Wedding Ring (21 page)

He frowned. “Please tell me you’re not talking about vigilante justice.”

“I’ve thought of it.” She watched his frown deepen. “And you haven’t?”

“In the early days, yes. I wanted to kill him with my bare hands. That’s normal enough. I’ve heard other parents who lost a child that way or worse say the same thing.”

“But you’re over that?”

“I’m over wanting to strangle him, yes. I haven’t forgiven him.”

“Are you trying to?”

“I’m just trying to find peace.” He paused. “What did you mean about doing something?”

“I don’t know yet. I’m not talking about anything illegal.”

He seemed to relax a little. “It would be healthier not to do anything at all.”

“How can you be so ready to leave this behind? Are you in such a hurry to move on to the rest of your life that you’ve forgotten the part you already lived?”

“We can’t bring her back, Tessa, no matter what we do. Holding on to all the bad memories won’t help. You’ve gotten rid of the good ones, but you’re holding on to the bad ones so tightly they’re destroying you. You have to let go and make room for the good ones again, and for a future. We deserve one. Do you think Kayley would want us to be unhappy?”

“I doubt that Kayley ever thought about it. She was five. Death was just a word to her until a drunk confused the accelerator with the brake, the road with the sidewalk.”

Mack leaned forward. “She loved us the way only a child that age can. Making us happy was her joy. She’s gone on to something else. I don’t know what. I wish I did. I wish my faith was so simple and secure that I believed in a heaven where she’s watching over us. But on the off chance it’s true, is this what you want her to see? You’ll break her heart, Tessa. You’re breaking mine.”

She couldn’t look at him anymore. This was the kind of conversation he always needed to have, and the kind that made her stomach roll. He wanted to talk about feelings and moving forward. She wanted to talk about finding justice.

And if they couldn’t communicate, what was the point of their marriage? Why hadn’t they pulled the plug? After all, he had her replacement waiting in the wings. Why was he still trying?

Why was
she?

“Don’t do anything foolish,” Mack said. “You’re not rational about this, you know you’re not.”

“Are we talking about Robert Owens or our marriage?”

“Let’s not mix the two.”

She gave him one last glance. “But they
are
mixed. They’re so twined around each other that I don’t know where one ends and the other begins. Robert Owens killed our daughter, and now he’s killing our marriage.”

“No, we’re doing
that
all by ourselves.” He rested his hand on hers for the briefest of moments before she pulled away.

“Thanks for including me this morning,” she said stiffly, reaching for the door handle.

“Don’t go yet. Stay here with me today. I don’t have a busy morning. I’ll cancel my appointments.”

She hesitated. What would they do? Make love? Talk more about things that should never be discussed? Could they go out together like two normal people, take a walk, perhaps, or browse through a museum? Watch a movie as if their own lives weren’t drama enough?

“We can just be together,” he said, as if answering her unspoken questions. “No strings. And no more talk of Owens. I miss you. I miss being with you.”

For a moment she was tempted. Perhaps this was the only chance to find their way back together, one hour spent in each other’s company, then another. One laugh, then another. One meal eaten without recrimination, followed by another, then another…

In the end, though, she couldn’t bear it. Because no matter what they did together, there would always be an empty chair, a pause in conversation as they waited for a childish interjection, the desperate yearning for the high-pitched laughter of a little girl.

In the end, she was too much of a coward to search for Mack again.

“I have to get back.” She opened her door. “A neighbor’s coming this afternoon to see Gram, and I ought to be there. Gram has so little patience, I’m never sure what she’s going to say.”

“And your mother can’t handle that?”

“You know my mother. The two of them will get into a fight, guest or no guest.”

He didn’t try to stop her. “All right. Give them both my love.”

“I will.” She was already standing on the driveway when he spoke again.

His words were soft, but she heard them anyway. “If you ever get tired of avoiding me, Tessa, you know where I live.”

Cissy wore a striped top that looked like a beach umbrella over the bulge that was her baby-to-be. She had pinned her blond hair off her neck, but damp ringlets adorned her nape and forehead. Tessa thought she looked like the poster girl for corrupted innocence, Hester Prynne in her final months of confinement.

“Gram’s upstairs getting some supplies together,” Tessa said as Cissy lumbered up to the porch. “She’ll be down in a bit.” She lowered her voice. “She’s really looking forward to this, no matter what she tells you. She’s been sorting through threads and needles and patterns since lunch.”

Cissy took the same chair she had last time, almost as if she had claimed it as her own. “I’ve been looking forward to it, too. I really want to make the baby a quilt. I don’t know if it’s a boy or girl. I told the doctor not to tell me, and Zeke says he don’t care. But I think maybe he does.”

Tessa was helpless not to respond. “He wants a boy?”

“No, ma’am, a girl. He says he’d like a girl that looked like me.” Cissy’s smooth skin turned a deeper peach. “He’s a good man. I hope you don’t think different about him.”

“It’s not my place to think anything.” Tessa heard how rigid, how cold, she sounded, and that disconcerted her. She was still immersed in her conversation with Mack, even though it had occurred hours before. And she hadn’t slept well last night. The nightmare had returned, and she had awakened at two in the morning to the terrifying squealing of brakes. She had never gotten back to sleep.

She tried to warm her voice. “What I mean is that this is your life, Cissy, and nobody else’s.”

“I know, but it worries me that people will think he’s not good and decent, on account of my living with him and having his baby.”

Tessa decided to avoid that minefield. She was too exhausted for confidences, too emotionally battered to get involved. She searched for a safer subject and hoped her grandmother would arrive soon. Nancy, busy sorting linens upstairs, wouldn’t rescue her.

Cissy found a subject before she could. “I brought back that book you loaned me.
Tess
. It’s a pretty name. Did your mother name you after the girl in the story?”

