“I don’t know much, really. I heard stories, o’ course. The second wife always hears stories about the first. By all accounts, your mama was the most beautiful, most adventurous woman in Springdale.”
“I’ve heard that line for years. It’s starting to sound rehearsed. Tell me something real. Why wouldn’t Daddy ever talk about her?” She gazed at Anita. “Please.”
“Before you were born, your mama ran away for a spell.”
“She left Daddy?”
“In the middle of the night, from what I heard. It took him a while to find her. She was way to North Carolina by then, but he tracked her down and brought her home. After that, folks said, she was different. Sad and quiet. Jenny Pilger saw her break into tears one day at the Piggly Wiggly.”
“Depression.” Elizabeth had never imagined such a thing. Her mama, the woman everyone said was so bold and adventurous, depressed. She didn’t quite know how to process this new information.
“She loved you. Old Anna Deaver said that Marguerite never let you out of her sight. She even slept with you most nights. Wouldn’t let anyone watch you, ever. But the rumor was that she never did shake that sadness. Some said she clung to you so tightly they thought your little eyes’d pop out. She stopped smilin’. That’s what I heard most of all. That she’d left her smile in North Carolina, and she couldn’t even come up with one for you.”
“I used to beg him for stories about her. He never would say anything beyond, ‘You hold your memories close, sugar beet.’ But I didn’t have any memories. Not enough, anyway.” She’d never been able to make him understand the howling emptiness she’d felt as a child.
“Maybe he didn’t have any stories to give you. Sometimes unhappiness can settle over a thing and bury it until there’s nothin’ else left.”
Nothing else left. Just unhappiness.
Elizabeth knew how that felt now. “That’s how it got between Jack and me.”
“It’s easy, sometimes, to forget why you fell in love with someone.” Anita stared out at the ocean. “I left him once, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know. Not then, anyway.”
“How would you, I guess, livin’ so far away, and your own life on top of it? Edward wasn’t the kind of man who’d tell his only child that his marriage had gone missin’.”
“You could have told me.”
“On one of our long, soul-searchin’ mother-daughter talks? Honey, you barely said hello to me when you called.”
“Where did you go?”
“That doesn’t matter. It didn’t even matter then. Away, that’s all.” She sighed, and Elizabeth wondered if that memory hurt more now that he was gone.
“Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”
Anita was quiet for a moment. The ocean whooshed toward them, tumbled lazily across the sand and slunk away again. “He overwhelmed me sometimes. He was so hungry for everything, so needy, and I was young when we got married. I didn’t know what I wanted. So I lived his life. For a long time, that was okay.”
Elizabeth knew that feeling. Jack and her father had that in common. Both men were like the sun; everything ultimately orbited around them. In the beginning, that was okay, but as you grew older, things changed. You started to see the roads you hadn’t taken, and you wondered, What if …?
Anita brought her knees up and curled her arms around her ankles. She started to turn toward Elizabeth, then looked down at her wedding ring instead. “I wanted to have a child.”
Elizabeth remembered that night in the garden, when she’d blithely asked Anita why she hadn’t had kids.
“Oh, honey, that’s a question for another time, maybe between different women.”
“In other words, mind my own business.”
“Yes. That question cuts to the heart of me, is all. I’m not goin’ to answer it as idle chitchat at midnight two days after my husband’s death.”
It must have wounded Anita deeply to hear that question asked aloud.
“I knew I’d be alone one day,” Anita went on, fiddling with her wedding ring. “I thought a baby would help. So, after Edward and I got back together, we tried. I had three miscarriages. All boys. Each one took a bigger piece of me, until …” She shrugged. “Three was enough, I guess. I figured God knew what he was doing.”
Elizabeth felt herself softening toward Anita, glimpsing a woman she’d never imagined before. It felt strangely like coming home. “I had a miscarriage once,” she said softly, surprising herself by the admission. “I never told anyone except Jack. It about broke my heart.” She touched her stepmother’s ankle, squeezing it gently. It was the first time she’d ever done such a thing.
Anita made a sound, a tiny gasp, then turned to her. “I have something for you. I brought it all the way from Tennessee. And it wasn’t easy.”
None of this was easy, Elizabeth thought but didn’t say. Instead, she helped her stepmother to her feet. They climbed up the rickety wood steps and emerged onto the soggy grass.