Unconditional (2 page)

After a while I sensed him studying me, so I looked over at him and smiled.

“You finally started your book?” he asked.

I went back to my work. “No,” I said around the pencil before removing it. “It's just an idea at this point. It's nowhere near where it needs to be.”

“Tell it to me.”

I tilted my chin toward him. Gave him “the eye.” Billy was always teasing me about my stories. Saying things like, “All right for children, but I'm not sure you can make a film out of it.” But the truth was, Billy was nothing if not proud of me.

“I'll be nice,” he said, though his smile was crooked, making me doubt the sincerity of the words. But the firelight played across his face, bringing out his boyish charm. “C'mon.”

“All right.” I chose another of my colored pencils from behind my right ear, tucked the first one in its place, and went back to work. After a deep breath, I began with the words that had been forming in my head for such a long time. “Once upon a time, there lived a little baby oriole named Firebird. Now Firebird just
lived
for the sunshine. He would bask in that glow for hours and hours. But when the rains would come, he would complain to his mama. He wanted to know why God gave storms the power to take the sun away. And Mama bird would just smile and say, ‘You'll understand someday, when you walk on the clouds.'”

Again, I pulled a pencil from behind my ear and replaced it with the one I'd been using. After a moment of careful sketching, I returned to my story. “Now, over and over again, the rains would come. And over and over again, little Firebird would complain to his mama. But one day, when a huge storm rolled in, his mama had a different answer. ‘It's up there waiting for you. But you have to go see it for yourself.'

“Now Firebird was scared. He hadn't used his wings much at
all
. Yet up he went into the great unknown.”

I looked at my husband. His face was somber. His eyes intent.

“Danger,” I said. “Turbulence.”

Billy gave me a half smile. I watched the rise and fall of his chest. His breathing that told me that, like a child, he was right there in the moment of the story.

I looked at my sketch pad, to the wide-eyed oriole I had fashioned from colored pencils and imagination. “But instead of answers, he was met with lightning, thunder, and howling wind. He feared the storm would rip him apart. He was on the verge of turning back when . . .” I looked at Billy. “. . . it happened. He broke through the clouds. And there it was: The sun, more beautiful than ever. And in that moment, it all became clear. No storm could take the sun away. The sun was
always
shining.”

I tore the page from the pad, slipped it toward Billy. “It was as constant as his mother's love. All he needed to see it was a little ‘walk on the clouds.'”

Billy looked at my drawing and then back up to me. He was proud of me. Proud of my ability to tell my stories. Proud to call me his wife. As proud as I was to call him my husband.

I looked back at the fire. Watched it lick away at the night air.

“Not bad,” Billy finally said. “For a start.”

I felt my heart smile before it reached my face. “I should have known you'd say something like that.”

Billy grinned. “I love it. Best one yet, didn't I tell you?”

“You keep that drawing for me, you hear?”

“I'll put it in my wallet. Carry it everywhere I go.”

The flames popped.

“Sam, you gotta write this. Every story you write gets better, but this one is the best. Seriously. Write it. Promise me.”

“All right,” I said. “I promise.”

Three days later
the rains came. By the second day it seemed that somewhere out there a man named Noah ought to be building an ark. Late one afternoon, after putting in an already difficult day, Billy got called in to work, as we knew he would.

“Don't wait up,” he said, tucking the white hard hat under his arm. “I'm probably gonna be awhile.”

“I won't,” I said. But I knew I would.

It was about ten o'clock when I received the call from the police officer over in Nashville telling me I needed to come down to a neighborhood known as the Commons, to a small grocery store called Murphy's. He said there had been an accident involving Billy, and he gave me the address.

“Is he all right?” I asked, already jumping into a pair of riding boots I kept by the front door.

“You just need to come on down. That's all I know to tell you right now, Mrs. Crawford.”

I ran out of the door and into the pouring rain, not bothering with an umbrella. Once inside the car, I was soaked through and through, but I didn't care. My hands shook as I tried to start the car. I dropped the keys to the floorboard, had to retrieve them in the dark. When I finally got the car started, I jerked it into gear and bounced over the ruts in our driveway. I was doing close to forty-five by the time I drove through the gate.

Usually Nashville is a thirty-minute drive. That night it was more like an hour. An hour of shaking uncontrollably, in spite of the self-reassuring prayers I spoke aloud, telling God to make it all right. Once inside the city limits, I plugged my GPS navigator into the cigarette lighter and typed in the address while waiting at a red light. The system told me I was only five minutes away. Five minutes from knowing what I know now. Five minutes from my life never being the same again.

I saw the reflection of flashing red lights before anything else, each one running across the dark, rain-drenched buildings like mice scurrying from a cat. I parked the car as close as I could get, and then got out and ran toward the ambulance and police cars.

I remember now how my mind registered seeing the ambulance, thinking it was a good sign. If Billy were dead, I reasoned, there'd be no need for an ambulance. Its presence surely meant he was alive. Maybe he'd been shocked by a live wire. Or fallen off a ladder. He'd spend time in the hospital, but after a week or so he'd be back at home. Then back to work. Life would return to normal. Surely . . .

I reached the building where a dark-green awning with the words
Murphy's Liquor Store
hung over the door and the front stoop. Bars were on the windows, painted black and slick with rain. Handmade signs pressed up against the glass from the inside were barely readable. But my mind, it grasped it all. Every word. Every advertisement. Even the graffiti spray-painted next to the front door.

I could see people standing in clusters, staring toward an alleyway, so I walked quickly toward them.

“Whoa there.” A hand grabbed my shoulder.

I turned to face a police officer, who stared down at me. “I'm—I'm Samantha Crawford,” I told him. “I got a call. Something about my husband?”

His face, young and red-cheeked, grew somber. He looked over my shoulder. “Oh, yes, ma'am. You need to come with me.”

