One Mountain Away (11 page)

Ethan.

“So you left home? You just drove away?” Harmony asked, after Charlotte finished.

Charlotte pulled herself back to the present and nodded gravely. “We just drove away.”

“You were terrified. I know you were.”

Charlotte decided not to take Harmony’s comment at face value. “I’m guessing something like that may have happened to you?”

Harmony bit her bottom lip. Then she nodded. “I left home, just like you. I…I couldn’t stay. My father didn’t drink, but he’s not a nice man.”

Charlotte sat quietly and waited, but Harmony didn’t go on, so she said, “A bad father should make us appreciate the good men in our lives when we find them, but we’re not always able to without practice.”

“Sometimes I still believe the things my father said about me.”

“If I had to guess, I’d say you’re reconsidering them.”

Harmony smiled a little. “What happened next? After you got to town?”

“It was pretty awful.” Charlotte glanced out the window at the expansive lawn stretching away from the house, at the dogwoods in bloom, the magnolias in bud. She hadn’t gotten this far in her journal, and it was hard to find the right words. It had been awful. She still felt a stab of fear when she thought about it, even though she had worked so hard in the intervening years to put that day behind her.

“I didn’t know anybody. I didn’t have any place to go.” She turned back to Harmony. “Was it that way for you when you arrived?”

“I had a friend from middle school who had moved here. That’s why I chose Asheville. Her family gave me a place to stay for the summer, but they’re gone now, living in California. Still, they helped me get on my feet, find a job and car, make some new friends….”

Charlotte didn’t point out that Harmony’s security net was still full of rips and tears. No one knew that better than the girl herself.

“I had a little money,” Charlotte said, “but not much. What the preacher gave me, the little my grandmother had been able to save. It was late by the time we got to town. Bill and Zettie took me to a cheap hotel, and they paid for a week, even though I hated that, because I knew they couldn’t afford it. They told me to call if I couldn’t find a job or a place to live, and they would come and get me. But I knew if they did, I’d never come down from the mountains again, that I’d never find a different path.”

“You must have found one,” Harmony said, looking around, because Charlotte’s house spoke for itself.

“It was the end of the week, and I had one more night at the hotel. I’d walked everywhere, talked to everybody. I bought a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter on sale, and that’s what I ate every day until it was gone, then I bought more. Nobody wanted me. Nobody needed me. I didn’t have any experience. I didn’t have the right kind of clothes. I was desperate, but what does that mean?” She looked at Harmony. “Call the preacher or the Johnstons and admit I’d failed? Rob a bank?”

The last got a smile out of Harmony. “It kind of looks like you did,” she said. “That would explain things.”

Charlotte was glad her story was helping, and telling it was easier than she’d expected. “I was sitting in a café, reading the paper, hoping I’d missed something, some job I could apply for, some lead, anything at all. Two women came in and sat next to me, and ordered breakfast. I’d ordered the day’s special. One egg, a slice of toast, a cup of coffee. Ninety-nine cents. Do you believe that price?”

“Where
is
that place?”

“Closed, I’m sorry to say. The women ordered these huge breakfasts. Bacon and sausage and French toast. I was so hungry I wanted to steal the food right off their plates.” She saw that Harmony understood, and she reached over and touched her hand again. “You know, I’ve never told anybody that part before.”

“Not everybody would get it.”

Charlotte patted her hand. “I was close to tears, so I started listening to them to keep my mind off my future. One of the women was in her thirties, and I realized she was complaining about how she needed a live-in babysitter for the summer, but nobody wanted a low-paying job like that. Her friend laughed and said that maybe the problem was they didn’t know what to do with two active boys. It would take somebody young and energetic. And stupid, the other woman said, and they both laughed.”

“Nothing like a hard sell, huh?” Harmony said.

