The Sisters (32 page)

She rolled down the window an inch and stared straight ahead.

“Let me take you to dinner,” he said. “Right now.”

“My family’s expecting me.”

“Tomorrow, then. Lunch.”

“You have class,” she said. “You told me you have class on Mondays.”

“I’ll skip. Say you’ll have lunch with me.”

“Why? So you can leave me standing around again? No thanks.” She started the car and pulled away, leaving Ken in the empty space, looking after her.

*   *   *

Ken didn’t come to the barn the next day, or the next. On the third day, he showed up but didn’t ride, just spent nearly an hour closed inside the tack room with Hi, their voices raised but the words indistinct. When at last they came out, Ken went straight back to his car without even a glance at the barn, Hi watching him, arms crossed, as if to make sure that’s just what Ken did.

Grace flung the saddle up over the white pony, Whisper, and cinched the girth straps while a little girl wearing a rosy pink cowboy hat and new blue jeans chattered to her. Grace checked the tightness of the saddle and explained to the girl how to grab a handful of the pony’s mane, then raise her left foot into the stirrup. “I’ll give you a boost up,” she said, “and then when you’re standing in the stirrup, fling your other leg over. I’ll hold on to you until you’re steady.” When the girl was mounted, her chatter silenced and face rigid with fear, Grace handed the reins to Hiram’s son Terry, who taught all the beginners.

Grace headed back to check Whisper’s water. She filled the bucket and was pouring it into the trough when Hiram stepped into the stall. “Watch yourself around that fellow, Grace. He’s got no business messing with you.”

What was she supposed to say? Should she admit she’d wanted to go out with Ken, that she’d agreed and he’d stood her up? She turned to Hiram, the empty bucket swinging from her hand. “Why does everybody make such a big deal about age?” She hadn’t mentioned Ken to either Grandma or Mother, because that’s what they would have fixed on.

“That’s got nothing to do with what I’m talking about.”

No, Grace thought, it wouldn’t. What a hypocrite Hiram would be if he warned her off Ken on those grounds. Hi’s wife, Mary, was at least twenty years younger than he was.

“Crab’s … odd,” Hiram said. “Not quite right, you know?” He squatted down in the stall and braided a couple of pieces of straw while he talked. “He don’t fit this world. Not since the war. Used to come here when he was still a kid, got drafted right out of high school—marines took him—about the time Mary and me got married. He drove the team for the carriage that picked us up at the church.” Hi dropped the braided straw and picked up two more pieces. “I knew a lot of fellows that got sent to Vietnam. I ain’t never seen a one of them change like Crab did. All them years in that gook prison, I expect.”

Grace opened her hand and the bucket clanked softly as it dropped into the straw.

Ken. A prisoner of war.

Where and how had he been taken? How long had he been held? What had happened to him there? Why were his friends—why was Hi—turning away from him? Trying to get other people to stay away from him?

Grace clutched her left wrist and thought of Capt. Mark P. Stevens. Had there been anyone to meet him when he came off the plane? She remembered scenes of wives and children running toward the men, scenes played over and over on the news, but if someone had been there to greet her captain—her newly promoted major—the cameraman hadn’t filmed it. What if he had been alone? What if he was so changed that no one wanted to know him, no one wanted to be patient? Who would listen to him, let him talk about those years in prison? Who—when the world acted like the war had never happened?

Ken was gone and Hi would never tell her how to find him. But even if she did, what would she say? That she understood? Of course she didn’t. That she wanted to try? That she cared? That she’d like to know him? She did. But she wouldn’t. And it was her fault.

*   *   *

Grace knew the car was squarish and tan, but that’s all she could remember. Furious at herself for being so unobservant, she turned to make another pass through the community college parking lot. How could there be so many tan cars? It had another color, didn’t it? Maybe blue or a darker brown on part of the doors? She couldn’t remember. It was old—she knew that—but so were most of the cars in the student lot. Maybe she wasn’t finding it because it wasn’t here at all.

