Somewhere Between Luck and Trust (16 page)

Chapter Eighteen

GEORGIA HAD EXPECTED
Cristy’s reading skills to be minimal, and she was right. Still she was encouraged that the young woman paid close attention to her instruction and had a quick mind. Her natural intelligence and desire to make this work were strongly in her favor.

In their first real lesson Georgia had worked on consonant sounds, some of which Cristy had known immediately, and others she’d been more hesitant about. They had gotten through half the letters, and Georgia had associated each with an object, providing a picture that included both uppercase and lowercase letters that matched it.

Cristy knew the names of all the letters, but she didn’t always know the sound or sounds the letter represented in words. So they had worked on that, beginning with the most common sounds, attaching only one to a letter, and Georgia had left the cards that went with the letters for Cristy to practice. She had suggested that Cristy look around for objects whose names that began with each letter, explaining that some letters, like
k
and
c
and even the team
ck,
often made the same sound, so she might not always be right. But they would go over her choices, and Georgia would explain why they weren’t right, along with the rules that governed them.

Now, on their second Sunday together, Cristy was waiting with the cards on the wide front porch. She rose from the table when Georgia came up the walkway. “It’s so pretty, I thought we might want to work out here.”

“Perfect.” Ever since her picnic at the Biltmore with Lucas, Georgia hadn’t wanted to go inside. They had lingered all afternoon, walking the grounds until they were both too tired to walk farther. Later he had dropped her off at her town house and turned down an offer to come inside, because he planned to write that evening and catch up after being away.

But there had been a wonderful goodbye kiss to assure her he wished there had been a different ending in store.

Georgia noted that Cristy had provided a pitcher of ice water and a plate of crackers and thin slices of cheese. Georgia had brought more groceries to stock the cupboards, but with true Southern hospitality, Cristy was willingly sharing what little she had left.

“How did the work go this week?”

“I got a lot of words for you. I made sketches so you could see what I found.” Cristy pulled out a pad of paper and began to flip pages. Georgia was entranced. The girl whose handwriting was clunky and primitive could draw like a master.

“Branch...” She held up the card Georgia had given her featuring a
B
for
Branch.
She’d painstakingly lettered the page, showing her graceful, bending branch with both a lowercase and uppercase
B.

“Excellent. And that one’s not always obvious, because the
r
sound follows so closely. That’s great.”

Cristy flipped to a drawing of the old barn in the distance. “Barn.
B,
right?”

“Yes, it is.”

Cristy had drawn an arrow to the door, and said, “
D
for door.” She had carefully lettered both
d
’s next to it.

“Good. Do you find it confusing to have the
d
and the
b
on the same page?”

“I get them confused. I always have. Then I thought the
B
has double bumps, like the double doors on the barn, so that helped. At least the capital
B.
The little ones are still confusing. They look alike, only one is backward.”

“It
is
confusing. So let’s work on that. I have some tricks.”

Georgia started with the most common one. She asked Cristy to touch her index fingers to her thumbs, then put them together. “What letter do you think the word
bed
begins with?”

Cristy said the word, then nodded. “That’s a
b.
Right?”

“Great. And
bed
ends with
d.
” She said it slowly, emphasizing the
d
sound at the end. “So imagine your fingers have made a bed. We read left to right, so your left hand is the
b
and your right hand the
d.
Now, anytime you get confused, just remember
bed.
Make the letters with your fingers and you’ll see that
b
goes this way—” she pointed “—and
d
goes that way.”

“I’m going to feel pretty silly making little bunnies with my fingers whenever I can’t remember.”

“Not as silly as you feel not being able to read. Bunny begins with a...”

“B.”

Georgia held up her left hand and made a
b.
“Right.
Bunny.
”

“I should have learned this a long time ago.”

Georgia heard the sadness in Cristy’s voice. She made her own sound matter-of-fact. “You won’t get any argument from me, only I would say you should have been
taught
this a long time ago. Now, let’s see what other sounds you discovered.”

* * *

An hour later, Cristy wasn’t ready to quit. She wanted to go on and on. No matter what Georgia said, she should have learned the sounds letters made about a million years ago. She was sure her teachers had covered this in school, but she was just as sure her brain simply hadn’t been able to wrap around it. Her second-grade teacher had seen she was falling behind the other students, and had asked Cristy’s parents to have her tested. They had declined, insisting she just needed to work harder, a story Clara had told Cristy many years later.

Now she wondered how different her life might have been if they had gotten her the help she needed and she had learned these sounds and the millions to come when she was still a child.

“Okay, we’re done for now,” Georgia said. “You’re doing great. I know this seems pretty simple, but everything we’re doing in these early lessons is like the foundation of a building. Everything else has to be constructed on top of it, so it has to be strong and secure. An earthquake won’t shake it.”

“I’ll practice this week.”

“I know you will. You’re determined. That’s crucial.”

“I’m just not sure if somebody doesn’t get the right start, you know, when they’re supposed to, that they can ever catch up.”

Georgia put some of her materials away, leaving out the things she wanted Cristy to practice, then she looked up.

“I told you about Samantha’s problems learning to read, didn’t I?”

“But you caught that problem right off.”

“I thought you might want to hear my story. Because it’s really about getting a bad start and somehow beating the odds anyway.”

“Couldn’t you read, either? It’s like an epidemic?”

“Let me tell you.”

Cristy poured a glass of water and passed the crackers. But in a moment she was so absorbed in Georgia’s tale of being left in a sink that she forgot to eat or drink.

When the other woman had finished, Cristy imagined her own eyes were as big as the cracker that was still sitting on her plate.

“I can’t believe that,” she said. “And you lived through it. It’s a miracle, isn’t it?”

“Something of one, for sure.”

“Did you have problems learning? After being so premature and then so sick?”

