“I exaggerated all that to distract my mother.” She lowered her voice. “My mother’s memory of Aunt Sara doesn’t seem to fit with the way she is now.”
“If you thought Sara was a pain, why did you come? For her money?”
Kate cut him a look that made him laugh. “Actually, I wanted to learn more about my father. I only recently found out that he had a sister. Money and being famous had nothing to do with it. And besides, I needed a change. It just all seemed to fall into place at the right time.” She paused. “What’s that?”
Jack had his eye to the viewfinder. “What’s what?”
“There. To your left. Sticking out of the mud.”
He looked but saw nothing, but then the light from his angle was different. Kate, still holding his crutch, made her way to the far side. “When we get back, I’m going to soak my feet in a pot of hot water. It’ll take hours to get the mud out from under my toenails.” Bending, she used her thumb and index finger to pick up what she’d seen. It was hard to tell what it was. She slogged back to Jack.
“Skeletons don’t scare you but mud does?”
“Last night it took me two hours to file and polish my nails, so yes, mud turns me off.”
Jack took the thing from her fingers, put it against his T-shirt and rolled it around to clean it. “Sure you didn’t drop this when you ran out of here after I untangled your hair? What did you think had you? An alligator?”
“Of course not!” she said much too quickly.
He was obviously amused by that. “They don’t climb trees. They—” He looked at what he’d cleaned. In an instant, the expression on his face changed from teasing to pure, unrestrained horror.
“What is it?”
Jack just stood there. Silent and staring.
She had to open his fingers to see what was in them. She held up a gold chain and on the end was a charm that formed the letters CM.
“Cheryl Morris,” he whispered. “And I loved her.” Turning, he started toward the side of the pit.
FOUR
Kate was behind Jack as he got out of the hole. As soon as he stepped onto the grass, his shoulders fell down. He struggled to walk away from the tree roots and what they contained. But he got only a few feet before he slumped down onto the crutches. If it hadn’t been for them, he would have fallen.
She saw his shoulders begin to shake. He was crying. The brother he’d so recently lost and now his connection to what they’d found in the tree were breaking him.
If there was one thing Kate knew about, it was grief. She’d dealt with her mother’s since she was four years old. She’d had to learn how to comfort her mother, how to steer her toward the bedroom so she didn’t lie down on the floor and curl up.
She didn’t know this man well, but she could see that he needed help. Sara was inside the house, her camera aimed at places that the setting sun was hitting. Kate rapped on the window and motioned for her to come out.
Sara put her arm through her camera strap as she ran to the door.
Outside, she went to Kate, who nodded toward Jack. He was leaning on his crutches and he looked in danger of collapsing. “He knows who it was. Someone he loved.”
That was all the explanation Sara needed to make her run to Jack, Kate beside her. The look on his face was something Kate had seen too many times. Grief was an emotion that took over a person’s body and mind. It pulled at your soul until it was the only thing that existed. There was nothing else, no one else, just the deep, all-consuming grief.
Sara put her arm around his waist and spread her hand wide on his stomach. It was as if she wanted to take his pain into herself. Her face seemed to age as tears began to roll down her cheeks.
Kate knew Sara’s feeling of helplessness. She’d felt the kind of love that wanted to share someone else’s pain but couldn’t. She put her arm around Jack’s shoulders and her hand on his heart. Slow, deep beats. It was as though his heart was trying to decide whether or not to continue. Did it gladly and gratefully give over to that oily, drowning, devouring grayness that was grief? It wanted Jack to say, “Take me. I’m yours. Do with me as you will.”
Kate knew it was up to her to direct the two of them. They needed to sit down before they fell. She pulled, pushed, maneuvered. Sara clung to Jack, her small body almost merging with his. Whatever the actuality of their relationship, there was a bond between them that was so strong they were almost one person.
There was a concrete porch and steps at the back of the house and Kate managed to get them there. She helped Jack sit, Sara still clinging to him, and Kate took the other side.
The three of them were close together, tight, bodies mashed side by side, needing the warmth, the sharing of humanness. Needing not to be alone. It was going to take some time for Jack to come back to now, back to reality. He had to let go of that pull to another world where pain no longer existed.
As Kate waited, she watched the fading light illuminate the tree in front of them. The sun hit the red blossoms and seemed to catch fire. It was the magnificent tree’s last blaze in her long life. Tomorrow she would fade. Tomorrow she’d give up the secrets she’d held inside her for so very long.
The light was red, then yellow, then red again, and the tree was as flamboyant, as spectacular, as any fireworks.