Waiting for Sunrise (30 page)

Pam shrugged. “It wasn’t that, Mama. It was after that. Taking care of things. Helping with supper and getting the little ones ready for school and bedtime and . . . well, you know.”

Patsy cupped her daughter’s cheek in the palm of her hand. “You are very brave, my Pammie.”

Pam smiled weakly. “I’ve missed you, Mommy.”

Patsy gathered her daughter into her arms; both wept without care. “I missed you too. So very much.”

“And you won’t leave us again, will you?”

How could it be, Patsy wondered, that she’d done the very thing to her children she’d been angry at her mother for doing to her? Abandonment only bred anger. Confusion. And a strange sense of betrayal that one may not ever be able to get past. No matter how hard they tried. She’d lost her mother, her brothers, and now . . . her son. Her firstborn.

“Will you?” Pam asked again, and Patsy could hear the trepidation rising to a near panic.

Patsy squeezed her daughter and cried harder still. And wished, with all her might, she knew the answer.

33

With the funeral and Christmas behind them, Gilbert knew it was time to make his move. To do what he needed to do. To save himself. His children. His wife, most of all.

As soon as he stepped into his office that morning in late January, and after Mary Ann had brought him a cup of coffee, he asked her to get Walter Bonfield on the phone.

Mary Ann gave him a look of apprehension as she reached for the heavy coat he’d pulled his arms free of and thrown over one of the office chairs. “Everything all right?” she asked, walking the coat to his coatrack and hanging it on one of the hooks.

Gilbert took a sip of his coffee. It was hot and strong; he winced as it slipped down his throat. “It will be.”

Mary Ann left his office and he went to his desk. A minute later, his phone buzzed. “Walter Bonfield is on line one.”

Gilbert picked up the handset. “Mr. Bonfield, I’m glad I caught you this morning.”

“Anything new I can help you with?”

“Yes. I’ve decided I want you to go down to Cedar Key. Tell me what you can on this Billy Liddle.”

“Something happen?”

“Instinct, Mr. Bonfield. My gut tells me this Billy Liddle is my wife’s brother.” Heaven knew, he hoped he was right. “See what you can find out for me, will you? Snoop without being obvious.”

“I can head down there . . .” Gilbert listened to what sounded like paper being flipped. Perhaps pages from a calendar. He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He just wanted Bonfield in Cedar Key as soon as possible. “Two weeks.”

“Two weeks? You don’t have anything sooner?”

“I’m sorry. I’m on another case right now that has me pretty tied up.”

Gilbert started to take another sip of coffee, but remembering how hot it was, blew into the cup instead. Two weeks felt like a long time, but maybe it was God’s timing. Bonfield had other clients, and their need for his services could very well be just as important. He took a sip, closed his eyes, and swallowed. “I see. Okay, then. Two weeks. I should hear something from you in two and a half?”

“Absolutely.”

“Talk to you then.”

Gilbert ended the call, looked up to the door between his office and Mary Ann’s, and waited for her appearance. As if on cue, she opened the door and walked in, her own coffee cup in hand. “Dish,” she said.

Gilbert watched as his secretary—and often his big-sisterly confidant—lowered herself into one of the chairs opposite his desk. Telltale signs of a recently eaten donut lay on the front of her dress. He pointed, not wanting to state the obvious. Mary Ann looked down, said, “Oh,” brushed the crumbs away, and returned her attention to him.

“Ah . . . so the thing is . . .” He ran his fingers through his hair. He’d gotten a haircut the day before; it managed to tame the curls, but only a little. “We’re still plugging along, but Patsy is . . .”

“Still sad?”

“Gosh yes.” Gilbert placed the mug on the desk, linked the fingers of his hands, and said, “I wish you could have seen her that day, Mary Ann.”

“What day?”

“On the bus. When she was a kid and I was some upstart airman thinking I was all dashing and dandy.”

“Dandy? Now there’s a word I haven’t heard in . . . thirty years.”

