Authors: Karin Salvalaggio
Jared gestures toward Grace’s aunt. She is squeezed into the same lilac tracksuit she’s always worn during Grace’s hospital stays. A small gold cross sits flat against her white turtleneck. Her silver hair is pulled back into a loose knot.
“That’s my aunt Elizabeth,” says Grace, thinking back on the number of times she’s awoken in the hospital to find her aunt sitting next to her bed. “She’s learned to sleep through almost anything.”
Jared drops his voice to a whisper. “I imagine she never lets you out of her sight.”
Grace wipes away a tear and keeps her own counsel. The previous morning had been an exception. After breakfast she’d chased her aunt out of the house, swearing that she was going to spend the day resting in front of the television. Her aunt had laughed before telling her niece not to swear. Grace thinks of everything bad that’s happened since. She closes her eyes and counts down from ten again. She can hear Jared’s footsteps. He is coming closer still. All she can smell is cigarettes and coffee. The stale scent of booze is gone. He reaches out to touch her, and her eyes open wide.
He wraps his fingers around her shoulder, giving her a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Going out in the woods like you did. That took guts.”
Grace doesn’t know what to say. Talking will only bring tears, and she doesn’t want to cry.
Jared removes his hand, but Grace can still feel the pressure of his grip. He tells Grace that she couldn’t have saved her mother.
Grace doesn’t agree, but instead of arguing, she asks him if he would like his hat back. She’s hoping he says no.
He bends forward to adjust it so it sits evenly on her head and says she can keep it.
Elizabeth stirs in her sleep, and they both stop moving. For a few seconds his fingers sit in frozen benediction on Grace’s forehead. Elizabeth’s neck is arched back and the loose skin on her throat trembles with each breath. Like an A-frame house about to slide off its foundations, the book
The Pilgrim’s Progress
rests unsteadily on her lap.
Grace lowers her voice. “They always hated each other.”
Jared folds his arms across his chest. “Who do you mean?”
“My mother and my aunt.”
“That’s a shame. Do you have any other family?”
“No one.”
“What about your father?”
Grace blinks up at the lights. The tears are flowing again. Jared hands her a tissue and apologizes.
“No, it’s okay,” she says quietly, her words muffled by the tissue pressed to her face.
“No, it’s not. I had no business asking.”
“It’s always been everyone’s business. My dad could be anyone.” Her face reddens. “My mother never told me his name.”
“She was probably looking out for you.”
She puts her hands flat against her face and holds them there. “My mother never looked out for me.”
There is a beeping noise and Jared slips his pager out of his pocket. “I’m really sorry, but I have to go.”
Grace is too upset to speak.
Jared passes her the entire box of tissues. “Look, I’m here at the hospital most days. Why don’t you call me if you need someone to talk to?”
She almost manages to say thank you.
Jared hides his hands away in his trouser pockets and gazes outside. His stare is vacant, but his jaw looks like it’s set as tight as a snare. “You know, you scared me out in the woods. You were so still, I thought you were dead. When you started screaming, I think my heart stopped.”
“I seem to have that effect on people,” she says, not meaning to be funny, but realizing how it must sound. She rubs her sore eyes.
He leaves her then, promising to visit when she’s feeling stronger.
“I’d like that,” she confesses in a low voice only she can hear.
Grace reaches forward to take her aunt’s book, but Elizabeth springs up from her chair just as Grace’s fingers touch the spine. The book falls, its flat cover slapping hard against the floor. Her aunt lets out a small cry, and her pale eyes dart about the hospital room as they try to find a safe place to land. The thread-like veins in her cheeks glow brightly against her ivory complexion. Behind her reading glasses her small cornflower blue eyes water. She calms down when she sees Grace but starts to panic all over again when she remembers why they are in the hospital.
“Oh, Grace,” she says, reaching out for her niece’s hands, rubbing them with her own because she always finds them cold. She breathes deeply again and presses the flat of a palm to her bosom. “Oh gosh, what a dream I just had.” She looks at her niece once more just to be sure. “But you’re okay. You’re still here. You’re okay.” A tissue appears out of nowhere. She lifts her glasses and dabs her moist eyes before blowing her nose.
