In the Midnight Rain (40 page)

Bourbon and orchids. They'd built a wall for him once before. They could do it again.

* * *

But an hour later, he had to admit it wasn't working. God knew he was tired enough. The bourbon should have shoved him over the edge. But each time he closed his eyes, his brain coughed up a parade of flashing disasters, things that had happened, things that could happen, things he couldn't prevent. When he found himself imagining the animals getting hit by cars though there weren't even any cars in the neighborhood, he gave up.

Out of habit, he turned on the computer and while it booted, went downstairs for a cup of tea. It was odd not to have April trailing him around, and a tiny stab of regret stuck him.

He shoved it away, blinking quickly to keep Ellie's face out of his head.

The chicken on the table mocked him and he sat down, finally a little hungry, while he waited for the kettle to boil. It was damned good chicken, and he devoured the first piece, then another, in the time it took for the kettle to whistle.

It made him a little sad to think of the way it should have gone with this chicken. It had been for Ellie, because she liked his cooking so much. And he'd planned to bake the ring into a biscuit, which was why he still had it in his pocket. He touched the lump against his thigh, and felt the hollow sense of loss.

He knew he was on autopilot, and knew everything would make sense when he finally got some sleep. He was smart enough to know he was shaken by the force of that other shoe. A storm of biblical proportions, warning him away. What man in his right mind wouldn't panic?

From the cupboard, he scrounged up a bag of cookies, and added a generous measure of sugar to his tea. The chicken had only pointed out to him that he was starving. For good measure, he also got a chunk of good cheddar from the fridge, and carried it all back upstairs with him. Piwacket, awakened by the racket, followed him, trailing happily at the smell of the cheese. He gave her two very tiny crumbles, one at a time, and opened his E-mail program, watching as the files loaded. The first was one from Ellie. Seeing her name there gave him a terrible jolt, almost as if she were dead, writing from the grave.

She'd sent it the night before last, in answer to his request to read her book.
I'd be honored to have you read the book, Blue,
she wrote.
In fact, I was going to ask if you would read what I've done. I'd love to have your feedback.

He stared at it. The last message in the queue was also from Ellie. It had been posted just a few hours before, and he wondered how she'd done it. Her laptop was still here, and it was broken. He opened it, his heart pounding in anticipation.

My grandmother's address is RR #31, Box 12, Sweetwater, Louisiana. I wasn't thinking very clearly this morning, but I'm in a panic about the book and all my notes, and it would mean a lot to me if you'd box them up and send them by overnight mail to me.

Ellie

That was it. He realized he'd been holding his breath, hoping for—what? He didn't know. A sign, maybe.

But the note gave him something to do, anyway. He went downstairs and got the box of notes, manuscript pages, and disks, and carried it upstairs with the laptop. First, he put the manuscript pages in order. A lot of them were damp and smeared, but most were fairly readable, and if worse came to worst, she'd at least be able to have them scanned to disk. The note cards, protected by the plastic box, were fine, and he checked the disks in his own hard drive to make sure they hadn't been damaged. They were fine, too.

Last, he turned on the laptop. To his amazement, it made the small humming noises and little buzzes that indicated it worked. The LCD was cracked, and when the files came up, there were little lines of distortion running across the screen, but it was still readable.

On the screen was an icon showing Mabel at maybe twenty or twenty-five, laughing, and a text box said,
Hearts and Bones.
Blue clicked on it, and a word processing program opened to a file.
Chapter One,
it said.

He began to read, but just as he started into it, the doorbell rang. Startled, he looked at the clock and realized that it wasn't even ten o'clock yet. It had just been such a long day it only felt late.

It was Gwen Laisser standing there on the back steps, wearing a light silk coat. "I been over to Hopkins'," she said with a tight mouth. "I saw Marcus there. What'd you do with my granddaughter?"

Blue knew he hadn't had much sleep, but this did not compute no matter how he came at it. "I'm sorry, I don't get it. Who do you want?"

"You got so many girls now you can't keep 'em straight?"

"You mean Ellie?"

"I do. Where is she?"

He still didn't get it. "You want to come in? I don't think I know what's going on here."

She pulled off her glasses. "Blue Reynard, I can't believe you're that blind, and I know you're not that stupid. You mean all this time, you didn't know?"

