The Memory of Lemon (20 page)

There was a reason people described cabins as cozy and snug. The thick, solid walls created by the hand-hewn logs seemed to keep the outer world at bay. You could feel safe in a cabin. In the tiny bathroom, I changed out of my jeans and shrugged into my new navy lace sheath dress, sleeveless for warmer weather. I touched up my makeup, pulled my hair up into what I hoped was an artlessly sexy topknot, and spritzed on my perfume.

I put my overnight bag into the space under the open stairway, then climbed to the loft. Why not have a look upstairs before everyone came?

Ohhhh,
I thought. So romantic. Sunlight streamed through a tiny window onto a four-poster bed tucked under the eaves, pillows dressed in creamy linens ruffled like an eighteenth-century gentleman's shirt. A summer quilt in bridal white.

I heard voices approaching the cabin, so I backed down the steep steps and slipped into my low heels.

The first guests were arriving from the shuttle, which would take people back and forth all evening.

My heart fluttered. Ben would be here soon.

But he wasn't there when the groomsmen paddled across the water in their Save the River T-shirts pinned with boutonnieres—nice touch, Roshonda—to cheers from onlookers.

Ben wasn't there when the ceremony began.

Lydia, in a simple white embroidered muslin gown with flowers in her hair, stood in the center of the garden. She handed her bouquet to her attendant. She picked up her beautiful old violin and tucked it under her chin. She seemed to wave the bow like a wand, casting a spell as she lowered it, then passed it over the fiddle strings. The music that came forth was as modern as Kentucky bluegrass, as ancient as old Ireland.

She and Christopher sang their vows in the lyrics of the song.

Oh, take my hand, and walk this garden

And pledge to me you'll be my own

Beyond the hills, beyond the river,

Wherever we will call our home.

As their music drifted through the garden, up through the green hills and down to the river, it carried the flavor of spice. If I closed my eyes, I could envision a succession of shadowy women hovering around Lydia and her mother, drawn by the music, by the familiar flavor of spicebush, their taste of home. It was as if they had come back to wish her well.

The ghostly women stayed until the vows were sung, rings slipped on youthful fingers, and the happy couple announced to family and friends. Lydia tucked her violin and bow under her arm and held her bouquet in her hand. She linked her arm with Christopher's and started back down the garden aisle. And then she stopped.

As I had suggested in a whisper to her before the ceremony started, Lydia presented her bouquet to her mother, who dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief as she clutched the flowers to her heart. They, too, were bound together in love.

A murmur of happy surprise rose up to roost in the trees.

I was so caught up in the moment that I didn't notice that the wraithlike figures had faded, once again, into the past. I had been hoping that maybe they would hover around me, too.

I needed their support.

Roshonda, Gavin, and I had helped Lydia's family come together in the place they had called home. The best weddings can celebrate new beginnings, but still honor those that had gone before.

My family, however, was still mired in the past. The people I loved the most were out there, somewhere. Still wandering. My dad hundreds of miles away in a scrapyard trailer. Gran lost in the fog of dementia.

And Ben? Where was he?

Ben was still missing when Lydia and Christopher cut the wedding pie and guests made a champagne toast.

My official dessert duties over, I stepped back into the night and texted Ben:
Where are you? Please come soon.

“He said he's on his way, Neely,” Dave reassured me for the umpteenth time.

But Ben wasn't there when the guests threw confetti flower petals at the newlyweds as they left the old barn to start their honeymoon.

He wasn't there when the last guest left and the grateful, happy Stidhams took the shuttle to the River Landing Inn in downtown Augusta, where Roshonda and Gavin were also staying. He wasn't there when Gavin turned out the lights and the barn went dark.

“Why don't you come back with us, Neely?” Roshonda said, as she and Gavin were getting in his car. “My room has two beds.”

“I'll just wait in the cabin a little longer,” I told her. “But thanks for the offer.” I smiled. Roshonda squeezed my arm.

The lights were on in the abiding cabin.

I looked at my phone's display again. It was working. But still nothing from Ben.

Why had he texted Dave and not me?