“So I stood up and leaned over. And I said, ‘I’m not stupid, but I am looking for a job for the summer and a place to live.’ They looked me over like I’d just crawled out of a tunnel. I knew I had thirty seconds to sell myself. So I told them I had references, that I was from the mountains but I had a high school diploma and, more important, that I really needed the job and the place to stay because my grandmother had just died. I said if that mother hired me, she could be sure I wasn’t going to up and leave—that’s how I said it—because I really didn’t have any other place to go, no matter how much trouble her little boys were, and besides, I had helped my gran teach Sunday School for years, so I knew kids.”

“It’s like somebody put that woman in your path.”

Charlotte considered that. Maybe at the time it had felt that way, but in the years afterward she’d convinced herself that people made their own luck—probably so she could be even prouder of herself for what she had achieved.

“That’s the definition of faith, isn’t it? I honestly don’t know whether I believe that, Harmony, but I do believe this. If life hands you an opportunity, you grab it and hold on to it the way you hold on to a child who’s squirming to be set free. That’s what I did. Mrs. King was never sorry, not for one moment, that she grabbed her own opportunity and hired me. I stayed with the family a couple of years, and by the time they moved away, I wasn’t afraid anymore. I knew I could make it, and I did.”

“Lottie Lou?”

Charlotte felt herself smiling. “My mother’s idea, and I’ll tell you a secret. It’s not even a nickname. It’s the name that was right there on my birth certificate. I changed it legally the moment I had the money to do it, but Charlotte Louise Hale is a fraud.”

“Never a fraud. You’re a kind woman. And all this, this part of your past? That’s why you’re offering me a place to stay?”

Charlotte thought of all the reasons why she had offered, so many more than she could tell the young woman. She had already made herself uncharacteristically vulnerable, and that was enough for one day.

“That’s the reason,” she said. “Because I know what it’s like to need a safe place to get back on your feet. I was homeless. I know what it feels like to worry about where you’ll sleep and whether you’ll be safe. I wanted you to know that I really do understand.”

“Wow.” Harmony’s eyes filled with tears. “But that woman at the restaurant gave you a
job,
Charlotte.”

“Harmony, you have a job. You don’t need another one.”

“No, you worked for what you got. I’d just be living here and taking up space.” She brightened. “I could cook for you. And clean.”

Charlotte saw that earning her way made all the difference to Harmony. “I have a housekeeper who comes in part-time to clean, but she doesn’t cook. Do you like to cook?”

“I love to when my stomach cooperates. But I’m a vegetarian. I don’t cook meat. And I’ll have to fix things early in the day if I’m working the dinner shift. Would that be okay?”

“Better than okay. I have a small appetite, so I won’t need anything fancy. And I’ll pay for all the groceries.”

“May I do the shopping? You can tell me what you like, and I’ll make sure we have it in the house.”

Charlotte reached over and held out her hand, palm up. “That would be such a big help.”

Harmony slapped the outstretched hand with her own. “You’ve turned things around to make me feel better about this. We both know
you’re
helping
me
.”

“Trust me when I say it’s mutual, okay?”

“What could you need that you don’t have already?”

Charlotte tried to smile. What did she need? A thousand “first days” to fix all the mistakes she had made? Her daughter and granddaughter safe in her arms? A chance to tell Ethan she was sorry she had so easily discounted the life they had shared?

“I’ll get back to you on that,” she said. “For now? A friend and a cook.”

“May I look around the kitchen? You know, to see what’s here?”

“I’m officially turning it over to you.”

Harmony looked as if Charlotte had just given her a present. “You won’t be sorry.”

Charlotte wasn’t sure about much in her life, but she was sure she wouldn’t be sorry she had made this offer. No matter how it turned out, what did she have to lose?

Chapter Nine

IF ANALIESE HAD one complaint about the Church of the Covenant, it was the migraine-producing administrative tasks that fell to her. The meetings, the committees, the pledge campaigns, even her association with Covenant Academy, the private school affiliated with the church. On the day that she had heard the call to ministry she had envisioned a different life, filled with prayer and the spiritual needs of her flock. Instead, too often she combed through budgets, fiddled with mission statements, coordinated volunteers and staff alike. Even their competent church administrator couldn’t save her from the worst of it.