"Know?" He shook his head. "Gwen, come inside. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, pardon my French." Wearily, he left the door open and went into the kitchen. "I got some chicken here, if you want some."

It hit him. He lifted his head and looked at her, and all the pieces fell together.

She shook her head at the expression on his face. "You really had no idea. I thought somebody would have told you sometime or another, seeing how you were so fond of her. Mabel. Me."

"Mabel Beauvais." He stared at her. "All these years, you've been living right here." Another piece of the puzzle fit together. "And Ellie is your granddaughter."

"That's right. And she is the only thing I've got left, son, so I want you to sit right there and listen to me."

He sat.

"I feel for you, child," she said. "I ready do. And I know you think you're living under some curse, and I reckon I know a little about that kind of thinking myself. But I want you to think about those details in your life. God's not out to punish you. Your mama was close to sixty and smoked like a fiend from the time she was ten years old, so it was no big surprise she had a heart attack. Your brother went to war, and that surely increases the chances of dying young. Your daddy put a bullet in his head because he couldn't stand all he'd lost. The only person you lost through no fault of her own was your wife. It was sad, Blue. It was terrible, and we all cried right along with you."

"Don't," he whispered.

"Don't you don't me," she said. "Get up off that whiny butt of yours and go after your woman. Marcus told me she's gonna have a baby, and I'll tell you now you haven't seen any misery in your life if you don't get that baby born in this town where we can all enjoy it. Including you."

He looked at her, and couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry. "I can't believe I've been mooning about Mabel to you all these years."

She cracked a smile, and in it he could see that devastating young woman with so much fire. "Did my heart good." She poked at a piece of chicken and picked it up when it didn't jump off the plate. "And I reckon it was you that the good Lord used to set everything to rights here. You see how that happened? He figured you'd suffered enough, Blue, and sent you a woman."

He bowed his head. And unashamed, he wept. Someday, he'd sing the blues again. Life was just like that. But it wouldn't be today.

* * *

Ellie and her grandmother talked for hours. Talked about the book, and the surprising outcome. Talked about the town of Gideon, and finally, finally, Ellie eased into her search for her father.

It was past midnight, and Ellie felt guilty, but her grandmother showed fewer signs of weariness than Ellie felt. They had eaten and cleared the dishes, and sat now at the kitchen table, with a bowl of peanuts in the shell between them. Geraldine loved peanuts and had passed the pleasure of them to Ellie. She cracked one now, and thought of George Washington Carver, and it seemed odd that she could somehow claim him a little bit now. One of her people.

Or was that pretentious? Just because her father was black, because her blood connected her to that vast, loose "people" in America, what connection did she really have? None in her history. In her head, she was as white as she ever was. If her father had turned out to be an Italian American, would she run out and try to learn Italian? Or cook pasta?

A little thrill went through her, though. One person she could claim was Mabel Beauvais. Imagine!

"What is it, Ellie? You've been drifting off all night. Are you thinking about that man?"

"No," she said softly. "I'm thinking of another one." She opened her purse and took out two photographs, taken from Rosemary's trunk, and put the first one down. It was the one of Diane laughing at the edge of the picture, staring at someone just out of sight. "I found this when I was looking for material on Mabel," she said.

Geraldine made a soft noise of pain, and picked it up. "Ah, she was such a pretty little thing. I never did know what to do with her." She looked up expectantly, waiting for the other picture. "And you found your daddy, didn't you?"

Ellie swallowed, and put down the picture of Marcus and James mugging for the camera. "The one on the left," she said. "James Gordon."

Geraldine only nodded. "You look just like him."

"Aren't you even surprised?"

Geraldine pursed her lips. Shook her head. "Not really. Your mama wouldn't say, of course, but I had my suspicions all along."

"You did?"

"You don't have to sound so shocked—I mean, she came back here, silent as a prayer, and wouldn't say one word about the father of her child. And she just cried and cried when you were born, like her heart would break. I figured you must favor him."

"You never said a word."

