Glory Road Read online

  I didn’t need to know the details—how long it had been going on, who knew about it, whether he loved her—but of course, I learned them soon enough.

  A year.

  Everyone but me.

  And yes, he did.

  With nothing remaining but my baby girl, I packed our things and drove south, not stopping until we reached Perry. Mama was waiting on her front porch when we pulled up the driveway. A peach cobbler was in the oven, and her arms around me were strong.

  CHAPTER 16

  The therapeutic use of gardens is a long-standing tradition. The simple act of digging one’s hands in soil, removing what’s harmful, and replacing it with what’s beneficial and beautiful can add a sense of purpose and peace to even the most distraught soul.

  —ELIZABETH MCLEOD, GARDENING IS GOOD FOR YOU

  GUS

  My daily routine didn’t change much these days, and I was okay with that. Most mornings I woke at six—no alarm clock, thank you very much—poured a cup of coffee, and took it with me to my back porch. From there, my gaze could roam across our deep property, filled with trees that had been rooted in place for generations. That’s part of what I loved most about our little swatch of land out here—its permanence. It spoke of earth and time and dust and life. It was here before I arrived, and it would be here long after I was gone.

  Tom added the porch on to the back of our house when Jessie was seven or eight, and it’s been a respite ever since. It’s where I’ve had most of my morning coffees, where Tom helped Jessie with homework, where I talked to Jessie about boys. It’s where I sat for hours after leaving the hospital when Tom died. It’s where we set up Evan’s dollhouse when Jessie moved in with me after escaping Birmingham and Chris’s wandering passions. The porch had been a silent family member for most of the important events and decisions of our lives, but it had never seen me go crazy.

  This morning I sat on my porch as usual. It was early, long before Evan would make her way to my house to borrow something or Jessie would call and ask me to bring her some sunscreen if she’d run out. It was just me, my coffee, and the sounds of the woods around my house waking up with the sun.

  The chain on the swing had developed a new squeak overnight, and as I rocked, I tried to remember where I’d heard the sound before. Somewhere else in my memory, another swing chain squeaked as I rocked back and forth. As I searched, the carpet under my feet became dusty dirt and the beadboard ceiling above me became blue sky.

  My parents’ house in Poplarville appeared behind me, and Janey Riggins flew down the road in front of me on her shiny red bike, Santa’s gift to her the year before. Other neighborhood kids raced past on bikes and bare feet, but I remained where I was. I was searching for someone I couldn’t find.

  Then the rain came. Long wet streams fell from the sky, soaking my legs and darkening the dirt on the road to an angry black. Janey and the other kids pedaled faster to escape the rising tide of swirling mud and sludge, but their pedals got stuck and they fell off.

  I tried to get up to help, but I was rooted in place. When I yelled, no sound emerged. Someone tugged on my arm, and I turned to see Tom sitting on the swing next to me. He wasn’t the fifty-five-year-old man he was when he died but the fresh-faced eighteen-year-old I fell in love with. His hands were on my face, my hair, my shoulders.

  “Don’t worry, Augusta Mae. I’ll take care of you always.”

  I reached out to touch his face, but he trailed away from me. He grew smaller and smaller until he was no bigger than a squirrel. Then he disappeared in the rain.

  Somewhere deep in my mind, my own voice told me this was ridiculous. Tom had been dead for fourteen years and I was sitting alone on my back porch. But Tom and Janey, the rain, the clouds, the bicycles—it all looked and felt so real. I had a hard time picking out what was true and what wasn’t.

  Finally reality came back to me, like it did when you woke from a dream and you could almost see it retreating. You reached out to hold on to it, but then your eyes opened, daylight streamed in, and—poof!—the dream was gone, and you couldn’t remember even the first detail of what happened.

  Except I still remembered. I patted the seat next to me, searched behind me, even leaned over the edge of the swing to peer underneath, but I had to straighten up before I fell off. Tom was nowhere. Instead, Jessie knelt in front of me, tears in her eyes, her hands grasping mine in a death grip.

  “Mama? Are you okay?”