During her first week she had realized she would burn out quickly if she allowed her days to be swallowed by paperwork. So she’d made rules. Except for emergencies, Thursdays were devoted to the Sunday service, the sermon and liturgy, and whatever research they required. Fridays were devoted to pastoral calls and counseling.

Usually Fridays were her favorite day of the week, but today she awakened with a vague feeling of dread.

She made two hospital visits before stopping for sandwiches downtown with the new chairman of the finance committee. The young CPA had recently gotten a divorce, and instead of budgets and endowments, they talked about how well he was coping. Well enough, she decided, when he admitted his biggest concern had been who would get custody of their collie. Analiese hoped he would wait a few years before he tried married life a second time, but she was glad he’d ended up with the dog, if not the wife.

After he left to go back to work, the afternoon stretched in front of her. She had two counseling appointments in the early evening and plenty to do at church. But she had one more person to see before she went back to the relative peace of her office.

A vision of Charlotte Hale sitting in the chapel had nagged at her since yesterday. It had bothered her all through Minnie Marlborough’s funeral and later that night at the monthly council meeting. When she got out of bed this morning, she had realized she had to see Charlotte again.

She didn’t want to call her at Falconview or meet her there. She had been to the Falconview headquarters once on church business. There was nothing wrong with the modern office building on Hendersonville Road, with its sleek surfaces and smoky glass windows, except that words seemed to echo and disappear in Charlotte’s office. At the time she had wondered if that was intentional. After all, Charlotte was not particularly fond of listening to anyone else.

Now she pulled out her cell phone and called Charlotte at home to leave a message. She planned to ask if she could drop by that evening. Instead, she got Charlotte on the first ring. She was so surprised it took her seconds to form a different plan.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought I’d be leaving a message. I was calling to see if I could stop by for a visit this evening, but if you’re home now and up for it…?”

Charlotte sounded weary, but she told Analiese to come ahead.

Half an hour later she pulled up in front of Charlotte’s house. Sitting in her car and reluctant to go inside, she looked over the serene landscape. She’d been here several times, and it never ceased to amaze her that one woman lived alone in a house that was large enough for three generations.

Several years ago Charlotte had volunteered this house for a mission fundraiser, and a hundred people had fit so easily inside and around the light-bedecked swimming pool that Analiese had been sorry the committee hadn’t tried to accommodate twice as many.

The fundraiser had gone off without a hitch, organized down to the final slice of cheesecake by Charlotte herself. It had all been so perfect, but no one had lingered, or talked too loudly, or eaten more than his share. No one had taken off pumps or wingtips, rolled up hems and dangled feet in the twinkling turquoise pool. By ten the caterers had disappeared, and Analiese and the others had gone home, oddly sober despite an abundance of fine wine and a bartender with unlimited abilities.

She wasn’t sure what she was going to say.
I’m sorry I snapped at you when you were trying to make amends? I can’t shake the feeling you might need to talk and I might need to listen? I’m worried about you even though you’re a woman who discourages such a thing?

Without a firm plan she got out of the car and walked to the front door. Sometimes it was just best to see what was needed. Anyway, it was entirely possible that Charlotte would politely and firmly boot her back out the door before she had a chance to probe.

She rang the bell and listened to the electronic Westminster chimes resonate through the foyer and up the curving staircase. Charlotte took her time, but she answered the door herself. She opened it and stood back to let Analiese inside. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t look as if she regretted the intrusion.

“I have iced tea,” she said. “And juice. Why don’t we get something to drink and sit out by the pool? It’s turned into a beautiful day, hasn’t it?”

Analiese agreed but asked for iced water instead. In a few minutes they were sitting on a flagstone patio with the kidney-shaped pool sparkling just beyond them.

“Is this how you get your exercise?” Analiese asked. “With the weather getting warmer, swimming must be something to look forward to.”

Charlotte played with her glass of tea, rubbing the accumulating moisture with her palms. “I hate to say this, but I almost never use it. I used to swim every single day when I moved in, but over the years…?” She shrugged.