The Wishing Jar Page 4

  Edith saw the red light on the stove the minute she came into the kitchen. She had hoped Abby wouldn’t notice, or that there might be a chance for her to cut the oven off when Abby’s back was turned. No such luck.

  She braced herself for another lecture, but apparently her daughter thought she had suffered enough for one day. Instead of commenting, Abby simply slid the foil pan into the oven and pulled a bag of romaine and a couple of ripe tomatoes out of the crisper in the bottom of the fridge. “Want to help me make salad?”

  Edith nodded. Abby washed the vegetables, patted them dry with a paper towel, and set them, along with a big wooden bowl, on the table in front of her. Then, apparently reconsidering her initial salad strategy, she took the tomatoes back. “I’d better do the cutting,” she said.

  Abby, of course, wouldn’t let her near a knife. Suppressing a sigh, Edith began tearing the lettuce into smaller pieces. Even this small task was a challenge, because her left hand didn’t work so well anymore. She had to think about every move—how to grab each leaf between her left thumb and forefinger, hold it, and then tear pieces off with her right hand. It was a good thing the pasta would take forty minutes to bake. By then, she might have the lettuce finished.

  Surviving a stroke had proved to be much more humiliating than being found dead on the living room carpet. In one terrible instant, Edith had become a child again, unable to tie her own shoes or cook a meal in her own kitchen. For weeks after she first left the hospital, she couldn’t even go to the bathroom or take a shower alone. Why, she wondered, did a stroke have to split a body down the middle like that? She would have given up her good leg in a heartbeat and been happy for the wheelchair if she could only have had the use of both hands . . . and her face . . . and her voice.

  The worst challenge of a disability like hers—perhaps any disability, Edith suspected—was not so much the physical hurdles, but the fact that people around her, even her own daughter and granddaughter, treated her like a slow-witted child, as if paralysis of body equaled senility of mind. Ever since that dreadful night when the EMTs had dragged her back from the brink of eternity, she had been moving in reverse, shrinking, diminishing. The world had turned upside down, and without warning or permission, she had become her daughter’s daughter.

  True, she couldn’t play the piano or wield a sharp knife any longer, or even bake cookies without burning them around the edges. But her mind was every bit as acute as it once was, and she longed for real dialogue rather than the infantile interchanges that masqueraded as conversation. She was certain if she had to answer the question, “How are you feeling today?” one more time, she might run screaming from the room—except that she could neither run nor scream.

  Abby turned from the cutting board at the sink and tossed a handful of tomato wedges into the salad bowl. “How are you feeling today, Mama?” she asked.

  Edith tried to arch her eyebrows and roll her eyes, but only one side arched and rolled, and she was pretty sure the effect was lost on her daughter. “Fine.”

  Abby sat down opposite her at the table. “Look, Mama, I know how difficult this is for you—”

  As if, Edith thought, borrowing one of her granddaughter’s favorite phrases.

  “I know you’d love nothing more than to be back here in the kitchen, cooking meals for us, the way you always did before you had the—well, you know. Before.”

  Before the stroke, Edith’s mind supplied. You can say the word without shocking me. I live with it every day.

  “Anyway,” Abby went on, “I wish you could do all those things, too. But I worry about you. I don’t want you to get hurt. You’re my responsibility; I have to take care of you. And I can’t always be here to keep an eye on you. Do you understand?”

  I ought to, Edith thought. If I’m not mistaken, this is a verbatim repetition of a lecture I gave you once—oh, about forty-five years ago. But it was simpler to give in than to attempt an argument. “Yes.”

  “All right, then. We have an agreement?”

  Edith gave a lopsided nod. “Yes.”

  “Good. Because I need to be able to go to work without expecting the fire department or the police to come calling at my office.”

  I get it, I get it. Enough, already, Edith’s mind shot back.

  Abby glanced at the clock over the sink. “Dinner will be ready in about half an hour. I think I’ll get out of these pantyhose and heels. My feet are killing me.”

