No husband, no boyfriend.
And no sixteen-year-old total stranger, no nameless child with black hair and blue eyes who might, just might, have been Nana Lina’s unacknowledged great-grandson.
“THAT’S BEAUTIFUL, ELENA,” Hayley said, picking up the crayon drawing Roland’s granddaughter had made for her as they played and colored after dinner. “Is that me?”
Elena nodded somberly, and Hayley was glad she had interpreted it correctly. At four, the child’s art skills were still fairly primitive, but it seemed to be an illustration of a girl sleeping on the fragile tip-top branches of a tree. The stick figure, which stretched out rigidly across the branch, had bright yellow hair, and the tree’s leaves were made of circles so vigorously drawn they had left little green crayon shavings behind on the paper.
The four of them—Hayley, Elena, Roland and his wife, Miranda—had gathered in the front room of the little square adobe foreman’s house—well, what used to be the foreman’s house, back before her father started selling off the acreage. Now it was just Roland’s house.
Hayley smiled over at the serene-faced man, who sat in his straight-backed chair near the fireplace, watching quietly. “You must have made this tree story seem very romantic.”
“He made it seem a great deal too romantic,” Miranda said, with the rote sound of someone who had gone over this subject many times already. She had been gathering toys, and briskly tossed a bunny into a wicker basket. “When in fact climbing tall trees is quite dangerous, and if anyone I know ever tries it, she’ll be punished!”
Hayley glanced at Elena, whose eyes had grown large. “Your meemaw is right,” she said. “I wasn’t being smart. If I had fallen, I would have been hurt very badly.”
But could anyone have stopped her? She’d been about six when she fell in love with climbing the vineyard’s encircling trees. Maybe it was because, up high, she felt entirely disconnected from the misery inside her house. She imagined herself a fairy, with an acorn cap for a hat, bluebells for shoes and wings made of rainbows and wind. She was small enough to hide in the leafy branches, and sometimes she wouldn’t come down, even when she knew her mother was calling.
One day, when she was seven, her parents had a bigger fight than ever before, and she’d climbed higher than ever before. Fifteen feet up in the black oak tree, she fell asleep. According to Roland, the household was utter chaos as they looked for her—her mother frantic, her father furious, bellowing her name.
Roland was the one who had found her, sound asleep, luckily wedged between the huge trunk and the thick branch, her legs and arms dangling like pale pink tinsel. Though he had been nearly fifty, arthritic and tired from a long day in the vineyard, he’d climbed up and brought her down to safety.
The fight, she’d learned later, had been ignited by the news that her mother was unexpectedly pregnant again. After Genevieve was born, Hayley never climbed another tree. She still longed to escape, but one glimpse of the baby, and she knew she had to keep her feet on the ground, in case Genny needed her help.
She looked at Elena now, wondering if this little girl would also feel the need to find a private place, to pretend her life was different. Miranda had whispered earlier, as Hayley helped her prepare dinner, that Elena’s mother had run off a year ago, and probably wasn’t coming back.
It was hard for Hayley to comprehend that. She knew, of course, that not everyone wanted to be a mother. But this beautiful, fragile little girl…
It was so easy to damage a child like this. And so hard to make her whole again.
Her heart fluttered softly, as she thought if I had a child…
No. Not if. When. When she had a child, she would wrap him in so much love he could never break. She had a sudden image of the blue-striped wallpaper of the nursery she’d begun at home. And the five bright bluebirds that circled on the mobile above the crib. Only three more months now.
Three months, and the cradle that had been empty for so long would be filled.
She considered telling Roland and Miranda. They would be happy for her, even if they didn’t know the whole story, even if they could never understand how much this new baby would mean.
Her heartbeat sped up at the thought. Still, she wasn’t ready to share the news yet. She felt guarded, superstitious…haunted by the memory of the last time she’d had news like this to share. As if something terrible might happen if she spoke of it too soon.
They were all silent for a few minutes, listening to the crackle of the fire and the muted piano notes of Chopin on the sound system. Her heartbeat settled down—the magic of the Eliots working on her as it always had.
Hayley had spent many hours just like this when she was a child—back then, Genevieve would have been the toddler scribbling at the coffee table. By the time she was ten, Hayley had hoisted her fat, laughing baby sister onto her hip, and started coming here to the refuge of this little house, with the foreman who understood her better than her own father.
She’d given Genevieve as many hours of peace as she could. But she always had to go home again, eventually.
Just as she did tonight.
The only difference was that, tonight, her father would not be there. She wouldn’t have to wonder, as she entered the house, whether this was a good night or a bad one. Whether he was drunk or sober. Whether, when her mother turned around from the kitchen sink, she would be crying, or bleeding.
Banishing the image, Hayley stretched, shaking off the sleepiness caused by the plane ride, the time difference and the emotional day. The funeral had been harder than she’d expected. And seeing Colby…
No. She wouldn’t think about Colby. She put her hand softly on Elena’s dark curls, then stood up from the cushy leather sofa.
“I guess I should head back to the big house,” she said, trying not to sound ten years old again, and scared. “Miranda, the casserole was fantastic. Thank you so much for—”
She swallowed, suddenly unable to find the words to thank them for everything they’d done, not only tonight, but all those years ago.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t call,” she said in an abrupt switch of topic. “Or write. But Mom was always terrified. Always covering our tracks. She said any contact with our old lives would be fatal. She was so sure Dad would find us.”
Miranda came over and hugged her. “We knew,” she said. “Your mother wrote us once, just so that we wouldn’t fear for you. She didn’t tell us where you were going, merely that you had to leave. We understood, maybe better than anyone, why it was necessary. We knew your father.”
“Did he start looking for us right away? He never tried to contact us, but obviously his lawyer knew where we were.” For a long time, she’d wondered whether all the subterfuge, the fake names and the prepaid cell phones and the cash-only living, had been required. Somehow she couldn’t imagine her father staying sober long enough to launch a serious tracking campaign. Her mother had feared he would hire someone to find them, but Hayley had her doubts about that, too. She’d never known her father to turn loose of an extra penny for anyone but himself.
“I don’t think he looked for the first several years. Not until his first heart attack, I’d guess.” Roland rose, lifted Elena into his arms and came to stand near his wife, who still had her arm around Hayley’s waist. “I got the feeling he was afraid that, if your mother came back, she might press charges against him. She wouldn’t have, for herself, but for you…”
His gaze was gentle, but worried. She wondered how much he knew about that night, the night they disappeared. Someday, maybe, she’d tell him, but not tonight. She was so tired, and she still had to face that house.
Would it be better, she wondered, knowing that her father was in a casket, six feet underground, never to come storming through the doorway again? Or would that make it worse?