Where the Broken Lie (2 page)

May this room stand forever.

Such a beautiful place, this home. I’m beginning to feel connected to something for the first time in weeks.

Inside, Grandma and Grandpa are sitting in the living room, doing what they do: her knitting in her chair and him reading a magazine with a hooked fish on the cover. The television isn’t on, but the local news blares from the kitchen radio. Savory smells float in from the kitchen.

Grandma puts her knitting to the side and greets me with a hug. “I was beginning to wonder if you was lost.”

“Hi, Grandma.” I bend to kiss her. “No, not lost, just taking a look around, you know. Those back stairs could use some paint.”

“Yep, it’s on your list,” she says.

“List?”

Grandpa rises with one strong hand extended, the other clasped on my shoulder. “Oh, she’s got a whole list of things for you to do.” He tips back in an exaggerated manner and looks up at me as if he’s staring at a California Redwood. “My goodness, I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having to look up at you, Tuck. At least I’m still better looking.”

“No arguments there,” I say, enduring Grandpa’s overly firm handshake. “So what’s this list about, Grandma?”

“Your list of chores,” she says. “You didn’t think you was going to board here for free, did you, Tuck?”

She laughs, and it’s 
her
 laugh. High pitched and bursting, as if she’s gotten a love pinch on the behind. That’s how Grandma Gaines always laughs. As if something inside her can’t be contained.

“No, I suppose not, Grandma. So I’m painting the back stairs, what else do you have planned for me?”

“One thing at a time, dear. One thing at a time.”

… so Tucker is back in Willow Grove. Not for the first time, of course, but it had been a while. And it always made him nervous. Even now. Seeing Tucker meant being reminded of Katie Cooper and everything that happened back then. That overplayed nightmare memory still so fresh in his mind and in the collective mind of Willow Grove … 

The next morning, with Grandma knitting and Grandpa tinkering with something in the garage, I go off on my own. I’m worn out from chasing my racing thoughts, so I try to walk away from them instead.

I don’t get far.

I stop in the middle of Madison Street and quietly watch as a man I once knew weeds his flower garden. On hands and knees, clawing and scratching at earth with a harnessed vigor, he tosses the flower killers over his shoulder with something like ruthlessness. At least that’s how I see it. To most, an old man tending his garden represents peaceful nurturing. But when I see Howard Cooper, I remember his beautiful daughter lying inside an open casket with her hands folded unnaturally across her chest, which I really did see. And I see her violent death, which I did not see but imagined a thousand times.

He stands, and he’s not as tall as he once was. He takes off his cap and reveals what few hairs the years had left him with. From a side pocket of his overalls, he pulls out a red handkerchief and uses it to wipe his brow and his near-bald head. He turns in my direction and squints at me as hard as one might squint at the sun. I want to call out to him but can’t decide whether I should refer to him as Mr. Cooper or Howard. It would be silly for me to call him Mr. Cooper, so I quickly rehearse saying, “Howard” under my breath. I should call him Howard. I’m a grown man, after all.

“Hi, Mr. Cooper,” I say.

“Well, I’ll be,” he says with a smile that crept in from a memory. He tosses his gloves on the ground and waves me over.

“It’s good to see you, Mr. Cooper.”

“It’s good to be seen.”

He keeps his eyes on me but sends his voice inside the house. “Mother, come on out here in the garden. I want to show you how things have grown.”

I smile and look down where I see a feather laying at my feet. No, not
at
my feet.
On
my feet. My breath catches in my throat and I feel my smile fade.

Mr. Cooper puts his hand on my back and walks me toward his house. But not before I bend down and pick up that feather.

A month after losing Ethan, Tammy and I were desperate to find some sort of meaning in his death. The universe owed us something it didn’t seem willing to pay. And as the universe consistently fell short of our expectations, we consistently lowered them.