  Edith laid a hand on her daughter’s arm. “Wait,” she tried to say. “We’ve got thirty minutes to ourselves. Can’t we talk?”

  But the words came out garbled, and Abby misunderstood, or was only half listening. “Talk?” She smiled and patted Edith’s hand. “I know. It’s hard for you to talk. That’s OK. I understand.”

  And then she was gone, leaving Edith alone to concentrate on tearing the lettuce into little pieces.

  Dinner was a sullen, silent affair, with Neal Grace offering little except to complain about the chicken pasta.

  “I understand T. J. came home with you after school,” Abby said, working hard to assume a pleasant tone.

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “It wasn’t an indictment, Neal Grace. It’s called conversation.”

  “Right.” Her daughter raised her head and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “OK, here’s some conversation for you. How about calling me ‘Neal,’ like I’ve asked you to a hundred times, instead of ‘Neal Grace’? It makes me sound like a baby, or some kind of redneck.”

  Abby sighed. “I’ll try, I’ll try.”

  Neal Grace glared at her. “Fine.”

  “Fine,” Abby repeated.

  But she couldn’t just leave it at that. Something was wrong with her daughter, and she felt compelled—or at the very least, obligated—to find out what it was.

  “Neal Grace—excuse me. Neal. What’s bothering you, honey? If you need to talk, you know—”

  “If I needed to talk, I’d be talking, now wouldn’t I?” Neal countered. “Nothing’s wrong. Just drop it, OK?”

  “Is everything all right at school?”

  “School’s fine.” She finished off a tomato wedge and looked around the table. “Is there any more salad?”

  “A little, I think. You haven’t touched your pasta.”

  “I don’t want it.” Neal got up, went to the kitchen, and returned with the big wooden bowl.

  “What do you mean you don’t want it? It’s your favorite.”

  Neal rolled her eyes. “It’s got chicken. I’m a vegetarian.”

  “Since when?” Abby cast a glance at Mama, who had a bit of pasta sauce dripping down her chin. She leaned over and wiped her mother’s mouth with her own napkin, then turned back to Neal.

  “Since—I don’t know. Since now.” Neal scraped the last of the romaine onto her salad plate. “Eating meat is cruel to animals.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Abby laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “The original cheeseburger girl is giving up meat? Now, that’s a switch.”

  “Maybe it’s time for a change,” Neal said. She finished her salad and tossed her napkin on the table. “May I be excused?”

  “Don’t you want dessert? There’s ice cream, and Granny Q made cookies this afternoon.”

  “They’re burned,” Neal muttered, avoiding her grandmother’s eyes. “Besides, I’ve got homework.”

  She bolted for the stairs before Abby could say another word.

  Edith followed Abby to the kitchen and watched while she put away the leftovers, made a pot of decaf, and loaded the dishes in the dishwasher. It was no use trying to help. Abby wouldn’t let her do anything, anyway.

  “It’s a nice night,” Abby said when the kitchen was clean. “How about if we take our coffee out on the porch?”

  They went outside and settled themselves, Edith in the chaise lounge and Abby in the swing that hung suspended from the rafters. The street was quiet, and through the tops of the trees they could see a few stars in the dark sky. Fr
om somewhere in the distance, music drifted on the night air.

  “It’s a little chilly out here. Do you want a sweater?”

  Edith shook her head, but Abby got up anyway and went into the house. She came back with a sweater and the small lap-sized afghan from the back of the sofa. She draped the sweater around Edith’s shoulders and patted her on the back. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

  Sure, Edith thought. You’re cold, so I have to put on a sweater. She shrugged it away from her shoulders and let it drop onto the back of the chaise. Abby, not to be outdone, left the swing for a second time and readjusted it.