I stood out from the shadows of the dogtrot so I could see down the lane and to the river through a clearing. I could hear the water, coursing past me, always the same, yet ever changing.

I had chosen the wrong man the first time. I thought I had chosen the right man the second time. The man who wasn't coming to me.

All the men in my life ended up leaving. First my father, who'd abandoned my mother and me. Then Luke with his roving eye. And now Ben.

This was a new twist on my old pattern. At least I had had
some time with my father and Luke. Ben was leaving me before we even really got started.

The wind picked up. In the moonlight, gray clouds scudded across the night sky until the stars flickered out. I hoped Jett and Nick had already found the stars they were looking for.

A storm was rising.

I could smell the rain before I heard it. Trees bent in the wind. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed over the river in hieroglyphics that someone, somewhere, might take as a sign.

But not me. I was done with signs.
Slice of pie. Lodestar. Wagon wheel.
I was a fool.

I should have gone inside, but still I stood there.

My dress would be ruined, but I didn't care. I turned my face up to the pelting rain.
Bring it on
. I let it wash away my assumptions and superstitions and that crazy idea that all would be well.

My hair was plastered to my face and neck. I shivered. But I stood there and took it.

And then I saw the headlights. Two headlights. Coming up the lane.

I tasted citrus and spice. I saw ghostly faces whirl before me in a squall. The women were still there, waiting.

With a loud crack, lightning cleaved through the dark night and the lights in the cabin went out.

“Ben!” I called.

He opened his car door and ran through the downpour to the shelter of the dogtrot. I stepped back out of the rain.

“You're soaking wet,” he said.

“So are you.”

“Why were you standing in the rain?”

“Because I wanted to.”

We could barely look at each other. What was holding us back?

Why were we so hesitant?

“Roshonda said I could find you here,” Ben said. “I've been down at the ferry all night. The Stidhams didn't want to pay two dollars for any car that didn't belong to a wedding guest,” he said with a wry tone.

“Couldn't you have had someone else be in charge of that?” I asked.

“I could have.”

“So why didn't you?”

“I needed time to think, Neely.”

I shivered. “That's never good.”

I could hear Ben's smile in his tone. “And you don't have the sense to come in from the rain.”

“Give me a minute,” I said, opening the abiding cabin door.

A gust of rainy wind blew me forward and I felt the ghostly women push me through the door.

In the darkness, I felt my way to the small bathroom and the towels hanging on the rack. I felt my way back to the entryway and handed Ben one. I bent sideways to towel off the worst of my dripping curls. “There,” I said, standing up straight. “You were thinking what?”

“We've been caught between two worlds,” he began. “We're friends. We've looked out for each other since we were kids. We will always have that. But I want more now, Neely. I want you. I want us.”

He paused, then cleared his throat. “When you texted me that Luke had signed the papers, I really got my hopes up. We get this
close.
This close
. And then something happens. I asked myself,
What could possibly happen this time?
The only answer was you. Maybe you would change your mind at the last minute again. I couldn't face it.”

“Then why are you here now?”

“I thought this might be my last chance. Maybe you stayed because you were waiting for me. Maybe you stayed for some other reason. There was only one way to find out.”

If I hadn't known it before, I knew now the depths of the hurt I had caused him. I was the one who had to take the next step.

“My zipper is stuck,” I said, turning my back to Ben, my heart beating fast. I closed my eyes.

Slowly, with hands oh-so-gentle, he unzipped my dress.

I turned around to face him, looked deep into his eyes, slipped my dress off my shoulders, and shimmied it all the way down. I kicked my dress aside, then my shoes.

I held the lapels of Ben's sport coat and helped him ease it off his shoulders. He unknotted his tie while I unbuttoned his shirt. He slipped off his shoes and socks.

I led him upstairs to the bed under the eaves, with the rain beating on the tin roof.

My body quickly warmed as we lay together. I caressed his face, and then we began to kiss, gentle at first, then hungrily. I loved the touch of his hand on my breasts, down the contour of my belly until it reached the place that wanted all of him, and wanted him now. I felt silken and molten and shivery.

