“We all missed you,” Donna said as she reached around in front of Savannah to get her plate.
“Oh...” his wife said, and he could tell by the confused look in her eyes that the memory of Donna had been ripped away, like so many others, by the crash. “Thank you.”
“I think I’d like to go home and rest now.” Savannah put her hand on his arm.
Bruce gave her a nod of understanding; he said, as he pushed back his chair, “You outdid yourselves as usual, ladies.”
Savannah gave Jock a hug and a kiss, said goodbye to everyone in the room, and then, arms crossed in front of her body, she walked into the grand, circular, three-story foyer.
“Hold up.” Jock stood up so he could say what he intended to say in a lowered voice.
Bruce waited for his father’s next words; the patriarch made a little motion near his mouth. “She sounds kinda funny when she talks. You gonna get that fixed?”
“It’s in the works. We’re just waiting for insurance to shuffle things around. I’m hoping to get her to therapy starting next week.”
Jock gave a nod of understanding accompanied by a single pat on the shoulder.
Savannah was waiting for him on the wide porch that ran the length of the expansive main house. She was sitting on the top step of the wood stairs with their three canines gathered around her; she was staring out at the fields in the distance with the slow-moving herd of cows as they grazed in the early-afternoon sun.
Bruce knelt down so he could greet the dogs. “You all right?”
It took her a couple of seconds to nod “yes,” but he didn’t believe it. The breakfast had rattled her; being with his family had rattled her.
Her body was curled forward like a turtle shell; it seemed to him like she was trying to disappear into his shirt. Acting, not thinking, Bruce held out his hand to his wife.
“Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you back to bed.”
Savannah had turned her head away from him; when she turned it back, there were tears clinging to her eyelashes. She lowered her head and wiped the tears on the sleeve of her borrowed shirt.
“I don’t want to go back to bed,” she finally said.
Bruce looked down into her face—a face he had both loved and resented. “What do you want to do, then?”
“I don’t know.” Savannah’s eyes returned to the horizon, her arms locked around Hound Dog’s thick neck for comfort. “Sunday was always our day.”
Bruce stood up to full height and slid his hands into his front pockets. Sunday had always been their day—a day they reserved for their relationship. But that had been a long time ago.
“When’s the last time we spent a Sunday together?” she asked him without looking at him.
With a frown, Bruce answered her honestly. “I can’t remember the last time.”
Savannah gave a little sad shake of her head. “For me, it was just last week.”
* * *
Her husband had offered to stay with her—to reboot their Sunday tradition. But it felt forced to her, so she declined. Bruce had a list of chores he had planned for his Sunday, and she didn’t want to keep him from his work. Murphy and Buckley followed behind her husband; Hound Dog stayed with her. Perhaps he sensed that she was new to the dog pack, like he was. She was grateful for the company, now that she was feeling, for the first time, like a stranger in her own home.
Her sisters had always been her solace, so she called her youngest sister, Joy, who had returned to Nashville, Tennessee where she was attending graduate school at Vanderbilt University.
“It was terrible,” she recounted for her sister. “Everyone stopped talking when I walked in, half of his brothers looked at me like I’d grown devil horns and a tail—they hate me now—and I didn’t recognize this lady, Donna, who works there who obviously knows me. I felt so nervous that I ate enough food to feed a small army...”
“I’m sorry, Savannah.” Her sister, Joy, said in a sympathetic tone. “It’s like a bad dream.”
Savannah was standing by the picture window, watching Bruce unload wood from the back of his truck and carry it to his workshop.
“It was like a bad dream,” she said of the breakfast. “Like that dream when you wake up late and you rush to work and everyone is staring at you like you’re a freak, and then you realize that you’re naked.”
“I’ve never had that dream before.”
“Well, I have. It’s the worst.” She sat down on the couch with Hound Dog faithfully parked at her feet.
Savannah sighed, noticing that her head was throbbing again. “I don’t know, Joy. I didn’t know it was going to be this way. I don’t know what I was expecting...”
“For things to be normal.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Yeah. I guess so.”
After a silent moment, her sister probed. “Do you still think you’re ready to find out why the marriage fell apart?”
Before she had left the hospital, she had argued with her family about just this topic. She had been so certain that she could handle anything that she found out about her marriage. But now? One awkward breakfast had made her feel so depressed, so disconnected from the Brand family. She used to be a favored sister to Bruce’s brothers. Now, the way Gabe and Hunter had looked at her...
Joy added when her sister didn’t respond right away, “If you want me to tell you what happened, Savannah, you know I will.”
“No,” Savannah said with a definitive shake of the head. “I’m not ready. Not yet.”
* * *
She had sulked for a while after she had placed calls to both sisters and her mother. But then Savannah decided that moping wasn’t her idea of making use of a beautiful Sunday. She found her way out to a patch of ground that was her kitchen garden; she loved to cook with fresh, homegrown vegetables picked right out of the garden. The garden was overgrown with layers of weeds; the pretty little white picket fence Bruce had built and painted as a surprise for her was dirty and unkempt. With her hands on her hips, Savannah shook her head. The fence, once her pride, was leaning in places; pickets were broken from animals and weather.
“What a mess.”
The garden seemed to be a metaphor for her marriage. Would she ever get used to seeing things so changed, when in her mind, it was just yesterday when her life was perfect? Her marriage had been full of laughter and romance and lovemaking; she’d been a beloved member of Sugar Creek Ranch and her garden had been teeming with fresh veggies, ripe for the picking.
“How do you eat an elephant, Hound Dog?” she asked her companion.
She was going to clean up this garden, one weed at a time. Savannah found her toolshed virtually untouched; she pulled on her gloves, and retrieved hand tools and a sturdy hoe. Armed with her weapons to beat back the weeds and decay, she stepped into the garden, reclaimed the ground as her own, dropped to her knees and began to yank out the weeds. A couple of weeds into the process, sweat began to form on her forehead and on her neck. It felt good to sweat; it felt good to take out her frustration on these stupid, creeping weeds that had ruined her beautiful garden.
“What are you doing?”
Savannah had been deep in thought, focused on ripping as many weeds from the ground as possible; she hadn’t heard her husband approach. She sat back on her heels and wiped the sweat from her brow before it rolled down into her eyes.
“Pulling