THE LIGHTING IN the old barn was dim at best.
Addy opened the stall door and slipped inside. The deer lay on its side. She lifted her head to look at Addy, then lay back on the straw, eyes open.
Addy sat down and leaned against the wall, knees drawn up to her chest. She’d been unfair to her mother. Knew it in the pit of her stomach where guilt pooled thick and heavy.
Was it intentional, this knack she had for hurting her? For closing her out?
Why hadn’t she told her about Mark?
The answer suddenly felt too obvious.
Because that would have made them too much alike. And the one thing she had been determined to be as an adult was different from her mother. The only unifying action she had ever taken in step with her mother was to change her name to Taylor when Claire had taken back her maiden name.
When Addy was twelve, her father had walked out and moved to Ohio where he started another life with a woman who had four children of her own. With the quiet click of the front door and the sound of his truck rolling down the driveway, he was gone. And he had never come back.
Addy’s hurt had eventually festered into anger, and she could not understand what her mother had done to make him leave. Or why she hadn’t done something, anything, to bring him back. Addy had pleaded with her to fix things, make everything all right again. But her mother’s silence on the subject had stood like a wall between them, and with every passing year that wall had only seemed to widen.
From the other side of the chasm, Addy could see her mother now as she had been unable to see her before. What Addy had once seen as her mother’s pride and stubbornness, she now saw in a different light.
Sometimes people just changed. Went another way. Left you behind. She wondered if her mother had maintained her stiff-backed refusal to let Addy see her pain, not out of pride, but out of the sheer will to go on, to not be destroyed by what he had done.
She sat there against the rough board wall, the deer now asleep. Would the very thing that had driven her away from her mother finally bring them back together again?
* * *
CULLEY SAT ON the edge of his daughter’s bed, closed the cover to A Simple Gift, the latest book they were reading. He read her a chapter every night, had been reading to her since she was a tiny baby. It had become their special time together, and he valued it greatly.
He was convinced that the love he felt for his daughter could never be explained with words. As a doctor, he’d had people with children try to tell him how it felt, but until he’d held his newborn daughter in his arms, he had no way of understanding the depth of it, nor its permanence.
Having nearly lost her three years ago, that love had taken on another dimension. And made him desperate to revive the spark that had once defined her.
Madeline lay propped against her pillow, her dark hair the exact same shade as Liz’s, shiny from her bath. She’d been quiet all through dinner. “Something wrong, honey?”
She fiddled with the sheet tucked up to her chest, not meeting his eyes when she said, “Mama called today.”
Culley sat up straighter, tried to hide his surprise. “What did she say?”
“That she’ll be getting out soon.”
Hearing such things come out of his seven-year-old daughter’s mouth never failed to shock him. There was something altogether unnatural about a child her age using words like women’s correctional facility as part of her normal vocabulary.
“Yes,” he said.
She looked up and met his eyes, holding his gaze, as if intent on getting the truth from him. “Will you be glad?”
It wasn’t a question he could answer with a few words, but one that required side roads of rationalizations and justifications, none of which she needed to hear. So he simply said, “Of course I will.”
She caught her bottom lip between small white teeth and said, “Will she live here with us?”
“Your mom and I aren’t married anymore, honey.”
“I know,” she said, sadness in her voice. “But where will she go?”
“I’m not sure, but it’s not something for you to worry about. Everything will be all right.”
“Do you think she doesn’t drink anymore?”
“I don’t think she does now, no.”
“Will she when she gets out?”
“I hope not.”
“Me, too,” she said.
Culley leaned over and kissed her forehead. She wrapped her arms around his neck, held on tight for a moment before letting go. “Good night, sweetie,” he said.
“’Night, Daddy.”
She flipped over on her side and shut her eyes.
Culley went downstairs, feeling as if a wedge of steel had settled in his stomach. Madeline had once been the kind of child that seemed lit up with happiness. As a toddler, she’d had the kind of giggle that he lived to hear. Sheer joy unmarred by awareness of anything other than good in the world. In the past three years, that happiness had all but disappeared, and she never giggled. He would give anything to hear it again.
His mom was in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said from the doorway.
She glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “I don’t mind.”
Ida Rutherford had not faded with age. Her skin had a glow to it not attainable even from the most expensive jars of face cream. That glow had come late in life. Culley’s early memories of his mother were of a woman whose natural joy for living had been siphoned away little by little until her face rarely saw the light of a smile.
“Madeline said Liz called today,” he said.