Ken was probably long gone, out of Newman altogether.

Hiram had told her Ken had a piece of property way out in the country, an hour or two northeast of Indianapolis. He’d bought it with the payout from a life-insurance policy taken out by his father, who had died while Ken was still a prisoner in North Vietnam. No one seemed to know what had become of his mother. According to Hiram, Ken, ever since he’d gotten back from Vietnam, turned up in Newman every few years, talking big about how he was going to go to school, get a job, settle down. He would stay for a couple of months, maybe as long as five or six, but then he’d vanish again, going back, Hi presumed, to his patch of lonely land.

Grace parked and headed toward the nearest building. Huge bronze letters on the side announced it as the Miller Science Pavilion. There was a girl out front, sitting on a stone bench, so Grace asked her if she knew Ken Vincent. She said she didn’t and pointed to a flat building on top of a low hill when Grace asked where students registered. “Drop and add’s over,” the girl said, and Grace thanked her and hurried up the stone steps to the building. She asked three different people in the registrar’s office, each one handing her off to someone, she supposed, with higher authority, but all of them told her student information was private and that they couldn’t even confirm that Ken was registered.

She asked about a restroom and followed their directions down the hall, to the left, and down another hall. She took a long drink from the water fountain, stopping only when she sensed that someone had appeared beside her to wait for a turn. “Sorry,” she said, wiping her lips with her fingertips.

“Me, too.” It was Ken, standing right in front of her.

For days she’d thought of what she would say, but now her mind was blank.

“How’s Ashes?”

“Fine,” Grace said. “A little edgy, maybe. He needs a good gallop.”

Ken shoved his hands in his back pockets and looked away. “I guess Hi will see to that okay.” He looked back at her and gave a slight nod. “See you, Grace.” He took a step away, and she grabbed his arm. Both of them stood for a moment, looking at her hand on his arm. She let go suddenly, as if her palm had caught fire.

“I was looking for you,” she said. “I wanted to bring you something.”

He fixed her with that frank stare of his, neither hot nor cold, just unreadable, unnerving.

“Is there someplace else…” She couldn’t do this standing outside a restroom.

Ken gestured for her to follow, and in a moment they were in a room with café tables and chairs. Awkwardly high wooden booths lined the walls. There were only a few students at the tables, some talking quietly, others with books and papers spread before them. All the booths she could see into were empty. Ken chose one in the corner and Grace slid in across from him, setting her purse on the table between them.

“So what is it?” Ken said. He’d joined his hands together, almost like a giant fist, and he tapped the fist on the table.

“I…” Grace watched his hands, lean and strong, dark from the sun.

“I know Hi didn’t send you. So what are you doing here?”

She put her hand over his, as if to stop his nervous tapping, but when his hands fell quiet beneath her small cool palm, she didn’t take her hand away. She didn’t want to.

Ever so slowly, Ken released one thumb and, curling it over her hand, stroked her fingers. And then, without her knowing how it had happened, her hand slipped between his. They were just as she’d imagined, his hands—warm and sandpapery.

“I’m sorry I left you at the mall,” she said. “I was pretty mad.”

He turned one hand so it cupped hers, and with his other he caressed her open palm. “I get in a funk sometimes,” he said. “I never know when it’s coming. And when it does, even if I could talk myself into going out, it’s no good for me to be around anybody. That’s what I wanted to tell you when I came to the store.”

She felt a rush of desire for him and longed to fling herself across the table into his arms. She wanted to curl in his lap and pull his head to her chest and hold him and rock with him and stroke his hair.

She loved him. Suddenly. Absolutely.

“I brought you something,” she said. With her free hand, she opened her purse and drew out a metal cuff the color of dull pewter. She held it so he could read what was engraved there:
Capt. Mark P. Stevens, USAF, 9-9-66
.

