Dreaming August (12 page)

“Guess you did.”

No Augie. No Henny. Benny spotted her scooter on the narrow cemetery road, Charlie’s truck parked behind it. Further down the road, a sky-blue minivan. Otherwise, not a soul. None that she could actually see, anyway. Or sense. She held out her hands.

“Give me a hand, will you?”

Charlie helped her to her feet, holding her steady while her cramped muscles loosened. “What are you doing at this end of the cemetery, anyway?”

Benny brushed herself off, pretended he hadn’t asked a question and instead asked one of her own. “How’d you get so wet?”

“Water valve burst.”

“Sounds like fun.” She laughed. “It’s getting late. I’d better get home.”

Charlie watched her out of the corner of his eye, but he made no more comment about where she’d been sleeping. Dreaming. Communing with the dead. Whatever it was Benny had been doing, it left her exhausted, and she wondered if it was the same kind of soul-weariness Augie and Harriet experienced. She thanked Charlie, promised she’d come by soon to see renovations he made to the old farmhouse on County Line Road, and started up her scooter thankfully still there and not turned into a motorcycle and gone.

Firefly-seeds

The habit of always having a change of clothes on hand, a lesson learned as a boy always staining, tearing or otherwise destroying them, never left him. Getting the back of his father’s hand hadn’t been enough to teach him, but his mother’s tears while she scrubbed or mended were.

The first time Daniel Greene the elder smacked his wife for not raising a more conscientious son, Dan Greene the younger learned to leave a spare set tied up tight in a garbage bag, hidden in the hollow of a tree in the woods behind his house. When he ruined too many pairs of jeans to go unnoticed, he started changing into the already-ruined stuff before going off with his friends. No one said anything about his ragged clothes. Henny. Tim. Charlie. They knew enough not to.

Dan shoved the wet stuff into his duffle bag, tossed it into the back seat of the minivan. His sister’s car was, in his opinion, the most hideous thing he’d ever seen on four wheels. Sky blue. Rusted out wheel wells. Cracks and tears in the upholstery, and carpeting stinking like unwashed gym socks. She sold her Land Rover after Paul left, and bought the cheapest thing still running. When Mabel cried earlier that morning, mortified for her mother to pick up her friends in the blue beast, Dan had given his sister the keys to his pickup and told her to make sure the kids didn’t eat in it.

“I just had it detailed,” he’d grumbled. Evelyn had kissed his cheek. Mabel hugged him around the waist. Joss didn’t seem to notice, his eyes being glued to the game he was playing on his mother’s cell phone.

Dan rolled down all the windows, one at a time, and got into the driver’s seat. It took a couple tries, but the van started up. The car was pointed in the wrong direction to take the quick, if illegal, way out. The cemetery road was a one-way, something Dan always found amusing. It was late. Few ever visited. Still, he followed the rules and drove the whole circuit through.

Well-spaced trees dotted tranquil, rolling lawns. Weller Woods hugged the whole west end, the oldest part of the cemetery. Most of the earliest settlers were laid to rest in that shaded sanctuary up against the wood. The Bossy family, the Wellers—they had whole sections reserved for them and their descendants, but they were not the oldest residents of Bitterly Cemetery. Many of those had no markers, having been buried on family land before there was a cemetery. Only one was marked, as far as Dan knew, and he did only because his best friend was buried beside her.

The car rolled to a stop where the sun still shined down on a wide expanse of lawn looking a little parched for the heat and broken sprinkler system. Dan let it idle. A discreet metal marker read: Rolling Green 183. The familiar debate ruffled through his head, to the same outcome. He switched off the ignition. He got out of the car. Three rows back, he found her.

Miranda Irene Greene

April 16, 1952 ~ July 7, 1993

“Hi, Mom.”

He said no more. Never felt the need. Dan simply bowed his head and remembered her smile, the touch of her hand, the way her hair curved under her chin in a perfect, platinum wave. He conjured her peaches-and-cream skin and the pale green eyes she shared with him. Whenever the bruising bloomed in these memories, Dan forced it back. He wouldn’t remember her as his father’s victim. She deserved better, even if she never believed so herself.