  “Well, sure.” I gently pulled my hands from hers and rubbed my sore fingers. “I’m fine. I just . . . I had a little daydream, is all.”

  “Who were you looking for?”

  I knew if I said Tom, she’d worry. I scanned the porch, searching again. “No one. I just thought I lost something.”

  Her eyes were pleading and scared, and they ran across my face as if trying to detect either the truth or a lie. Internally, I was doing the same thing—feeling my way back into this solid reality, coming to grips with what must have been just a dream. But it couldn’t have been a dream. A dream happened at night, in the safety of your own bed, under the cover of darkness. Not when you’re wide awake with a mug of hot coffee in hand.

  Jessie tugged on the hem of my nightgown. “Here. Let me help.” I followed her gaze and saw my hem had gotten stuck on a bad place on one of the wood slats. I’d been meaning to sand it down, but I kept forgetting.

  “When I got here, you were trying to stand up, but your nightgown kept you stuck to the swing. Probably a good thing though. You were so lost in that . . . dream, who knows where you would have ended up if you’d started walking around.” She loosened the hem and smoothed the fabric across my knees. “You said Dad’s name. You said Tom. Were you dreaming about him?”

  I nodded, unable to speak. His face had been so clear and bold next to me. As if all the time between us falling in love and his topple off the ladder had drifted away. I glanced around my porch, my little respite, and saw it for what it was. A small room tacked onto the back of our house, full of knickknacks and plants secreted away from Twig when Jessie wasn’t looking. It wasn’t anything fancy, but the time and place were comforting rituals for me. Had I been sitting out here all these mornings, just waiting for Tom to find me? I shook my head. Tom never would have wanted to be a part of something so terrifying for me—this unnerving loss of reality.

  I focused on Jessie to keep my mind from swirling through the possibilities of what the loss meant. “What are you doing over here anyway? It’s early.”

  She checked her watch. “Not that early. It’s seven thirty. You told Evan you’d be at our house at seven to make pancakes. Although I don’t know why y’all settled on seven. She’s never up that early.”

  Jessie was babbling. I hated that I’d made her nervous. No one wants to have to worry about her mother going crazy when she’s young enough to still be right in her head.

  But I was worried. I’d completely forgotten that I told Evan I’d be there. Those pancakes had disappeared from my brain, as if we hadn’t talked about them twelve hours before. The pancakes weren’t the big deal though. There were other, more important things.

  A few days before, I had left my stove on. It was on low, so that teeny blue flame was hardly visible unless you looked right at it, but it was there. Luckily, I came back to my house to grab my recipe box before the shop opened. I had no reason to walk by the stove, but the Lord must have guided my feet there. I heard the flame flutter in the breeze when I walked past it. A yellow dish towel was lying on the counter next to the eye, a little too close for comfort.

  And smaller things too—that I’d told Jessie a particular story three times already. That I’d tucked my backdoor key into my pants pocket, then panicked when I couldn’t find it. That I’d set off on an errand, then forgotten where I was supposed to be going.

  A few nights ago, I woke up to find myself sitting on the floor of my bedroom, pulling on an old pair of Tom’s work boots. I’d rooted around in my sock drawer and somehow fou
nd my thickest socks in the dark, yanked them on and up to my knees, and pulled Tom’s boots on over them. When I came to and turned on a lamp, I saw the mess. My heaviest winter coat lay on the floor next to me, coat hangers spilling out of the closet and onto the floor, and the sheets on my bed were a twisted pile of cotton and down. I vaguely remembered dreaming about a snowstorm and someone yelling out for help, but I couldn’t pin down the dream.

  I thought of my mother and her mother before that. How diseases passed from one generation to the next like a line of train cars, connected and steaming ahead. And here it was coming for me. I let myself feel the force of that truth—of my reality—then I buried it. I’d face it when I needed to—at some point I’d have to talk to Jessie about the inevitable—but until then, away it would go.

  “Did you forget about the pancakes, Mama?”

  I shook my head a little and focused on her.

  “I don’t care about them—Evan’s still asleep anyway. It was just strange that you didn’t answer your phone. That’s why I came over.”

