His Everlasting Love: 50 Loving States, Virginia (18 page)

He shook his head. “To be honest with you, I don’t know. But I guess I knew somewhere in the back of my mind this might be a possibility. I still haven’t told Josh and my dad the full version of what happened in Germany. I made it sound like we hooked up and you didn’t tell me about Trevor. For some reason I decided to sit on a few of the details. I told myself it was because I could win this case without them. But in reality, I think I was trying to protect you. Just in case something like this happened.

“And now…?” he shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m still trying to wrap my head around it. All I know is I want this baby. And I’m just so goddamn grateful I didn’t listen to you and leave you there. Because if I had, you might have…”

He couldn’t even finish that sentence, and he let his head fall over their joined hands as his voice choked with emotion. “We’ll figure this out, Willa. I don’t care what it takes. We’ll get you the help you need. A whole team of therapists if that’s what it takes for us to be a family. Whatever mental state you were in back in Germany, you must have changed, because I can see the woman I thought you were inside of you. I know you and me can make this work.”

She shook her head, overcome with emotion herself. That he’d still want to try to make it work with her, despite believing she used to be a patient-raping lunatic.

“Sshhh,” he said, shaking his own head. “Just, try to rest. We’ll work on getting you discharged, and then we’ll figure out the rest. Until then, I don’t want you getting agitated.”

God, she loved him. And in that moment, she wondered how she could have spent even a few months of her life trying to deny that fact. He was so much better now than the entitled boy he used to be. Smart, kind, and loyal to a degree she couldn’t even comprehend, and she felt beyond lucky to have the man he’d become pledging himself to her in this way.

There was just one problem. “Sawyer, I’m not now, and nor have I ever been, insane. I don’t need a therapist—”

Her protest was cut off by the ringing of this phone. He looked down at the screen. “It’s Grace. I should answer this. Trevor probably wants to talk to you. He was worried and I told him I’d have you call when you woke up.”

He cut off to answer. “Hey Grace, she’s awake. Put Trevor on the phone.”

But in the next moment, the smile fell off his face. “What do mean Trevor’s gone? Have you looked…?”

More rushed talking on the other side of the phone. Willa couldn’t understand what she was saying, but the muffled voice sounded frantic.

As soon as he got off the phone, Sawyer would relay the news she’d already began to suspect. Trevor wasn’t at his house. Or hers. Or anywhere in town that Grace had looked. He’d disappeared without a trace.

And was now nowhere to be found.

20

Sawyer found out two things the hard way that morning.

One) His son was missing, and Two) he wouldn’t just have to get his son’s mother a little bit of therapy. He was going to have to fully commit her to some sort of mental institution.

He never should have let her leave her hospital room. But after finding out Trevor was missing, she’d darted out of bed and pulled on the fresh pair of jeans Grace had brought when she picked Trevor up from the hospital.

“You’ve got a choice,” she’d said, snatching her phone out of the bag. “They’re not going to force me to stay here for a stomach flu, so you can either drive me home or make me take a taxi.”

Then she’d taken out her own IV and started running toward the floor’s elevator bank with more energy than someone in her condition should have had. He guessed what they said about mothers having super powers when it came to their kids was true, because she was all the way to the elevators before the floor nurse could catch up.

Of course Sawyer hadn’t made her get a taxi. He ran after her, just as worried about Trevor and determined to do whatever it took to help her find him.

…but that was before he found himself at the old cart behind her house, watching the mother of both his five-year-old and unborn child talk to a piece of thin air, she called “Pappy.” Pappy, he assumed, being the sharecropper who’d died of a heart attack while tending the field behind the house.

It was a hot August day, but it felt at least thirty degrees cooler by the old cart. And a shiver ran down his back as he watched Willa talk animatedly with the thin air about “the well girls” and the “the willow tree.”

“Okay, Pappy hasn’t seen him,” she said when she was done talking. “But he says I should skip talking to the Well Girls and go straight to the willow tree, since that’s on your side of the river and closer to the woods. We’re thinking he has to be in the woods, otherwise either he or Grace would have seen him by now.”

“Good idea, I’ll go look for him in the woods. But how about I take you back to my place first,” he suggested, gentle as he could. “That way you can get some rest while I look for Trevor.”