Ida turned from the dishwasher where she had been pulling out glasses and placing them in a nearby cabinet. “This morning.”
Culley leaned against the kitchen counter, folded his arms tight against the knot of emotion in the center of his chest, even as it began to unravel. “Did you speak with her?”
“No. Madeline answered the phone.”
“She’ll be getting out next month.”
Ida nodded, anchored both hands around the bottom of a glass. “How do you feel about that?”
“I don’t know,” he said, because he really didn’t. “I guess I should be happy for her, but—”
“It’s not that simple, is it?”
“No,” he said.
He had taken Madeline to visit her mother at the Mecklinburg prison several times. More so in the beginning. Somehow it got harder to see her rather than easier. He felt this in his daughter as well as himself. The Liz behind the glass enclosure was the old Liz. The Liz before the drinking. But there she didn’t have a choice. He didn’t know what would happen when the decision was hers again.
Ida crossed the floor, patted his shoulder in an awkward gesture of understanding. On this subject, he and his mother were synchronized. They both understood the complications of caring about someone who did not care for themselves, only where the next drink would come from.
“I spoke with Claire earlier,” she said. “Shame about the orchard.”
Culley nodded.
“She said Addy’s back to stay for a while.”
“Yeah. Sounds like it.”
“That’s nice, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure she’ll be a big help to Claire,” he said, keeping the reply neutral.
Ida studied him for a moment, looking for evidence to contradict his apparent lack of interest. He didn’t give her any. “I’d better get going,” she said.
“Thanks for staying with Madeline today,” he said.
“You know I love being with her. I am a bit worried about how Liz’s reemergence into her life will affect her.”
Culley nodded. “I know. So am I.”
He walked her out to her car. She slid inside, looked up at him through the open door. “Somehow she needs to understand that none of it was her fault,” Ida said.
“I’ll talk to her again.”
She nodded once. “Good night, honey.”
“’Night.”
He went back in the house, wishing he could snap his fingers and turn his child into the carefree little girl she had once been. But he understood her guilt, had felt the same thing as a boy when he had come to understand the hold alcohol had on his father.
A lawyer with his own practice, Jake Rutherford had managed a successful enough career during the day. But at night the alcohol took over, and the walls of their house reverberated with his rages. Culley had seen his mother wilt beneath the scalding heat of that anger more times than he could count. Growing up, the only thing he had wanted was to make his father see what he had done to their family. If he could see, then maybe he would stop.
But it had not stopped until his father died ten years ago, right after Culley had finished undergraduate school. It was only then that Ida began to stand straight again, like a flower that has found a kinder beam of sunlight.
Like his mother, Madeline was wilting beneath the harshness of Liz’s choices. Somehow, he had to help her see she wasn’t responsible.
He went back to the kitchen and made himself a glass of iced tea, heading to his office just off the living room. He had some patients to check in on, calls he had intended to make earlier in the day.
He sat down at his desk with his hand on the phone, his thoughts drifting to Addy.
For the past few years, he’d convinced himself that he was content. Life had not taken the path he’d expected, but he had peace after years of turmoil, and it felt like enough. At least it had.
But seeing Addy again had opened a door. And on the other side of it, he had glimpsed something he’d thought he no longer needed. Ignited somewhere low inside him was a desire for more than he had.
He couldn’t define any of it yet. He only knew that it had started with Addy. And that he was glad she was back.
* * *
ADDY WENT DOWN to the barn not long after sunrise. The fawn was still lying down, but awake. Addy spoke softly to her, offered her the bottle which she had filled with warm milk. The deer licked at the nipple a few times and then began to suck in earnest.
“You’re hungry this morning. That’s good.”
The deer drank the entire bottle, and encouraged by her appetite, Addy went back to the house to do a few stretches before her run. A brown county sheriff’s car rolled up the driveway and came to a stop at the edge of the yard. She straightened from a hamstring stretch and waited while the driver got out and inclined his head at her. “You must be Claire’s daughter.”
“Yes,” she said. “Addy.”
“Morning. I’m Sheriff Ramsey.” He stuck out his hand. Addy shook it.
The other man stepped forward and did the same. “I’m Captain Obermeier with the fire department.”
The screen door flapped open, and Claire came out of the house and down the porch steps. “What is it, Sheriff?”
He nodded at Claire, then said, “The fire yesterday. Looks like it was intentionally set.”
Claire stared at them for a moment. “What? How can you be sure?”
“Somebody ran a line of gasoline, then threw a match to it,” Captain Obermeier said.