  “I’m fine, honey.” I stood up on wobbly knees, then sat back down again. I’d give myself another moment. “Just feeling a little extra tired this morning. And I must not have heard the phone ring, out here all lost in memories. But I’ll have the pancakes made before Evan wakes up. I have a new bottle of lavender maple syrup in the pantry that I wanted her to try.” I stood again, and this time my legs didn’t betray me. My head still felt a little swimmy, but I could handle that.

  The creases in Jessie’s forehead deepened. How did my baby get old enough to have those worry lines? “Listen to me, I’m fine. Right as rain.”

  She exhaled and stood. “Okay. But I’m waiting here until you get dressed. I’ll walk back over with you. We’re out of coffee anyway. I’ll grab a cup while you get ready.”

  “Suit yourself. Half-and-half’s in the fridge,” I said before walking back to my bedroom. I only had to reach a hand out to the wall to steady myself once.

  CHAPTER 17

  Don’t be afraid of pruning. Lack of sufficient pruning results in cramped conditions and impeded beauty in your garden. Check your timing, monitor your plants’ growth patterns, and keep your tools sharp.

  —R. D. MATTHEW, PRUNING BASICS

  JESSIE

  I tried to dismiss it, tried to ignore it, but it stayed there in my mind, poking me at random moments.

  “Mama’s forgetting things,” it said. “She needs to see a doctor. What if something’s wrong?”

  But I had a business to run, complete with an absent computer, a thriving competitor right down the road, and a tropical storm in Florida that slowed my shipment of mandevillas, angering Ms. Rickers and an army of other neighbors vying for the brightest, perkiest front-porch flowers. Not to mention I had Olivia’s wedding flowers to plan and design. I couldn’t linger on Mama’s forgetfulness or her frantic dream. I told myself if anything questionable happened again, I’d get her in to see a doctor.

  But she was fine. She showed up at the house to make pancakes—hair sprayed, lips pinked, Reba concert shirt in place—as if nothing out of sorts had happened. She filled Twig’s front table with pies and cobblers, helped a customer load two bags of pine mulch into the back of her car, and swept up dirt and broken pottery from an orchid that toppled over during the night. If anything, she was more helpful than usual and doing it without even a single muttered complaint.

  I was writing up a receipt for a customer when my cell rang. Olivia Tate. “Evan, can you finish writing up these flowers? I need to grab this.”

  “Sure.” Evan hopped down off the stepladder and plunked a bottle of Windex on the counter a little too eagerly. She hated washing windows because she said newspaper on glass sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard. I agreed with her, but Mama said using newspaper instead of a paper towel made for cleaner glass. As usual, she was right.

  I stepped out onto the front porch and answered just before the fourth ring. “Hi, Olivia.”

  “Jessie,” she said, polished and businesslike. “How do you feel about driving to Dog River?”

  “Right now?”

  “Well, no, it doesn’t have to be now, but soon. Today, if possible. My dad keeps reminding me we only have a couple of months to pull everything together, and I’ll be honest—I’m starting to panic a little. I thought if you could get to his house, maybe we could talk through what the flowers should look like and where they should go.”

  I peered behind me into the shop. Evan was packing pots of geraniums into a cardboard box and Gus was sweeping. “I’m not sure I can leave the shop with my daughter and my mom. Could we do it—?”

  “What about after you close? Later in the day might be better anyway. The ceremony will be on the dock at seven, so you’ll be there roughly around the time the wedding will take place. That’ll be helpful.”

  “I guess I could make that happen.” Sunset wouldn’t be until close to eight, and it took less than an hour to get to the river.

  “Perfect. I have a meeting in four minutes, so I need to run. I’ll let Dad know you’re coming this evening. He’ll leave the gate open for you.”

  Evan assured me she and Mama would be fine without me, so once I hung the Closed sign in the window, I ran back to the house to freshen up. Remembering Sumner’s neatly pressed pants and shiny shoes, I wanted to wear something other than the Twig T-shirt and shorts I’d had on all day. After a quick shower, I flipped through hangers in my closet, sizing up my options. I discarded the first few outfits I pulled out and finally landed on a maxi skirt and a white tank top. I added a long coral necklace Evan had given me for Mother’s Day a couple of years ago and stood back to check myself in the mirror.

