The Law of Bound Hearts (24 page)

“There is a rabbinic story told in the Book of Knowledge,” he said.

“Funny, you don't look Jewish,” she said, her tone light, joking. They seldom talked about religion, but she knew for a fact that he never went to church. She'd asked him once and he said nature was his parish. He had little use for organized religion.

He smiled, then said, “I'm not telling it in the proper language. The author was more exacting, but basically it's this: If a man comes to you three times and three times asks forgiveness, you're bound to give it to him. If you don't, the thing you won't forgive becomes transferred to you. It becomes the monkey you have to carry.”

She did not find comfort in this story. “Where did you hear that?”

“I read it. Mishnah Torah.”

Another surprise. She'd only seen him read Clive Cussler novels and old issues of WoodenBoat. “You read religious texts?”

“Sometimes.”

She took in this information. “So, do you believe in God?”

He didn't answer right away.

“Do you, Lee?”

“Here's what I believe. Or maybe I should say what I know, the kind of knowing that comes from experiencing something, not thinking about it. There have been times when I'm out in deep water, out of sight of land, and it's gotten a little stressful.”

“You mean dangerous?”

“Let's say a little intense,” he said. “It puts things in perspective. You're called to look at the value of life and what's important.” He paused to watch a hawk circle overhead. “And you feel something greater than yourself. You give yourself over to it and you put yourself in the hands of that something, whatever you want to call it.”

“I read an article once about the astronauts,” she said. “I don't remember the quote word for word, but something like no matter what they believe when they leave earth, there are no atheists among returning astronauts. Something like that.”

“That sounds close enough.” He reached over and snipped off a tall blade of yellowed grass. She watched as he tore it lengthwise and began plaiting the strands, creating an intricate weave.

“Something you learned in summer camp?” she said.

“Boy Scouts,” he said, concentrating on his creation. Somewhere behind them a bird was singing.

“I had pictured this happening differently,” Lee said, after a minute. “I had big plans.”

“What plans? What're you talking about?”

“But last night, watching you at dinner, seeing you with your sister and knowing what it meant that you had come out here, well, I didn't want to wait. So I had to throw out my script and find another.”

“Another what?”

“Another perfect place. Richard suggested the prairie.”

He took a breath and rose from the bench. Before she could stand, he knelt in front of her. “Samantha,” he said. Then: “Oh, shit. I had this whole thing plotted, but now—don't laugh—I'm too nervous.”

She gave a half smile. It unnerved her to see him so anxious. “What is it?”

He held out his hand, palm up, revealing a gold circle. Somehow, out of that stalk of prairie grass, he had fashioned a ring. “Sam, will you marry me?”

She was in lag time, and it took a moment for his words to register. Then she smiled—a smile so wide it was hard to say even the simple word yes.

She would remember this always. The bench that looked like a pew, the morning light that transformed the prairie into a sea of champagne, the ring Lee had created from grass, the bird that could not stop singing.

He took her hand and slid the band on her finger. I'll never lose this, she thought. I'll show it to our children when I tell them this story.

Our children.

A whole future, a future she once believed forever gone, waved before her, as golden as the autumn prairie.

“I take that as a yes,” Lee said. He drew her close and bent to kiss her. In the background that crazy bird was just singing its heart out.

After a while he said, “What'd you say we go back and break the news to your sister.”

She hesitated, a slight, involuntary holding back. The sun seemed to dim. Lee was different from her. He had a great heart. She wondered what would happen when she disappointed him, when she couldn't match his heart.

“Lee?”

“Yeah?”

“What if you've tried, but you can't?”

“Can't what?”

“Forgive. What if you just can't forgive?”

“Forgiveness is in all of us, Sam,” he said.

“You give me too much credit. It scares me.”

“You don't give yourself enough,” he said. He expected too much of her. “You are as capable of forgiveness as you are of love.”

“How do you know this, Lee?”

“You know it, too, Sam. It's in all of us, if we can get quiet enough to listen.”

