Song of the Brokenhearted (30 page)

Ava turned off the engine and stepped from the car, zipping up her jacket. The cold came quickly with the autumn shadows. She tucked a blanket around Emma, leaving her in the car seat, and then left the door ajar while she walked toward the open garage where two cars and a small tractor were in the process of repair.

The air smelled of grease, gasoline, and burning leaves. Ava noticed the smoldering pile of leaves at the corner of the garage as she approached. If it weren't for a light bulb dangling from the ceiling and the low sound of a radio playing from a stereo on the floor, Ava would've guessed the workshop was abandoned.

“Anyone know a good mechanic around here?” she called into the open garage, not wanting to move far from the baby. Ava heard a tool clang onto the concrete floor and the slide of a floor dolly. Large work boots emerged first from beneath a sedan, then the rest of her brother on his back on the dolly. Clancy pulled off glasses and a headlamp, squinting his eyes as he stared at her.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Clancy said, breaking into a wide grin.

“You didn't answer the phone. It just rang and rang.”

“I only have my cell now, haven't had the chance to call everyone with it. That's on my list, you know. But what a shocker—I can't believe my big sister is here, in the flesh,” he said, grabbing her into a strong bear hug.

Clancy's full head of thick hair had that messy look so many young people used gel and a blow dryer to get. He was well over six feet tall, towering over her. His bright blue eyes seemed to twinkle like Santa's.

“I didn't realize just how much I missed you until right now,” Ava said, overcome with such emotion that she looked toward the baby to keep from bursting into tears.

“I know what you mean, exactly,” he said sincerely. “Did you come down to see Daddy?”

Ava frowned. “No, why?”

Clancy shrugged, uncomfortable suddenly. “Just thought that was why you were showing up.”

Ava didn't understand the connection. Rare as it was when they talked, Clancy never brought up their father. “When did you speak to him last?”

“First Saturday of every month.”

Ava tried taking that in for a moment. “You mean,
every
first Saturday of
every
month?”

Clancy shrugged. “I missed one in 2004 when we had a bad ice storm and again in 2006 'cause I had the flu.”

“That's incredible . . . I think. Or else something is wrong with you.”

They laughed at that. Ava glanced toward the open car door where Emma slept.

Clancy walked to a tube of disinfecting wipes and pulled one out, cleaning his hands and forearms. “We both know something's wrong with me. But you know, I don't have kids and nothing much better to do but work and hunt. Dad needs someone.”

Ava felt the stab of guilt. “I haven't seen him in thirty years, actually thirty-one.”

“Yeah, I know. I haven't wanted to bring it up. But that was another reason I was going to call you soon.”

“Aunt Lorena wouldn't let it go that I see him.”

Clancy's mouth dropped dramatically. “What the heck? You braved that looney circus? Sister, what are you doing here?”

Ava motioned toward her car. “Come see.”

It dawned on Ava as they walked up the front porch of Clancy's house—their childhood home—that there was a reason behind her brother and aunt's questions.

“Something's wrong with Daddy.” Ava stopped suddenly.

Clancy didn't respond as he held open the door with the baby bag on his shoulder and waited for Ava to enter the house. Her brother had kept the place clean and maintained. The front door had been painted a shiny black, and the white of the house appeared crisp and clean.

Emma rubbed her eyes and whimpered before dropping back to sleep over Ava's shoulder. Ava's back ached from holding the baby for the past few days, but she savored the feel of the little life pressed against her chest with head tucked near her chin and neck.

The inside had the décor of a practical man with a Western style. There were pictures of cowboys and wild horses, and horseshoes were recycled and welded together for use throughout the house as coat hooks, towel racks, a fireplace grate, even an entire bench near the back door.

“Did you make that?” Ava asked, inspecting the welds that held the shoes together.

“I have a little too much time on my hands,” Clancy said with a chuckle.

The furniture was distressed wood, and giant rugs covered clean wood laminate floors. Ava smelled stew cooking and saw a large kettle simmering on the kitchen stove.

“It's usually a tad cleaner than this, but you caught me unawares, sister.”

Ava looked around with admiration, though a knot had formed in her stomach as she realized how much of her brother's life she'd been missing. Questions about their father kept rising to her thoughts, but she squelched them for the moment.

“The old place looks great. You've made some changes. And new appliances too. It hardly looks like the same house.” Clancy showed her how he'd knocked out the wall between the living and dining room and put in a large window and sliding door out toward the backyard where a brick barbecue and long rock bar replaced the dried grass where the Doughboy pool had been. She felt relieved to see that her brother hadn't kept the house like a memorial to a tragedy.

“I've gotten quite handy. Have you eaten? I'm cooking a stew. I make a big one when I cook, then freeze the leftovers.”

“My domesticated brother. Smells great, and I'm starving.”

Over giant bowls of stew and store-bought corn bread, Ava finally returned to the topic she dreaded.

“Tell me what's wrong with Daddy. What is it?”

“The cancer.”

“What kind? How bad? How long has he had it? What are they doing to treat it?”

“Pancreas and it's pretty bad. Stage four. He found out last month. They aren't treating him, he don't want it anyway.”

Ava leaned back in her chair, trying to take it in. She stared toward the living room where Emma played on a blanket with her teething ring.

“So that's why Aunt Lorena kept asking me if I'd seen him.”

“Yeah, I'm sure. She still is one of his ardent followers.”

“Really? Since the days he was a preacher?”

“Guess before that too. She had a thing for him when they were younger, but he only had eyes for Mama.”