  When I was married to Chris, I kept my hair chin length in a blunt cut with regrettable blonde highlights. Now my hair fell below my shoulders in its natural dark-brown shade with long bangs that softened my high forehead. I often pinned them to the side to keep them out of my eyes while I worked, but this evening I just brushed them to the side and tucked my hair behind my ear. I smiled at my reflection and added a little more blush to the apples of my cheeks. After a quick swipe of mascara—it always made my brown eyes look brighter—and a little lip gloss, I was ready.

  Fifteen minutes later, Glory Road was in my rearview mirror. After a short jaunt on I-65, I headed west on I-10 and took the exit that would send me toward Sumner’s part of Dog River.

  The river formed a lazy C that cut into the western shore of Mobile Bay, with smaller creeks branching and bending away from it. Oak House was perched on one of those bends in the river, though I’d only seen it in magazine photos.

  Following Google’s directions, I turned onto his street and was surprised to find the area was less impressive than I’d imagined. I’d prepared myself for massive front lawns, expensive cars dotting the driveways, electronic gates protecting homes from unwanted visitors. Instead, I found a simple street lined with stately trees and thick underbrush. The evening sun streamed into my car, and a steady breeze stirred the tree branches.

  I checked the note where I’d jotted down Sumner’s house number. The farther I drove, the bigger and grander the houses got. At a mailbox bearing his name, I turned off the tree-covered road onto a smooth driveway lined with towering hydrangea bushes.

  Oak House rose before me into the clear sky, white clapboard against the bright blue. Slate-gray shutters framed large windows, and along the front porch railing climbed perfect pink mandevilla blooms that would make the neighbors on Glory Road weep with envy. Next to the old wooden front door was an Alabama historical marker. Stinson-McDavid-Tate house, 1914. On the other side of the driveway was another cottage, smaller but no less charming. Guest quarters, perhaps.

  I knocked on the front door of the main house, smoothing my hair with my other hand. I waited, but the house was silent. No feet crossing the floor, no turning of the door handle. I glanced around for a sign of life, but the gentle breeze rustling through the trees pro
vided the only sound and movement. A small path—stepping stones with grass laced between them—traveled around the side of the house, so I descended the steps and followed the path. It ended at an ivy-covered gate that spanned the distance between the side of the house and a tall hedge of camellias.

  Olivia had mentioned a gate, but she’d also said it would be open. This one didn’t budge when I pushed on it. A peekaboo hole covered in elaborate iron scrollwork was cut into the door near the top, but it was too tall for me to see through. I spotted a bucket lying on its side under the azalea bushes at the edge of the porch. I hesitated, then knelt down and pulled the bucket out, then turned it upside down and stood on top of it. It was a little unsteady, but it worked.

  On the river side of the house, just beyond what I imagined were grand steps off the back porch, was a wide, deep expanse of manicured lawn ringed with hydrangeas. Abundant blooms cascaded in fluffy mounds of lilac, soft blue, and creamy white. Wrought iron chairs circled a few tables to the side of the lawn. Trays of candles in silver containers sat in the center of the tables, as if left over from a party. At the far end of the lawn, grass gave way to sand, and a dock stretched over the water leading to a large covered boathouse.

  If that were all, the backyard would have been exquisite, the perfect setting for a wedding, but the main attraction stood to the side of the lawn opposite the tables. The oak tree must have been at least ten feet around. When I lifted my eyes from the low-hanging limbs sweeping across the lawn, the tree’s canopy filled the sky. Moss floated from the branches, ethereal and ghostly even in the bright light. The ground below the tree—even the air around it—was sun dappled and shade kissed.

  I jiggled the gate again from my perch on the bucket, then tried to see around the edge of the door. Maybe there was a trick to unlatching the lock. When that didn’t work, I reached for my phone to call Olivia. Just as I stepped off the bucket, phone in one hand, the bucket tipped and my foot slipped.