Touching Stars (15 page)

By the same bad luck, Sherry and Noah were seated across from Eric. Phyllis was beside Noah, and in the way a tongue prods an aching tooth, after grace, she prodded Noah to speak to his father, doing everything except openly chastising him for not being a loving son.

Sherry, normally a polite, even tactful, girl got enough of this by the time the roast was passed and asked Noah if he would mind trading places, because the sun was in her eyes. Then, once the switch had been made, she proceeded to tell Phyllis the story of her life, leaning heavily on her relationship with her father, a man who had made more than a few career sacrifices in order to give his children the life he wanted for them.

Gayle had never realized what a pit bull little Sherry could be. She was torn between dismay and admiration.

In an attempt to hold on to her Sunday-dinner fantasy, she tried to ignore the other interactions, but she was surrounded by them. Brandy and Lisa had allied themselves against their dates and were chatting over Jared and Cray’s heads. Caleb seemed mystified by the tensions and didn’t say a word.

Dillon, who could always be counted on to act out if he was anxious, raised the decibel level to piercing. He hadn’t been able to get a seat near his father, and in order to get Eric’s attention he got louder and more boisterous as the meal continued. Eric finally got up and went over to speak to him. Gayle had no idea what he said, but Dillon stormed away from the table.

“Just great, Dad,” Noah said, as Eric headed back to his seat. He got up, threw his napkin on the chair and went after his brother, followed in a moment by Sherry.

Franklin, the diplomat, caught Gayle’s eye and shrugged, as if to say that compared to this, negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians were a piece of cake.

By the time the meal ended and Gayle began to ferry platters back to the kitchen, she knew one tradition that would not go forward that summer. She had catered her last Sunday dinner.

Sam joined her as those who were left on the terrace dug into dessert. He was dark haired, with blue eyes that saw straight to the heart of most things and a natural warmth that was even more noticeable than his good looks.

“If you want to have a quick cry, there’s time.”

“What a disaster.” Gayle swallowed convulsively but staved off the tears. “I’m so sorry, Sam. I don’t know what made me think I could pull this off. I should have told Leon not to invite George.”

“George isn’t the real problem, is he?”

“We’re a mess, aren’t we? My little family?”

Sam leaned against the counter and watched her slowly setting coffee cups on a tray. She was working at ten-percent capacity, delaying her return to the terrace until August.

“It looks like a family trying to figure out who it is, with too many guests in the way,” he said.

The description was good. Gayle took a clean dishcloth and wiped each cup, as if a speck of dust might be clinging to some hidden surface.

“I just wanted everyone to be happy.” She looked up. “I want the boys to feel they can have friends here on Sunday. I wanted to include Eric and my parents. I wanted you to have a chance to sit in the sun with Elisa and relax for a change.”

“Your intentions were honorable. What’s behind them?”

Gayle knew, although it was hard to admit. “I guess I want to prove I have the most civilized divorce in America. Eric said we won that award.”

“Was that your intention right from the moment you realized your marriage was ending?”

“That was so long ago.” She bit her lip; then she nodded. “Probably.”

“I know you pretty well. You usually put your feelings aside and work for the greater good. It’s who you are, how you think of yourself.”

Gayle knew he was right. As a child, she had been taught that the way she treated others was important, but the way she felt about them? Immaterial. Still, Gayle couldn’t lay the whole problem at Phyllis’s door. Phyllis had never set out to make her daughter unhappy, only to make her aware of the importance of actions. And Gayle had been given plenty of chances throughout her life to change.

She gave up on the cups and faced Sam. “I’m not good at dealing with feelings. I guess that’s part of who I am, too.”

“I wonder, have you ever dealt with your feelings about Eric or the divorce? Really dealt with them? Or did you just plunge into being good at divorce the way you’re good at everything else?”

“From the outside, doesn’t it look like I’ve moved on?”

“Honestly?”

She nodded.

“You’re a very attractive woman, Gayle. But what happens to the men who show interest? You’ve been divorced how long?”

“Twelve years.”

“That’s a long time to be alone.”