Grace hands her aunt a paper cup filled with water and tells her to drink. “Do you remember your dream?” she asks.
Elizabeth’s brow wrinkles. “It was too upsetting to talk about,” she says. The cup trembles in her hands and some of the water spills on her lap. More water drips down her chin. Her stubborn mouth refuses to function as it normally would. “I think I need to eat something. It’s been a long time since breakfast.”
“I want to go home.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be possible for some time.” Elizabeth points at Jared’s hat. “It’s hot in here, why are you wearing that ugly thing?”
Grace’s voice goes up sharply. “It’s not ugly.”
Elizabeth places a hand on Grace’s arm. “I’m sorry. It’s been a long night. I couldn’t sleep so the doctors gave me something. I feel so groggy.”
“You look tired.”
“That’s because I am tired. How are you feeling?”
Grace thinks she should ask the same question of her aunt. She’s slowed down over the past few months. Some mornings she can barely get out of bed. Grace bites her lip. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Elizabeth breathes uneasily, rubbing her hand up and down the center of her chest as if pressing into the flesh would help the air move along. She shivers in the heat of the room. “I just can’t get it out of my head. You must have been terrified.” She lays a hand on one of Grace’s forearms but doesn’t let it settle. “Your mother and I had our differences but you must know how very sorry I am. I feel awful we never reconciled.”
“She sent her love.”
Elizabeth fingers the gold cross at her neck. “Pardon?”
Grace makes it up as she goes. “It’s one of the last things she said to me. Please tell Elizabeth I love her.”
“You have no idea what a relief that is to hear.”
“She looked ill. I didn’t recognize her.”
“We’ll know more soon enough. I imagine they’ll tell us everything soon enough.”
“I wish she’d told us she was coming back.”
Her aunt draws in a deep breath like she’s preparing to dive into a pool then she asks in that clear Methodist voice of hers, “Did you know him? The man who attacked your mother. Had you seen him before?”
Grace snaps her eyes shut.
But her aunt snaps right back.
“Don’t you dare,” she says, shaking Grace back into the room. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”
Grace barely moves her lips. “Nothing’s going on.”
“Then why were you so eager to get me out of the house?”
“No reason. I just thought you could use a break.”
“Grace, your mother died. The police are going to want to question you.”
Grace fumbles with the call button sitting next to her on the bed, twisting the cord around her fingers like she always does. “Why would they want to talk to me? I don’t know anything.”
“On the phone you said that you saw it happen. You must know what he looks like.”
Grace tries to remember.
“Well, can you describe him?”
“It happened so fast.”
Elizabeth squeezes her niece’s arm but her short fingernails gain no purchase. “You have a good eye, Grace, a memory for detail. I know you can help in some small way.”
Grace stares down at her aunt’s swollen knuckles. Last spring the doctors cut off the wedding ring she’d worn for forty-three years. Her aunt had it mended so she could hang it on a chain around her neck. Grace keeps forgetting to ask her why she doesn’t wear it anymore.
Distracted, Grace asks her aunt if her hands hurt.
“Grace, I’ve got more important things on my mind than my arthritis.” Elizabeth strokes Grace’s arm gently with an outstretched hand. “They had to do a biopsy on your heart to check if everything is okay. Because of the stress you were under they were worried about rejection.”
On impulse, Grace reaches up and puts her hand to her new heart. All she knew about the donor was that he’d been young and healthy when he’d died in a hunting accident. Dr. Gibson had looked sad when Grace had asked about sending a card to the family. Apparently they didn’t want to know Grace.
Elizabeth tries to reassure her niece. “It was just a precaution. Everything is fine.”
“I’d been thinking about her a lot lately.”
“Your mother?”
Grace gazes outside the windows into the fading afternoon light. “I’ve been remembering more about when I lived with her.”
Elizabeth stiffens. “Well, you’ve had a tough time lately. It’s to be expected that you’d be thinking of her.”
Grace picks at her raw cuticles. Her face reddens when her aunt puts out a hand to stop her. “Had you heard from her?”
Elizabeth tears at the rim of her paper cup. “No, sweetheart. Why would you ask such a thing?”