When I touched him, he groaned, and I guided him to me. We had no more time to waste.

We moved with each other in a new rhythm that we had the rest of our lives to perfect. Faster, faster, and more forceful, until we broke through every barrier that had ever come between us.

Afterward, we lay in each other's arms.

I rolled over and laid my head on Ben's chest, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

He stroked my damp hair. “You smell like frosting,” he said.

“I do?” I held up my hand, but couldn't see my fingernails in the dark. “That damned buttercream. You think you get it all out . . .”

“No, no, Neely. Frosting is a good thing. A very good thing. But a guy's gotta have cake,” he said, stroking my hip again. “Lots of cake.”

“Hmm,” I murmured. “Cake.”

—

Sometime in the night, I woke up with Ben snoring softly beside me. I should have felt perfectly content and fallen back to sleep. But I had that unerring feeling that there was more for the night to reveal.

I eased out of bed, covering Ben with the sheet, and wrapped myself in the quilt that had fallen to the floor.

Carefully doubling the quilt around me, I backed down the steps from the loft.

The storm had passed. The night sky had cleared. The moon and stars were out again.

I noticed details of the cabin that I had missed in daylight. In clear moonlight and dark shadow, I could clearly see the marks of a long-ago ax that had hewn each beam and made this place a
refuge. I ran my finger over clay chinking that still held little pebbles, worn down from bigger rocks over time. I sat in the rocking chair that perhaps this same craftsman had made, in front of the fireplace.

I rocked, the gentle motion loosening more of the knot that my tangled thoughts had made.

After this magical night, I knew, without question, that Ben loved me and I loved him. After all this time, after thinking I knew everything about him, I had discovered that being with Ben was thrilling. Loving Ben hadn't taken me out of myself, but more deeply within. Being with Ben had brought a delicious, long-awaited climax of the body, yes, yes, but more surprisingly, of the heart. I felt illuminated in some way, as if light was beaming from my chest.

I sighed, eased back into the chair, and slowly began the motion that was like a lullaby, holding my tender, new feelings like a baby. As I rocked, the flavor came to me once again.

Spicebush.

Citrus, spice.

A series of scenes flashed through my mind. An herb woman had once sat in this chair, picking up her fiddle to call her loved ones back and to call others who needed refuge with a song. That same woman rowed a frightened slave and her baby across the wide, icy river.

And I thought of Lydia, who had that same gift as the herb woman, binding her new husband to her with a wedding song.

Who would I call to me if I could?

The spice receded as the citrus came forward. I tasted lemon again. I remembered I had left extra tartlets in the kitchen in
case the wedding party needed a pick-me-up when they were waiting for the ceremony to begin. Suddenly, I was hungry.

I rose from the rocking chair, pulling the quilt around me, and walked the few steps to the kitchen.

There was only one tartlet left in the center of the table.

Moonlight, flooding through the window, outlined the yellow tartlet in indigo. I had a startled feeling of something sharpening into clearer focus.

I looked closer at the tart, at the mystery that could be revealed in the everyday, as if I had never really noticed the pattern of the sugared lemon slices. The sections of the lemon slice radiated like the spokes of a wheel.

A wagon wheel
.

And if I focused only on the pattern of those spokes, they formed a lodestar shimmering in the moonlight.

The oracle of the La Marzocco, just like the oracle at Delphi, had given me the message in symbols. And the symbols were in a simple slice of lemon.

My stomach rumbled. I wasn't just hungry, I was ravenous. Who could decipher symbols on an empty stomach?

I picked up the tartlet and took a bite, all crisp, sugary pastry and puckery lemon filling.

As I stood there in the moonlight, lemon on my tongue, other flashes of story came to me. Of a gray-eyed woman putting the young man she loved like a son on a boat for America. The young man who grew to manhood in a river town, tramping the woods with a long-haired artist and loving the daughter of the herb woman who had lived in this cabin. Living with his family on
the old canal. The family parting when Little Abigail left for Kentucky and childless Lizzie gave the cabin to the Ballous.