(2005) Wrapped in Rain (17 page)

"A friend of a friend introduced me to Trevor. A successful broker, partner in his own firm gaining credibility, and a bulldog's reputation up and down Wall Street. He seemed sensitive, connected, cultured, and"-she shook her head-"had an affinity for thousand-dollar bills." She looked out across the pasture, and the seconds passed. "Listen to me. I sound so ... so New York." She rubbed her eyes and drew in the dirt with her toe.

She continued. "He became a regular. Pretty soon, he was taking me home, and I suppose I began looking forward to seeing his face in the crowd. After several months, and saying no several times, I finally said maybe and he moved me uptown. A trial run, you might call it. I still don't really know why. No other options, I suppose."

I couldn't believe that. Katie always had options. A woman like that, beautiful and able to play the piano like a bird sings, always had options. Katie sounded lost. Homesick. Adrift.

"He's older and wanted kids right away, so I relented and played until Jase came along."

I walked to the percolator, refilled our cups, and returned to my camera. She sipped and continued. "Looking forward to Jase's birth kept us happy for a while ... We warmed up to the idea of marriage. When Jase arrived a month early, we married at the courthouse with no real celebration. A formality. Maybe we felt ... or maybe I felt, getting married justified Jase. I'm not sure I ever loved Trevor. No. . ." She shook her head. "Even then I knew. In the back of my mind, it was there."

"Katie, I'm sure-"

"No," she interrupted, holding up her hand. "I tried to love him, but for lots of reasons, I don't think I ever did. As bad as it sounds, I liked what he offered. That is, until I got to know him. Despite his appearances to the contrary, Trevor's not exactly lovable. That sensitive, cultured, and connected man turned into Jekyll and Hyde. Plus, Jase was a preemie and seemed like the underdog from the beginning. From day one, we encountered problems. He was physically little, his lungs needed time and development, and for about six months, he slept during the day and cried all night." She waved her hand across her chest as if mocking a display. "Never endowed with much, I had a difficult time nursing him. Trevor made good money, and he couldn't have his wife seem somehow less than the rest of the glitter and gold that populated his social circle. I had to measure up. Literally."

I kept my eyes on my work and smiled. "I can understand that."

"What?"

"Yeah, last time I saw you with your shirt off, you were flat as me. Bird-chested too."

She slapped me on the arm. "Tucker!" The bantering felt good. So did the laughter.

"I'm kidding." I held out my hand and backed up. "Uncle. I yield." We let the dust settle, and my curiosity got the better of me. "How'd you know?"

"Trevor's a camera buff himself. He's no good, but he likes to think he is. Our mailbox is full of his photography subscriptions. It would've been hard for me to miss Tucker Rain's career." She looked at me out the side of her eyes. "I like the name."

I nodded without looking up from my work. "It's a good name."

"I also like your work." She paused, looking for the words. "Especially when it comes to faces. Somehow, you can capture emotion and the moment all in the space of someone's face."

I nodded, thinking back through seven years of furiously chasing one picture after another. "Sometimes. But most times, I'm just wasting film."

"I doubt it." She stepped closer, eyeing the camera again in my hands and obviously growing more comfortable with me. "Anyway, after two years, too many working dinners and late nights he wouldn't explain, he began losing his clients' money and his waistline and turned into someone I didn't like or want to live with. There were three other womenthat I know of." She shrugged her shoulders. "For Jase's sake, I bit my lip, hung around, and hoped." She turned and walked to the barn door. "I was wrong. He became more open with his affairs, and when I inquired, physically abusive. I lived with it, covered it up, hoped he would change, and then ..."

"Then?"

"Then he hit Jase. Once. I walked out, filed, and when Trevor came to the hearing wasted and unable to speak in complete sentences, the judge threw him in jail for drunk and disorderly conduct and awarded me sole custody. Trevor sobered up and discovered he couldn't have exactly what he wanted. That did not, and does not, sit well with him.

