The Wishing Jar Page 18

  “Don’t suppose fiddling on the streets is a very lucrative occupation,” Charles growled from the other end of the table.

  Devin seemed totally oblivious to the attack. “I don’t make much money at it, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied mildly. “But it gives me the opportunity to do what I love.”

  He turned back toward Neal. “How are you getting along?” he asked. “If my calculations are correct, you’ll be graduating before the baby arrives, won’t you?”

  An icy silence settled over the room. Neal looked at her mother’s face, which had gone ashen, and at Charles’s, which was beginning to turn red. “Yes,” she whispered.

  Devin’s face broke into that dazzling smile, and he patted her hand. “Isn’t it wonderful?” He directed this comment to Charles, who by now had gone from red to purple. “A new baby coming into the world is always a cause for rejoicing, and—”

  “Devin—” Neal’s mother interrupted in a choked voice. But she didn’t have a chance to finish her sentence.

  “Abby,” Charles demanded, pushing back his chair and standing up. “I’d like to speak to you privately, if you don’t mind.”

  “A baby?” he yelled as Abby followed him into the back hallway that led to her mother’s bedroom. “She’s going to have a baby?”

  “Please, Charles, keep your voice down,” Abby pleaded.

  “And just when did you intend to fill me in on this insignificant bit of news? Before the kid started school? Or maybe you were planning to wait till he went to college?”

  “Charles, I intended to tell you, honestly I did, but—”

  “But what? Did you think it would just go away?”

  “Of course not. Charles, be reasonable. Try to see it my way. I’ve been dealing with so much lately, and—”

  “And you didn’t think it was appropriate to tell your fiancé that your daughter got knocked up by some—”

  “Stop it!” Abby shouted back. “I won’t have you talking about Neal Grace like that.”

  “Like what?” he whirled around to face her. “Like she’s a tramp? And where, may I ask, did she learn such behavior? By watching you with that . . . that fiddler?”

  His accusation was like a slap in the face. Abby reeled from the verbal blow. “Devin Connor has nothing to do with this. Nothing! He has never even been in this house until tonight.”

  “Ah, but you’ve been in his house, haven’t you? Long enough to leave your sunglasses there so he’d have to bring them back to you. And I’ll bet it wasn’t the first time you’d been there, either, was it? Was it?”

  “No,” Abby said in a whisper. “I was there more than once, taking photographs, doing the interview for the magazine—”

  “And I’m sure that was all you were doing,” he challenged, his voice laced with sarcasm.

  “Yes. That was all I was doing.” It was the truth. There was nothing in Abby’s relationship with Devin that she should feel guilty for. Nothing except . . . except . . .

  Except her feelings.

  As she stood there, watching Charles, listening to him rage out of control, Abby suddenly understood why she had felt safe with Devin and not with her own fiancé. There was a gentleness about Devin, an inner groundedness that enabled him to accept others where they were, as they were. She knew instinctively that no matter what she told him, he would be able to handle it with grace and without condemnation.

  “Devin is not the point here,” she said at last. “He’s a friend, that’s all. The point is, I should have told you about Neal Grace’s pregnancy.”

  Charles exhaled a long breath and bit his lower lip. “I accept your apology,” he said. “Yes, you should have told me. I have the right, I believe, to be kept in the loop as to what goes on in this family.” He leaned against the wall. “Now we just have to figure out what to do about it. Who’s the father?”

  Abby sank into the chair that sat outside Mama’s bedroom door. “The father is out of the picture.”

  “Well, we’re going to get him back in the picture,” Charles said firmly. “He’s going to marry her, no two ways about it.”

  “She’s not going to marry him,” Abby countered. “Neal Grace has been perfectly clear about that. And even if she wanted to marry him, I’d be standing in the church door with a baseball bat to make sure it didn’t happen. He’s an abusive jerk, and he’d make her life miserable.”

  “All right, then,” he conceded. “How far along is she?”

  “A few weeks. What difference does that make?”

  “Early abortions are much safer than late-term ones.”

  Abby shook her head. “She’s not going to have an abortion, either.”

  “And who came to this conclusion?”

  “Neal did. She might consider giving the baby up for adoption, but although she hasn’t said so yet, I think she may be leaning toward keeping the child.”

  He pushed off the wall and paced down the hall and back. “Abby, listen to me. Do you really think a seventeen-year-old girl is capable of making her own decisions on an issue like this? Doesn’t she realize that a baby will ruin her life? Not to mention all our plans.”

  “Our plans?” Abby repeated.

  “Yes, our plans. If we’re going to be married, Abby, I have a right to some say in this. She doesn’t want to marry this guy who knock—who got her pregnant. OK, I can live with that. I can even live with her not getting an abortion, although I still think that’s the obvious choice. But if she’s determined to have this baby, she will give it up for adoption. I’m not going to live the rest of my life as a surrogate father to a kid who isn’t even mine. You understand?”

  “Yes,” Abby said quietly. “I understand.”

  She understood, all right.

  “Good,” he went on. “Then we’re agreed. Neal Grace will graduate in the spring, have the baby, give it up for adoption, and go on to college as planned in the fall. I’ve made all the arrangements for your mother, too, and—”

  Abby held up a hand. “My mother? What about my mother?”

