Page 48 of The Night the Lights Went Out
Sugar took the jar from Merilee and handed it back to Colin. “You can have it. I bet there are still tadpoles in the lake—just make sure you have an adult with you if you decide to catch any.” Not that she and Jimmy had ever required adult supervision. But that had been in the days before bike helmets and seat belts. According to popular belief, it was a surprise anybody had survived childhood back then.
“Did this come from the drawer, too?” Merilee asked her son, bending forward to retrieve something from the floor next to Colin.
It took a moment for Sugar to recognize the printed map in the painted wood frame. “Yes,” she said. “It was a wedding gift,” she added, remembering. “From my daddy. He made the frame himself. It shows the land and the cottage you live in now.”
“You should hang it in the cottage,” Merilee suggested. “I think there’s a perfect space for it in the bedroom hallway, on the short wall between the two bedrooms.”
Sugar wanted to be angry. Her privacy had been invaded, after all. And she was missing the weather report on the television given by that handsome weatherman. But Colin was looking up at her with Jimmy’s eyes, and Merilee was saying the exact same words that Sugar had said to Tom long ago. It seemed there really was no way of escaping the past, no matter how far down you tried to bury it. It was there, invading the present when you least wanted it to. “It used to hang there. I took it down.”
Sugar pursed her lips to show Merilee that she didn’t want to discuss it any more, but as Sugar was discovering, Merilee wasn’t necessarily the quiet and unassuming young divorcée she’d first appeared to be. There was something deeper there. Like another person entirely, hiding inside. Sugar just wasn’t sure if she’d been pushed there or had been deliberately hidden.
Completely unaware of Sugar’s interest in closing the subject, Merilee tapped on the glass, then turned it to face Sugar. “What’s this spot here without trees?” she asked, pointing to the edge of the map, which had been cut off to fit into the frame. “It almost looks like a clearing, but there’s not enough to tell.”
Sugar took the frame and pretended to study it as if she’d never seen it before. As if she had no idea there was a clearing in the woods. She was trying to come up with an answer when Colin gave a yelp of surprise and turned around, holding Jimmy’s field glasses up like a prize. “Look what I found!”
Merilee sighed. “Colin, really. You need to stop now. That doesn’t belong to you.”
Tucking the frame under her arm, Sugar took the glasses from Colin. “She’s right. They don’t belong to you. Where are your manners?”
She was sorry she’d spoken so harshly even before the little boy’s face crumpled and Merilee bent down to place her arm around him. Merilee looked up, her eyes flashing. “You’re right, he shouldn’t be touching things that don’t belong to him. And I’m sorry for allowing him. But you could have said it more nicely.” Merilee pulled Colin up and he buried his face in her side.
Sugar found herself in the rare position of feeling the need to explain herself. “Those were my grandfather’s from the First World War, and then they were Jimmy’s. They were his most favorite thing. It’s a small thing, I know. But seeing someone else with them was almost like losing my brother all over again.” She swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
Merilee’s eyes were bright as she hugged her son. “David, my brother—he collected Legos. He always had a fistful of pieces and the little Lego people. Even his pockets bulged with them. He had so many toys, but he loved them the most. I saved a few of them after he died and I always think that if my house ever catches on fire, and I know the children are out safely, those are the first things I’d save.”
Their eyes met in mutual understanding of loss and regret and the debris of their interrupted childhoods. Sugar looked away first, unwilling to form an attachment that would break sooner or later. They always did.
“I’m missing my show,” Sugar said stiffly. “Thank you for the groceries.”
Merilee’s face matched the look of hurt on Colin’s, shaming Sugar to her core. But not enough to ask them to stay.
“You’re welcome,” Merilee said. She began leading Colin to the front door, but she paused as the boy ran back to replace the jar in the drawer, even though Sugar had said he could keep it.
Sugar sat down on her sofa long after the front door had been shut quietly behind them, holding the field glasses in her hands, trying to keep them from trembling.
Seventeen
MERILEE
Merilee took a turn off the main road where an old farmhouse crouched on pilings, its foundation having been removed along with the horses in the pasture and the white ranch railing fence that had once surrounded the farm. It was almost like looking at a once-distinguished old man who’d been stripped of his dignity and was forced to stand naked and exposed, like he’d done something wrong.
The brand-new brick signpost announced what was happening behind the old house and felled trees:THE MANSIONS OF SWEET APPLE. She’d never paid much attention to all the development going on around her, always too busy with her job and the kids and Michael. But since meeting Sugar Prescott, she had a whole new perspective on what all the new development might mean to the older residents who remembered what it had once been like.
Merilee paused for a moment as a long truck laden with tall Georgia pine trunks lumbered past her. She remembered a time from when she was small and her grandfather had taken her to his favorite fishing hole, only to discover that the surrounding landscape was so altered, he couldn’t find it.Once it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s no bringing it back.She looked at the gaping holes of Georgia clay that would soon become the foundations for new homes, thinking they resembled deep wounds more than progress.
She’d been unsuccessful reaching Wade on his cell phone and had called the office number on his business card. His secretary had explained he was on a jobsite that morning and then happily told Merilee which one. Since she passed it every day on the way to and from work, she figured it would be better asking him in a place where he’d be easily distracted and perhaps not notice her embarrassment or abject humiliation. She’d been under the delusional assumption it would be easier than asking him over the phone.
She picked up her phone and dialed his cell number one last time, waiting until it had rung enough times to go to voice mail before hanging up. With a resigned sigh, she pressed her foot on the gas and moved forward to two construction trailers parked at the edge of the site. Two men wearing jeans, collared shirts, and white hard hats stood next to the trailers with a partially unfurled paper, one man pointing at it and then gesticulating toward where a backhoe was slowly digging another large hole.
He looked up as she got out of her car, feeling self-conscious in her skirt and blazer, then found herself smiling in response to Wade’s own smile as he began walking toward her.
“Merilee! Now, this is a surprise. Did Sugar send you to sabotage my site?”
She frowned. “No. Would she want me to?”
He shrugged. “This was Willa Faye’s old homestead. My mother was born here.”
Merilee’s gaze turned toward the house, its white clapboard siding now fully exposed to the sun, without the shade of the old-growth trees. It reminded her of an old high school classmate of hers who’d walked to the front of the class to give a book report with the hem of her skirt inadvertently tucked into the waistband of her underwear, her wide backside visible to everyone. Merilee couldn’t even remember the girl’s name—only her nickname, “Daisy.” But she remembered the skirt incident and how she and her friends had laughed. It haunted Merilee with shame every time she remembered it. And now the exposed siding on the house made her wonder if the house might be feeling the same kind of embarrassment.