"For the last two years, we've attended counseling. It was my idea. I thought if we could learn to be friends, maybe we'd be better parents. My thought was Jase. He needed ... needs ... a dad. And Trevor may not be much, but he's all Jase has got."

"Things got better?"

"Trevor improved, even quit drinking for a time, but I'm pretty sure he never quit"-she shrugged her shoul- ders-"the other stuff. Anyway, our counselor suggested a family vacation, so five weeks ago, we flew to Vail. Trevor boarded the plane and called it a `much-needed vacation.' I thought maybe the change would do us all good. Maybe a snowball fight would cool him off a little. And"she started digging in the dirt again with her toe-"I guess I was hoping that maybe I'd find a reason to start over. To try again. We had been there a week when he got a call from the office saying he had lost his biggest account. That night, I came back from the grocery store and found him with a ski instructor." She shrugged again. "She wasn't teaching him how to ski. I confronted him, and he hit me." She pointed to her eye. "Then he went in search of Jase, who was hiding outside. I found him first and we started running, but not before I introduced Trevor's head to a fire poker."

That sounded like the Katie I knew. The Katie I knew would have taken a fire poker to his head back in New York, but adults are harder to wake up than kids.

Her eyes scanned the drive again, searching for whatever wasn't there. lase and I returned to New York, packed, and I filed a restraining order-which wasn't difficult given our history, the fact that Trevor was laid up in a Colorado hospital, and that the ski instructor took my side once she discovered who I was. We've been running ever since."

She walked around the barn and breathed deeply, letting the aroma of Glue, leather, manure, horse feed, and cobwebs fill her lungs and fingertips. "Trevor is no dummy, and chances are real good that, sooner or later, he'll find us. He doesn't like being told he can't do ... or have something." She shrugged her shoulders and looked straight at me. "I couldn't stay in New York and I couldn't go to Atlanta because he'd find me there. With no place left, I drove this way because I knew I could think here. That I'd find space and, maybe, peace."

She looked around the barn, waving her hand in an arc across the back of Waverly and the pasture. Both she and they were dripping with soft morning sunshine. The dew rising off the pasture looked like golden honey that had seeped through the cracks on the front porch of heaven. "When we were kids," she said, "I was happy here. Really happy. I remember never wanting the days to end and always wanting to play your father's piano while Miss Ella smiled and soaked in every note."

She nodded, almost to herself. "Nobody's eyes ever lit up for me like Miss Ella's. Sometimes, late at night, when the crowds dwindled, I'd close my eyes and think of her sitting next to me on the bench, letting me play your father's grand, whispering in my ear and telling me to imagine myself in front of a sold-out show at the Sydney Opera House." Katie shook her head. "She was my cheerleader. The best. Every time I play, I think she's sitting beside me. Nodding, smiling, closing her eyes, and waving with the melody. Sometimes, I can almost hear her voice and smell the Cornhuskers."

I smiled but said nothing. Katie needed to talk, not listen to me. I picked up another lens and realized how much I had missed the sound of her voice. "Got any plans?"

"Yeah." She laughed. "Start over. Put down some roots. Teach my son how to play baseball." She wiped her face on both shirtsleeves, smearing her mascara. I pointed to the bike leaning against the corner of the barn. "We got that in Macon," she said. "Something to occupy his time while I thought of where to go and what to do. I wanted to go where Trevor wouldn't find me." She looked around and attempted a smile. "Looks like I found it."

"How do you know he's not tracking your every credit card transaction now?"

"I had a good lawyer in our divorce, so I have money, but this trip, well ... years ago, I put a little cash in an account in Atlanta. My rainy day fund."

"Looks like it's raining."

She nodded and looked out the back of the barn. "You might say." She leaned back against the door and shut her eyes, letting the breeze fill her lungs. Somewhere, a hint of ripe peaches and burning leaves wafted in and settled throughout the barn.

A few minutes later, Mose walked in with his hands hanging on the corners of his overalls-his best farmer pose.

