A Month of Summer (40 page)

Slipping my finger under the flap, I split open the seam carefully, like a historian studying the fragile documents of some long-past civilization. Inside, there was a piece of paper—a single folded sheet of letterhead that seemed hardly worth all the drama. As I pulled it out, the envelope remained heavy in one corner, bulky, so that I knew something other than paper remained. I listened as the object scratched along the inside of the envelope. It landed in my palm, a single brass key, brown with the patina of time, slightly cool after its long stay in the darkness. There was no tag on the key, no explanation. I unfolded the paper.

The writing was my father’s, the sheet crisp with age, slightly yellowed around the edges, an old piece of company stationery. The letter was dated two years ago. The handwriting was the hurried yet crisp penmanship I remembered, not the shaky, barely intelligible scrawl from various file folders and notes now hidden from
those people
.

The text was short and to the point, the beginning unsentimental.

At the bottom of the page, the bank address and the box number had been carefully written. I stood staring at them, my mind spinning ahead, imagining driving the few blocks, entering the vault, taking down the box, opening it, and discovering whatever my father had left for me. What would be inside? Simple financial details, legal information, bank account numbers? Or would I find something more, something deeper, something I’d been searching for? Was the safe-deposit box merely a way of attending to affairs, or was it an extension of the desk drawer—final proof that I had always been close to the mind and heart of my father?

Closing my fingers around the key, I went into the house for my purse, hoping that today would be the day when all the questions were finally answered.

CHAPTER 24

Ouita Mae came to my room when she arrived from her trip back home. She’d taken a cab from the airport, because her grandson couldn’t go after her. An unexpected crisis had slowed down his day and delayed their trip over to Claude’s house. Ouita Mae didn’t seem to mind. She picked up the book and started reading to me while she waited. I tried again to bring up the subject of Claude’s photo album, but she thought I was talking about the things in Claude’s house.

Down the hall, the screaming woman had been quiet for hours. I suspected that Dr. Barnhill’s medical crisis was with her. I heard the chaplain pass by with family members, their voices mixing in the muted tones of grief and consolation. Shortly afterward, Dr. Barnhill came to collect his grandmother. He seemed in a fine mood. I wondered if this process of living and dying ever struck him as anything other than a day’s work—if the young ever consider that time is not an endless river, but the stream pouring from a potting can, the interior a mystery, the flow dependent on the hand of the gardener and the amount of water inside. So often, the grooming of obligations and future plans causes us to miss what blooms wild and untended in the present. If I’d learned one thing from the progression of Edward’s disease, it was that the people we love do not always stay with us as long as we’d like. I hoped that, in the midst of all his important commitments, young Dr. Barnhill would find some quiet moments to truly appreciate this time with his grandmother.

I heard Rebecca striding up the hall before she came in my door. I’d learned to recognize the quick, curt sound of her footsteps. The nurses didn’t normally move in such a hurry, nor did they wear sandals with hard soles that echoed against the tile.

“I need . . . ,” she said, then stopped, because Dr. Barnhill and Ouita Mae were in the room.

Dr. Barnhill was talking about the plans for my first home visit, perhaps as soon as next week. I expected Rebecca to be interested in that, but instead she breezed in and stood with her arms crossed, her body language conveying that she was impatient to be alone with me.

Dr. Barnhill went on reviewing my care plan. Rebecca seemed preoccupied, even though Dr. Barnhill was more attentive to her than he was to most people. I suspected that most men were probably that way with her. Rebecca was a pretty girl, but not in a fashion that seemed as if she worked at it. Today, her cheeks were flushed. Wisps of dark hair swirled around her face in wild disarray, as if she’d been rushing around and hadn’t had time to give thought to her appearance. She didn’t ask any questions about my tests or aftercare, which seemed odd. She merely listened until Dr. Barnhill was finished, and Ouita Mae said they should go because by now Claude would be waiting for them in the foyer. I suspected she could tell that Rebecca wasn’t in the mood for company.

