach, tiny birds opened their wings and flew up toward her throat. Just
because he’d written yearly letters, just because they’d once loved and had a daughter,
did this give her the right to show up unannounced in his driveway?

Jack and Caleb were obviously on their way to a game. If she stopped them now, she
would make them late and ruin their afternoon. Maybe she’d watch them for a little
while. Then decide. Only a little while.

She followed Jack’s pickup down the winding roads into Mountain Brook village, an
enclave of beautiful homes tucked into the valley. She followed him through the town
dominated by old English architecture and brick-lined sidewalks. He turned right into
the elementary school, which at first glance Kate thought was a large estate. The
field to the left of the school was packed with families. Baseball bags were scattered
like litter, spilling bats and gloves, uniforms and Gatorade bottles. Parents sat
in clustered groups with folding chairs and blankets.

This world was foreign to Kate, one that she often avoided for fear of turning over
the soil of a long-buried ache. Yet, there they were, families doing whatever it was
that families did. Jack and Caleb sauntered in almost identical steps as they approached
the crowd. Caleb entered a dugout and Jack turned away to unfold a blue canvas chair.

Kate climbed out of the car and locked its doors, although she knew it was completely
unnecessary in whatever world she had just fallen into. Staying as far away as possible
from the field, but still able to see, she leaned against a metal light pole and watched
the unfamiliar movements of school-age sports. Jack sat in his chair, scribbling in
a notebook: stats, she assumed. His full attention was on the game and she didn’t
fear him turning to see her.

Jack seemed content—happy, even—as he hollered encouragement toward the field, writing
in his notebook. Every once in a while he checked his cell. A girlfriend maybe? A
business deal?

Birmingham was showing off in its spring finery, an overdressed woman wearing too
many colors and bright jewelry. The azaleas and camellias, the dogwoods and the daffodils
burst from the ground. Kate glanced around the fields and surrounding homes, feeling
as though she’d fallen into a Disney movie. She knew it wasn’t perfect, nothing was,
but this town sure looked like it on that spring afternoon. She watched Jack, content
to be an observer. Maybe she wouldn’t tell him she’d been there at all. Maybe she’d
get back in her car and leave him to his perfectly nice life without her interference.

The baseball game was into the second inning when Jack stood to walk to the concession
stand. He spoke on his cell phone and meanwhile glanced toward Kate, still leaning
against the light post. She held her breath and averted her eyes, as if this would
make her invisible. Kate counted to ten and then glanced back toward the concession
stand, but he was gone.

“Katie?” Jack said her name.

When she heard his voice, she felt her heart expand and reach for him, but it was
when she turned and saw his eyes that the need returned in full. In the middle of
a bright baseball park, surrounded by families, she saw only Jack. It was propriety
and fears that kept her arms straight and her hands from touching him at all. She
smiled. “Hey, Jack.”

They stood, face to face, inches apart as unsaid words filled the cracks of distance
and time. Finally he spoke. “It’s really you. What are you doing here?”

She bit the right side of her lip in a childhood nervous gesture. She’d hoped she
wouldn’t want exactly what she wanted at the moment—to kiss him, and more than once.
She would not ruin this moment with her need. She would not chase him away with her
old desire. “Would you believe me if I said I just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

He laughed and it was a lovely sound—deep and freeing and full of life. He hugged
her and she fell against his chest, into the hollow cleft where she’d once so casually
settled her body. He let go and stepped back. “Let me look at you and then you can
explain yourself.”

She blushed. Warmth traveled through her body and settled in her face. She covered
her face with her hands, and he took her fingers and pulled her hands into his grasp.
“You,” he said.

“You,” she said in return, staring once again into those green and unsettling eyes.

“So, you’re a big baseball fan?” he asked.

She smiled. “Really, I’m not positive about the difference between a run and a touchdown.
I came to see you. I guess, maybe, I should have called.”

“How did you find us?”

“Well, I went to the house and you were leaving, so I followed.”

“Were you going to tell me you were here or just spy on me?”

“Tell you, of course. I sort of felt like I was interrupting and I wanted to wait
until the game was over.”

“This is amazing, Katie.”

“I go by Kate now,” she said.

“Well, that’s nice. But to me, you’re Katie.” He tipped his hat. “With all due respect.”
He took a deep breath. “I don’t really know what to say because I’m a little stunned.”

“I know. I wanted to see you and talk.”

He smiled. “Can all those things wait until after Caleb bats?”

“Absolutely. They can wait until he bats ten times.”

He laughed—that lovely sound again—and shook his head. “This is wild. But come sit.
Watch baseball with me.”

“Watch baseball with you.” She smiled. “Nice.”

They walked together toward the baseball diamond and Jack offered Katie his chair.
Number 17 was at bat.