Words Unspoken (22 page)

The hail, the fear, the bridge ahead on I-75. The bridge that they were getting ready to pass under …

Lissa grabbed her head in her hands and ducked down, as if she could hide behind the dashboard. She had no idea how long she remained in that position, nor when Mrs. Gruder turned off the highway and parked at a Texaco station. She hardly heard the teacher’s voice or felt her hand on Lissa’s shoulder.

Eventually the trembling stopped. She sat up with difficulty and realized she was sobbing.

“I’m sorry, Lissa. I didn’t realize—I forgot …”

Lissa nodded, unwrapping her fists, forcing herself to take deep, slow breaths as the therapist had instructed. Slowly, in and out, in and out. She swallowed repeatedly, but could not dislodge the lump in her throat. Tears slid down her cheeks as she heard the insidious words.

All your fault.

And her soft answer, seething through her brain.
I hate you, Dad.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 12

Lissa anticipated the driving lesson with Mr. MacAllister the next Monday afternoon like a little girl going to her first horse show: unbounded excitement and total terror. If she could wrap her arms around all that had happened this weekend, if she could put words on the feelings, perhaps he would have an answer, or at least some advice. But halfway through the lesson, as she drove along the tranquil road of Military Park, she still had not found the courage to broach the subject. Fortunately, Mr. MacAllister did not need her to take the lead.

“Did you have a nice weekend, Lissa?”

She felt her face go tense, her jaw clench, her hands clasp tightly around Ole Bessie’s steering wheel as if she were back on Caleb, gripping the reins as he galloped out of control while she desperately tried to slow him down.

“It wasn’t so bad.” Deep breath, deep breath.

She pulled Ole Bessie over to the side of the rode, beside a huge rectangular stone monument with a woman in long robes—a figure from antiquity—carved into the stone. Underneath the woman, Lissa read the plaque:
26th Ohio Infantry, 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 21st Army Corps
. All dead. A memorial for a bunch of dead soldiers.

She cut the engine and looked at Mr. MacAllister. “There were good parts of the weekend and horrible parts.”

He said nothing.

“I went to Atlanta with my Latin teacher. On the way back we drove past the … the …” She cleared her throat. “The accident site.” Very deep breath. “I had another panic attack. She was driving, but I panicked. And all I could hear were those horrible voices telling me again it was all my fault and that I was never going to get past this. Never.”

She looked over at the silver-haired gentleman beside her, noticing again the kindness in his eyes, and something else. A pain, an understanding. She wanted to reach over and take his wrinkled hand and clutch it, wanted his thirty years of helping scared teenagers to seep through her hand into her veins and travel to her heart. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest as if she were very cold.

“How often have you been back to the accident site, Lissa?”

Surprised, she frowned, felt the ripples on her brow. “Never. Never until Saturday.”

“Doesn’t sound like failure to me, Lissa. Sounds like courage. Facing the unthinkable.”

Courage?

“It’s just I wasn’t expecting it. It came out of nowhere—like the hail—and all of a sudden we were passing under that bridge and I was coiled up in a knot.”

Mr. MacAllister had one arm across his chest, and he surrounded his lips with his other thumb and forefinger, deep in thought. Finally he spoke. “There’s a lot of mental energy that goes into driving, whether we realize it or not. The trick is teaching kids to be defensive drivers
,
to be prepared for the unexpected, to acknowledge it will happen. It’s the same in life, Lissa. I call it a battle plan.”

“Can you explain?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

He said nothing for several long seconds.

“Let’s use an example from history, Lissa. The Battle of Chickamauga. Right here, right on these fields. September 20, 1863. The Confederate General, Braxton Bragg, had a decisive victory right here at Chickamauga over the Union troops led by General Rosencrans. I’ll spare you all the bloody details for now, but in spite of terrible carnage, Bragg won. The problem was that General Bragg failed to follow it up—he allowed the defeated Union army to retreat to Chattanooga.

“General Bragg’s indecisiveness following his victory at Chickamauga led to defeat at Chattanooga two months later. And then Chattanooga, firmly in Federal hands, would become the base for a drive into the Deep South in 1864—you can read that very inscription at the museum in the visitor center. You see, Lissa, Bragg wasn’t thinking far enough ahead. But you can. You can get past the
now
.”

She glanced at him and shrugged, unconvinced.

“You’re taking positive steps—like doing your homework.”

She gave a bitter chuckle. “I guarantee you
that
wasn’t hard. It just spilled out—all the anger, all the pain.”

“I’ve learned that getting things out into the open, saying the truth about what is inside, usually speeds up the process of moving forward. Admitting it, facing it, and then planning a way to keep moving in the right direction.”

“So what are you suggesting, Mr. MacAllister? What is my battle plan?”

“I can’t make it for you. What do you think it should be?”

“I have no idea!” It came out as an angry expression of incredulity.

“That’s okay. Think about it. It’ll come to you, I imagine.” Then he unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door to climb out, instructing Lissa to do the same.

He began walking quickly toward the monument, and Lissa hurried to keep up.

“You said there were horrible parts to the weekend and good parts. Do you mind telling me about the good parts?”

She followed him through the grassy field. “Oh, well, I got to go to my favorite bookstore in Atlanta.”

He nodded, still walking. “Which one?”

“The Sixth Declension.”

With that, he stopped and turned around to face her. He looked pleased. “I know that store. In Decatur? Used to go there every once in a while myself.”

“Really? You like Latin?”

“I like history. All kinds of history. And Mr. Evan Jones knows his history. Filled his store with the best books—ancient and modern—available.”

“That’s weird. I mean, I can’t believe you know that store.” She almost told him about Silvano, then changed her mind. “Yeah, I used to study like a lunatic in that bookstore, surrounded by all those books—you know, back in high school, for the Latin competition.”