Tessa grimaced. “I hope not. No, Tessa’s just a nickname.” Nancy had chosen the more ostentatious Teresa Michelle, but Billy had shortened it to Tessa the first time he saw his baby daughter.

Cissy reached into the canvas bag she’d brought with her. She took out a square of neatly folded fabric and an old tomato pincushion studded with straight pins. Then she removed the book and held it out to Tessa.

Tessa hadn’t expected to see Hardy’s book again so soon, if ever. She was touched that Cissy had been so prompt and faithful. She wished she had searched Helen’s motley book collection or the private stash she had brought with her for something that was more likely to have been read.

“If you’d like, I could look for another book you might like better,” she said. “Gram has quite an assortment.”

“Oh, I liked that one just fine. It wasn’t the easiest book I ever read, but it made me think a lot, you know? And I like a book that does that.”

Tessa was surprised. “So you finished it.” She struggled not to make the words into a question.

“Last week. But I’ve been going through it some, looking for answers to some of the questions I had. So I held on to it a while. I hope that was okay? You didn’t need it sooner?”

“No. No…” Tessa settled back in her chair. The teacher Tessa MacRae was powerless to resist continuing. “What kind of questions?”

“Well, you know, the times were different then. I understand that. And I guess in England, at least then, people got stuck a lot right where they were and couldn’t really make changes…. I mean, a beggar couldn’t really turn himself into a prince.”

Except on the pages of Mark Twain. Tessa encouraged Cissy with a nod.

“But I think that being stuck was what Mr. Hardy, the writer, you know, that’s what he thought the world was all about. It didn’t seem to matter what Tess did or tried to do. Her fate was all decided. And who would believe that? I mean, if you can’t fix anything in your life, why would you want to go on living?”

Tessa figured an explanation was in order. “Hardy lived at a difficult time. The world was going through enormous changes. He got caught between rural village life, which had a rhythm and security of sorts, and industrialization, which made so many abrupt changes in what people did and thought that everything was more or less thrown into chaos. That helped make his writing…” Tessa searched for the right word.

“Gloomy?”

Tessa realized she was enjoying this, even as she was taking herself to task for getting involved. She had assumed that Cissy, because of her accent and grammar, even her status in life, would not be able to glean anything from the novel. Like too many of the people in Hardy’s work, Tessa’s own prejudices about class and education had affected her judgment.

“Gloomy,” Tessa admitted.

“You know, the world’s like that now. Look at life out here in the country. I bet if you asked your grandmother, she’d tell you that everything’s changing so fast there’s not much point in making plans based on the way things used to be. Take Zeke. Not so many years ago, he would have just taken over his daddy’s farm when Mr. Claiborne passed away. Well, him along with Gabe and Josh.”

“Gabe and Josh?”

“His older brothers. Gabe lives up the road, but he works with Mr. Claiborne, and Josh drives a truck, but he comes home when they need him. Anyway, there’s not enough work for the three of them all the time. Josh don’t care, but Gabe wants to keep farming. So that leaves Zeke with nothing to do.”

Tessa could hear the whooshing sound as she got sucked in further and further against her will. “That must be a problem for him.”

“Oh, no. No, it’s a good thing. See, Zeke don’t—doesn’t want to be a farmer. He wants to be a luthier.”

“I’m sorry, what does that mean?”

“He’s a musician himself, bluegrass and old-time mountain music. He can play anything. Guitar, fiddle, mandolin. But he wants to make instruments and repair them. He’s been training for the repair part with an old man over in West Virginia.”

“That must take a lot of skill.”

“It does. So see, even though things change, you can adjust and find your place and happiness. I looked up Mr. Hardy in the encyclopedia, and it said he was the son of a man who built houses. But he became a writer, didn’t he? He didn’t have to be what his father was. So why does he believe people can’t break away and be more than fate says they have to be?”

Tessa had simply loaned the girl a book. She had never expected this thoughtful analysis, or the way the story had brought out Cissy’s own concerns about her life.

“And another thing,” Cissy continued, before Tessa could answer. “I don’t think God punishes girls for the things men do to them.” She sat forward. “I don’t believe in that kind of God, even if Hardy did. God is good, even if men aren’t. God doesn’t make bad things happen. Nobody will ever make me believe he does! I was glad I wasn’t Tess. But I think I’m even gladder I’m not Thomas Hardy.”

The girl hadn’t had an easy life. The few things she’d said had confirmed that. Now she was pregnant out of wedlock, poor, unable to pursue the education she so obviously deserved. And still, she was God’s very own champion. Put Thomas Hardy and Cissy Mowrey in the same room, and Tessa would be forced to bet on Cissy.

Tessa realized a schoolmarmish response wasn’t what the girl needed, but she couldn’t venture more. “I don’t think he’s quite as unfeeling as you make him sound. I think Hardy was trying to show that Tess was pure both before and after the birth of her baby. Her fate might have been predetermined, but she wasn’t at fault. In that way his book was different from so many of the others written about that same time.”

“Maybe so, but the baby still died, didn’t she? And Tess dies, too.” Cissy looked distressed. “They kill her.”

Tessa couldn’t help herself. She saw how personal the discussion had become. She leaned over and touched Cissy’s hand. “You’re going to be fine, Cissy. Your baby’s going to be fine.”

Cissy swallowed hard and nodded.

“I think you’re a very intelligent young woman. Why don’t you put some of your thoughts in writing? It would help you organize them a little. You have so many good things to say.” Tessa sat back.

“Oh, no, ma’am, I can’t write very well. I mean, I never really learned how. My family moved so much, and I wasn’t in school as often as I should have been. So I didn’t really…”

“Why don’t you let me help you?” Tessa wasn’t sure who was more surprised at the offer, Cissy or herself.