Fortune's Hand

PRAISE FOR
BELVA PLAIN
AND
FORTUNE'S HAND

“BELVA PLAIN WRITES WITH AUTHORITY AND INTEGRITY.”
—
San Francisco Chronicle

“POIGNANT … Plain crafts plots and plot twists that aren't reminiscent of anything you've read before.”
—
The Sunday Star-Ledger
(Newark)

“Belva Plain doesn't know how
not
to write a bestseller.”
—
Newsday

“INTRIGUING.”
—Harriet Klausner,
BookBrowser

“Belva Plain is a talented tale-spinner with an almost Dickensian ability to keep her stories going.”
—
The Philadelphia Inquirer

“[Plain] offers … compelling stories about women coping with life's crises.”
—
People

“BELVA PLAIN IS ONE OF THE GREATEST STORYTELLERS OF OUR TIME.”
—
Rave Reviews

BOOKS BY BELVA PLAIN

THE SIGHT OF THE STARS
HER FATHER'S HOUSE
LOOKING BACK
AFTER THE FIRE
FORTUNE'S HAND
LEGACY OF SILENCE
HOMECOMING
SECRECY
PROMISES
THE CAROUSEL
DAYBREAK
WHISPERS
TREASURES
HARVEST
BLESSINGS
TAPESTRY
THE GOLDEN CUP
CRESCENT CITY
EDEN BURNING
RANDOM WINDS
EVERGREEN

H
e knew he was lying on the ground because there was dampness under his back, and because he smelled fresh grass. Then he heard a thrum, ceaseless as steady rain; yet, although it filled the void, it was not quite like rain, and after a while he recognized the chirp and trill of tree frogs. Spring. Tree frogs.

Out of the darkness not quite black, but darker than gray, came a voice, neither harsh nor comforting.

“Where the hell is the ambulance? You'd think he hadda come from Memphis or N' Orleans.”

“Hospital's twenty-seven miles! Hey, don't touch him, I said.”

“Just fixing another blanket on him. It's damn cold.”

He turned his head toward the voices, but they moved away and all he could see was the night mist rising over empty space. Then pain came, and he moaned.

“Take it easy, son. You'll be okay. We're cops. You've been in a crash, but you'll be okay.”

A flashlight drew a semicircle in which, for a moment, there appeared boots, trousers, and car wheels; when these receded, there were only voices again.

“The truck must have been going seventy, had a load of feed to get rid of down to Marchfield, and then get home for some shut-eye.”

“You don't know that. No witnesses.”

“Common sense. This poor guy here was on the interstate, had the right of way.”

“Twilight. The worst time. Can't hardly see nothing, only you think you can.”

“Well, none of my business. They'll talk that over down at the station house. Wouldn't want to be in the trucker's shoes this minute, though.”

“Geez, take a look at the car. Makes you sick. Like stepping on a soup can.”

“You've got this guy's license? Robb MacDonald, is it?”

“Yeah, MacDonald.”

MacDaniel
, he wanted to say.
It's MacDaniel. And my dad, and my mother?
But it took too much effort to ask, and he lay still with his pain.

“Where the hell's the ambulance? Guy could die before they get here.”

Is it possible, he thought, that I am dying?

Through his long days in the hospital's high, white bed, he struggled toward acceptance of a reality that was beyond any reasonable acceptance. They had been driving
home from Monroe, where his mother had just had all her long-neglected teeth extracted. In the backseat, she had been drowsing against Dad's shoulder. Pray God they hadn't felt anything! No, he was told, be assured that they had not. The truck had struck the rear half of the car, and while he, Robb, had been thrown out onto the ground, they had been crushed instantly to death.

Could it have been his fault? All he remembered was seeing the headlights emerge from the country road, part the foliage, and unbelievably shoot across his path before he could stop, or turn, or do anything but scream disaster—oh God, oh God!

