Love Comes Home (37 page)

“They’re just talking.”

“Does he look mad?” Lorena kept her hands over her eyes.

Kate peered out at the man as he sank down on the porch steps. She couldn’t see his face well. She was about to say that nothing about his posture suggested anger, when suddenly he was on his feet glaring at Jay. But then he sank back down on the step. “No. More sad.”

“That we’ve found him?” Lorena peeked through her fingers.

“I don’t know, Lorena. We’ll have to wait until Jay tells us to get out. Then we might find out the answers. If he’s your father.”

At last Jay motioned to them to get out. Kate held Lorena’s hand as they walked toward the man whose eyes fastened on
Lorena the moment she got out of the car as though drinking in the sight of her.

Lorena stopped a few feet away from the man. “Are you my father?”

The man shifted on his feet, but he didn’t step toward Lorena. They were like two boxers sizing each other up before they tried to land any blows. Kate whispered a prayer that there wouldn’t be blows, only gentle words, but words could pack a punch at times too.

“I am.” His voice quavered a little and he cleared his throat. “You’ve grown up pretty, Lorena.”

“I’m too skinny, and my hair always looks like some kind of bramble bush.” Lorena pushed her hair back from her face.

“You got hair like mine.” A smile touched the man’s lips. “I just keep my curls all whacked off, but your mama did love your hair. She was forever fussing with it. Tying ribbons in it. She thought it was beautiful. She thought you were beautiful.”

“Where is she?” Lorena stared straight at the man’s face, needing this answer most of all.

“She died, Lorena.” The man spoke the necessary words straight out, but Kate could see the truth of them still hurt him. Being married again and years gone by hadn’t changed that. “After the baby came, she never got her strength back.”

Kate slipped her arm around Lorena, who seemed to have to push out the next question. “And the baby?”

“A girl.” A ghost of a smile slid across the man’s face. “Your mother named her Melanie. She looked like you.”

“Did she die too?”

All trace of smile disappeared as the lines of the man’s face deepened. He looked at Jay and then Kate as though for
help before he settled his eyes back on Lorena’s face. “No. I turned her over to the county and some agency found a couple to adopt her. I don’t know who. They wouldn’t tell me.” He looked up and away from Lorena then. “She was just sitting up, trying to crawl a little.”

“Why’d you give her away?” Lorena stiffened, hardly seeming to notice Kate’s arm around her. She was asking about more than the baby.

“She was hungry, and I didn’t even have enough money to buy her a banana. I had to get a job, but what then? I couldn’t leave a baby in the car while I worked and that’s all I had. My old car. A car’s no place for a baby. You can understand that, can’t you?”

When Lorena looked at him without answering, he went on. “That’s why we left you there at that church too. So you could have a better place.”

“But what about Kenton? You kept him.” Lorena blinked to keep back the tears, but she wasn’t completely successful. “Was it because he was a boy?”

The question seemed to stagger the man and he grabbed the porch post beside him. Grief deepened every line in his face as he swallowed hard before he answered. “I guess we should have told you. You remember how you couldn’t wake Kenton up that morning?”

Lorena nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks. Kate tightened her arm around her.

“Kenton died in his sleep the night before we left you at the church. That’s why we left you there. Hoping you would find somebody to take care of you. Keep you from maybe dying like he did. Your mother loved you so much. I loved you so much. Can you believe that?” He peered over at her.

“I want to,” Lorena whispered through her tears. “I’ve always wanted to.”

“We parked the car down the road and I walked back to watch from some trees on the other side of the church. I saw the girl get you. I saw her pick you up and carry you away. Like you were some kind of treasure.” The man’s eyes flicked over to Kate. “That was you, wasn’t it?”

Kate could barely speak past the lump in her throat. “The Lord had me take that raspberry jam to Grandfather Reece at just the right time. I’ll always believe that.”

“I stole the jam you left there. To give Iris, but it was days before she would eat it.”

Jay handed Lorena his handkerchief to mop up her tears. Then he stepped over behind them to put his arms around both her and Kate. That seemed to help Lorena pull herself together. “But what about Kenton? You didn’t leave him where the rats could get him, did you?”