His hand slipped authoritatively around my forearm. He drew me along until we stood at the mouth of the alley, alongside several other officers, their breath visible in the cold night air. The rain was relentless, making it difficult to see. I wiped my hands across my eyes and focused on what lay ahead.

Yellow police tape sectioned off the scene. A female investigator, blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail, was kneeling under an umbrella and holding a camera. The flash went off, exposing the body of a man lying face up, half covered by a blanket.

“Billy!”

I started to run to my husband, but the officer who had led me there held me back.

“Wait up, ma'am. That's a crime scene. There's Detective Miller,” he said, pointing to a middle-aged man with swept-back silver-gray hair. He wore only dress pants, a shirt, and a dark sports jacket, yet somehow appeared unaffected by the weather or the chaos around him. “He's in charge. You gotta wait here till he tells you something.”

The shaking deep inside turned violent. A crime scene, the officer called it. This was more than a shock by a live wire or a fall from a ladder. The axis on which my world spun was being torn from its place. “That's . . . that's my
husband
!” I said, pointing.

“Here,” the officer said, taking off his jacket and wrapping it around me. “Just wait right here. I'll see what I can find out for you.”

I methodically slipped my arms into the oversized jacket as he went to talk with the detective. I took careful steps forward, cautious not to draw attention from the other officers. I wanted to be—
had
to be—close enough to hear what was happening. To see. But even from only a few yards away, I wasn't near enough to see Billy's face, to know if he were alive or dead.

Another man dressed much like Detective Miller joined the detective where Billy lay. They both squatted.

“What have we got?” I heard Miller shout over the rain.

“One shot to the chest. Large caliber.” He pointed to the wall behind him. “Lodged back there.” He pointed to where I stood with the other officers, the emergency medical responders, and the growing number of bystanders speaking in hushed tones. “Here's the strange part: I got three more shots down here.”

“Witness reports?”

“Only that the shooter was wearing a red hoodie.”

“Surprise, surprise,” Miller said, standing again.

The officer who'd been with me stood to the side of the detectives, waiting. The three of them spoke for a moment before the officer turned and nodded in my direction. I watched Miller's head droop like a sad old dog's. His hands went to his hips, fingers splayed close to the metal badge hooked to his belt on one side, a holstered gun on the other. He took several steps toward me, walking with a slight limp. I focused on a single button of his white shirt beneath the dark blue jacket. I could see that the rain had plastered it to his barrel chest. He looked up and our eyes met, just as the second detective reached for the blanket and pulled it over Billy's face.

“No!”

My legs buckled, and my knees crashed against the asphalt.

I remember nothing else.

Chapter Three

One Year Later

The last thing
I wanted to do was attend a black-tie affair at the Opryland Hotel, where I was being honored for my “continued work toward children's literacy.” I didn't want to deal with all that pressed white linen and crystal gleaming under massive, low-lit chandeliers. Or the scent of fine perfumes and men's cologne, rich aromatic coffee and chocolate desserts swirled with raspberry sauce. The crowd of people, dressed to the nines, sitting straight-backed on padded seats. The calling of my name, the walk to the stage, the standing at the podium where I'd be forced to give a speech I'd been working on for weeks.

I wanted nothing to do with any of it.

I'd gone through scads of paper trying to come up with something appropriate to say. Looking at the wadded discards overflowing my trash can, it was a wonder I'd ever made a dime as a writer. The words simply wouldn't come. I couldn't string ten of them together to form a coherent thought. Nothing about the award—which was for a book I'd written before Billy died and had been published about a month after—made sense. So I'd written a book and managed to give a few thousand of them away to the public schools. So what?

It wasn't like it had cost me anything much. Not like losing my husband. My life. My reason for breathing. I'd been so enmeshed in my misery, I'd hardly considered the impact of the gesture. Then I received a call from my agent telling me about the award banquet.

“You have to do this, Sam,” Jonathan said, a few days before the event. “You
have
to get out, and this is as good a place as any to start.”

“I can't,” I told him. “Not yet.”

“It's been a year, Sam. It's time.”

“I don't know. I don't think I can.”

“Do it, Sam. For me. For Billy.”

Sending a simple “thank you” via my agent was not enough. And, as Jonathan had said, not going was out of the question.

He had given me an idea, though. Eventually I wrote the speech to focus more on Billy. As I placed the emphasis on my one true inspiration and the gifts
he'd
left behind, the words poured out of me and onto paper so easily. I was amazed I hadn't thought of it sooner.

At the banquet, after a dinner of steak, twice-baked potatoes, asparagus, and the chocolate cake with raspberry sauce I'd come to expect at such events, I pretended to listen as my publisher eloquently introduced me. When Shannon called my name, I rose amid the applause, lifted my black gown to just over my ankles, and climbed the steps to the stage.

I kept my focus on the podium until I reached it and then smiled out over the sea of faces who smiled back at me. Many of them I'd never seen before this night. Some of them I knew, of course. Some I knew well. Those were the ones who tilted their chins just enough to give me encouragement. It was the support I needed to even begin speaking.

I took a deep breath, unrolled the two-dollar bill I'd kept clutched in my hand since Shannon had begun her speech, and spread it out before me. Behind me, a large screen displayed the cover of my latest work. My
last
work.

Other than the speech I was about to give, I hadn't written a single word since Billy died.

I took a second breath, squared my shoulders. “What an honor it is to be here,” I began. “I'm still not certain how a children's author receives such a prestigious award for giving away a few books.”

I paused long enough to allow the polite laughter—a kind offering, I thought—to subside. “Everyone here seeks to make a difference in this world. My husband, Billy, would have been right at home with all of you. This evening I'd like to share Billy's idea about changing the world with
love
.”