Geraldine put the picture down. "What would have been the point, Ellie? Your mama was gone. I had no idea who your other people were. You were stuck with us, in a little town, the illegitimate child of a girl who never did get a thing right. It was gonna be hard enough without me adding something that was only a suspicion. And your grandpa flat-out refused to see it." She looked at the picture. "He was a fair enough man, for his times, but it would have broken his heart to think his daughter had—"

Ellie nodded. Her grandfather had been a product of his times and his culture. He would never have used profanities, either in public or private, and he'd never discriminated against anyone over their color, but he wasn't comfortable with a heavily integrated world. He had liked that the diner on Park Street was where the old white guys ate, and that the "colored" guys liked the one on Market.

"It wouldn't have made any difference over him loving you, child."

"I know."

"So, did you get to meet him? Does he know he's your daddy?"

Ellie glanced up, that quick slice of sadness going through her solar plexus again. "No. He died in Vietnam. She tried to get him to go to Canada, but—" She shrugged, feeling suddenly weary. "So, maybe it was all for naught."

"No. You know. That's something." She gave a little cackle. "And now that baby won't be such a shock. I did worry about that a little, that you'd end up with a child that was a big surprise to you."

Ellie laughed. "Oh, that could have been kind of interesting to explain."

Beneath their giggles came the sound of a rumbling engine, and headlights suddenly flashed through the kitchen windows, making big squares of white light on the walls. "Who the devil could that be?" Geraldine said, and jumped up.

A door slammed and then the engine and lights died—Ellie stood up, too, thinking it was weird that those sounds should come in that order. Without a hint of expectation, she stood up, too, and they both went out on the porch.

The motion-sensitive lights on the back porch suddenly flicked on, showing the big black truck Ellie had grown to know and the shadow of a man behind the wheel. It also illuminated a man coming toward them, a man who looked rumpled and tired, his hair tousled, as if he'd been sleeping, his chambray shirt wrinkled, his feet bare. "Ellie, damn it," he said in that bourbon drawl, and stopped, his hands on his hips.

"This is him, huh?" Geraldine said, leaning in close.

"Yeah." She couldn't quite take it in. "Blue, what are you doing here?"

"You know," he said, and came forward till he was standing at the foot of the steps. "I can't really answer that question." He turned his attention to Geraldine and held out his hand. "How are you, ma'am? You must be Grandma. I've heard a lot about you, but Ellie never let on that she got so much of her beauty from you."

Geraldine snorted at this extravagance, but Ellie could tell it pleased her anyway. "You must be Blue."

"I am. And I've been a real jackass."

"So I heard." Geraldine said.

The teasing left his face. "Can I talk to you, Ellie? I wouldn't blame you if you want to make me wait, but we've driven for a couple of hours, and I'd like to have five minutes, anyway."

She nodded.

"Y'all go ahead," Geraldine said. She lifted her hand to the man in the truck. "You there, come on in and I'll fix you something to eat."

Marcus stepped out, and slammed the door firmly. He mounted the steps and nodded toward Geraldine. "Thank you," he said. "I need to call my wife, too, if you wouldn't mind loaning me your phone. I'll call collect."

"That's fine. Come on."

Marcus looked at Ellie and lifted his eyebrows. He touched her shoulder on the way by.

"Wait a minute. Grandma, this is Marcus Williams. He's the other man in the picture I showed you."

Geraldine cocked her head. "Is that right?"

They went inside, leaving Blue and Ellie on the porch. He still stood on the ground. She still stood on the porch. She looked at his feet. "When are you ever going to grow up and wear shoes like a normal person?"

"I was in a hurry." He lowered his head. "Ellie, I lost it when I saw that cabin. It scared the shit out of me, and I panicked."

"I know."

"I've got your stuff in the truck if you want it, but"—he took a breath and reached into his pocket—"I kept thinking I wanted you to have something you'd remember always. Something that you could tell all your girlfriends and our grandbabies about to show them how romantic their grandpa was." He looked at the case in his hands, then at her. He looked tired. There were lines along his mouth, and hollows below his cheekbones, but his eyes were clear. "But here we are, and all I can think is that it's been a million years since I felt so good, since I woke up in the morning and felt happy." He swallowed, and she would have called his body language shy in somebody else. "I just want to marry you. I want to have ordinary days. I want babies. I want to laugh with you and listen to music and hold hands."