“You were always afraid of the rats.” The man smiled sadly. “But no, we’d have never done that. We gave him a proper burial. We turned on an old road up to a barn. Found a digger and a shovel there, like it had been left for me. Took me the rest of the day, but at nightfall we laid Kenton to rest. Your mama read from her Bible. We picked daisies to put on his grave and your mama looked around in the woods until she found four good-sized rocks to lay on the grave. One for each of us and the baby she was carrying. Then I carved his name in the bark of the nearest tree.”

In the silence that fell over them, a bird singing in the yard next door sounded almost too loud. A few cars passed by on the street and still they didn’t say anything. It was as if they
were there at the boy’s grave even now, grieving over him along with his father.

At last the man said, “Maybe we were wrong, but we did what we thought we had to do. For you. Can you forgive us? Forgive me?”

Out of the corner of her eye, Kate caught the movement of the curtain in the front window. The man’s wife peeked out through the window screen. She jerked back out of sight when Lorena moved away from Jay and Kate to go to her father. He held out his arms to her and she stepped into them.

Kate’s heart lurched inside her chest. She wanted to pull her back. Back to Rosey Corner. Jay must have known what she was thinking, because he held her close against him and whispered in her ear. “She will always be our sister. Nothing can change that.”

“I know,” Kate said softly. And she did know, but she also knew she wanted her sister in Rosey Corner, not Cincinnati.

She shut her eyes and remembered catching a butterfly when she was a little girl. Her father had warned her not to hold it too tightly. “But it will get away,” Kate had said.

“That’s what you want. Part of the beauty of the butterfly is in the flutter of its wings. You don’t want to steal that from it. Open your hand and let it be free.” He had held his hand out flat.

Reluctantly she had done what he said. For a few seconds, the butterfly had stayed on her palm, its wings still. But then it had lifted up into the air as light as a downy feather. Free to follow the wind.

Now she slowly opened up her hands. As much as she wanted to clutch Lorena to her, she had to let her choose her own way.

When Lorena pulled back from the man, he said, “You can stay with us.” He nodded toward the window his wife had been peeking out. “She’ll be glad for the company. But whether she is or not, my home is your home if you want it to be.”

Kate held her breath waiting for Lorena to answer, but she kept her hands open. Jay tightened his arms even more around her.

Lorena didn’t look back at them. She kept her eyes on her father’s face. “I have a home.”

Kate let out her breath and relaxed in Jay’s embrace.

“I’m glad,” Lorena’s father was saying. “Your mama prayed for you every night. She never laid her head down on the pillow without saying your name and asking the Lord to send angels to watch over you.”

“And now she’s up there with those angels.” Lorena looked up.

Kate did too, at a sky that was suddenly bluer than it had been a moment before. She sent up a thankful prayer as Lorena asked, “Do you have a picture of her?”

He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and took a picture out to hand Lorena.

She studied it a long moment and then closed her eyes. “I can see her now.”

When she started to hand the picture back, her father waved her hand away. “Keep it. I’ve got her picture up here.” He touched his forehead.

But he wasn’t as much help when Lorena asked him exactly where her brother was buried.

“I came back there once. After your mother died.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Lorena asked.

“You had a new daddy by then and I didn’t have two nickels to rub together. It was best to leave you where you were happy and all. You were happy, weren’t you?”

“I was. I am.”

“That’s what I thought.” He touched her hand. “So I left. I tried to find Kenton’s grave before I headed out, but the woods didn’t look the same. I couldn’t even find the barn or the lane through the field up to it. If I hadn’t seen her pushing you in that swing.” The man nodded toward Kate. “If I hadn’t seen that, I would have thought I wasn’t in the right place. So maybe it can be enough for both of us to know it was a peaceful spot. He’s not there anyway. He’s up in heaven with your mama.”

They left him standing on the walk in front of his house after Lorena told him to come see her in Rosey Corner. Before they went around the corner and lost sight of the house, the man’s wife stepped out on the porch behind him. Kate wondered what he would tell her about Lorena or if he’d ever come to Rosey Corner.

They were leaving Cincinnati when, almost as if she were talking to herself, Lorena said, “He was glad to see me.”

“Yes, yes, he was,” Jay said. “He loves you.”

She was quiet again for a minute. “It’s okay to love two daddies, isn’t it?”

