CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
When Andie pulled up at the cemetery on the outskirts of town an hour later, having said her good-byes to Louisa and Rose and their families, the grounds were deserted. She closed Ernie’s door with a tinny clunk and surveyed the manicured paths that led from the parking lot. She could have found her way to Gus’s grave with a blindfold on, even though she only visited once a year these days, when she came to town for the maple-sugaring party.
She cradled the dogwood blooms as she struck out across the undulating hills, sticking to the center path until she reached a grove of trees and took a smaller trail to the left. She stopped when she reached the crest of the hill that led down to the plot where Gus lay. She could already pick out the granite headstone from among its neighbors. Her gaze didn’t waver from it as she stepped onto the fresh spring lawn and walked slowly down the hill.
AUGUSTUS JAMES TILLY. It was a big name for a small boy. She reached out and traced the engraved letters with a finger, still unable to quite believe he was interred in the ground beneath her feet. She’d blocked the day of the funeral from her mind. All she could remember now were impressions: how it had been unseasonably, indecently warm for December, and how the sky had opened and rewarded the mourners with a surprise drenching, as if God were either crying—or, as Andie now preferred to think of it, playing a practical joke on them all, like Gus would have wanted.
One by one, she draped the dogwood branches around the headstone. I hope you like them, Gus. Then she sat cross-legged in the grass at the foot of the grave, surprised to find that she felt calm. She closed her eyes and let her memories of her little brother emerge of their own volition. She drifted peacefully, one palm held flat against the ground where he lay.
Slowly, imperceptibly, her thoughts turned to Will, her lips curving in an unconscious smile as she thought about his innocent trust in her, and the love he’d bestowed on her and conjured within her, ever since she first laid eyes on him at Metrowest.
It’s too late, she realized in a headlong rush. She could no more decide not to love him than the snow could decide not to melt in the spring. In walking away, in seeking to mitigate the risk to her heart, she’d made a false choice. By trying to sidestep the potential pain of loss, she’d inflicted the loss upon herself.
Wherever in the world Will was, she would always love him—would always be connected to him by a cord of affection so sensitive that it could tip easily into pain. But that’s what love was: the courage to endure having a piece of your heart walking around outside your own body, exposed to the vagaries of fate and the world’s incipient cruelties. Love was having the ability to comprehend that risk, but the faith to embrace it anyway. Rhys had that courage, and she now recognized its spark in herself as well.
Rhys. The very thought of him was enough to undo her. He was a man who knew how to love. The image of his face upon the discovery of Will’s empty bed flickered before her. What she saw now was not the face of an avenging deity but of a father in pain. He was not at all like Susan. He’d been upset with Andie, yes. Even, perhaps, infuriated. But, much as his displeasure had felt like an annihilation at the time, it had been fleeting, and it had not meant the withdrawal of his love.
She’d never really learned that, she realized now: that unconditional love didn’t mean never getting upset, never getting angry. That you could be furious with people and still keep loving them. In her life, the withdrawal of approval had always meant the revocation of all rights: to love, to comfort, to security. Rhys had declared his love for her as dawn broke at the end of that disastrous night, but she’d been unable to comprehend it, unable to hear anything but the tumult of her own fear.
What have I done? The true extent of her mistake was shockingly clear to her. Rhys had given her a priceless gift—the only thing she’d ever really wanted—and she’d thrown it back in his face. I’ll go to him, she thought feverishly. I’ll find him and explain. But he was in Beijing. The thought was enough to stir not just melancholy but outright panic.
“Gus, I’ve really blown it,” she moaned piteously.
Just then, on the crest of the hill, Andie glimpsed the flash of a blue shirt and a mop of salt-and-pepper hair. No. It couldn’t be. Susan.
She stared in disbelief as her mother picked her way down the hillside, around gravestones and flower arrangements. As she approached, Susan raised her hands placatingly.
“Before you say anything,” she said, “you shouldn’t blame Denise. She did everything short of locking me up to prevent me from coming here. She said I’d be ambushing you.”
“Well, she’s right.”
“But, Andie, I had to see you.” Susan knelt beside her and looked at her with pleading eyes. “It’s been eating me up, how I treated you at the farm that day.”
Andie looked away, shivering with aversion. She wanted to leap to her feet and run out of there as fast as her legs would carry her. The only thing stopping her was Rhys. He would want to hear about this conversation, she realized. That is, if he ever spoke to her again.
She remembered his sweetness and concern at the maple-sugaring event, the way he’d prepped her for her confrontation with Susan like an old-time boxing coach readying a prizefighter for a match. He would want to know that the hurtful way Susan had left things that day hadn’t been the final outcome of their showdown, after all.
“I’ll listen to what you have to say,” Andie said warily. “But make it quick.”
“I was surprised you confronted me,” Susan admitted. “And a little angry, and quite scared.”
“Why scared?” Andie was puzzled.
