The Returning (38 page)

He said, “We’re going to make this family work, Andrea.”

“We are?”

“Yes. I’m determined.”

“Then—” She was afraid to say it but forced herself. “Then you’re not leaving me?”

“Leaving you?” He shook his head, slowly at first, then more emphatically. “No, Andrea, I’m not leaving you.”

“But—”

“We have so much to talk about—”

“I thought maybe you wanted—”

“Andrea, hear me out. I’ve been a lousy husband and a not-so-good father, but that’s going to change. You, me, the kids—we’re going to be a family. I mean, a real family. Tonight was a good start, don’t you think?”

“Well, yes.” She was hesitant but willing to agree. “I mean, I never would have imagined all three of them together like that, getting along. Billy and Phoebe, yes, but Beka . . .” She shook her head. “I don’t know how that happened.”

“I think . . .” He paused a moment, seeming to weigh his words. Then he said, “I think it’s called grace.”

She went on shaking her head, her brow heavy. “I don’t know what that is.”

“That’s what I want to tell you, the best I can.”

He squeezed her hand. And when he did, she tried—she tried very hard—not to let the tears rise up, not to let them gather on the half-moon of each lower lid. But she couldn’t hold them back. When they spilled over, she watched as John lifted his free hand to wipe them away.

“I’m sorry, John,” she said.

“No, no, no, it’s all right. Don’t apologize.” He let go of her hand and dug into the pocket of his shorts. He pulled out a neatly folded handkerchief and offered it to her. “You know, I can’t believe you even stick a handkerchief into the pocket of my shorts, for crying out loud.”

She smiled apologetically, then took the handkerchief, blew her nose, dabbed at her face. As she wiped away the tears, she found herself laughing—at herself, at the handkerchief, at the strange twists and turns of life.

“There. That’s better,” John said. He was smiling too. “You know what Billy says. We don’t sing any sad songs around here. Only happy songs.”

She shut her eyes, nodded, knew that she was opening the gift she had longed for on the day John came home. Even the summer they were young and in love wasn’t like this. Second chances were sweeter than the first.

“So in prison,” John started, taking her hand again, “I was biding my time, trying not to be noticed, you know? I just wanted to do my time and get out. But someone found me there—chased me down, I guess you could say. . . .”

She nodded again, listening. The glider swayed gently as he talked. As the minutes ticked by, and then an hour, she felt something she hadn’t felt in a long time. She thought it must be hope, but as he told his story, she realized that what filled her was something wholly unfamiliar, and she decided it just might be the first raw impression of grace.

She was content to sit and listen to John for as long as he wanted to talk, far into the night, if need be. She would be happy to stay right there until the whole night passed and dawn came seeping in through a crack in the horizon. It would be the first day of a life she’d never known before, and she would welcome it. For now, though, beyond the dim light of the porch and out beyond the dark sloping yard, a streak of moonlight glimmered like a golden road across the lake while a flock of gulls lifted from the shore and sailed like pilgrims toward the waiting stars.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Sometime back in the 1920s my grandfather Harry Tatlock bought a cottage on Conesus Lake in upstate New York, not far from the family home in Rochester. I have photos of my mother as a very young girl there. My favorite is the one in which she’s about four years old and she’s standing on the dock with the lake behind her. She looks adorable in a cotton print dress, her smiling face framed by a floppy sunbonnet. Decades later she would return to the cottage for summer vacations with her husband and their three daughters. I am, of course, one of those girls, and my memories of that lakeside cottage are among the best of my childhood.

The setting re-created here is based largely on those longago impressions of Conesus Lake, mixed with more than a little poetic license. But that’s a writer’s prerogative, I think, and I hope those readers presently acquainted with the lake will be patient with my flights of fancy.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Ann Tatlock
is the author of the Christy Award–winning novel
All the Way Home
. She has also won the Midwest Independent Publishers Association “Book of the Year” award in fiction for both
All the Way Home
and
I’ll Watch the Moon
. Ann lives with her husband, Bob, and their daughter, Laura, in Asheville, North Carolina.

Visit Ann’s Web site:
www.anntatlock.com

B
OOKS BY
A
NN
T
ATLOCK

Every Secret Thing

The Returning

Promises to Keep

Travelers Rest

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