“But I’m not. I’ve certainly gone out with men since Eric left. I have my sons. I have the inn. I’m surrounded by people all the time. I’m never alone.”

“Sometimes we surround ourselves with people just so we don’t have time to examine what we really need.”

She realized he was also making a point about dinner. Gently and lovingly, Sam was telling her that today she had done the same thing on a smaller scale. She had surrounded her small family with other people, at least one of whom was guaranteed to cause turmoil. That way the problems the Fortmans were facing would be diluted.

She crossed to the refrigerator for a pitcher of cream and put it on the tray, adding the sugar bowl beside it before she spoke. “You know, you’ve got perspective on this question. Does life ever get easy? Not easier. I mean,
effortlessly
easy? Do I have something to look forward to? I could use that about now.”

“There are minutes sprinkled here and there.”

“I don’t see any of those in my immediate future.”

Sam joined her and lifted the tray to carry it out to the terrace. “Maybe not, but if you spend this summer dealing with some of the things you’ve swept under the rug, maybe you’ll have more of those minutes for the rest of your life.”

Jared knew Brandy was still angry at him. When she’d learned he was going all the way to Massachusetts for college, she had been upset enough. Now, with the reality setting in, she wanted to negotiate. But Jared knew his future was too uncertain. He had no idea what the next years of his life would require. He couldn’t promise he would come home next summer, and he couldn’t promise that once she was accepted to a school he would consider moving to join her. Brandy’s grades were just okay. She wasn’t looking at schools that would have a challenging curriculum.

Jared knew something was required of him if he wanted to smooth things over, but he wasn’t sure what. He wasn’t ready to end their relationship, but he wasn’t ready to make promises, either.

They had dropped off Cray and Lisa, and were on their way to Brandy’s house. After dinner the four friends had taken the rowboat out on the river, then hiked for a while before returning to the inn. No one had been in the best of moods. Jared wasn’t exactly sure what had gone wrong at dinner, but as Sundays went, this wasn’t one of his favorites.

“I wish you’d say something.” Beside him in the pickup, Brandy’s arms were crossed over her chest. Her tone was mutinous.

Jared turned the pickup into the Wilburns’ driveway and switched off the engine. “I’ve said a lot. You haven’t listened to much of it.”

“Mostly what you said was how excited you are about going away to school.”

“Brandy, my grandfather wanted to know if I was looking forward to MIT. He’s paying some of my expenses. What should I have said? That I’m sorry I was admitted, and I want to stay here and wait for you to graduate?”

She opened her door and jumped down. Sighing, he did the same, going around the pickup to join her. He could see she was struggling to hold back tears.

“I’m just going to miss you, that’s all.” She sniffed.

He put his arms around her and pulled her hard against him, kissing her until she was breathless. She pulled away and sent him a watery smile.

“Well, that’s a little better,” she said.

“You know I’m going to miss you, too. We can call and e-mail.”

“Are you at least coming home for Christmas?”

He felt trapped. “I’m planning to.”

“I’m going to save the money I make as a counselor. I can come up and see you.”

He nodded, as if that was a terrific idea. In reality he wondered just how long Brandy would mourn before she started looking for his replacement. Senior year was a social whirl, and not having a date for the important events was going to get old quickly. By the time she saved enough money to fly to Boston, she might not remember who he was.

That last thought made him clutch her to his chest. He rested his cheek against her hair. “Do you want to watch TV or something? Or do you just want me to go home?”

“My parents won’t be back until late. They said not to expect them before midnight. Keep me company.”

Arms around each other’s waists, they walked up the path to her house. Brandy’s parents had a couple of acres on a private road. The exterior of the simple one-story house was painted tan with green shutters, but in Jared’s opinion the inside was needlessly fussy. The heavy drapes looked like a queen’s royal robes. The living-room furniture still looked showroom fresh, as if no one ever sat on it. Only the family room in the back seemed like a place where people lived. Despite sharing the inn with hundreds of guests each year, his mother still made the whole place feel like a home.

“Want some popcorn?” Brandy asked as he settled on the couch and reached for the remote.

“Nope, just you.”

She settled beside him, and he put his arm around her.