The sound of a car rolling slowly by turned his head. Dan returned Charlie’s wave, could not help smiling as the truck wound away. Their fearsome foursome got whacked in half when Henny died and Tim moved away, but if he had to choose which of them he’d stick close with, it was Charlie.

As he turned away from his mother’s grave, he noticed Charlie’s brake lights brighten. He slowed, stopped, and only then did Dan see Benny’s scooter in the shaded part of the cemetery where all the best families took up space. He hurried to the van where he could spy on her from its safe anonymity. Charlie and Benny talked. He helped her to rise. A moment later, she was zipping beyond the shady wood and out of sight. Charlie’s truck remained visible only a moment longer. Dan started the van and drove slowly, stopping where he thought she’d been parked.

What was Benny doing at this end of the cemetery? When they were kids, she used to hang out in the woods with her friends, but she wasn’t a kid anymore. Her friends were grown or gone and no longer frequenting such places. Dan left the car idling, and got out. He picked his way among the tombstones, looking for some sign or reason for her to be there. Why in the heck did he care anyway? Dan chuckled to himself. When it came to Benedetta Marie Grady, there was no sense in his head. Nothing more to it than that.

All the headstones were Wellers, dating back to the 1800s when Bitterly became incorporated as a town. Dan knew little of the history, but he did know the Bossy and Weller families were the rich folk of their day. They owned the general store, the lumberyard, and any other business that served to put Bitterly on any map. They built the best houses, kept the best land, and often served on what sparse government existed in so small a town. There were stories, rumors, even a few scandals involving the families. Dan had no patience for gossip. As far as he was concerned, most, if not all of town history was a load of gossip made bigger by long winters and bored denizens. But one could not live in Bitterly without knowing the names on the tombstones he searched now for the one Benny had been visiting.

Back along the wrought-iron fence were the newer graves. There hadn’t been a Weller descendant in Bitterly since 1976, and he only knew that because his sister and her then-husband bought the house from a family member long-gone from Bitterly, back in the mid-nineties. The family held onto the house for whatever reasons they had, but in the end, none of the Wellers wished to return to the town their family founded. The house was in bad shape, but Paul did right by it, Dan had to give him that. It was under his supervision the place was restored to what it had once been, right down to every odd quirk of the original builder.

Dan noticed the grass a bit flattened on one of those newer graves, wove his way to the site itself. The ground was definitely disturbed, as if someone had reclined in the grass. No wrappers or flowers or anything else to mark Benny’s presence in evidence, Dan was nonetheless certain this was the right spot when he read the names on the tombstone.

Katherine Weller Fiore

September 13, 1919 ~ January 28, 1976

*

August Fiore

July 4, 1908 ~ July 7, 1980

The cold, slithery feeling started at the base of Dan’s neck, worked up his scalp. She had blurted the name, pulled out the lie to toss at him, to get him to back off. He’d known it from the start, even if it didn’t hurt any less. But there was a reason she’d picked the name, and Dan was looking at it.

Dan went back to the minivan and put it into drive, but he kept his foot on the brake. He rested his head to the steering wheel. “You were wrong, Charlie,” he whispered. “Dead wrong.”

Letting go a long exhale, he let up on the brake and rolled away. Benny hadn’t come looking for him the night of Mabel’s party. She came for the same reason she had been visiting this old-not-ancient grave.

Were there handprints in the concrete?

Why had she wanted to know? Bits fell into place. August Fiore built the house Dan lived in with his sister and her kids. His was the name Benny gave as her pretend-boyfriend. Benny had fallen asleep on his grave. No matter how he rearranged the bits, they simply did not form any kind of picture Dan could decipher. Something about this grave and those handprints meant something to her, and he was going to figure out what.

Daniel Greene played the fool, but he wasn’t one. Charlie might have been wrong about the reason she showed up at a party already over, but Dan hadn’t imagined her laughter, her smile, or the easy silence between them.

The Cricket Knows Her

Benny’s hands didn’t shake putting the key into the lock, even if her insides felt like Jell-O. She entered her apartment and went straight to the couch flopping into it and closing her eyes. What was real? What was dreaming? And how much of either was her own brain insinuating itself into both?