Grace’s eyes slide in her aunt’s direction. “You’d tell me?”
“Of course I’d tell you.”
“I’m sorry.”
There’s a knock at the door and Elizabeth looks up and smiles. “Dustin Ash, how long have you been standing there?”
Dustin brushes back a strand of graying hair that has fallen from his ponytail and steps in the room. Tall and slim, he has a habit of stooping. He smiles apologetically and holds up a pink teddy bear that has a bandage wrapped around its head. It wears a T-shirt that says
GET WELL SOON
.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I had to see for myself that Grace was okay.”
Elizabeth peers beyond Dustin toward the door. “I’m surprised you got past security. I hope someone is still out there.”
“Don’t worry, Grace is well protected.”
Elizabeth is close to tears. “You’ve always been so good about looking after us.”
“Old habits die hard.”
Elizabeth turns to her niece. “Do you remember when you got lost out at Darby Lake? You must have been seven or eight at the time.”
“No, I don’t think so.” A few days earlier Grace told Dustin she was too old for stuffed animals but he seems to have forgotten already. She takes a quick glance up at him. He doesn’t look as angry as she thought he might be.
“Of course you remember,” Elizabeth insists. “We searched for hours. The sheriff even came out to help.”
Dustin raises his deep-set eyes. “It was pitch-dark when I found you asleep under a tree. You seemed to be the only one that wasn’t worried.”
Elizabeth’s words are sharp. “That’s because she didn’t understand the danger she was in. I still don’t know what possessed her to wander off like that.”
Grace can still hear them shouting her name. Flashlight beams had darted through the woods like fireflies. She’d gone looking for her mother. She had seven dollars and twenty-three cents in her pocket and a map she’d stolen from her uncle’s truck.
Dustin tilts his head. “I’m just grateful I was there when you needed me.”
Grace looks at Dustin and their eyes meet for the briefest of seconds. She owes him so much.
When her uncle Arnold was still alive he threw a party at the house on Summit Road every year for his employees and their wives. After one too many beers her uncle had humiliated Grace in front of his friends so she’d gone off and sulked, sitting out on the back porch of an unfinished house a few hundred yards away. She was eleven, but felt four, and aside from a few geeky girls she’d met in Sunday school she was friendless.
Walter Nielson came looking for her. He sat down next to her on the step and patted her knee in a friendly way. It seemed as if he’d been working for her uncle as a truck driver since the beginning of time. He’d also known Grace’s mom. Grace trusted him.
He held out his beer. Just like his body, his fingers were big and fat. “Go ahead,” he said, offering it to Grace. “Have some. Will do you good to have some fun.”
Grace hesitated but he insisted so she held the beer with both hands and put it to her lips. In that moment he took the opportunity to put his hands up her dress. She sat frozen with the bottle in her mouth, swallowing hard and pretending she wasn’t there and
it
wasn’t happening. In her mind she floated above the porch, watching Grace and Walter from her perch among the latticework of two-by-fours tracking through the unfinished roof. But Walter didn’t go away, and his hands stayed where they were. He had one hand inside her panties and the other one was down his own trousers. His face was twisted up into shapes she’d not seen on a man before. He pushed his way on top of her and groaned into her neck, his hot breath on her cheeks, his swollen lips eventually closing over her mouth. She looked past him up into the darkening sky and thought about the number of ways she could die. Walter mumbled into her neck that she was his baby girl and she imagined jumping off the north bridge into the Flathead River, slipping into the dark water, never to be found again. There were all kinds of ways she could die. Walter, however, seemed impervious. She didn’t know how to get away from him.
It was Dustin who came to her rescue. Shaped like a whippet, he was surprisingly strong. He grabbed Walter by the throat, pounding his big round head hard into the pavement and threatening to kill him if he ever so much as looked at Grace again. Walter staggered off toward the woods. That was the last time Grace saw him. He died in an alleyway in Boise a week later. Someone bashed his head in with a baseball bat.
Dustin clears his throat before handing Grace the teddy bear. “I brought you a little present. I know it’s a bit childish, but I guess a part of me doesn’t want you to grow up.”
“Thank you,” she says, setting it on her lap. “It’s very sweet of you to come by.”