Waiting for Sunrise (32 page)

And nearly all her life.

On her way back, Patsy’s eyes scanned the living room for framed photographs—anything, some whatnot perhaps—that spoke of the life she’d known before Trinity. Though Veronica decorated with bric-a-brac and framed photos, only one caught her attention; she walked over to it, picked it up, and studied it. It was an obviously impromptu snapshot of her mother standing at a kitchen sink—not one Patsy was familiar with—drying dishes stacked in the drainer. She wore a typical housedress and high heel pump shoes and a floral bib apron with rickrack trim. She was so pretty. Beaten down by life as she was, her beauty was second to none.

She took the photo into the kitchen with her and asked Billy the question weighing heaviest upon her. “Where is my mother?”

His eyes clouded over. “Come, sit down.”

Gilbert stood. The look on his face said he already knew the answer.

Patsy lowered herself to her seat, held the photograph to her heart.

“She died,” he said. “Last year. Just days after Christmas.”

The words echoed through the long and old tunnel between her mind and her heart. She was too late. Only by months. But too late.

Patsy stared at Billy as Gil and Veronica remained silent. There was so much more she wanted to know but couldn’t seem to ask. How had she died? Where had she been all these years? Had Mama ever mentioned her? Called her name on her deathbed?

First one, then another, then another . . . little by little they all leave you, Patsy.

“Um . . .” her brother finally said, “I hate to tell you this, but Harold . . . Harold is also dead. He . . . he was in prison . . .” He waved a hand. “Long story and I’ll explain it all later but . . . he tried to escape in an uprising and . . . he was shot.”

Patsy continued to stare.
First one . . . then another . . .

“You probably don’t want to know about Daddy.” He snorted. “I hardly want to talk about him. He and Mama divorced back years ago when I was sixteen. Far as I know, he’s remarried, got a little girl who was born before Mama and him ever even divorced.”

Gilbert cleared his throat from beside her, startling her. Patsy looked at him, waited for him to speak. “I hired a private detective . . . if you’re wondering. That’s how I found you.” He ran his fingers up and down the glass of tea. “He found a man named Ira Liddle in Macon. Fits the description of your father, but . . . this man never remarried.”

The two men stared at each other. Veronica tapped her short and groomed fingernails against the white Formica of the tabletop. Patsy glanced from one to the other, then back down to the photo she still held in her hand.

“I’m sorry about Harold,” she whispered, looking back to her brother.

Billy nodded. “Harold made his choices. In the end, we all get to make our choices. It took me awhile to come to grips with it, but I’ve got a good wife and a father-in-law who listens and then doles out the best advice I’ve ever heard.” He paused. “And, I’ve got a good Lord who listens too. I don’t know where I’d be if I didn’t have him.”

“Amen,” Patsy said, though she thought she sounded more like Mam or Gabby than what she was feeling in her heart. She patted Gilbert’s hand. “I think I’m too tired to keep talking. Can we go home now?”

“Sure,” her husband said, offering a weak smile.

They left with a promise to return the following day. Gilbert, always the businessman, asked if morning or afternoon was better. Billy chuckled and said, “Cedar Key doesn’t hold to time. We’ll catch each other, I promise.”

On their way out, Patsy returned the picture to the end table where she’d found it. She gave it one last glance, then forced a brave smile to her face. “Thank you for your hospitality,” she said to her new sister-in-law. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll feel like that cake.”

“I’ll save it for you,” she said. “And hold you to it.”

She and Billy said an awkward good-bye at the door. She wanted—oh, how she wanted—to throw her arms around him and never let him go. But she couldn’t. Not just yet.

Maybe tomorrow when she saw him.

Yes, tomorrow. She’d feel more like talking then.

35

Darkness still cloaked the sky the next morning when Patsy rose, dressed quietly, and wrote Gilbert a note, leaving it on her pillow. She found a flashlight by the back door and used it to light the way back to where they’d been the night before—across from Dock Street and the restaurant where she hadn’t gotten her deviled crab but had found her brother. The thought made her smile, in spite of all that had happened in the last twelve hours of her life.

She and Gilbert hadn’t talked at all during the short drive to their cottage, and little more than that after going inside. One thing she could say for her husband, he knew her well. When to approach her and when to leave her alone. Last night had been a time for the latter.

Today, as she walked in predawn darkness, she knew the time had come for her and God to have a little talk. Just the two of them. And there was no better place than the marina she’d spotted the night before.

She’d also noticed a few benches. Odd that she had, she now thought, keeping her eyes on her feet and her feet within the beam streaming from the flashlight. These were unfamiliar streets. Long and narrow, with very few street lamps. Foliage grew thick and tall on both sides, crowding the houses and cottages like the one she and Gilbert had rented.

Nothing on the island seemed to be stirring. Just her and a breeze strong enough to make her happy she’d worn a sweater. Lights winked in some of the houses, but she saw no one outside. She shivered with a sense of both adventure and fear.