Addy glanced at her mother. “The phone calls you’ve been getting. Could they have anything to do with this?”
Sheriff Ramsey laserbeamed a look at Claire. “What calls?”
“They’re not anything I’ve taken seriously. Just someone who thinks I shouldn’t voice my opinion on the route of the new interstate.”
“Well, that’s a place to start. We’ll check out the call records with the phone company. Right now, we’re going back up to take another look around. Make sure we didn’t miss anything yesterday.”
Claire nodded.
“Thank you,” Addy said.
Both men offered a “Yes, ma’am,” before getting in the car and heading up to the fire site.
Addy stood silent for a few moments, processing what she’d just heard. Claire sat down on the bottom porch step, dropped her forehead onto one hand.
“They’ll find who did it,” Addy said.
“I’m not sure it really matters.”
“What do you mean? Of course it does.”
“I don’t know,” Claire said, setting her gaze on the driveway. “The last few years, it’s been one thing after another. First we had the problem with Alar. After we stopped using it, the trees at the north end of the orchard wouldn’t grow. We had to cut every one of them down. And, of course, that cut back on our production. We had a freeze a couple springs ago that really hurt the next year’s crop. And the temporary labor costs have gotten so exorbitant, it’s hard to make ends meet. At some point, you have to start wondering if the good Lord is trying to tell you something.”
Addy had never heard this kind of resignation in her mother’s voice. For as long as she could remember, her mother had gone at the task of running the orchard with bulldozer determination. “Every business has its rough spots.”
“True,” Claire said, trying to smile. “But when there’s more rough than smooth…”
“I’ve never known you to give up on anything.”
“There’s something to be said for going out gracefully. Anyway, I’m keeping you from your run,” Claire said, standing.
Running had become Addy’s way of burning off the hard stuff, stress, worries. But to do so now felt as if it would be about her needs and hers only. She glanced at her mother and said, “Come with me.”
Claire shook her head, looking surprised. “I couldn’t run five feet.”
“We’ll walk,” Addy said. “Start at the beginning.”
Claire met her gaze, and something nice passed between them. She nodded once, then stood, and they headed down the gravel road, the morning sun warm on their shoulders.
* * *
SORE ANKLE, his foot.
Harold Carter had succumbed last spring to a massive heart attack, after decades of fried chicken and its accoutrements—mashed potatoes, gravy and hot buttered biscuits.
Since then, his young widow, Mae, had been in Culley’s office no less than eight times. This Monday morning marking another visit during which Culley had yet to find anything wrong with her.
She leaned back on the examining table with one knee propped up while her other leg extended in a graceful ballerina point. Mae was attractive, some would have said beautiful. She had the well-kept look of a woman who spent most of her time at the task.
He lifted her delicate ankle, gently probed the area where she had complained of pain. Mae didn’t flinch. “There’s no swelling,” he said. “You say you turned it?”
“Yesterday. I don’t know how I could be so clumsy. It isn’t like me.”
Culley rotated her ankle in one direction, then the other. She winced.
“Sore there?” he asked.
“A little.”
He released her foot, skeptical, but giving her the benefit of the doubt. “You can take ibuprofen every four hours. Normal dosage. If it’s not better in a couple of days, give me a call.”
Mae sat up, the V-neck of her peach-colored silk blouse slipping far enough to one side to reveal a glimpse of ivory lace. “Nothing fractured then?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Oh, good, I’m so relieved. I had visions of having to wear one of those awful brown lace-up shoes.”
Culley stepped back and entered a few things in the computer on the edge of the counter. “I don’t think you’ll need to worry about that.”
Mae straightened her blouse and then gave him a direct look. “Would you like to go out to dinner?”
She shot straight; he’d give her that. “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said. “Doctor-patient.”
“It’s not a problem for me.”
He managed a half laugh. “I’m flattered, Mae, but I’m not looking for that right now.”
She slid to the edge of the table, dropped to the floor, walked right up to him and stopped with an inch of space between them. “Look, Culley, we’re grown-ups. This isn’t high school. I don’t need roses and promises. But I would like to have a man in my bed. I’d like for that man to be you. Simple as that.”
Maybe he should have been interested. Flattered, at the least. He’d been single for three years. To date, only one woman had made him start to think he might be missing out. “Wrong man, wrong time.”
She touched a finger to his shirt, trailed the row of buttons, stopping at his belt buckle. “Offer stands,” she said. “All you have to do is call.”
She picked up her purse then and left the room.