“Because I wronged you so badly all those years ago, and all along I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. I panicked.”
Andie nodded slowly. She understood panic. But she still didn’t understand why Susan sought her out now. “What are you saying?”
“You . . . you weren’t to blame for Gus’s death,” Susan said, her voice quavering. “Of course you weren’t. But I put the blame on you to save my own skin.
“Jim loved you, you see, and by then he hated me. What I told you about the dislocated shoulder was true. And another time, he broke my wrist. He was a monster, and I was terrified. I . . . I let him think Gus’s death was your fault, when really . . . it was mine.”
Andie froze. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t tell the truth about what happened when I left you outside Dolan’s.” Susan’s eyes were dark pools. “I didn’t go straight to the car. I was frantic with worry about what your father would do if I didn’t get dinner on the table. That part is true. But then I remembered he’d asked me to get him a bottle of Old Crow . . .”
Susan shook her head in disgust. “Asked,” she laughed bitterly. “Actually, I should say ordered.”
Andie kept her eyes trained on the thick veins of silver in her mother’s dark hair.
“Back then I’d do anything to keep the peace,” Susan said. “And booze trumped dinner—no question. I should have gone back to Dolan’s and had you come with me, but I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t drag Gus on one more errand.”
Susan’s hand shook as she plucked compulsively at a tuft of grass by her feet. “There was a line at the liquor store. I should have left, but I was weak. I just had to get that damned whiskey. I knew what kind of state Gus was in—fed up and hyper—but I left you to deal with it. You, an exhausted eleven-year-old.
“When the accident happened, I didn’t even hear it.” Susan’s mouth was a brutal slash of grief. “Can you believe it? My only son was . . . killed while I was buying cheap whiskey for a man who despised me. I didn’t even realize anything until I came back out and saw a crowd gathering on the corner outside Dolan’s. I dumped the bottle and ran.”
Andie couldn’t say anything. She’d never known how long she’d stood before Dolan’s window or how much time had elapsed before Gus dashed into the road. She’d always taken her mother at her word that she’d only stepped away for a minute or two. But even if this new version of events was true, it was still just a tragic accident.
“I was so ashamed—frantic,” Susan confessed. “I knew how people would look at me if they knew the truth. So I told the police I’d only just walked away to get the car. The lie just . . . slipped out.
“And Jim—I know he would have killed me.” Susan’s voice was hollow. “So I let the lie stand. I knew it would destroy your relationship with him, but I . . . I did it anyway. I’d always been jealous of the way he loved you, and the way Gus loved you, too. I’d poured my whole life into them, but they didn’t care. Your father resented me, and Gus—well, I didn’t have a way with him.”
Susan shivered, her eyes bleak. “Pretty soon, part of me even started to believe the words coming out of my mouth. I had to, you see. But it didn’t stop the guilt, the terrible guilt. I even started to resent you for the way it made me feel. It makes no sense, but that’s how it was.”
“Why?” Andie croaked. “Why are you telling me this now?”
“Because I love you,” Susan cried, her eyes imploring. “In spite of everything I’ve done, I love you. I just got so bogged down in the lie I didn’t know how to let it go. When your father died, I wanted to tell you, but by then you’d become a young woman—so driven, so self-possessed. And yet, when you looked at me, you were still that wounded little girl. It tore me up inside to see you, so I made sure it only happened once a year.”
Susan took a deep, weary breath. “When you confronted me at the farm, you forced me to take a hard look at myself.”
She looked sickened, her expression raw with self-loathing. “Believe me, I wasn’t proud of what I saw. You were my littlest girl . . . you deserved my love and my protection, no matter how Jim treated me.” Susan reached for her throat, tugging at the silver chain of a locket she always wore, so familiar to Andie that she’d long since ceased to notice it. With shaking hands, Susan opened the face of the locket to show Andie something nestled inside: a small dried-out husk of a pressed flower. A clover blossom, aged and brown.
The daisy chains. Andie had to stifle a sob.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me. I know that’s too much to ask. But I needed to tell you anyway.”
Andie was queasy, disoriented. She knew that, by rights, there was no reason for her to care about Susan’s pain, but somehow she did anyway. She couldn’t help it. And she knew for a fact that she didn’t want this hanging over her anymore. She’d been through too much, learned too much, seen too much. Mostly, what she felt was exhausted. Like she could go to sleep and not wake up for a thousand years.
“I’m not saying I’ll be able to see you after this,” she said softly. “I don’t know. But I do forgive you.”
Susan’s tears finally came, bubbling out of her like a wellspring from the newly thawed earth. Andie couldn’t touch her, didn’t have enough left in her to transfer any more of her strength to assuage her mother’s grief. But she sat beside her until the shadows over the graveyard shifted, and peace settled over the hillside. Then she got slowly to her feet and, legs still trembling, walked back to the car and set off for Concord.