“I was lucky in that. So, no, but I didn’t do well in school. I had no reason to. Not until my life was straightened out.”

“And your mother? You never found out anything about her?”

“I want you to look at something. I think you’ll find this interesting.” Georgia reached in her bag and pulled out a bracelet and set it on the table beside Cristy. Then she told her the story of how the bracelet had appeared on her desk, along with the newspaper clippings.

Cristy fingered the bracelet, turning over the charms and examining them as Georgia spoke. She realized that sharing this with her was an honor.

“Why did you bring it for
me
to look at?” She looked up. “I bet you’re not going around telling just everybody about this.”

“To be honest, you’re only the second person besides Samantha who knows the story.”

“Why?”

“Two reasons, I guess. I wanted you to see life’s tough in different ways for different people. I imagine you saw that in prison and, knowing you, Cristy, I’m sure you absorbed it.” Georgia touched her hand to her chest, over her heart, to make her point. “But I wanted you to see that people who look perfectly average and normal also often have unusual things they’ve had to overcome.”

Cristy didn’t know how to respond to that, but Georgia went on before she could try.

“There’s another reason, a selfish one. You think in pictures, more than most of us do. Pictures represent words and concepts to you. And I thought it might help me if you look at the charms and tell me the first thing you think of when you look at each one.”

Cristy clutched the bracelet in her fist. “For real?”

“Really, yes.”

She considered. Georgia was asking her for a favor, a very personal favor. Georgia probably wanted her to feel useful, as if her unique abilities could make a difference to someone else. Cristy might not be able to read, but she did understand what made people tick.

Not that she had always been the best judge of character.

Georgia put her hand on Cristy’s. “I’d like you to see that you have things to give others, too. That’s part of my asking. But honestly, I’d also really like your feedback. I think my mother was close to your age or a little younger. Mix that in with your other abilities, and you might see something nobody else has so far.”

“I’ll try.”

Georgia withdrew her hand. “You can’t make a mistake. How many times in life do we get a chance like that?”

Cristy looked more closely at the bracelet. “Well, it’s gold. That means it cost more than a silver bracelet ever would have. I think most of the time a charm bracelet is a gift from somebody, usually a parent. So this girl’s parents might have had money, maybe a little more than her friends. Maybe they weren’t rich, but this looks finely crafted. It’s not clunky. It’s delicate, but...” She turned it around in her hand, then she looked up.

“I don’t think it’s ever been repaired. I’d have to examine it closer, but it looks solid. That means it’s probably good-quality gold. And for the most part it’s not tarnished, so that either means somebody cleaned it before leaving it for you, or the gold isn’t thinly plated over something cheaper, like copper or brass that tarnishes easily.”

“That’s great. I didn’t know gold plate tarnished.”

“I saw that on television once. I never forgot.”

“You have a remarkable memory.”

Cristy continued fingering the bracelet. “But I don’t think it was cleaned before you got it, at least not much. Because some of the charms
are
a little tarnished. Different people probably gave them to her, and some of them were likely cheaper than the rest. And look at this one.”

She held the bracelet closer to Georgia so she could see. The charm in question, the only silver one, was a heart, with a raised flower in the center and “Forget Me Not” inscribed around the edges.

“This charm is silver, or probably silver plate, and it really ought to be cleaned. She didn’t buy this one herself, and whoever gave her the bracelet in the first place didn’t buy it, I bet, because they would have known better. Somebody else wanted her to have this charm. So either they didn’t figure out the bracelet was gold, or they couldn’t afford one that matched.”

“That charm has a date on the back,” Georgia said. “So do a couple of others.”

“I see that.” Cristy thought about it. “The first time the boy who gave her the heart kissed her? Their first date?”

“Good guesses. Or maybe something more intimate?”

Cristy shook her head. “I’d guess not. I don’t think that’s something a girl who had a bracelet like this one would want her mommy and daddy to see. How would she explain it? Especially back then.”

“A very good point.”

“I’m guessing again that she came from a family with some money,” Cristy went on. “Look at all the charms. They weren’t cheap, I’m sure, and at least some of them, probably half or more, came from her folks on birthdays or Christmas. But I’m guessing the boy who gave her this one came from a poorer family. Because if he’d had money, and she complained this was the wrong kind of charm, he would have replaced it.” Cristy snapped her fingers to show how easy that would have been.

“That’s really good thinking.”

“A lot of the rest of it’s pretty obvious. I bet she had a cat. She rode or at least liked horses. She played basketball or liked someone who did. Maybe the boy who gave her the heart was on a team, or maybe she played herself in high school or college. She liked to sew.”

“That would explain a lot if it was true.”

Cristy looked up. “Like what?”

“My daughter sews up a storm, but apparently it skipped a generation. What do you think of the house?” Georgia fingered the largest charm on the bracelet. It was a Southern-style mansion with pillars, something Scarlett O’Hara might have enjoyed.

“It could be her family’s.” Cristy looked closer. “You know, I don’t think so, though. How many people live like that?”

“You thought she had money.”

“The thing is, this charm...” Cristy leaned over to show Georgia what bothered her. “It doesn’t look like it was made for a charm bracelet. It’s out of perspective. Not that the others are all identical in scale, but this one’s so much bigger than it should be. It dominates the bracelet. Almost like it was meant for something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, a necklace, maybe? Or to hang from a pin? I almost think it’s a copy of a real house, maybe from a souvenir shop. And the other thing?” She looked up and met Georgia’s eyes. “I think her family had money, but I don’t think they were as wealthy as they would need to be to live in a house like this. You know why? There’s only one gem on this bracelet. The ruby, or what passes for a ruby, here.” She twirled it around and showed Georgia the one she meant.

“The other person who’s seen the bracelet, a man named Lucas Ramsey, thought that might be a birthstone.”