"Well, hello, little Miss Katie." Mose had never lost his bedside manner. He took off his hat, wiped his forehead with a white handkerchief, and placed his hat across his heart.

Katie stepped out of the stall and stared for a moment before breaking into a big smile. "Mose?"

"Miss Katie, this is not my house, but because I helped raise this boy, I can extend to you a warm Waverly welcome. You stay as long as you need, and longer if you want."

She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek.

About that time, a little cowboy wearing a plaid shirt, shorts, boots up to his knees, a two-holster belt, and a star pinned on his chest jumped off the front porch. He ran into the barn with a six-shooter in one hand and it cowboy hat in the other. "Mama, Mama, Mama, look!" He pointed at Glue. "That's a horse!"

Mose was the closest. He knelt onto one knee, took off his hat, stuck out his hand, and said, "Pleasure to meet you, Sheriff." Jase drew both guns and pointed them at Mose, who dropped his hat and stuck his hands in the air.

`lase"-Katie knelt next to Jason-"this is Dr. Moses. And that," she said, pointing to our horse, "is Glue."

"Mose," I said, pointing atJase's guns, "be careful. It's not his guns that should scare you. It's hers that ought to put the fear of God in you."

Katie looked at Mose. "He's talking about last night. We were-"

"I know." Mose waved her off with his right hand. "Tuck told me. He's just carrying on because he's never been shot at before. Me, on the other hand, I spent four years in Europe where I got shot at most every day. You take all the aim you want at me."

"Great, take her side," I said.

"Katie"-Mose wrapped one arm around her and an ear-to-ear grin spread across his face-"how would you like some brunch? We tried when he was little, but that little squirt never gravitated toward manners."

"I remember," she said over her shoulder.

"Mose," I interrupted, "don't be fooled. That woman is a wolf in sheep's clothing."

"Miss Katie," Mose piped up, "don't pay that little whippersnapper any mind. If he gets smart, I'll get a switch and we'll find some discipline."

"I'd like to see that," she said, smirking.

Jase approached Glue's stall and stuck out his hand. Glue leaned his head over the gate and tickled Jase's fingertips with his nose, leaving them slimy with spit. I picked some hay off the middle of the barn floor and held it out to Glue. Glue whinnied and gently pulled it out of my hand. Jase copied my gesture, bringing a delightful laugh out of him. It was a sweet sound.

Only thing missing was a petite black woman with a glass eye and dentures, sitting on a five-gallon bucket with her dress hiked up over her knees and her knee-highs rolled down around her ankles. Miss Ella left some pretty big footsteps. They swallowed Rex's.

THE TWO OF THEM WALKED OFF. KATIE TUCKED HERSELF under Mose's arm and left me standing alone with Jason in the barn.

"You like my horse?"

Jase nodded.

"You want to ride him?"

Jase nodded again, this time faster. "Hey, Mose," I called. "Is Glue working today?"

"Yup. They'll be here this afternoon."

I nodded and looked to Jase. "Wait right there, partner." I returned from the tack room with a hackamore, a dry saddle blanket, and the children's Western saddle I'd been working on. It fit boy and horse perfectly. I set Jase atop Glue, shortened the stirrups one notch, and watched Jase's face light up like a Q -beam as his toes slid into the stirrups. Three minutes later, I led Glue from the stall and we walked out of the barn.

Katie saw us and let go of Mose's arm, acting like she wanted to lift Jase off the horse. "Miss Katie," Mose said, wrapping his arm around hers, "that horse is almost as gentle as the young man that's leading it. Best you come with me and let's eat some eggs. I want to look at those eyes of yours."

I turned south out of the pasture, underneath the water tower, now faded, overgrown, and covered in poison ivy and confederate jasmine, and down through the orchards. We walked around the southern end of the orchards and through the pines, where we neared the rim of the quarry. Nearing the edge of the sixty-foot drop-off and the base of the rusted and dangling zip lines, we stopped to look down in the mineral spring.