The area around the marina was better lit. For that she was grateful. She turned off the flashlight and slowed her pace. After picking the bench along the sidewalk near the water’s edge, she slid onto it. Looked around. Behind her, boats rocked, water lapping at their hulls. In front and to the right side of her, a sliver of the quarter moon’s reflection danced atop a multitude of ripples and waves. A solitary bird gave its throaty call. She listened for an answer. One never came. For all she knew, she and this lone, unseen bird were the only two awake and stirring about.

So she sat on the bench in the dark and waited.

Which was fine with her. She needed this time to herself. To think. In quiet. To figure out how she was feeling about this sudden upset . . . or completion . . . in her life. If it was completion. After all, it had only been one brother standing in the restaurant, just yards from where she sat now. Only Billy. Harold was dead.

And her mother was dead.
Dead.
There would be no surprise reunion with Mama. No seeing her. Touching her. She’d never have the chance to ask any of the questions she’d always thought she might. Never have the chance to present the “whys” and “why nots.” Every chance was gone.

Mama was dead and Daddy was dead and Harold was dead and Papa was dead . . . But she and Billy were very much alive and well. She and Billy and Lloyd.

She’d hadn’t told Billy about Lloyd. She should. Maybe today when they saw each other again. Today.

As if in slow motion, the sky along the horizon changed color. From the darkest gray to a hazy shade of blue. The sun was coming up, just as it always had and always would.

But the temperature was still slow in rising. In spite of the sweater (and the slacks that went with them), she hadn’t fully anticipated how chilly even a spring morning before sunrise could be. She pulled her feet to the bench and hugged her knees to her chest. She took in a deep breath, planted her chin between her knees, and waited as the blue changed to orange over a thin line of red. She thought to pray, but words weren’t yet forming. Maybe they weren’t supposed to, she decided. Maybe this moment was just about her and God and sitting quiet.

Clouds she’d not noticed before now hovered above the changing colors. Below, resting on the water, a sliver of land stretched its arms wide. She wondered what it was. A piece of the mainland? An island?

“That’s Dog Island.”

Patsy gasped, dropped her feet, and swung around. Billy stood mere feet behind her on the street. “How’d you know . . .”

“What you were wondering? I wondered the same thing first time I came here. Wondered it about all the keys around here you haven’t yet seen.”

Patsy shifted to the right and patted the bench beside her. Billy took the cue and sat. He smelled of shaving cream and aftershave. Not the little-boy-after-a-night-of-sleeping smell she remembered. She brought her feet up again and this time lay her cheek against her knee. “Actually, I meant, how did you know I was here.”

Billy scooted up, shimmied out of his thick jacket. “Oh. I didn’t.” He draped it around her shoulders, tucked it behind and around her. “There you go.” He crossed his arms and slid back on the bench. “I was on my way to work. I usually walk this way, though not typically so early.”

“I took you away from your work last night, I suppose.” Billy’s face glowed in the morning sunlight. Patsy looked out over the water, toward the strip of land that was Dog Island, and watched the sun peek an eye open. As if on cue, a variety of birds came, seemingly from nowhere. “I can’t remember when I last saw the sun come up.”

“I see it all the time. Not every morning, of course. But this is really one of the things I love most about living here.”

“Sure is a quiet place. A lot like Trinity. Only smaller, if I can even imagine myself saying that.” The sun had made it halfway up. “If
anyone
can believe that a place could be smaller than Trinity.”

Billy laughed beside her. “I don’t remember anything but big places. Miami. Gainesville.”

Patsy looked at her brother’s handsome face again, his features bringing back so many memories of their mother. “You don’t remember Casselton?”

“Only snippets. I remember a little about the house.” He seemed to study the water. “It was a two-story house.”

“That’s right.”

“And fields in the back with a vegetable garden.”

“Yes.” A breeze came from the gulf, rustled the palm fronds and the thick branches of the oleander. Patsy tilted her face into it, her own thoughts now filled with memories of coming in from that field, bushels of vegetables balanced on a hip. On instinct she reached for her hair falling down her back, and pulled it over one shoulder, twisting it as she did.

Billy stole a glimpse at her as his eyes shifted downward. “I remember the night you left.” His lips drew thin. “He was a raving madman that night.”

Patsy didn’t have to ask who
he
was.

“I remember hearing them fight. Harold slept through it, mostly.” He coughed a sad chuckle. “I was scared out of my mind.”

Patsy tilted her head to see him better. “Why?”

He groaned. “Ahhhh . . . Daddy . . . all he wanted was to know where you were and . . .”

“And Mama?”

“All she wanted to do was to protect you. I remember hearing her say that she’d sent you somewhere where he couldn’t get to you. ‘No more whippings . . . no more looks,’ she told him.”

Where he couldn’t get to her . . .

Billy shook his head as though relieving himself of another memory. “The place we lived in Miami was a matchbox,” he said.

“Wait,” Patsy said. She wanted to know more.

“It had an indoor bathroom, but it was so small,” he continued. His way, she supposed, of letting her know he wasn’t altogether ready.

Patsy nodded in acquiescence. “How long did you live there?” The sun now sat on the water like a giant yellow-gold ball, bobbing up and down, waiting for a child to come rescue it. And maybe play with it.

“Until I was twelve.”