“Cl-ood buk,” I said, as she was leaving.
Claude’s book.
“You tsssee Cl-ood book, tic-cher.”
Picture. Picture. The pictures in Claude’s book. See the boy on the yellow horse.
Frustration made my muscles tight, my lips uncooperative. “Cl-ood book.”

Ouita Mae smiled on her way out the door. “Oh, sure, sweetie. We’ll read some more tomorrow. Y’all have a good visit, now.”

Rebecca began pacing back and forth by the window. A knot formed in my chest as she braced her hands on her hips, let her head fall forward, drew a long breath. She waited until the squeal of Ouita Mae’s walker had disappeared down the hall, then she turned to me. Unmasked now, her expression was an unsettling mix of anxiety and pain.

Perhaps my premonition that morning had been correct. Was something wrong with Edward? Was he back in the hospital? Perhaps the prognosis was worse this time. “Utt? Whh-at?” I concentrated on forming the words correctly. “What rrrr-ong?”

“Did you know my father left a safe-deposit box for me?” She moved to the side of the bed and stood over me. “I need to know, Hanna Beth.” It wasn’t a plea, or an order, but something in between. “I found a safe-deposit box key with my name on it. In his computer desk.”

I shook my head. I knew he kept pictures of Rebecca and Marilyn, of his old life, in the top drawer of the metal desk. I never questioned him about it. He thought, perhaps, that I wasn’t aware of his secret place. He kept the key to the drawer in the garage among a box of discards. I knew which key it was, but I never took it out. I never opened the drawer. To do so would have been a betrayal. If I walked by the office when he had the drawer open, I always moved past and let him keep his thoughts, his memories, to himself. “Nnno.”

“Did you know what was in the box?”

I shook my head again, unsure how to feel. Edward had kept a safe-deposit box? Even when his memory began to fade, he hadn’t bothered to tell me he had left something stored away to be unearthed . . . when, exactly? By whom? Rebecca’s name was on the key.

I turned to Rebecca, reached for her, my hand hanging suspended in midair, the fingers still thin, but not so curled as before. “What boggs? What . . .”
What box? What did you find?
I wanted to scream it out.
What was he hiding there?

Her eyes narrowed as she took in another breath, tightened the barricade of her crossed arms. “Is Teddy my half brother?”

The simple question hung in midair like a volatile cocktail of gunpowder and nitroglycerin. I lay unable to do anything but watch it fall. “Whhh . . . wh-at?”

Rebecca’s eyes sparked with an unmistakable hint of Edward’s temper, threatening to ignite the unanswered question into something neither of us would be able to control. She was her father’s daughter—slow to grow angry, but now angry all the way. “You heard me, Hanna Beth. There was a letter in the box, dated two years ago, in my father’s handwriting. It explains . . . things . . . the past. Is it true that Teddy’s my father’s biological son?”

I lay mute, stunned. All these years, Edward had insisted that Rebecca was better off not knowing, that no good could come from her being told what had happened so many years ago, from her learning of Marilyn’s part in it. Had he left the key to the truth for her in the desk drawer, along with the old pictures and mementos from her childhood? Should I confirm it for her? What would happen if I did? What if she became angry, bitter with us all over again? What if this fractured the fragile bridge that had begun to bind us together as a family? We needed Rebecca now. We couldn’t manage without her.

Part of me suspected that she needed us, too. But how would she feel, learning these facts so soon after the death of her mother? What if Rebecca rejected them altogether? She loved Marilyn. She wouldn’t want to accept this version of history. It would be less painful to walk away, to leave us behind and preserve the picture of the mother she loved. The dead travel about our memories in a soft, white light. It’s never easy to recall that, while living, they had flaws, committed wrongs, made mistakes for which they never sought atonement.

“I want the truth.” There was no hint of Rebecca’s emotions in the statement, no sign of which way she wanted these revelations to fall. How could I explain the past without the words to tell the story?