“I’m sorry about this afternoon,” she said. “I just don’t want you to go. But I know you have to, Jared. I’m being selfish. Just don’t forget me, okay?”

He turned her a little so he could kiss her. Her breasts were soft against his chest, and she put her arms around his neck to draw him closer.

In the corner he could hear the humming of the fifty-gallon saltwater aquarium. Outside the kitchen window a woodpecker was tapping a hole in the siding, and in the living room, a grandfather clock began to chime.

Jared was only vaguely aware of the sounds. They were a soft orchestral accompaniment to the frantic drum solo of his heart. The remote was forgotten. The room itself, with its green plaid furniture, the deer head mounted above the fireplace, the wooden plaque with the Wilburn coat of arms, faded away.

He managed to ask a question. “You’re sure your parents aren’t coming back until late?”

“Absolutely sure.” Then, as if to sweeten the deal, she whispered the rest. “I have condoms. I don’t want to get pregnant. I don’t want to trap you.”

He was elated. In his heightened state of arousal, this seemed like the pledge he’d been hoping for. Brandy loved him, but she didn’t want to chain him to her side. She knew exactly what she was doing tonight. They would practice safe sex. Sex on
every
level would be safe tonight.

“I just love you so much,” she said. “Can’t I show you?”

Jared knew he was lost when no answer occurred to him except yes.

O
n Monday morning Helen Henry handed a bright gold shopping bag tied with red ribbon to Gayle. “I figure you been so good to the church, it was about time for some of us to be good to you.”

Gayle knew Helen well enough to realize the bag and ribbon were probably recycled. Helen was legendary for saving everything she thought she might use in the future. She no longer rescued other people’s trash, which had once cluttered her old farmhouse, but she was still careful not to throw away anything that came her way naturally.

Gayle untied the ribbon and lifted out a long quilted strip.

“It’s a table runner in the Touching Stars pattern,” Helen said. “For that table in your reception area. See? We made it using light fabrics for the background, same as the light stars in the quilt. And dark fabrics for the stars, same as the background in the quilt. Sort of a negative of the one for your wall. People will see this table runner and look past it to the Touching Stars in the stairwell. I made sure it would fit there.”

Gayle was touched. Helen and the church quilters had done a beautiful job on the table runner, which was pieced with fewer diamonds on each arm of the stars, for size. And they were right. It was a perfect addition to the reception area. Once the quilt was on display, one would highlight the other.

Gayle thanked her, along with Dovey Lanning and Cathy Adams, who had come with Helen to quilt this morning.

“Not much, but something,” Dovey said. She was about Helen’s age, with white hair pulled back in a bun and faded blue eyes that still took in everything.

“You know we call you the Quilt General, don’t you?” Helen pulled out a chair and looked at the seat suspiciously, as if she wasn’t absolutely sure it would hold her weight.

“Quilt General?” Gayle laughed. “Whatever for?”

“You’ve organized every single quilt sale we’ve had. You were the one printed all those tickets for the Cactus Bloom quilt raffle and counted the money. You were the one who got it advertised and got that story about it in the paper. You’re the one comes through for us and makes sure everything goes according to plan. Quilt General.”

Apparently Helen decided her chair would do, and she lowered herself onto it. The other women made themselves at home around the frame. Helen and Dovey both looked it over to see if anything new had been added. A few guests had finally given quilting a try. Only the worst stitches were removed. Gayle had explained that this quilt was not going to be judged at the county fair but rather was going to be something returning guests could point to next year and say, “I quilted part of that.”

“So, Miss Quilt General, are you planning to take your turn?” Helen demanded.

Gayle had been waiting for this question. Helen was also legendary for making quilters out of people who hadn’t had the slightest interest. Gayle had her answer all ready. “You have to promise that once I’m done, that will be that. You won’t keep after me to learn to do it better.”

Helen’s muttered response sounded suspiciously like “Not in this lifetime,” but Gayle preferred to believe the old woman meant she would not continue to insist. She wasn’t too worried, since she knew that once Helen saw her primitive needle-working skills, all this would be a moot point.

She listened as Helen explained what was expected of her; then, after the quilting stitch had been demonstrated a few times, Gayle set to work.

