“Yes,” she said. She was doing her best to keep her knees from giving out. Her head thrummed, and Everett’s face swam a little before her eyes.
He took a deep breath, held it, and exhaled. “I don’t want different. I don’t want anyone to ever know. Most of all, him. I’d do anything to protect him from ever finding out that I’m not his real father. Because I am.”
Her eyes filled with tears, and she closed them briefly, then opened them to find Everett looking back at her. She’d gone to the hotel to see if she could perpetuate the illusion she’d created. But she’d lost her nerve because it would only be another lie piled on top of the festering heap she’d created. She opened her mouth to speak, but no words would come.
“If I could pick out any little boy to be my own, I’d pick him.” He reached for her hands again and squeezed them hard. “I want you to know that. I need you to know that.”
She willed herself not to cry even as more tears leaked from her eyes. Later she would fall apart. Now something was happening that could not occur if she gave in to her emotions. She remembered the robotic feeling from the night she’d made Christopher, how she’d so easily exchanged her warm flesh for cold metal, her skin barely registering the contact as he moved over and inside her. In her head she heard that damn Heart song playing on an endless loop. What Everett couldn’t give her was the one little thing he could.
Everett swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing inside his throat, and she thought for the millionth time what a tragedy it was that this man—this handsome, charming, kind man—could never reproduce himself. “How drunk do you think he is by now?” he asked. His breathing pattern had changed. He sounded like he did after he’d been lifting weights.
“He was well on his way when I left at five. He might even be passed out by now. Or with someone else. Or . . .”
“Shhh,” he said. He rested his finger on her lips for the briefest of seconds, and then reached into the pocket of her shorts to retrieve her cell phone. He held it out to her. “Yes?” He raised his eyebrows, shaking the phone the slightest bit.
She took the phone from his hand, felt his gaze rest on her, and in it his assumption that she would do this thing. But would it be any easier with his complicity? She saw them in her mind, her two beautiful children, a perfect matched set. It was so tempting to perpetuate what she’d created, and guarded, for so long. It was right there if she wanted it, and all it would take is one more meaningless night. But of course, it wasn’t meaningless. That one night held more meaning than nearly any other before or since. It divided and defined, haunted and hindered. But no more.
She exhaled, the whoosh of air loud in the silent room. She cupped his chin in her hands and gave him the barest hint of a smile. “No,” she said, and handed him back the phone.
ZELL
John honked the horn in the driveway, and Zell hurried outside to see the truck. He climbed out and swept his arm past the bed, loaded down with their surprise for Cailey and her family. She came over to stand beside him, rested her head on his shoulder. “You’re a good man, John Boyette,” she said.
“You’re a persistent wife, Zell Boyette,” he quipped. He chuckled and shook his head. “I don’t know how you get me into these things.”
She elbowed him. “You wanted to do this as much as I did. That child grew on you this summer.”
“That she did.” He elbowed her back and raised his eyebrows. “She also got you out of going with the Robinsons to Lake Lure.”
She waved her hand in the air, refusing to admit just how true that was. “She needed us a lot more than Clay and Althea did.”
He touched his finger to her nose, gave her that look that told her he was wise to her ways. “And you needed her.”
She smiled, holding her hands up in mock surrender. “Maybe just a little.”
“You know,” he said, “I’ve been thinking.”
She laughed. “Oh no.”
“No, I’m serious. I think you should go back to teaching somehow this fall—Sunday school or maybe substituting again? Something where you can work with kids. You’re good at it.”
“Yeah, I was thinking about calling around, seeing if there’re some schools that might need help with beautifying their grounds or even doing the Wildlife Habitat program. That’s how Cailey knew about it—they did it at one of her schools. So, seeing as how I know what to do now, I thought maybe I could put that hard-earned knowledge to use.”
He nodded, smiled. “I like it.”
“Yeah,” she said. “Me, too.”
He clapped his hands together. “You ready to go? It’s only gonna get hotter, so we might as well get started.”
“Sure, I just need to make one quick phone call before we go.”
“Whoever it is, you’re probably gonna see them there,” he groused.
She paused, thought of the promise she’d made to herself. She couldn’t go love on someone else’s child unless she’d done the same for her own. Her son was hurting, but she’d been too wrapped up in her own shame to reach out to him. She couldn’t spend one more day with him thinking he’d failed her, when the truth was he was just like her.
“It’s Ty,” she said.
His smiled widened. “That’s my girl.” He pointed at Lance’s house. “I’ll just go see if Lance remembered his hedge clippers.”
She nodded and went back inside. She picked up the phone, dialed the number, and listened as on the other end, it began to ring.
CAILEY
Two days after I got home, they all showed up. Zell and Mr. John, Jencey and Lance with Lilah, Alec, Pilar, and Zara all whooping and hollering as they chased each other around in that terrible bare yard of our eyesore house. Bryte came, too, and brought her husband, Everett, who hadn’t been around a whole lot that summer but who was very nice. They left Christopher with his grandmother, though, because they said they didn’t want him underfoot. They had work to do, they said. With big smiles on their faces, they pointed to a pickup truck parked in our driveway. It was filled with bushes and flowers and even a small tree.
Zell came and stood beside me as I took it all in. “Every gardener should have a garden of her own,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said, but I barely had a voice to say it with.
She shrugged. “We all helped.” But I knew it was mainly her idea. She was the only one who knew how much this would mean to me.
“The other night,” I said, “I never really got to say goodbye with everything that . . . happened.”
She shrugged. “We don’t really need to say goodbye, do we?” She waggled her finger in my direction. “I mean, we’re still neighbors, and that means you better come see me.” She pointed at the little tree John was unloading from the truck with help from Everett. “Do you know what kind of tree that is?”
“A sycamore?” I guessed.
Zell laughed. “Well, yes, we thought it would be fitting to get a sycamore. But that’s not what I call it.”
I raised one eyebrow, something I’d been teaching myself to do. It always made Cutter laugh. “What do you call it?”
“The Miracle tree,” she said.
“The Miracle tree?” It made me think about that Miracle-Gro stuff we used in Zell’s garden.
“Yep.” She nodded. “We’re going to plant it in the front yard so that we can all see it as we drive by. It’ll be a nice reminder of the miracle that happened here this summer.”
I looked at all the people gathered there—Lilah and Alec running around with Pilar and Zara, Jencey and Lance making goo-goo eyes at each other, Bryte looking a lot happier than she had when she showed up at Zell’s the other night. We had a lot of miracles going around. We probably needed a whole forest full of trees in my front yard.
Zell put her arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “You were my miracle,” she said, her voice so low I didn’t know if I’d heard her right. But then I looked up into her eyes, and I knew I had.
I had to change the subject before she made me cry. “Well, you know what I don’t want in my garden?” I asked.
“What’s that?”