Page 111 of Dreams of Falling
She turned again to see the Tree of Dreams. “Forgive me,” she whispered, not sure for what or to whom she was speaking.
thirty-six
Larkin
2010
“Stop.” Ceecee reached across the table and put her hand on the letter. “That belongs to Ivy.”
“Yes,” I said gently. “But Mama wanted me to see it. She said she’d found out something about the fire and wanted to show it to me.”
Ceecee pulled the letter toward her, then carefully folded it before laying her hands on top. I studied her hands for a moment, the neat fingernails with pale pink polish; her hands were perfect for gardening, or making comfort food in her kitchen, or soothing babies. She’d done all of those things for me and my mother. I needed to remember that. From the look on her face when she saw the letter, I knew I would need to remember.
“But how do you know this is it?” she asked, the stubborn jut of her chin just like when she’d told the softball coach he should let me play even though I’d yet to prove that I could make contact between bat and ball.
Bennett covered my hand with his, understanding everything that was going on inside my head and heart without a word spoken between us. I glanced at him, hoping to show my appreciation, and in a sudden flash of insight I became aware that what I felt for him was somuch more. He gave me a lopsided grin with his ruined mouth, then winked with his good eye, making me realize that mind reading wasn’t necessarily always a good thing.
I faced Ceecee again, struggling to recall what I’d been about to say. “In the e-mail, Mama mentioned she’d found photos of me as a little girl—and I found those, too, with the letter. It’s not definitive, but I think it’s likely that this letter is what she wanted to show me, don’t you?”
“I need a cigarette,” Bitty announced, pulling one from her housecoat pocket. She stood to retrieve an ashtray she apparently kept hidden in the pantry, then sat back down at the table and lit up. Ceecee didn’t say a word about Bitty smoking in the house, and that worried me most of all.
“You’re right, Larkin,” Ceecee said. “It’s not definitive. I’d rather wait and ask Ivy.”
Bennett squeezed my hand, giving me the courage to say what I needed to say next. “She might never wake up, Ceecee. I think we all should prepare ourselves, just in case.”
“Or she could wake up tomorrow.” Ceecee’s voice was thick with tears.
“She could,” I agreed. “That’s what we’re all hoping and praying for. But before her accident, she wanted me to know something, and I think it’s in this letter. Wouldn’t reading it be a way to honor her even in her absence?”
We sat in silence, listening to the grandfather clock in the hall chime one o’clock. Bitty blew a ring of smoke up to the ceiling, like a protective halo above us, then rested her cigarette in the ashtray. She picked up the wedding photo in the frame, and the loose photograph of the two young men. “We should probably tell her,” she said. “About Reggie. And Margaret.”
Ceecee closed her eyes as if deciding between the lesser of two evils. “It’s not like it matters anymore. There’s nobody left who could be hurt. Except perhaps Ivy.” She gave a little shrug. “But I don’t think even she would care now. Boyd loved her so much.”
I opened my mouth to state the obvious, that of course her fatherloved her. But then I remembered my thoughts when I first saw the Myrtle Beach photograph, and my mother’s silly expression in the photograph of the two of us. It so resembled one of the boys in the first photo. “Oh,” I said as I looked at the wedding photograph of Ceecee and my grandfather Boyd, then compared it to the one of the young men behind the fake bars. One of them was definitely the man I’d called Granddaddy, with glossy dark hair and bright eyes, his warmth and strength apparent even in the photo of him as a young man.
“Your mother has the same eyes.” Bennett tapped on the image of the man standing next to Boyd. He had lighter hair and was several years younger than the other young man in the photo, but they shared a resemblance.
“So, who was Reggie?” I asked, unable to tear my gaze away from his photograph. “Besides apparently being my mother’s biological father.”
Ceecee drew a deep breath. “Reggie was Boyd’s younger brother. They were very close, despite their age difference. Reggie saved Boyd’s life one summer. From drowning.”
I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable with my guess as to where this was headed. “That’s a huge debt to have hanging over your head.”
Bitty and Ceecee shared a glance; then Ceecee spoke again. “You could say that.”
Bitty continued. “We three girls—Margaret, Ceecee, and I—met Reggie and Boyd the summer we graduated from high school.”
“In Myrtle Beach,” I supplied.
Bitty nodded. “Reggie and Margaret fell in love at first sight. It was a match made in heaven. She was smart, beautiful, and rich, and he was handsome and smart with big ambitions. The first time he met her, he introduced himself as a future president of the United States.” She took another drag from her cigarette. “They weren’t the only ones to fall in love. So did Ceecee and Boyd.” She looked pointedly at me.
Bennett squeezed my hand again as the implications of this bombshell settled on me like so much fallout. “Oh,” I said, amazing myself again at my clever use of vocabulary. Except there really wasn’t anything I could say that would adequately express my surprise.
“What happened to Reggie?” I finally managed.
“He died before your mother was born, and before he could marry your grandmother, although he wanted to.” Bitty stabbed her cigarette into the ashtray for punctuation.
“So Boyd married Margaret, who was pregnant with his brother’s child, claiming the baby was his own,” I said slowly. “And then Margaret died in a fire two years later.”Suspicious. I saw the word on the fire chief’s report, underlined in blue ink. The mural my mother had painted that showed all three women, a child, and amaninside the burning house. And I saw the ribbon I’d pulled from the tree with the wordsforgive mewritten down its length. My voice sounded brittle enough to break. “When did you marry Granddaddy?”