In our never-ending quest for signs and wonders, Tammy and I had visited Lady Denise, a local psychic. She lived out in the country in a two-story farmhouse shingled in an uninspired brown. The roof was checkered with missing tiles and had a slight left-to-right downward slant. The house was surrounded by several small shacks and a large hay barn that at one time must have been proud with red but now stood gray and humbled. The gravel driveway curved around to the back of the house where we saw any variety of animals wandering the yard. Cats, chickens, a pig, wild turkeys, goats, geese, and even llamas. On the far side of the lot was a kennel that housed two chesty Rottweilers who seemed ready to dispel us of any “bark worse than bite” notions we might have had.

We got out of the car and walked toward the house where the front door swung loose from its top hinge. Invisible chimes jingled, and the gentle wind softly proclaimed. The dogs stopped barking and Lady Denise suddenly appeared before us in the doorway with a black lab at her side.

“Oh, hi. I’m Tucker Gaines, and this is my wife, Tammy. I called yesterday.”

She was barefoot and dressed in blue jeans and a white t-shirt. She had long white-blonde hair, bright red fingernails and toenails, and contradicted the image of a psychic I had in my head.

“Have a seat at the table,” she said with a welcoming gesture. “I’m going to get something to drink. Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you,” Tammy and I both said.

We moved to the dining room where a tabby cat slinked over and curled itself around my leg. The house was cluttered and gave me an uneasy feeling that kept me from sitting down or touching anything. The rooms felt old, and rays of sunlight exposed the dust that hung in the air. On one light-blue dining room wall hung a painting of a close-eyed Virgin Mary holding a baby and resting on a cloud surrounded by an army of angels.

The front door slammed shut behind us. We spun around to see that Lady Denise had somehow crept back into the room without our noticing and was already sitting on the opposite side of the dining room table, a half-empty glass of lemonade in front of her.

“You are being followed,” she informed us without smile or sinister. “Please, have a seat.”

Suddenly, I felt silly and sinful. What was I really expecting to happen here? I glanced around for a crystal ball.

There was nothing dramatic in our forty-five minutes with Lady Denise, but it did bring us peace somehow. She had a quiet, soothing manner and commanded trust when she spoke. Probably because the things she spoke were things we wanted to hear. As we were leaving, Lady Denise put her hand on my left wrist and, eyes bright with conviction, told me to watch for feathers.

“Feathers will be Ethan’s way of letting you know he is with you.”

“Thank you for this,” I said awkwardly. “How much do we owe you?”

“Nothing. I don’t charge for grief counseling. It’s my way of giving thanks for my gifts.”

One evening a week later, I sat alone in my basement dizzy on vodka. Any sense of peace and acceptance that Lady Denise had managed to instill in me was long gone. Her words and comfort diluted with drink until they lost all potency. A sudden fury welled up from inside me and I began punching the pillow I had been clutching. When my rage burned out, I tossed the pillow to the floor and sat back against the couch. Then, right in front of my face, one perfect tiny white pillow-feather drifted down and landed in my open palm as soft and as light as an answered prayer.

Mrs. Cooper pours me lemonade from a glass pitcher. Her dark auburn hair has thin streaks of gray, which run exactly where you would paint them were you the painter. She puts the pitcher down on a small wrought iron table and tucks some of that lovely hair behind her ears the same way her daughter used to. The same way my daughter does now. The same way every little girl ever has. The corners of Betty Cooper’s mouth used to curl upward in a beautiful Mona Lisa sort of way, and I used to wonder what secrets must be hidden away in there. I say that they used to curl upward because I notice while eating her cookies and drinking her lemonade that they don’t anymore. There’s a stormy torment that clouds her face these days. She’s every bit the small town beauty she had been years back, but behind her glassy green eyes there is a sadness that had not always been there. A gentle anguish where there had once been a flowing peace.

“We heard about your loss, Tucker,” she says, sitting with Mr. Cooper and me at the table on the back porch. “And we’re so sorry.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Cooper.”

“You were always such a good boy,” she says with a shake of her head and a frown that says “shame on the world.”

“You’re good people, too, Mrs. Cooper,” I say. “And so was Katie.”

Then we talk about Katie, and I tell them the story of the first time I met their little girl.