She curled her fingers, felt the scratch of the grass ring against her palm. She thought, what if when you get quiet you don't like what you hear?

Sam and Libby

When they returned to the car, the parking lot was nearly full. The families and the couples with dogs reminded Sam of weekends in Sippican when the beaches were full of people. Lee turned on the ignition and shifted into reverse.

“Wait,” Sam said. “Stop.”

“What,” he said, “you've changed your mind already?”

“Fat chance.” She dug in her tote. “Here.” She held out her cell.

“What's this for?”

“Alice,” she said. “She should be the first to know. Before we tell anyone else.”

He smiled, then put the car in park and switched off the key. “I better warn you, she'll cry.”

“You think?” Sam couldn't picture Alice, all Yankee practicality, crying.

“I can guarantee it. A complete waterworks. She was beginning to give up all hope.” He punched in his mother's number. “Fasten your seat belt and get ready.”

“For the tears?”

“For Alice in overdrive. Five minutes after we hang up, she'll have the church, preacher, and organist booked. We'll be lucky if she doesn't start putting nursery furniture on layaway.”

Sam looked at the grass band on her finger. “Do you want that?” she said in a soft voice.

“Do I want what?”

“A wedding,” she said. “For starters.”

“I want you.” He grinned. “You get to settle the rest of it.”

“And kids?” She felt suddenly nervous. There was so much they'd never talked about. “Do you want to have kids?”

“It's not a deal breaker. I mean, if you don't want them, I guess I can live with it, but yeah, I've always thought it'd be great to have a family.”

The future that she'd seen on the prairie shimmered before her, so real she swore if she held out a hand she could stroke it.

“Hi,” Lee was saying into the phone. “No. Everything's fine. Yeah, she's right here with me. That's why I'm calling. We wanted to tell you something.” He listened a moment and then laughed. He turned to Sam. “She says I'd better be phoning to say I asked you to marry me.”

“I did,” he said to Alice, “and she said yes.” He laughed again and said to Sam, “She wants to know what took me so long.” He passed the phone to her.

“Hi,” Sam said to her about-to-be mother-in-law.

“I knew from the first day I laid eyes on you that you were the one for Hurley,” Alice said. “Have you set the date?”

“I warned you,” Lee said to Sam after they hung up. “I know I just said the wedding plans were up to you, but I hope this time you aren't set on eloping.”

“Why?”

“Because now that we've told my mother, it's not even a remote possibility. I bet she's already calling her friends.”

“Stacy,” Sam said. “We've got to tell Stacy.” She punched in the number for her assistant. “Hi, Stace,” she said. “It's me, Sam.”

“I was waiting for your call,” Stacy said. For a crazy instant, Sam thought Alice had already spread the word. “Well, you don't have to worry,” Stacy went on. “They didn't ask for their money back.” “Who?” Sam couldn't stop looking at Lee. She wondered how many kids he saw in their future. Two would be perfect. Maybe three.

“Helloooo,” Stacy said. “The Chaney wedding. The cake. Isn't that why you're calling?”

“Wrong wedding,” Sam said.

“What do you mean?”

Sam told her the news.

“What did she say?” Lee asked after she hung up.

“You know Stacy. After she finished whooping and hollering, she said, ‘Sagittarius and Aries. Fire attracts fire. Your future will burn bright. Lots of passion.' ” She didn't tell him Stacy had said half the women in Sippican would be wearing black armbands.

“I like that last part,” he said, leaning over to kiss her. “The part about lots of passion.”

Her toes tingled with wanting him. Maybe four. Four children and a dog.

He turned on the ignition. “Now let's go tell your sister.”

It was nearly noon when they returned to the house. Libby was out and Richard was in his study. The sound of his cello reverberated through the house.

Sam opened the refrigerator. “How about breakfast?” She checked the time. “Or lunch?”

“Maybe later.” He wrapped his arms around her. “Right now I think I want to go upstairs and sample some more of that passion Stacy was talking about.”

Libby turned back toward Richard. She'd heard the back door close and then the sound of a car starting up.