  For a long time they sat in silence, sipping at their coffee and listening to the sounds of birds rustling in the trees and the distant music. On just such a glorious evening, Edith recalled, Sam Long had sat on this very porch and proposed to her—probably with Mother and Daddy peering out at them from behind the curtains. On a thousand such evenings, she and Sam had snuggled together in the swing he had built himself, talking and laughing and planning together until the mantel clock struck midnight. And until recently, she and her daughter had spent countless hours on this same porch, deep in conversation about Abby’s photography and the people John Mac helped and Neal Grace’s successes and failures.

  If only they could talk that way again.

  Abby sighed. “I don’t know what to do about Neal Grace,” she said. “I feel as if I don’t even know my own daughter anymore. What on earth is going on with her?”

  Edith’s heart leaped, and she turned toward her daughter to respond, to discuss the child they both loved, to try to find a solution—together. But then Abby went on musing, and Edith clamped her mouth shut again. Abby wasn’t talking to her. She was simply rambling to herself.

  “That music,” Abby said. “It reminds me of a man I met today up on Pack Square. A fiddler named Devin Connor. Kind of a mountain man, I guess. At least that’s the kind of music he plays. He didn’t seem to have much—I don’t suppose he would, if he’s fiddling on the streets for quarters. But there was something about him, something intriguing. He was so gentle and kind. And I never met anyone with so much passion for his music. He played ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ for a toddler in a stroller and had that child absolutely entranced. I have an appointment to interview him tomorrow for the magazine. I can’t wait to find out what makes him tick . . .”

  Edith laid her head back against the cushion of the chaise and stared at the stars as her daughter’s voice continued to wash over her. Clearly Abby didn’t expect a response. She rarely had the patience to wait for one these days.

  The music came down from somewhere in the hills and seeped into Edith’s soul. And in the sky and the stars and the music, she found herself drawn close—very close indeed—to that place where time meets eternity and the man she loved beckoned to her from the other side.

  6

  What Makes Devin Tick

  At eleven the next morning, Abby was bending over the layout table, drowning in proof pages, when she looked up to see Ford Hambrick standing in the doorway with a cat-caught-the-canary grin on his face. “You’ve got company.”

  “Company?” Abby frowned. “I don’t have time for company. Who is it? Birdie again? Tell her I can’t see her now, but I’ll call her tonight.”

  “It’s not Birdie.” He arched one eyebrow in a rakish expression. “It’s a man.”

  “A what?”

  “A man. You know—tall, tanned, good-looking. Says you asked to interview him.”

  “Devin Connor?”

  “Exactly. From the look on your face, I gather you know who he is?”

  “Yes, of course.” Abby took a deep breath in an effort to return her heartbeat to normal. Her mind recalled the echoes of his music and the glint of intensity in his clear blue eyes.

  She straightened up and ran a hand through her hair. “Take him into the conference room, will you, Ford? Get him coffee— or whatever he wants—and tell him I’ll be with him in a minute.”

  “You got it, Boss.” Ford disappeared, and Abby looked frantically around the cluttered office. Where was her tape recorder? And her camera. She’d need her camera.

  Annoyed with herself for getting so flustered, she rooted in her desk and came up with her palm-sized recorder, a legal pad, and a pen. She hefted her camera bag onto her shoulder and headed out the door.

  The conference room, the largest room in the suite of offices leased by Carolina Monthly, doubled as a staff kitchen. The middle of the room was dominated by a large rectangular table surrounded by chairs. In the far corner, a more intimate seating area offered a sofa, two easy chairs, and a coffee table, and on the left-hand wall an arrangement of cabinets held a coffee maker, a small refrigerator, and a sink.

  When Abby entered the room, Devin Connor was standing with his back to her, stirring sugar into a stoneware mug bearing the Asheville logo and a design of blue and purple mountains. She hadn’t remembered him being so tall. Six-two, at least, and wearing blue jeans with a carefully ironed collarless white shirt. A well-worn brown leather jacket hung on the back of one of the conference chairs.

  She plunked her camera bag onto the table, and he turned.

  “Mr. Connor,” she said briskly, moving toward him with her hand outstretched. “I’m Abby McDougall. We met yesterday.”