“Absolutely,” Kate said. “There’s no limit on love.”

Jay reached across the seat and took Kate’s hand. Then Lorena was scooting up to lean her arms on the back of the front seat. “Do you think Fern saw them?”

“You mean saw your parents when they left you at the church?” Kate asked.

“No, later. When they were in the woods. Fern always
knows everything that happens in the woods. Remember, she knew about the fire that night before we did.”

“She could smell the smoke,” Kate said.

“But she might have seen them.”

“She might have,” Kate agreed. Fern did know every inch of the woods. “But we can’t be sure they were even in Lindell Woods. They might have driven a ways before they stopped, and that’s why your father couldn’t find the place when he came back. I can’t think of what barn he could have been talking about.”

“But Fern might remember a barn you don’t.”

“True, but surely if she saw a grave she would have told somebody,” Kate said.

“Fern wouldn’t.”

“She’s right, you know.” Jay glanced over at Kate. “Fern wouldn’t. Not unless you asked. Even then she might not tell you if she didn’t want to.”

“She’d tell me,” Lorena said.

“Probably,” Kate said.

“She would,” Lorena insisted.

“Okay, but I don’t want you to be disappointed if she doesn’t know.”

“I won’t be. Sad, but not disappointed.”

“Are you sad now?” Kate studied Lorena’s face.

“Of course she is,” Jay answered for her. “She lost her mother.”

“You know about that, don’t you, Tanner?” Lorena said. “But you were there when it happened to you. It’s all sort of faraway for me. She still feels alive in my head the way she’s been since she drove away that day. I can see her leaning out the car window waving at me. Her face had gotten fuzzy, but
now I have her picture. So I can just keep her alive in my head like Tori does Sammy.”

“Tori is beginning to let go,” Kate said.

“Yeah. She told me she had this dream where Sammy told her goodbye and walked right across Graham’s pond and up into heaven. She said he didn’t look back. Not once. That he told her to keep the fish, before he walked out on the water. That was a funny thing to dream him saying, wasn’t it?”

“Maybe he was telling her to let go and find a new person to love,” Jay said.

“I hope she picks Clay. He’s so nice,” Lorena said.

“And it’s obvious he loves Tori,” Kate added.

“But does Tori love him?” Jay asked.

“Maybe the better question is, can she love him.” Kate remembered Tori’s tears the day she found her at Graham’s pond. So much had happened since then, she hadn’t thought about talking to Tori. Maybe she should.

“Uh-oh, I feel some matchmaking about to happen,” Jay said.

“I think it’s already been happening. Not by me, but Graham. He told Clay to go fishing over at his pond a couple of weeks ago when Tori was there.”

“Then Tori doesn’t have a chance.” Jay laughed. “Just like you didn’t have a chance after Graham decided I was the one for you.”

“I’m glad, Tanner,” Lorena said.

“I’m glad too.” Kate leaned over and kissed first his cheek, then Lorena’s. “And I’m glad you didn’t want to stay in Cincinnati.”

“I couldn’t stay in Cincinnati.” Lorena frowned and shook her head. “I’ve got to sing at church tomorrow.” She put her
chin down on her arms folded on the back of the seat. “Besides, we’ve got things we have to do.”

“What things?” Kate gave her a puzzled look.

“Lots of things. We’ve got more flowers to plant. Then you’ve got to take me back to the radio station in a couple of weeks. But first we’ve got to do something about Fern.”

“Fern?” Kate frowned a little. “I don’t think Fern wants us to do anything about her.”

“I don’t mean try to change her or anything. But she’s got to have a place to live. She says she can’t stay in Aunt Hattie’s house.”

“She could if she wanted to. At least for a while,” Kate said.

“She doesn’t want to. She’s been staying out in the woods, but she’ll freeze when winter comes.”

“Don’t worry. Kate will think of something,” Jay said.

“Me?” Kate hit her chest with her fingers.

“Sure. Aren’t you the one always fixing things up in Rosey Corner?” He grinned over at her. “Our Rosey Corner angel.”

“We’ve got a couch.” Kate grinned at Jay.

Jay gave her a look. “Fern in our living room is not the greatest idea you’ve ever had.”

“Fern wouldn’t like that anyway,” Lorena said. “We’ll have to think of something else.”