It was not his fault, they told him. He must quell that doubt, quell it forever and go on with life. Why, it was close to a miracle that he had escaped with nothing more than a severe concussion and a badly broken arm and shoulder! But these would heal, and he would be in fine condition to take up his new teaching post at the consolidated high school in the fall. So they consoled, insisted, and consoled.

Meanwhile, were there any relatives or friends to assist him at home for the first few days? He had no siblings, and of relatives there were only some second cousins who had moved away up north or out across the Mississippi. There were, however, friends enough to help out a little—not that he would need much help after the first couple of days, for he was used to doing almost anything that needed doing, especially after Dad's mild though enfeebling stroke—friends and
neighbors like the Wiltons, who had the farm down the road.

“Well then, there's no reason why you can't go home tomorrow,” the doctor said cheerfully at the end of the week. “Better call now and make arrangements. Any time after nine.”

Lily would arrive on the stroke of the hour. On the morning after the accident, she had been there at seven, long before they would even let her in. He had to smile to himself; she was as prompt and dependable as a loving wife; indeed, he thought of her automatically as his wife, and no doubt she thought of herself that way. They had been “going together” since they were seventeen, all through the senior year in high school and after that at the Baptist college in Flemington, from which they had graduated at the end of the fall semester. But for the lack of money, they would no doubt have already been married by now.

Grateful for the relief from physical pain, Robb lay back on the pillow to reflect instead on all the varieties of emotional pain. Now that his parents were dead, he had probably been thinking more deeply about them than he had in all the years of living with them. Certainly he had cared and understood the struggle on their poor little farm; he had pitied Dad's failure with the gas pump when an efficient competitor, a full-service station with trained mechanics opened in the village; he had helped out every day after school; he had earned enough to pay his own way through college. They had had joy from him. But was that enough? Was there nothing more in life than to rear a child and take pleasure
in his pleasure? They had had so little for themselves.

Mostly, he thought about his mother. It came to him, now remembering, that she must never have slept a full night through. He could still see the clock on his dresser when he awoke early; a quarter past five, it would read. Downstairs, she would be shaking the fire and clattering the frying pan. The henhouse door used to clack in its flimsy frame when she went for the eggs. She was a country woman. He would always remember her scattering grain to her flock of Leghorns or hoeing the corn in her kitchen garden, where the fleshy squash lay among the rows.

“Spring is yellow,” she said, planting the yard with daffodils and pruning the forsythia.

It seemed to him, too, that she must sometimes have sat down to read because she could quote poetry:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
—How, given the circumstances of her life, had that ever come about?

“You're like your mother,” Dad used to say. “She'd have her nose in a book all the time if she could.”

Lily was like her. Do they not say that a man, without being aware of it, looks for a woman who reminds him of his mother? Yes, maybe so. Lily, too, could be bright and brisk. She, too, could dream over flowers, and often did. With all her childish pug nose and wide, smiling mouth, had he not even named her “Flower Face”?

Pink and white and so small she was that his fingertips could meet around her waist. Flower Face.

“It's good to see you smiling,” the doctor said, coming in.

People are so good, Robb thought. The Wiltons, Isaac and Bess, had taken care of everything while he was in the hospital, from the funeral arrangements to the feeding of the chickens. Between these friends and Lily, with her mother, he had been not fed, but overfed. And now, through the kitchen door, came Lily and Mrs. Webster, bearing more nourishment covered with a white towel.

“Corn bread,” said Mrs. Webster, plunking it down on the table. “Still warm enough if you eat it right away. Heat up the coffee, Lily, and take it out on the porch. It'll do Robb good to sit outside. He's been indoors long enough.”

Both touched and amused, he saw that since his own mother was gone, she was determined to mother him.

“I've already had breakfast,” he said. “Young Ike came over last night and fixed the coffeepot so all I had to do was turn on the gas. It's surprising what you can do with only one hand.”

With Mrs. Webster, there was no arguing. “Well, you can have a second breakfast. I'm in a rush with a million things to do at home, but Lily can stay and keep you company. I'll be back for you around four, Lily.”

“The insurance fellow said he'll be here at five,” Robb said.