What would have happened if she’d taken Henny’s hand and followed where he led? Would Charlie have found her dead on Augie’s grave? Or her husband’s? The thought shuddered through her. Until Henny-in-her-dream held out his hand for hers, she hadn’t realized just how much she didn’t want to follow him into death, and it hurt almost as much as him dying in the first place.

Tears stung. Benny let them fall. She tried to tell herself it was because there were no guarantees that she would find her way to Henny. Augie’s wife wasn’t there to greet him when he died, after all. The lie tasted like metal in her mouth. The painful, glorious truth was Benny wanted to live.

She wanted to see her little cricket grow up, become a woman, and leave her. She wanted to love someone and be loved in return so the event was bittersweet and full of pride, not the end of meaning in her life. Those were the things she had wanted with Henny, things no longer possible. With him. But Benny had to admit, at last, she still wanted them.

Arms over her eyes, she stifled her sobs. The last thing she needed was her mother to come running. In her state, she would spill it all and that wasn’t something Benny wanted to do just yet. She tried to think about Savannah, about Augie or Harriet or anything besides this simple, sincere wish to not only live, but to live happily, and couldn’t. Shoving a throw pillow over her face, she screamed into it.

An arm slipped across her shoulders. Benny dropped the pillow. Nearly jumped out of the couch. Something fluttered up as if tossed, and to the ground. Peter pulled back, but his concerned eyes stayed on her.

“Sorry.”

“You scared the crap out of me.”

“You okay?”

“No.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Peter picked up the square bit of paper. He placed it gently onto her lap. “You sure?”

Benny looked down at the ultrasound picture, her cricket floating oblivious, her bits and parts decipherable only because Savannah had pointed them out to her. Peter nudged her.

“Girly stuff?”

Her eyes shifted to him. “Peter, I…”

“You left it in my car,” he said. “I wasn’t snooping or anything.”

“I didn’t say you were.” She picked up the picture, smiled a watery smile. “It’s a girl.”

Peter put his arm across her shoulder. “Do I have to ask who her father is?”

“Probably not.” Benny nestled into his shoulder. “It was just the one time. One time in six years, and I get pregnant.”

“You sorry?”

“No!”

“Then why are you being so secretive? It happens, Benny. It’s not like you have to marry him or anything.”

“I know. But…”

“But?”

“I might be kind of in love with him.”

“Benny.” Peter shifted, took her shoulders in both hands and shook her gently. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I know,” she wailed. “That’s why I haven’t told anyone. Why I’m afraid to.”

Peter quirked an eyebrow. “Not sure I follow you.”

“Henny. My husband? How can I possibly love Dan Greene? I’m a fraud and an oath-breaker.”

“Oath-breaker? You really are a dork.”

“Shut up, Peter.”

“You’re also an idiot.”

“Why am I an idiot?”

“Because that’s not what I was getting at. Jeez, Ben. Henny’s been gone for six years. Can you possibly believe this is what he wants? You never loving anyone? Ever?”

Benny grimaced. “It’s what I promised him. Forever.”

“And?”

“And falling in love with someone else breaks my promise.”

Peter chuffed. “Does not.”

“How do you figure that?”

“Did Ma and Dad stop loving Tim when you were born? Or you guys less when I was?”

“That’s different. We’re their children.”

“It’s not different.” Peter took her hands, kissed one, then the other. “You were always my best playpal, Ben. I still get that all-lit up feeling inside when I see you. Call it a Pavlovian response of childhood. So when I say this, please know it’s with all the love in my heart, okay?”

She sniffed. Nodded.

“You’re dumb as a box of rocks.”

“A dork, an idiot, and now dumb as a box of rocks. Gee, thanks.”

Peter laughed and hugged her roughly. “Because you know love doesn’t just go away. You, more than most people, are aware that a heart isn’t a finite space. You’re always going to love Henny, but it doesn’t mean you can’t love someone else, too.”

“Doesn’t it?” She hiccupped. “I’m afraid to find out.”

Peter slumped back into the couch. “What are you going to do about Dan?”

“I’ll tell him.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Before you go to North Carolina, or after?”