  “I remember,” he said in a deep voice that just hinted at amusement. “I’m here, after all.”

  Abby felt her neck grow hot. “Well, thank you for coming, Mr. Connor.”

  “Devin,” he corrected.

  She inclined her head. “Devin. My assistant got you some coffee, I see. Do you need anything else?”

  He smiled. “Not at the moment.”

  “Fine. Fine.” Abby cringed as she heard her own voice pitched half an octave above normal. She cleared her throat. “Shall we sit down?”

  Devin pulled out the chair at the head of the table and waited until Abby settled herself, then took the seat at a right angle to her. “I’m not exactly certain why you wanted to interview me,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m simply a fiddler who plays music on the streets. I doubt that’s very interesting to anyone.”

  “It’s interesting to me,” Abby blurted out, then corrected herself. “To our readers, I mean.” She found herself staring at him— at those blue eyes, and the recalcitrant lock of sun-streaked hair that fell over his forehead. At his tanned face with the smile lines that fanned out from the corners of his eyes. At his fingers, long and lean and squared off at the tips, with clean, well-cut nails.

  He seemed perfectly composed, sitting there with his hands wrapped around his coffee cup. Not nervous or the least bit uneasy. Contentment radiated from him, and her mind summed him up in a single sentence: Here is a man at peace with himself and his life.

  Seeing him up close, she also realized that he was younger than she had originally assumed. Mid to late forties, perhaps. Quite handsome in an outdoorsy sort of way. He was clean and neatly dressed, his beard and hair professionally trimmed. This is no mountain man, she said to herself.

  Her mind, unbidden, finished the thought: But he is a man. Definitely a man.

  Abby pushed the notion aside. She’d best get down to business— and quickly.

  She centered the legal pad on the table in front of her, laid the tape recorder between them, and looked up. “Do you mind if I tape our interview? I’ll take notes as well, but I like to make sure I cover all the bases,” she said, sliding into her role of professional journalist.

  “Of course.”

  “All right, then.” She pushed the red button on the side of the machine and checked to make sure the tape was running. “Now, Mr. Connor, let’s start with the basics. You are—how old?”

  “Please, call me Devin,” he repeated. “I’m forty-eight.”

  “And you live—”

  “Here, near Asheville. I have a cabin up in the mountains.”

  Abby smiled to herself. A cabin. In the mountains. Maybe he was a moun
tain man after all.

  “Do you have—” She paused. “A family?”

  “I did, once,” he said. “They’re gone now. I’d rather not talk about them, if you don’t mind.” He took a sip of coffee and looked at her. “And what about you? Husband? Children?”

  “I live with my teenage daughter and an elderly mother.”

  “No husband?”

  For a split second Abby hesitated, exasperation rising up within her. Who was doing the interviewing here, anyway? Then she stifled her irritation and answered, “I’m a widow. My husband died two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. It must be difficult for you,” he said, leaning slightly forward, as though he might reach out a hand in sympathy.

  The sincere starkness of his words were a sharp contrast to the myriad of platitudes and pat responses she had received after John Mac’s death. This man did sound as if he genuinely understood the difficulties she faced.

  But Abby didn’t want the interview detoured. She steered the conversation back to him. “I’d like to know—that is, I think our readers would be interested in what motivates you to play your music on the street,” she said. “You’re very good, you know. Maybe even good enough to do this professionally. But you can’t possibly make a living on the donations people give you.”

  “I don’t care about making a living,” Devin answered. “I care about making a life. Music is life to me. It’s love. You don’t sell love; you give it away. You lift it up as an offering, and you are enriched whether the world affirms it or not.”

  Abby scribbled his words on the pad, just to make certain she got them right. She could almost see the article now, perhaps with a cover spread. The mountain philosopher. The fiddler of life. Her mind spun with the possibilities.

  “Tell me more about yourself,” she said, shifting back in her chair. “About your background. How you live. What generates such passion for your music.”