“I see. And did you like it? The competition?”

“I
loved
it. I craved it. Competition was my caffeine for the longest time. You name it, I competed. Grades in school, the Latin club, horse shows. Life
was
competition.”

He stopped and leaned against the stone monument. She imagined him as a soldier, perhaps a lieutenant or a corporal.

“Were you good?”

“Good?”

“Good at competition? Did you win things?”

“Yes, I did. I was very good.” Lissa adopted a similar pose, her back against the stone monument, her eyes staring forward at the empty battlefield. “I didn’t use to make mistakes, Mr. MacAllister. That’s the thing.

I got it all right. Nothing intimidated me. So you see, it’s very odd to be reduced to panic in the driver’s seat of Ole Bessie. Humiliating. Not even that.”

Now she put her hands on her hips and looked Mr. MacAllister in the eyes. “It’s like I’m a completely different person. If you told me that I could win a million bucks if I learned how to drive up Lookout Mountain by Christmas, it wouldn’t motivate me now. Wouldn’t mean a thing. I’ve lost the fun, the joy of the challenge. Why get up in the morning if there’s nothing to prove and no one to beat? I hate the void. And then the void is filled by something dark and thick.”

“Depression. Depression’s a mean master. Sucks you dry, doesn’t it?”

When he looked at her with his pale blue eyes, Lissa was convinced he knew exactly how she felt. “Yeah. It’s like you’re smothering under a huge, heavy blanket, and you don’t have the energy to throw it off.”

“Maybe you’ll just have to crawl out from under that blanket, Lissa. Maybe you won’t be able to throw it off. But I believe you are going to get out from under it. Gradually.”

She shrugged. “Maybe.” She thought of her ride on Caleb, the breakneck pace, that momentary delight at being almost out of control. A taste, a fragrance of the past. “Maybe you’re right, Mr. MacAllister. Maybe it will come back. I just hope it comes back in time.”

“In time for what, Lissa?”

“In time for life.” She knew without looking at his face that this old man understood.

CHAPTER TWELVE

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13

Sitting at her desk, Stella reviewed the list of edits she had received from Eddy Clouse. He had combed through the manuscript and found only a handful of tangles, nothing that a little conditioner couldn’t remove, Stella thought to herself, pursuing the metaphor. Combing out the tangles was the absolute least of her worries.

She stared at the letter on her desk and literally felt she might vomit, spit out the last twenty-seven years all over the desk. All over the world.
Someone knew.

No, someone was fishing for her identity. For years she’d dealt with overeager fans and nosy reporters. She had kept every letter from a reader carefully preserved in her files. Youngblood Publishers forwarded them to her post office box every month, wonderful letters that almost made Stella tear up as she read them, testimonies of the way literature seeped into hearts and changed them. She cherished the letters, and every one of them was answered personally and then sent back to Eddy Clouse, who posted them from Atlanta with the Youngblood address on the back of the envelope.

But this letter was different. First, it had come to the post office box on its own—not forwarded from Youngblood. Eddy Clouse and Jerry Steinman were the only people who used that address. How had this reader found out about it? Second, the postmark was impossible to read—this guy was careful about covering his tracks. And third, it was obvious that this person had already read the manuscript of the new novel. Impossible! A dangerous breach of security that Eddy would never allow.

Others had tried to sneak around the protocol and force her into the open. It hadn’t worked then. But then she had been younger and, although she hated to admit it, sharper. Keen. Now she felt the weight of secrecy and old age creeping up on her. She mulled through the phrases in the typed, unsigned letter, the envelope with no return address.

Have appreciated reading your newest novel …

Here the letter writer—somehow she felt sure it was a
he
—launched into a precise synopsis.

As with all the others, it is “stellar,” Stella… . For many years now, I have wondered at your anonymity. Why is this so important to you? Are you a recluse? Or is there something you are hiding? What is the reason you don’t want anyone to know who you are?

Here’s my offer. Meet me in Chicago at a little restaurant called Stefani’s, West Fullerton at noon on October 19. You show up and give me an interview, and I’ll discuss with you how I will use this information. If you choose to ignore this opportunity, I will be forced to write an article based on what I know and get it published as I see fit.

It’s your move.

Hoping to see you on October 19.

The letter writer was sniffing her out, searching for clues. One thing was for sure; he had read the new novel. But that didn’t bother her. He wasn’t trying to steal her words. He wanted to steal her identity and then show it to the world—an unscrupulous fiend who wanted a face-to-face interview. What in the world made him think she would fall for such a ploy? Her heart sank. She
would
go. What if he knew about Ashton, about the past?

She had a lot more to protect than her anonymity. She would go. She dialed Youngblood Publishers immediately, asking for Eddy’s personal line. She felt a wave of relief when he answered.

“Eddy, Stella here.”

He doubtless noticed her unusually crisp tone. She rushed ahead.

“No worries—the edits are coming along fine. But … but I have another question, a problem. Who in your office has read the manuscript?”

“No one, Stella. Just me, as always.”

“Somebody’s read it, Eddy. I just received an anonymous letter, threatening me—from someone who has obviously read the whole thing.”

Eddy’s voice faltered. “I … I just don’t see how. The manuscript arrived as always in the box and then secured in the burlap bag with the address label on the twine. It certainly didn’t look like it had been tampered with. And I’ve kept it under lock and key since then.”

“Very strange.”

Silence.

“Have you talked to Jerry lately?”

“No. He’s going to be my next call. I wanted to start with you.” She let out a long sigh.

Eddy Clouse was her friend of almost thirty years. He had learned to read the stress in her voice, even if she never admitted it.