“I can’t believe what you’ve done with this old place,” Dovey said. “I remember what it looked like twenty years ago, and I can tell you it was shameful that Doc Featherstone’s descendants let it go the way they did. When I was a girl it was something of a showplace, but after the doctor died, it came down to all his children, and they could never agree which of them should keep on living here.”

“That’s what we were told,” Gayle said.

“Nobody really wanted it, and nobody really wanted to sell. So this one lived in it, then that one, and they were always arguing about who would pay for this and who would pay for that. Most of the time
nobody
would pay until things got really bad, so the roof leaked, or windows were broke and the glass wasn’t replaced fast enough. Wasn’t till all his children died off that the grandchildren were able to figure out they just had to sell.”

“Everyone expected us to tear it down.” Gayle poked her needle through the layers and tried to poke it back toward her again. The point came up over an inch away. And the finger underneath that was supposed to guide it already felt raw from her efforts.

“I like people who save old things,” Helen said. “Nothing worse than wasting things that could be used again, and that goes triple for something like a house.”

Gayle poked the needle through again, this time even farther away and definitely not close to the chalk line she was supposed to be following. She soldiered on.

“At one time the house must have been filled with laughter. When I walked through it, it didn’t feel empty and sad, like some houses do. It felt like a happy house. I guess that’s silly. I probably just wanted to think it had been happy, since I loved it at first sight.”

“No, it
was
a happy house,” Dovey said. “And that’s why the family was so reluctant to sell. They had all those good memories tied up here. I guess those memories were more important than the money they could have got for it. And even when they were arguing about what to do, seems like they went on being friends. They had reunions here, I remember. Every year, as regular as a clock striking midnight.”

“They still do.” Gayle tried and failed at yet another attempt to get her needle back on course. “The first week of September, the Featherstone descendants take over the whole inn. And what a rowdy bunch.”

“All’s well that ends well,” Cathy Adams said. “I like that story.”

“Well, I got another story to tell,” Helen said. “About that farmhouse used to be across the way.”

Gayle was already fairly sure she didn’t like quilting. She could not imagine why anyone chose to spend their time this way. Her left index finger felt numb, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stay on course or shorten the length of her stitches. But the talk around the quilt frame? This she could get used to.

Helen took tiny, perfectly spaced stitches as she spoke. “When I was a girl, there were about as many Civil War soldiers still hanging on as there are soldiers from World War II these days. I know it all seems such a long time ago now, but it wasn’t. Not really. People I knew were still affected by it, you know. Families raised by women ’cause so many of the men had died. More Americans died in that war than in others before or since. And of course the Valley took decades to get over all the crops being destroyed and Sheridan’s men laying waste to anything they took a fancy to burning. You know Custer was one of them, one of the soldiers who came through here? Weren’t so many Valley residents sorry when he met his end at the hands of those Indians. I’m sorry to say it, but a lot of folks here believed he got his due, and there’s no mistaking it.”

“All these years later, people here are still fighting the war,” Gayle said.

“The odd thing about all that?” Dovey effortlessly mimicked Helen’s perfect stitches. “Not everybody in Virginia was all het up about secession, you know. We were one of the last states to secede, and then only with reluctance. But after the Union came and went here more than a few times, and then Sheridan came through burning everything, weren’t too many people in this part of the world who would speak up for the Union anymore. Take somebody who’s sitting on the fence and give them a shove? You know what side they’ll end up on, sure as can be.”

Cathy Adams stitched away as she spoke, although her stitches weren’t quite as perfect as the others’. “Whether there’s any sense in it or not. And what sense was there in all that death and destruction? Brother against brother?”

“The woman who lived in that farmhouse across the river saw it all,” Helen said. “She was a young woman when the war began. Of course she wasn’t so young when I would see her here and there. By then she was older than I am now by some years. She lived in that house alone until the day she died. I think she was close to a hundred.”

“Didn’t she have family?” Cathy asked. “That would be unusual, I think, in an area like this one.”