I rested against the pillow, tried to think. I wished I were in the wheelchair. It would have been easier to face her sitting up.

Rebecca studied my face, gauging my reaction. Her eyes slowly filled with tears. “Is it true?” she choked out. “Is Teddy my father’s biological son?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

Rebecca shivered, swallowed hard, pressed her lips together to stop them from trembling. “In the letter, he wrote . . . he said . . . Did my mother know you were pregnant before she married my father?” Her disbelief was evident, even now. Her expression begged me to revise the past, to render Edward’s letter in the box merely the delusional ramblings of an old man whose memories were tangled like the string of a windblown kite.

I considered denying it. What good could possibly come of this now? Didn’t Marilyn—even Marilyn—have the right to be forgiven the mistakes of her youth?

But why should she be forgiven? All these years, she’d done everything she could to poison Rebecca against her father. She’d taught Rebecca to hate him, to hate me, hate Teddy.

“Did my mother
know
?” Rebecca repeated insistently. “Did she know?”

I took a breath, closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at her. “Yes.” It was barely audible, barely a word. That single utterance would change everything she understood about her life, the very soil in which she’d been grown.

I heard her stagger backward a step, sink into the chair Ouita Mae had pulled close while reading to me. “Before they married, was my father aware that you were pregnant?” I knew she was grasping, clinging to a last fervent hope, curling it protectively around the memory of her mother. She wanted to believe Edward and Marilyn had made the choice together—that they’d decided to marry despite my carrying Edward’s child.

She grasped the rail, waiting for an answer.

Slipping my hand over hers, I circled her fingers with mine. “No.”

A tiny sob escaped her, trembled against her lips. “Did she keep it from him? Is what he wrote in the letter true—did she and my grandmother have the lawyer tell you that my father denied all responsibility? ” Motionless, she waited, her attention focused on me, unwavering, her face filled with dread.

“Yes,” I whispered, and tightened my fingers around hers, holding on. This was the moment the secrets finally ended, allowing truth to save or to destroy. The choice was Rebecca’s.

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “My God, I can’t . . .” The sentence dissolved into a sob that doubled her over, shook her to the core. Bending forward, she covered her face with her hand.

“Ssshhh,” I whispered, squeezing her fingers. “Ssshhh, Rrr-becca. Hushhh, sss-weet. Ssshhh.”
It’s all right, I wanted to tell her. Don’t cry. It’s so long ago. It’s so long ago.
How many years had I dreamed of this moment? How many times had I imagined the truth coming out? I’d pictured the way it would feel, how it would taste. Revenge is sweet to the imagination, yet so often bitter in reality.

I had only to look at Rebecca’s face to know how deeply this wounded her. All these years, she’d been a pawn in this game of chess for which there seemed to be no good finish. A logical part of me had always known, just as Edward knew, that it would end this way. Giving her to one parent would mean destroying her love for the other.

“I was with her when she was dying,” Rebecca sobbed. “I was holding her hand. Why didn’t she tell me then? Why didn’t she tell me I had a brother?”

Even if I’d been able to form the words, I wouldn’t have known the right ones to deliver then. There were none. All I could do was stay there with her, hold on as she doubled forward, letting her forehead rest against our intertwined hands. I turned in the bed and stroked her hair, felt her tears on my skin, saw the wounded little girl who’d watched her belongings being moved from the house on Blue Sky Hill all those years ago. Edward’s daughter. My daughter. Our daughter.

The thought slipped through my mind, painted something warm and new over me, until my heart took on the color, too. For so long, Rebecca had been a shadow in our lives, a regret, a casualty of war, a loss my husband felt but didn’t speak of, a child to whom I felt obligated. An obligation. That’s what Rebecca had always been to me. Now I had become an obligation to her, and that was as much as I’d dared envision. I’d hoped she would take care of Edward, of Teddy, even me, out of a sense of duty to family. But now I touched upon a startling possibility, an awakening of something I’d never imagined, never been bold enough to fully realize.