“Are they going somewhere?” she asked.

He nodded and smiled, and in that moment she caught a flash of the young Richard and knew both the heat of desire and the anguish of loss.

“Last night Lee asked me what I thought was the most romantic spot around here,” he said. “I suggested the prairie.”

“Most romantic spot?”

“I think he's going to propose to your sister.”

“Oh.” She again felt that sense of emptiness, of being left behind.

“Are you getting up?” he asked, pausing at the door.

“In a bit.”

After he left, she held her fingers over the shunt, felt the rushing of blood. She slid her hand up her forearm, felt the hardness of bone beneath her palm. She thought about Gabe's story of the tribesmen who had survived lightning and so possessed the power to knit bones. She wondered if there were tribal healers who could mend the heart. What you would have to survive to earn that power. From another part of the house, she heard the sound of Richard tuning his cello.

She showered, dressed, and went downstairs, restless in a house that felt too empty. She checked her e-mail, but there were no messages from either Mercy or Matt. Around ten, she tried Gabe again, but there was still no answer. Briefly, she considered driving over to the hospital, but if Hannah remained in a coma, there was little point. Plus, she knew bacteria were rampant in hospitals, carrying the risk of infection, and she certainly didn't need that complication.

She poached and ate an egg, cleaned up the dishes, leafed through the Sunday
Tribune,
did both crossword puzzles. Richard was still holed up in his study; Sam and Lee did not return. Finally she scrawled a note for the others and headed out. She drove down Westminster and stopped at Foodstuffs, where she purchased a spinach-and-chicken casserole with wine sauce. As he'd promised, Gabe's door was unlocked.

As soon as Libby opened the door, Lulu was on her, barking frantically and nearly knocking the bag out of her arms. She had to laugh, the way the greyhound bounced up and down, baring its teeth at her. There was no doubt about it, Libby noted, it was definitely a smile.

She set the casserole in the refrigerator, then looked until she found a retractable leash hanging on a hook by the back door. “Don't get too excited,” she told the dog, as she clipped on the leash. “It's just a short one.”

They strolled twice around the block, passing two couples who nodded to her and called Lulu by name. Ecstatic to be outdoors, the greyhound darted around, stopping every few minutes to sniff rocks and shrubs. Occasionally, in a fit of ecstasy, she'd snap and bite at the air, which made Libby laugh out loud. She wouldn't have dreamed it could be so pleasurable to walk a dog.

When they returned to the house, she refilled the greyhound's water bowl, then sat at the table and waited while Lulu drank her fill. As she sat there, occupied with nothing except a momentary contentment, a word surfaced in her brain, floating up like a fragment of music. She found a scrap of paper and set it down:

Bonesetter.

She let it roll around in her mind, pleased with the perfect sound of the vowels, the abruptness of the
t
's, the soft liquid of the
s.
She pictured a scene. At first the details were hazy, but gradually they came into focus. Open mesa. A woman, tall—like her mother—stood alone.

The greyhound came in from the kitchen, did her ritual circling, then settled in at Libby's feet, curling into a ball. Libby bent to stroke her coat, as sleek as a seal's. More words surfaced. She picked up the pen and wrote:

They say when lambent light
Illuminates the heavens.

Too much alliteration, scoffed a familiar voice, the same one that saw all her shortcomings, the one that silenced her. She willed it away. A stronger voice told her it was crucial to keep going, reworking would come later.

They say when sky fire strikes,
Current burns, cracks, blinds.

Tonight, when brown flesh splits,
Swirls, spins and falls silent, then rises,
They say a bonesetter is born.

She wrote on, re-creating myth, unmindful of the greyhound at her feet or the traffic on the street outside or the ticking of the mantel clock. When she surfaced, she was amazed to see the better part of an hour had passed.

She left a note asking Gabe to call her when he got in, and telling him she'd left food in the refrigerator. Lulu leaned against her leg. The dog cocked her head, raised her ears, and looked up with sad eyes.

“All right, all right.” Libby scribbled a postscript to the note. “Just don't get used to it,” she said to the dog.