“She did have a son in the area. Of course, he was old by then himself. I was still a girl, but the way I recall it, she would never move away, never move in with her son or grandchildren so they could take care of her. Somebody came over every day and got her meals and made sure her house was clean, her garden taken care of. That was back before we had real phone lines here, but her family laid wires across the hills to some relative or another’s house. You’d come across that wire if you were walking in that area, just lying on the ground connecting her house with one of those old-fashioned phones you had to wind up.”

“Country people knew how to make do,” Dovey said. “Most still do.”

“I wonder if she’s the one who made the star quilt I have the pieces from.” Gayle tried piling stitches on her needle the way the others seemed to be able to do. The result looked like a train wreck, cars piled on cars, and no survivors.

“She was a quilter, that’s certain,” Helen said. “Quilting comes and goes, you know. One generation gets caught up in it, the next, well, maybe they have enough quilts already, or maybe they just grew up tired of hearing about it. But that time around the Civil War was a fertile time for quilting. She would have learned how at her mama’s knee.”

Helen leaned over and looked at Gayle’s wobbly quilting line. “I never did see such a poor example of what a quilting stitch is supposed to look like.”

“Didn’t I tell you needlework’s not my strength?”

“I guess I thought you were like everybody else who tells me that.”

“I’m afraid I’m different.”

“You might well be.”

“You’ll have better luck with my son.”

Helen harrumphed and went back to her own section. “T’other reason I know she was a quilter? Now there’s a real story. Only after that sorry work you’re doing over there, I don’t know if I ought to favor you with it.”

Gayle laughed. “I am actually doing brilliant work. This is the best stitching I’ve managed. And remember? I’m the Quilt General?”

The light in Helen’s eyes was warm, although her lips continued in a line that was straighter than Gayle’s stitches.

“What story?” Dovey demanded. “Just get down to it.”

Helen sewed a little while, as if she was pulling it all together. “Well, that farmhouse wasn’t nearly as big as this house, but it wasn’t a shack, either. In its time it was a nice solid house, big enough for a real family and maybe a guest or two. But by the time Mrs. Miranda Duncan—”

“That was her name?” Gayle asked.

“It was. Miranda not being a common name in her time, but my mother told me once that Mrs. Duncan told her she was named for somebody in a Shakespeare play.”

“The Tempest,”
Gayle said. “I saw it performed a few years ago.”

“Well, that was most likely it, then, since you recognize it. By the time she got to be old, the house was too big for one person to care for, you understand? And though her family helped, and there was even a hired man or two who came and went, the house started to show its age. And old houses, purt near abandoned like that one, well, they get a reputation, if you know what I mean.”

Gayle was thinking about Travis and the dig, and trying to hang on to every word Helen told her so she could pass them on to him. “Reputation?”

“That house had stood for a very long time by then. People had lived there, died there.” She punched
died
harder than the other words.

“You mean haunted?” Gayle asked.

“That’s it exactly.”

“So people thought Miranda Duncan was living in a haunted house?”

“They did. It was one of those stories people begin, just to have something to talk about. To my mind, nobody ever swore they saw a ghost floating around. My brothers sure never did.”

“They went there?”

“You got to remember, there wasn’t a lot for us to do. We didn’t have television and only got radio when I was already quite a young lady. So we told a lot of stories. Made up some of them, you understand, and I’m sure this one was made up, too.”

“What was made up?” Dovey demanded.

“That Miranda Duncan was touched in the head. See, some of the young people from this area used to spy on her. My brothers were older than me, and they had more leeway to come and go. They’d be out of a night doing whatever they weren’t supposed to do, and they’d sneak up to her house and peek in her windows to see what she was doing. Some people said she was a witch, you know, and others said the house was haunted. Pretty soon, though, everyone just agreed that she was a little loose in her head, like old age or the war or something or other had shaken some of the good sense right out of her.”

“Why? Because she didn’t want to leave her home?” Gayle asked. “Even when she was too old to live alone?”

“That lent itself to the story, I suspect. But people who were spying in her windows saw her talking to herself while she sat by a fire—didn’t matter if it was cold or hot outside, there was always a fire—and sewed. She was talking to herself or to somebody long gone—which was what they really wanted to think. Anyway that’s what they said. Now me, I understand why a person would do that.”