Gilbert forced a chuckle. “She was scared witless. I remember wondering about where she was going. Then she told me, she was coming here to Trinity. We ate dinner in this dive behind a bus stop. Food was good—not as good as what you get at Gilly’s—and while we ate she told me she was moving here to live with people she didn’t even know. Didn’t tell me why—not until later, that is—just that Lloyd Buchwald was her brother and she’d never even met him.”

“As a mother, I just cannot imagine what it must have meant to her mama to have put her on a bus and send her off like that.”

“I know. As a father, I feel the same way. But things were different back then, Mary Ann. You and me . . . we’ve never been faced with desperation. Not really.”

Mary Ann didn’t say anything for a moment. Then, “When did you find yourself in love with her?”

This time, Gilbert’s faint laughter was for real. “Oh my. I came home from the service, for good, and Janice told me that Miss Grace’s school was having their annual dance that night and I should go.” Gil gave Mary Ann his cheesiest grin. Unlocked his fingers. “Local hero and all.”

“Mmmhmm,” she said. “I remember.”

Gil shook his head. “I didn’t have a thought in my head about going there and meeting anyone special. In all honesty, I was going to make an appearance and then go meet some of the guys for a more, shall we say, grown-up party.”

“Mmmhmm.”

“But then . . .” Gilbert paused. Allowed himself to remember the way she’d looked that evening. “She was dressed in this pinky-peachy colored”—Gilbert waved his hand about himself—“dressy thing.”

This time, Mary Ann laughed. “A formal.”

“Yeah. Okay. But it wasn’t just the way she looked—which was pretty and not so much like a little girl anymore—it was the whole package. The way she carried herself. The way she . . .” Gil felt himself blush. “Smelled.”

“And you were a goner.”

“One hundred percent. I knew she was too young and I knew Papa Buchwald would have my hind end if I did anything inappropriate. So, I set my sights on being respectable, building a business, a life . . . and eventually, adding a wife.”

“And you were happy.”

Gilbert’s breathing slowed. Oh yes. He’d been happy. “You know, Mary Ann, when we say those vows—for better, for worse—we don’t really think about the worse, do we?”

Mary Ann shook her head slowly. “I married a man who stood on both feet and promised me the moon. But six months after our wedding, a car accident left me with someone sitting in a wheelchair the rest of his life. Many a time he’s told me to leave and make a better life for myself. And every time I remind him, ‘Hon, that’s not the vow I took.’”

Gilbert peered toward the single window in the room, and beyond to the town outside his office walls. Life goes on, he thought, no matter what happens inside a marriage, life goes on. He looked back to Mary Ann. “And I daresay, when you look at Tom, what you see is the man standing before you.”

She blinked. Took a sip of coffee. Blinked again. “Most times, you’re right, I do.”

“And when I look at Patsy, I still see that scared little girl, and then the young woman she became. Full of chatter and laughter and . . .”

“What?”

Gil swallowed past the lump in his throat. “She has my heart, Mary Ann. She thinks I’ll eventually be like the others and be gone, but . . .”

Mary Ann shook her head. Not a strand of hair moved, but one thin brow cocked upward. “I’ve never seen anything so pathetic in my life as her weeping over her daddy’s grave like she did. I told Tom when we got home that it just made me want to cry myself.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I know she’s still hurting over losing him and will for a long, long time. But I have to ask, how are the kids taking all this?”

Gilbert finished his coffee as well before he answered. “The younger ones don’t really have a grasp on the fact that their papa isn’t coming back. Ever. Pammie and Greg understand better, of course. Pammie is so happy her mama’s home, she seems to be making the best of it. But Greg . . . Papa and he were buddies.”

“They were that.”

“And to make matters worse, Greg’s pretty mad with Pats. They hardly even speak. And when Greg does talk to his mother, it’s with such . . . disrespect, such contempt. Patsy seems to be . . . I don’t know . . .
allowing
it. Letting him get away with it? Maybe because she feels guilty for having left him in the first place? I don’t know. What I do know is that there’s a level of tension in the house you could cut with a sword. Never mind the knife.”