When she pulled into her driveway, she saw that in her absence Sam and Lee had returned. Hours earlier, just the thought of confronting Sam's unyielding anger and Richard's betrayal had overwhelmed her, but something had shifted while she was at Gabe's, something she couldn't put a name to or understand. She felt a strength she hadn't in a long time. In the quiet of Gabe's home, writing those lines of poetry, she had reclaimed a part of herself. She went inside, to the kitchen, where the three of them were having tea.

“I was just about to send out the posse,” Richard said. And then: “What's that?”

“Who, not what.” Libby was absurdly pleased with herself. She unclipped the leash. “This is Lulu.”

“Where did you find her?” The greyhound insinuated herself between them.

“She's Hannah's,” Libby said.

“Who's Hannah?” Sam asked.

Richard stroked the greyhound's head. “I always wanted a dog,” he said.

“You did?” Twenty years she'd lived with him and he'd never once mentioned it. She wondered what else she didn't know about him, what else she hadn't seen. Was it because he had withheld or because she hadn't looked? Lulu darted from one of them to another, poking her muzzle in their thighs and licking their hands. Then she stood by Richard and put her head in his lap.

“Who's Hannah?” Sam asked again.

“A friend,” Libby said. She crossed to the sink and filled a bowl with water, set it out for the dog. “She's in the hospital and Lulu was so lonely without her, I couldn't bear to leave her alone.”

“How's Gabe doing?” Richard asked.

“He's with her. Hannah's parents are there, too.”

“A couple we know,” Richard explained. “Gabe works for the Open Lands Association. Hannah was on the same dialysis schedule as Elizabeth, but she's in a coma now.”

“Oh,” Sam said in a quiet voice. A flash of comprehension crossed her face. She wouldn't meet Libby's eyes.

Is he someone's husband?
she had said.

Libby rested a hand lightly on her sister's shoulder, stroked her hair back from her forehead. It's all right, she wanted to say. Sam still would not look at her, but she did not pull away. Libby remembered a lecture Anna Rauh had given the class on Keats's theory of negative capability. You have to be empty, the professor had said, and only then can you fill with understanding and sympathy for the subject. She'd been talking about poetry, but Libby thought maybe it was as true of life. Did you have to experience a great emptiness—a loss of certainty—in your own heart, for it to be receptive to others? Were pain and loss the lightning one had to survive in order, like a bonesetter, to heal the heart?

“On a happier note,” Richard said, “we were waiting for you to return to begin a proper celebration.”

“Celebration,” Libby said.

Sam extended her hand. “My engagement ring,” she said.

Libby looked at the grass band on Sam's finger.

“Until the real thing comes along,” Lee said, looking sheepish.

Sam looked at him, her face luminous. “This is the real thing,” she said.

“Congratulations.” Libby was amazed to find she meant it, completely. She leaned over and gave Sam a hug and then crossed to hug Lee. “Welcome to the family,” she told him. “Such as we are.”

They had a celebratory meal of leftover chicken and salad, and Richard found a bottle of champagne for the toast. Libby allowed herself one sip. While they ate, she told Lee stories about Sam, about the summer Sam made money by selling the neighbors floral bouquets, the catch being she'd cut the flowers from their gardens.

“I never did,” Sam protested.

“And another time,” Libby said, “she got up in the night and cut my hair with our mother's sewing scissors.”

“I did not,” Sam said, truly shocked.

Libby looked at her. “You don't remember?” she said. “I had long braids and you cut one right off. We found it on your pillow in the morning. Mother was furious.”

“I really did that?” Sam said.

Libby nodded. “I can't believe you've forgotten.”

“What about the time you made me go to St. Martin's Catholic Church?” Sam told Lee and Richard the story of taking Communion and of her fear that Libby's shoes would go up in flames, consuming them both as well.

“Snotty, know-it-all Janice McKenney,” Libby said. “I haven't thought about her in years.” She looked at Sam. “I wouldn't have done it if you hadn't been there.”

“Because I was your audience?”