  “I’ve found just the place for her. Not too far from here, out near Black Mountain. She’ll have her own room with a private bath, and you can visit her whenever—”

  “Charles,” Abby interrupted. “My mother is not going to a nursing home, and my daughter is not going to be forced to give up her baby.”

  His face went blank. “What are you talking about? I’ve already told you I won’t live in this house with your unmarried daughter and her illegitimate child.”

  “Yes, you have, Charles. You’ve made your position very clear.”

  “Then what—?”

  “Then until you can at least pretend to try to see my side of things, this conversation is over.” She turned on her heel and walked down the hallway toward the dining room.

  He caught up with her at the doorway, grabbed her arm, and wrenched her around to face him. “What do you think you’re doing? I thought we understood each other.”

  “We understand each other perfectly.” Abby narrowed her eyes at him. “You want a simple, uncomplicated life, with me all to yourself. You’ve laid down your self-centered ultimatums and expected me to fall in line. You want me to choose between my family and you. Fine. I’ll choose. But don’t expect me to choose you.”

  “Abby, you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “I know exactly what I’m saying.”

  “We need to talk about this—calmly and rationally, like adults.”

  It took all of Abby’s self-control not to blow him out of the water right then and there. Instead, she inhaled deeply and said, “Perhaps we do. But I’m obviously not able to relate calmly and rationally at the moment.”

  She pulled away from him and walked to the dining room doorway. Everyone was sitting rigidly around the table as if they’d been turned to stone. Clearly, they had all overheard the argument in the back hallway.

  “Charles has to leave now,” Abby said. “If you’ll all excuse
me, I’ll see him to the door.”

  Aware of all eyes on her back, Abby ushered Charles to the porch without another word and watched until the taillights of his sedan disappeared into the night.

  Exhaustion, mingled with immense relief, flooded through her. She shut the front door and leaned against it for a moment, eyes closed, trying to summon the strength to return to the party.

  Behind her she heard a confusing clamor of sounds: the scraping of chairs against the hardwood floor, rustling, murmuring. Then a roar of affirmation. Clapping, cheering, hoots, and whistles.

  She opened her eyes and saw that her mother, Neal, T. J., Devin—even Taylor and Birdie—were all on their feet, applauding her.

  Neal Grace left the table and came into the front hall, sweeping her into a crushing embrace. And amid the racket, she heard her daughter’s whisper in her ear:

  “Way to go, Mom.”

  24

  Walking through the Fire

  For a long time that night, Abby lay awake, her mind turning over the events of the evening. When the mantel clock downstairs chimed one, she was thinking about Charles Bingham. He wasn’t a bad guy, really. With some effort, she might be able to make him see that family was more important than the simple, uncomplicated life he had envisioned. Maybe she should give him another chance.

  Or maybe you just think he’s your only chance, her mind argued.

  Much as she resisted admitting it, there was some truth to that. A fifty-plus widow with an ailing mother and a pregnant teenage daughter didn’t have the best of opportunities to find a compatible soul mate. And spending the next thirty years alone certainly wasn’t a pleasant prospect. But did she really want to compromise everything she held dear just for the sake of having someone—anyone—in her life?

  You don’t have to settle for just anyone, her mind argued.

  An image of Devin Connor hovered behind her closed eyelids. Smiling at her, playing that haunting, unforgettable music on his fiddle.

  No. Devin was just a friend. A good friend, she was coming to believe, but no more. So what if a mere glimpse of him made her heart pound? So what if his very presence brought a sense of peace and well-being to her soul? Those were her feelings. He had given no indication of reciprocating them. He had simply been . . . kind.

  The clock struck two. Abby thrashed around in the bed, unable to get comfortable. She held very still, trying not to think. At last her eyes grew heavy, and her limbs began to relax.

  Then, just as she felt herself melting away into sleep, she heard a rustling whisper: Believe. Hope. Risk.

  Her eyes snapped open. Had she really heard the words? Or was her mind playing tricks on her in that space between waking and sleeping? Believe. Hope. Risk. What on earth did that mean?

  She turned over and pulled the covers higher. Her mind drifted again, and from somewhere far away she heard a fiddle playing a mournful, familiar tune.

  The dream was an odd collage of images from her recent waking hours. Charles pleading with her to return to him. Devin’s music in the background. An infant crying in another room. A leering jack-o’-lantern face, its features illuminated by a wavering yellow light. Neal Grace shouting, “I told you, Mike, it’s over. I’m not getting rid of this baby, and I’m not hooking back up with you.”

  Abby stirred and turned over. The last part seemed to be reality intruding itself into her dream. She heard the front door slam, then footsteps coming up the stairs.

  “Neal?” she called softly.

  A shadowy figure appeared in the doorway of the bedroom. “Didn’t mean to wake you, Mom. Sorry.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Nearly four.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Mike showed up. Wants me back—but without the baby.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him to get lost, what else? He seems to think that if I had an abortion, I’d come running back to him and everything would be cool.” She sagged against the doorpost. “Of course, he’s lost far too many brain cells to be rational.”