“Well, I’m not his father, but if my brother or I ever talked to our mother with disrespect, we’d have been taken out to the woodshed.”

Gilbert shook his head. “My daddy would have done the same. But I can’t. Not this time. Maybe when he was younger, but he’s thirteen now. And while I have told him to shape up or suffer the consequences, I also understand his feelings.”

Mary Ann took a long sip of her coffee before gripping the mug with both hands. “Boss, I wish I could say I have the answer for you. I don’t. In our day, we weren’t allowed to have feelings.” She shot him a cautious smile. “What about that Negro woman . . .”

“Gabby.”

“Is she still helping you out?”

Gilbert nodded. She had been such a godsend.
Gabrielle
. She told him once that her name meant “heroine of God.” And she was that. But he couldn’t ask her to stay forever and he wasn’t ready to send his wife back to the hospital either. Didn’t seem to be the answer. Hadn’t really helped before. Why would it start helping now?

Gilbert slapped his hand onto his desk. “Mary Ann, we’ve been down memory lane long enough and we’ve got work to do.”

She saluted him as she stood. “Yes sir! I’ll get right to it.”

She was halfway across the room when he stopped her. “Oh and Mary Ann . . . in about two weeks or so, I’m going to hear from Bonfield again. Be sure I get the call, no matter where I am.”

“Will do.”

Two and a half weeks. If he could make it that long. And surely he could. As a businessman, he knew just how productive two and a half weeks could be.
If
the positive remained the focus. Two and a half weeks could also tear down a plan. Shred it into thin slices of nothing.

With the door closed behind Mary Ann, Gilbert bowed his head. “Lord,” he said, “you created a whole world in seven days. I’m giving you double and a half that time. Just as I trust what you did that first week, I’ll trust even more in what you’ll do with this time.”

His chest heaved. He felt tears coming—something he wasn’t all that accustomed to—and he let them form and spill over. “Because I love her, Lord. And I know you love her more, although sometimes that’s hard to imagine.”
She’s my girl
, he prayed silently.

She’s mine too
, his heart heard in response.

———

Exactly two and a half weeks later, the call came. Gilbert ended the call, pushed the button on his office phone for another line, and placed a call to Dr. Jennings. He left a message with his secretary, then returned to his work and waited for a call that would not come for another three hours.

He told Dr. Jennings what he knew and how he’d obtained the information. Why he’d waited so long to share it. He hadn’t been sure, not completely sure anyway. Now he was as sure as a man could get. And he believed, truly believed, that this one trip—if what he believed to be true was indeed true—could bring his wife to understand her past, live in her present, and actually
have
a future.

“You could be wrong and this could backfire,” Dr. Jennings told him after a long pause.

“But if I don’t try,” Gil said, “the situation stays the same.”

“That’s true.”

“I’d ask Gabby to stay with the kids, but she needs some time with her family.”

“She’s resigned from the hospital, did she tell you that?”

She hadn’t.

“I talked to her husband the other day. When school is out, he’s going to look for work over there in Trinity. He’s willing to move the family just so she can stay there.”

Without hesitation, Gilbert added, “Tell him he has a job with me the minute he gets here.”

They spoke awhile longer. Dr. Jennings concluded the call by saying that if he were needed, he’d only be a phone call away. That he wished them both the best.

Gilbert ended the call satisfied. He’d talk to Gabby that night. Tell her to go home and be with her own family for a change. Inform her that her husband had a job when they moved. Then he’d call Janice, see if the kids could stay with her and Marvin and their kids for a few days.

After that, he’d tell Patsy his plan. Tell her that an arts festival was about to happen down there in Cedar Key and that one of his employees had told him about it. Once he had her convinced, he’d call the woman who owned the cottage Bonfield told him about and request information.

He jotted notes on a piece of paper. Everything he needed to remember.

And it hit him. There was still one thing he hadn’t told Dr. Jennings.

Gilbert reached for the phone, then replaced it. No, he decided. Best that he not say anything at all about what Bonfield had told him. Best to just let things happen.

Patsy would know everything in time. And, somehow, they’d get through it.

Together.