“I had no idea.” Ava shook her head in dismay. Perhaps that was the reason Aunt Lorena had always seemed to hate their mother.

“She's been visiting him for quite a few years now. This hit her pretty hard.”

Ava watched Emma trying to turn over on her blanket from her back to her stomach. She got stuck on her side again and finally gave up, flopping onto her back.

“I guess I should see him,” she muttered more to herself than to Clancy. She rose from the table to turn Emma over for some tummy time. She kicked her arms and legs excitedly and grabbed the teething ring.

“Seems there are a few reasons for your trip out here,” Clancy said in a matter-of-fact tone. “I haven't had a house guest for quite some time, and tonight I get two.”

They stayed up late talking. Clancy hadn't visited them in Dallas in a number of years, and he'd never been much good on the phone. Ava was surprised to hear that he'd nearly married and that he'd become a golfer of all things.

“Golf? You?”

“I dated myself a photographer from Austin for a while. She was out here taking pictures when we met. She liked to golf— her father was really good and taught her. She bought me some irons for Christmas one year, and I got hooked.”

“So the girlfriend ended but the golfing didn't?”

“You got it.”

“And no girlfriend now?” Ava asked, her eye sweeping the place for any sign of a feminine touch.

“Not at the moment. And with work and visiting Dad more often, I don't see time to look for one.”

“How often do you visit him now?”

“Coming on to every few days now. He don't have much time, so I figured might as well make it good.”

“Why didn't you tell me, Clancy?”

He chewed the edge of his lip and rubbed his forehead.

“Daddy told me not to, but I was going to anyway, Aves. Just I wasn't ready to break his request quite yet.”

Ava pursed her lips. Was this the real purpose of Emma coming into her life, so that she'd come back home and find out about her dad? If so, what did God want her to do with the baby?

“So we'll see him in the morning then,” Ava said with a dread that sent shivers through her body.

Clancy set Ava up in his guest room. He moved the bed against the wall to keep Emma with one safe edge and Ava would be the border of the other. After getting Emma to sleep, she crawled into bed with her muscles aching and head full of the day's events.

With the house settled down for the night, Clancy's dog bounded inside and straight for her brother's room. She heard him talking to Danner and the hound's tail knocking against something in the room. The woodstove popped with a fresh oak log stuffed inside, and off in the distance, a chorus of coyotes yelped in an otherwise silent world. She stared at the ceiling and was glad to be sleeping in Clancy's old room and not her own.

She couldn't sleep, and Emma seemed to sense Ava's unrest as she squirmed, frowned, and then stirred again.

Today was Monday and she hadn't talked to her husband since Friday. It felt like a month. They kept missing each other's call or their service was bad. Ava hadn't talked to Kayanne, Sienna, or anyone from church, but her in-box was filling up.

Ava typed a text to Dane:
I know you won't get this till you're on your way home or on top of some mountain somewhere. But I'm thinking of you tonight. Of us, our family, and our life together
.

As unstable as their life was at the moment, more than it had ever been, their marriage was home and she was filled with a longing she hadn't felt since their early years together.
I'm homesick for the things that matter
, Ava thought with bittersweet joy.

Tomorrow she was going to see her father. Her mind drifted to the prison, to that awful confined existence. She remembered the initial shock of seeing her father there many years earlier. He came into the visitation room wearing an orange jumpsuit and sat at a table across from her. Her father, Reverend Daniel Henderson, had gotten himself a tattoo. Ava could see the bottom of it sticking out from his orange sleeve, and though she wished to know what it was or said, she resisted showing interest and kept her eyes averted with quick glances at his face and then around the room.

She'd never asked him or Clancy about it. Ava expected her father to have a great story. “Prison does things to a man” would've been his likely words. After everything, Daddy was still the best excuse-artist she'd ever seen. It was a gift Ava hadn't inherited. Even when her excuse was valid, she couldn't say it right and she sounded false doing so. But to weave sympathy out of any kind of sin was a talent, like that princess who could weave gold from straw.

“I'm so happy my firefly finally came to see me,” Daddy had said as he reached across the table with two hands because they were bound together in handcuffs. Ava had pulled her hands away into her lap, leaned back, and blew a bubble with her chewing gum. She'd dyed her hair platinum blond for the occasion. When he'd seen her last during the trial, it was raven black.

“How are you?” he said with less confidence than usual.

“I'm doing drugs,” she'd said, trying to express boldness with her words. “And having sex. Lots of both.” She'd never said the word
sex
in front of him before in her life, and she was proud of herself for doing it.

Daddy stared at her with those deep brown eyes, and there it was, the look of sadness that made her feel guilty for hurting
him
! Ridiculous.

“Firefly, oh, my little firefly.” He rubbed his ears as if to rid them of what she'd said. So he'd believed her? Ava had said it to hurt him. He deserved it after the way he destroyed their lives with his lies and deceits. But not long after his prison sentence, Ava had decided that what she did with her life was her choice. She wouldn't rebel because she was angry at him. She would live her life on her terms, not in retaliation, because then he'd have a hold on her again.

You don't own me now, Daddy. You don't mean anything to me
.

She'd practiced saying it but the words caught in her throat. Instead she chewed on her nails and pretended she was sitting through the most boring of Baptist preachers.

“I've been ministering to the men here. For this next season of my life, this is my calling. My lawyer hopes I'll get a new trial or early release. Then I'll be home, and we'll make amends.” He spoke in a low tone as if more to himself than to her.