“She’s not my mother.” The response was automatic. The moment she said it, she wished she hadn’t. “I’m sorry,” she said, gesturing helplessly with her hands.
There were other things she could say, excuses and explanations she’d tried on like ill-fitting sweaters over the years, but in the end, they amounted to empty words, and she and her father knew it. Elizabeth and Anita had never gotten along. Simple as that. It was years too late to change it … or to pretend otherwise.
Daddy heaved a big-chested sigh of disappointment, then said, “Walk your old man outside. Tell me about your excitin’ life in that heathen Yankee rain forest.”
As they’d done a thousand times before, they walked arm-in-arm down the wide, curving mahogany staircase, crossed the black-and-white marble-floored entry, and headed for the kitchen, where the cinnamony scent of hot apple cider beckoned.
Elizabeth steeled herself for another round of stiff, awkwardly polite conversation with her stepmother, but to her relief, the kitchen was empty. Two mugs sat on the pale wooden butcher block. A silver sugar bowl was between them.
“She always remembers your sweet tooth,” Daddy said.
Elizabeth nodded. “Go on outside; I’ll bring our cider out.”
As soon as he started for the door, she poured two cups of cider and carried them outside.
The back porch wasn’t really a porch at all; rather, it was a portico-covered square of stone-tiled space. Winter-dead wisteria and jasmine twined the white pillars in veins as thick and gnarled as an old man’s arm. Overhead, it hung in sagging, ropy skeins that bowed the massive white beams downward. Now, in the midst of winter, it gave the area a vaguely sinister look, but come spring, when the green shoots exploded along those seemingly dead brown limbs, that same wisteria would turn this back porch into a fragrant bower. Beyond, huddled in darkness, was her mother’s garden.
Several black wrought-iron chairs hugged the back of the house. Each one faced the sprawling yard. Elizabeth handed Daddy his cider, then sat down in the chair next to his. The chairs creaked back and forth on runners that had been old ten years ago.
“I’m glad you could make it home this year.”
Something about the way he said it bothered her. She looked at him sharply. “Is everything all right? Are you healthy?”
He laughed heartily. “Now, sugar beet, don’t try to make me old before my time. I’m fine. Hell, your moth—Anita and I are plannin’ to kayak in Costa Rica this spring. There’s a place called Cloud Mountain—or some damn thing—that speaks right to m’ heart. Next year we’re gonna climb up to Machu Picchu. I’m just glad you could make it down here, is all. I miss seein’ you and my granddaughters.”
“I believe you forgot to mention Jack,” she observed dryly.
“Like you keep forgettin’ to mention Anita. Hell’s bells, honey, I reckon we’re too old to be fabricatin’ feelings. But as long as you’re happy with golden boy, I’m happy with him.” He paused, glanced sideways at her. “You are happy, aren’t you?”
She laughed, but even to her own ears, it was a brittle sound, like glass hitting a tile floor. “Things are great. The house is finally coming together. You’ll have to come see us this year. Maybe for the Fourth of July. That’s a beautiful month on the coast.”
“I’ve been hearin’ about your beautiful coast for two solid years now, but every danged time you call me it’s rainin’. And that includes the summer months.”
This time Elizabeth’s laugh was real. She leaned back in her chair, stared out at the yard that had once seemed so big. The shadowy stalks in Mama’s garden glinted in the moonlight. She could hear the snarling rush of the creek down below, almost a river this time of year. Come summer though, it’d be a lazy ribbon of water where dragonflies came to mate.
She remembered another time in this backyard, back when she’d been a little girl. It had been after her mother’s funeral. The moment she’d realized that Mama was really gone. Forever.
She’d been sitting in the grass, a kindergartner catching fireflies in a mason jar, listening to the distant buzz of adult conversation. It had been spring—April—and the night air smelled of the honeysuckle and jasmine her mama loved. When everyone had gone home, her father had finally come to her and squatted down. You want to sleep in my room tonight, sugar beet?
That was what he’d said to her. Nothing about Mama or grief or the endless sadness that was to come. Just one simple sentence that was the end of one life and the beginning of another.
She remembered how wrecked he’d looked, and how it had frightened her. She’d known loss from the moment they’d told her that Mama had gone to Heaven, but it was then, from Daddy, that she’d learned about fear.
As she stared ahead, watching the silvery ghost of a little girl looking at yellow-bright lights in a glass jar, she said, “The moon looked just like this that night.”