The sun hovered just over the skyline. She thought of her own Greg—now just a little older than Billy had been when going to Gainesville—and how difficult it would be if they just up and moved. “That’s a hard age to move.” An even harder age to have your mother up and send you away . . . not that thirteen would be any better.

“Not really. I didn’t have many friends in Miami. Mama was never happy there. Harold, he was really the only one who got . . . upset.”

Patsy looked at him. “What?”

Billy shrugged. “I was just thinking . . . remembering. He and Daddy had such a fight. Mama and me, we sat in the kitchen. At the table. And when it got really bad, Mama told me to leave.”

“Did you?”

He grimaced. “Yeah. Always. With every fight.”

Patsy fought the urge to wrap her arms around him and pull him close. He wasn’t a little boy who needed protecting anymore. He was a grown man. Married. Running a business.

“Only once did I stand up to the old man.” He looked at her.

She didn’t speak, willing him, this time, to go on. She had to know. As much as she could take and as much as he could give. For now.

“The day I found out about Daddy’s affair. And the baby.”

“I wonder whatever happened to that woman and the little girl . . .”

“Maybe some things we don’t need to know.”

Patsy let the words sink in, wondering what he meant, exactly, by them. “Were you and Harold close as you grew older? You were nearly inseparable when you were little boys.”

“At times. As we grew older it became pretty apparent how different we were. Ronni says we’re like Esau and Jacob from the Old Testament. One was the father’s son and one was the mother’s.”

Patsy smiled at him, straightened her legs, and dropped her feet to the ground. She pulled the jacket from around her shoulders, laid it across her lap. “You being Jacob?” She flipped her hair over her shoulder.

“Yeah. Not that Harold was really Daddy’s. He just . . . he fought back. He never let Daddy get the best of him. Of course, in the end, I suppose Daddy won. He turned Harold mean.” He looked at her, searching her face, it seemed. “You wear your hair long for religious reasons?”

Patsy laughed. “Oh goodness, no. Back on my wedding night, Gil asked me not to cut it. So, other than a trim, I never have.”

“That’s some husband you have. He sure went the extra mile to find me. And to get you here.”

Patsy sighed. “And to be honest with you, I haven’t even thanked him.” She smiled to lessen her own guilt. “But I will. It’s just that . . . I . . . I haven’t handled all this . . . my life story . . . so well, I’m afraid.”

Billy leaned forward, cracked his knuckles, rested his elbows on his knees. “Look . . . I don’t know how much you want to know—”

“Everything. Tell me everything. Whatever you can say for now and save the rest for later. But just . . . tell me. I’m ready. I think.”

Patsy watched as the words seemed to swirl around in her baby brother’s head. “Mama . . . after Daddy left . . . she had a time of it. There was a neighbor, Mrs. Stone, who sort of came in and demanded that Mama be strong. Get a job. Change her name. We got a new place. Small. It was just the two of us; Harold was already in prison. She always seemed like she was doing all right, but deep down, I knew she wasn’t. She was pretending, just like she’d done . . . all my life, anyway. I tried to get her to move to Cedar Key with Ronni and me, but she said no. Young lovers didn’t need a mother or a mother-in-law hanging around, she said.”

Patsy laughed at the thought. “I’ve been lucky in that. Gil’s mother has hardly bothered me at all. Just been there when I needed her and left me alone when I didn’t.”

“Same here. Ronni comes from good people. I couldn’t ask for better. And . . . well, they led me to the Lord, so for that I’ll always be grateful.” Billy sighed. “Anyway . . . Mama stayed on in Gainesville after the wedding, but after Harold got killed, I really put in for her to come here. Then we found out Ronni was expecting . . .”

“Expecting?”

Billy closed his eyes. Nodded. “Yeah. The baby didn’t make it past four months, but . . . doctor says that’s not so uncommon.”

“That’s true.” This word of acknowledgment and comfort from the woman who never miscarried but just kept getting pregnant. Regret shot through her spirit. She’d never really appreciated her children. Always complaining, more with each new pregnancy. And here was this sweet woman who would never have the chance to hold her first in her arms. Patsy ached to hold all five of hers right then and there.

“Ronni was devastated, and, for Mama—who’d
just
moved in—I guess it was the final straw. A few months later, we found her in bed one morning. Sleeping.” Tears formed in his eyes and he swiped at them. “Or at least we thought so.”

“Sleeping, as my friend Gabby would say, with Jesus.”

Billy nodded.

“Did she . . . did she ever . . . talk about me?”

Billy didn’t answer at first. Patsy supposed he was weighing his words again before saying anything. “Yeah. Not a lot. But she kept your picture. For a long time she kept it hidden away from Daddy, but I knew where it was.” He looked at her. “She never would say why she sent you away though. I asked when . . .” He shook his head. “Well, more than once.”

“And?”

“She wanted to try to call you but she didn’t want to interfere, I think. And sometimes, if I brought up trying to find you, she’d get so upset I’d just let it drop.”

The words caught Patsy unguarded. She’d never even considered . . . “I don’t . . . I don’t know what to say. I thought . . .”

“That she’d forgotten you?”