  Abby raised up on one elbow. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”

  Neal padded down the hall in her sock feet, and Abby barely heard the bedroom door close before she was drifting again.

  The bizarre dream images returned—this time with Charles’s face morphing into a jack-o’-lantern that kept growing larger and larger, the flame inside the head rising higher and brighter. She could smell the distinctive scent of charred pumpkin as the candle flame singed the top of the jack-o’-lantern. The baby’s crying increased in volume, rising to the level of a scream, a banshee’s wail . . .

  The bed was shaking.

  “Mom!” a voice yelled in her ear. “Mom, wake up!” Someone grabbed her shoulders and shook her, hard.

  Abby jerked upright in bed. “What?”

  “Come on, Mom—we’ve got to get out!”

  She was fully awake now—she was sure of it. Neal Grace was in her face, shouting. The baby kept on crying, screaming. She could still smell the smoky scent of the candle in the pumpkin—

  No. It wasn’t a baby, wasn’t a candle. It was—

  The smoke alarm.

  Fire. Real fire.

  She gasped and took in a lungful of smoke. In the darkness she could make out a creeping haze overhead, moving downward.

  “Get your grandmother!” she cried, lunging out of bed and grabbing her robe off the chair. “Get outside—now!”

  Neal Grace bolted for the stairs, and Abby followed close on her heels. When she turned on the downstairs lights, she could see that Mama was already out of bed, holding her hands over her ears and wandering around in the living room, looking dazed and confused. Smoke poured from the direction of the kitchen.

  “Granny Q!” Neal yelled as she hit the bottom landing. “Let’s go!”

  Neal reached Mama first, stationing herself on the old woman’s left side and hustling her toward the front door. They made it to the porch just as the kitchen ceiling caved in. Abby, right behind them, turned to look.

  It was a horrifying sight—fire raining down from above, licking up from below. And she, like Lot’s wife, frozen in place as she witnessed the destruction. She grasped blindly for support, found the key rack on the wall next to the door, held on for dear life.

  “Mom, come on!” A hand snaked out and grabbed her, hauling her out onto the porch and into the yard.

  Abby looked up. In the second-story windows, she could see flames leaping and dancing. Above the house, in the cold, bright night, a million icy stars speckled the frozen sky. Golden sparks rose up into the blackness to join with the silver ones high overhead.

  She looked down at the frosty grass. Neal Grace had no shoes, and the heavy white sweat socks she wore had wicked up moisture until they were drenched. Abby felt a shiver run through her. She clutched her robe more closely about her and discovered that she held something cold and sharp in her hand.

  Her car keys.

  Neal saw them and grabbed them from her. “In the car,” she commanded, herding Abby and her grandmother toward the driveway. She got in the driver’s seat, backed the car a safe distance from the house, and left it idling, the heater running full blast.

  Dazed, Abby watched as yellow flames licked out the windows and danced against the red brick of the exterior walls—an eerie performance, as if the house itself were alive. Alive like the phoenix, consumed in its own nest, determined to go down singing . . .

  It might have only been a few minutes, sitting in the car, staring through the windshield as both past and present went up in flames, but it seemed like forever. At last the wail of sirens and the blaze of emergency lights cut through the night. Neal Grace got out of the driver’s seat and went to assure the EMTs that everyone was all right and no one was in the house.

  Despite the firefighter’s efforts, the flames burned on, kindled by the dry wood that made up the internal framework of the
old structure. Dawn finally broke, revealing little remaining of Quinn House except the stout brick walls, one charred section of the front porch, and a soggy mess of smoking rubble. What hadn’t been burned had been flooded.

  Abby took in the sight of her ruined ancestral home, and the only question that came to her mind was the unanswerable Why? From the backseat of the car, she heard her mother murmuring something else, words she remembered only vaguely from years gone by: “When you pass through the water, I will be with you . . . When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned.”

  25

  One Last Wish

  By eight o’clock in the morning, neighbors had gathered, bringing blankets and quilts, lawn chairs, thermos jugs of coffee, and boxes of donuts. One thoughtful woman even came up with a pair of tennis shoes for Neal Grace.

  Abby would not—could not—leave the scene of the destruction. She sat in a folding chair on the sidewalk in front of the house, staring at the ruin, her mind refusing to believe what her eyes could see.

  “I . . . I can’t think,” she said, turning to Neal Grace. “I have no idea what to do now.”

  “You’re in shock, Mom,” Neal said. “We’ll wait here until the firemen are sure everything’s out. Then we’ll go rent a hotel room, call the insurance company, get some rest.”

  “Where’s Mama?”

  “She’s lying down at Mrs. Thornton’s next door. She’s fine— just a little tired.”

  Abby shook her head. “I can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now. She’s lived in this house her entire life.”

  “So have you, Mom,” Neal reminded her gently. “It’s a horrible loss—for all of us. But the house can be rebuilt. At least we’re all alive.”

  Abby gazed at her daughter in wonder. She seemed so mature, so composed, becoming the comforter in this moment of crisis. It offered Abby a fleeting glimpse of the kind of parent Neal Grace would be, and in that instant Abby devoutly hoped Neal would decide to keep her baby.