Ken released her hand, took up the bracelet, then stood up to slide onto the bench beside her. He put his arm around her, and laid a line of caressing kisses on her temple, behind her ear, on her cheek, her neck, along her jaw, and finally her lips. She clung to him and he held her ever more tightly and they kissed and kissed.

“Grace,” he said, retracing the line of his first small kisses. “Sweet little Grace.” He held the bracelet up to read it. “How long did you wear this?”

“Until I saw him get off the plane,” she said. “Until I knew he was home again.”

Ken held the bracelet before him, sliding his thumb over Captain Stevens’s name. “You brought this for me?” He turned to her again, and, cupping her chin in his hand, he looked into her eyes, the same direct gaze, but tender now. “You’re sure?” He tugged at the edges of the bracelet to widen it, then pressed it onto his wrist and squeezed it closed. He took her hand and lifted it, kissed the tender underside of her wrist.

There was a tear on his cheek. “I want you to wear mine,” he said. “Will you? Somebody sent one back. I never knew who.” He pulled her into his arms. “Say you’ll wear it, Grace. Will you?”

Grace pressed into him. She wanted to feel her heart pounding against his. She pressed harder, and harder still—and there it was: the beating of his heart, a rhythm matched with hers. “I will,” she said. “I will. I will.”

E
IGHTEEN

A Mighty Fortress

August 1987

Indianapolis, Indiana

MABEL

T
HE VESTIBULE WAS DARK AND
cold, with high ceilings that seemed to be made of stone arching overhead, like a grand tomb. Mabel groped for something to lean on, but her hand found only a slender wooden stand, awkwardly placed at the entrance to the sanctuary. In her reaching for the tilted surface, she knocked off an open book, which fell with an echoing slap to the marble floor.

“Mama, take my arm.” Daisy was beside her now, holding her steady, and, as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Mabel saw her son-in-law, Barry, fetching over a small metal chair. Where had it come from?

“Are you feeling faint?” Barry asked, guiding her into the chair and then kneeling down to take her pulse. “Mabel?”

“I’m all right,” she said. “The light was so bright outside. I just couldn’t see when I came in.” She waved her hand in the air around the seat. “Where’s my camera? Did I drop it?”

“It’s here, Mama,” Daisy said, giving a tiny tug on the strap around Mabel’s neck. “Right where it always is. You just sit still a minute and then we’ll take you in. The rest of the guests won’t be here for another half hour.” She could feel Daisy’s firm, slender hand stroking her arm. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I told you,” Mabel said. “It was just the light. And the sudden cold—coming in out of the heat like that.” She could sense Daisy doubting her—Daisy, who knew every turn of her mood—but Barry and the other people gathered in the vestibule—the priest, a couple of ushers, the hired photographer—seemed to accept her story, as they were chatting about other incidents when a sudden change in light or temperature had made someone ill.

Mabel hadn’t been in a church for more than sixty years, not since she was sixteen. She hadn’t even stood directly outside one since the Juniper fire, when she and Daisy had paused on the walk before the ruins of the Emmanuel Baptist Church. It didn’t matter that this cathedral bore no resemblance to the little stone church she remembered. Even a casual mention of Sunday services tripped a collage of images in her mind—of her father’s funeral and then her mother’s, of Jim Butcher standing next to her in the pew, loudly singing “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” two mornings after he’d first raped her, of the churchwomen who had finally driven her away by staring and whispering behind their hands as she passed, of Bertie in her pink graduation dress searching the sanctuary for her and Wallace. She’d hoped to reach the end of her life without entering another church or another cemetery, never imagining that her granddaughter, Jenny, without a single day’s instruction in religion, would fall for a boy who had seriously considered becoming an Episcopal priest.

“We’d better call the hotels about open dates,” Daisy had said last Christmas, moments after Jenny had startled them all by announcing in the middle of dinner that she was dropping out of college for the spring term so she could plan her wedding to Stephen, whom she had known only three months. “Or there’s that new restaurant—you know the one I mean. It’s a converted Victorian mansion. I’m sure we could rent that if they catered the reception.”