Bear you on the breath of dawn
Make you to shine like the sun
And hold you in the palm of his hand.”
The lump that formed in his throat mortified him. He stared down at the table, wrestling to control his emotions, and as if to spare him, she turned away abruptly. She put the dishes in the sink and ran water over them. When she spoke, her voice was gruff. “You best be getting back, son,” she said. “It will start getting dark soon, and these are unfamiliar roads to you. Where did you fly into?”
“A small airport near Augusta.” He rose and cleared his throat. “I flew in on a private plane.”
Her eyes widened, but she remained silent. “Well,” she said at last. “We have chocolate cake. I can pack you some for the road.”
He nodded and watched wordlessly as she cut him a slice larger than he could eat. He used the bathroom again, and when he came out, she was waiting on the front porch, the paper bag with the cake in her hand. She was not crying, but her nose was red, and Anton felt his own eyes sting with tears. “Bye, Mam,” he said, stooping low to hug her.
She threw her arms around him and clung to him. When she finally released him, she took his face in her hands and kissed it repeatedly. “I love you more than the moon loves the sky,” she whispered. “You remember that. Anytime you see the night sky, you remember that”—and here she let out a cackle—“that there’s a crazy fool in Georgia who loves you more than there are stars in the sky.”
I love you, too. It would’ve been so easy to say those words, to let them slip out of where they were gathering in his mouth. But he didn’t. Couldn’t. In some dim way, he understood that if he said those words, he would break, that the ice that was encasing his body, helping him hold his shit together, would crack and shatter, leaving in its wake that dark, vulnerable place where he couldn’t go. He had already had his entire known world turned upside down. This seemingly fragile, powerless woman standing in front of him, with her teary, beautiful face, her longing and her loneliness, her guilt and her shame, her weakness and her strength, her moon and her sky, held the power to destroy him. This much he knew.
And so he said, “I’ll see you soon,” and forced himself to pat her shoulder, turn and run down the steps, flashing her a smile and a wave as he got into his car, and then he gunned his engine and backed out of her driveway and sped down the gravel road until all that remained of him and his surreal visit was the dust cloud he left in his wake.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
By the time he passed through the small town of Ronan and slowed down when he drove by Sal’s restaurant, he was almost relieved to have left that small cottage behind. He felt his usual equilibrium, his practicality, settling back into him, and with each mile, the tearing, helpless feelings she had aroused in him were lessening.
Of course, there would be the fallout of this visit to deal with upon his return. He’d barely had a chance to absorb the extent of David’s reckless behavior. He had no real idea how much Delores knew or suspected about what her husband had done and what he had risked. And then there was the fact that Uncle Connor had been complicit in Juanita’s imprisonment. It was as though every adult he had trusted had behaved in the most contemptible of ways. Their education, their wealth, their liberal leanings, none of that had kept them from deceiving Juanita Vesper. In fact, it was precisely the opposite—it was their very privilege that had allowed it to happen. And he had to live with that. The next time David Coleman talked about the importance of raising the minimum wage, Anton would have to ignore what he’d done to an impoverished black woman. The next time Delores came home from her Planned Parenthood meeting, Anton would have to forget the five-thousand-dollar check that lived inside a manila folder in Georgia. The next time Uncle Connor pontificated about reforms to the criminal justice system, Anton would have to forget how he had railroaded an imprisoned woman with a court-appointed lawyer.
A slow burn started within Anton, making his skull tingle. He blinked rapidly a few times but couldn’t say whether it was to keep his tears at bay or to fight off the sudden fatigue that he felt. Let him take his stupid governorship and stuff it. The thought came into his head and was accompanied by its physical counterpart—almost immediately, the knots in his neck and upper back released, his grip on the wheel slackened, and a feeling of liberation swept through him. It would be so great to walk away from this campaign, to continue being attorney general, and later, to fade into anonymity, maybe someday run a small law firm. But before his body could even absorb what had happened, his mind betrayed him, flooding itself with notions of duty, responsibility, obligation, and honor. His grip on the wheel tightened as he looked for the signs to the freeway.