“You think I can rest when Trevor’s out there? No, I’ve got to keep looking. Come on.”

She started toward the river, making a beeline for the tree.

“And what do you think is at the tree?” he asked, easily catching up with her.

She let his question hang in the air for a few seconds before answering, “I’m not crazy, Sawyer. I’m just strange. And too worried about our son to keep a lid on it.”

She also looked tired, like she could drop any minute. But she kept going for Trevor. She really did love him. He could see that now. Even if she was certifiable.

At least one good idea had come out of this. He needed to search the woods on their side of the river. If Trevor had grown up like him and Josh, he probably already knew these woods better than a navigator on his fourth tour.

But still, Trevor was only five. And Sawyer didn’t like the idea of the little boy out alone in those dense woods. Or anywhere near the small but deep river that ran through them.

“Does he know how to swim?” he asked Willa, vaguely remembering a
New York Times
article he read a while back about how few black kids knew how.

“Yes, all of us do,” Willa answered, her voice weary. “The two slaves who drowned trying to cross the river insist on teaching anyone who can see them how to swim, starting from the age of three. In fact, if we don’t get the information we need at the Willow Tree, I’m probably going to double back and ask them. But they’re all the way down on the other side of the property, so I’m hoping it won’t come to that.”

Okay, he had to ask… “Who exactly do you think is going to give you the information we’re looking for when we get to the willow tree?”

Willa kept her eyes trained on the willow tree as she answered, “I know you’re not going to believe me, but that’s where my dad lives. He was a Howard University undergrad who got out of his vehicle to help a white woman whose car had broken down at the side of the road. A group of good old boys saw him helping her and strung him up from the willow tree on your side of the river for daring to exchange words with a white woman. He and Marian had what she still calls ‘a romance novel without an HEA’ about a year after she returned home, pregnant with Thel. And that’s how she ended up having me just a year after Thel.”

She shook her head with a dry smile. “Pappy’s still mad at him over that, although you’d think fifteen years living dead together would be enough to let bygones be bygones. Maybe if they lived on the same side of the river...”

She was right about one thing. He of course didn’t believe one word of that crazy story. And as they crossed the bridge, he forced himself not to think about the several stints in rehab facilities that hadn’t seemed to help his mother at all before she died.

It wouldn’t be like that for Willa, he tried to assure himself. He’d get her the best head doc money could buy, make sure she was around to be the mother Trevor and their unborn baby needed.

But then they finally reached the willow tree, and he once again had to watch the creepy sight of Willa talking to somebody who wasn’t there. Had to experience the same weird mixture of cold and foreboding, as he tried to figure out exactly what it would take to get her the help she needed. If he’d be able to talk her into going into a facility on her own or if he’d have to get the authorities involved.

However, this time the excruciating feelings and questions didn’t go on for quite so long. After less than a minute of her one-sided conversation, Willa’s face immediately lit up.

“C’mon,” she called to them. “Trevor’s at the fairy bridge. He went there to help Marian. She fell down, and he brought her a few books to keep her company while they waited for help to arrive.”

The fairy bridge…she must have been talking about the tiny stone bridge about a couple of kilometers into the woods. At least that’s what he wanted to believe she meant.

He could only hope at this point that Willa didn’t believe in fairies, too.

“DADDY! MAMA! YOU CAME!” Trevor yelled when Willa and Sawyer came around the grassy bend to the small stone bridge that connected their family’s properties. “Just like Grandma said you would!”

“I’ll be damned…” Sawyer said beside her, clearly shocked when they came upon Trevor and her mother exactly where her father told them they would be.

Trevor broke away from Marian, who was lying supine underneath a pitch pine, reading a book. “Grandma said you’d be here soon!” he said as he came running up to them.

Willa grabbed the little boy as soon as they reached him, hugging him hard and tight. Then pushed him back to say, “What have I told you about coming into these woods alone?”

“I had to, Mama,” Trevor answered. “The spirits told me Grandma was hurt bad and didn’t have any more books left to read!”

“Show me,” she said, taking him by the hand and going into total PT mode despite having just come out of the hospital herself.

“Okay,” Trevor said. He looked over his shoulder at Sawyer. “You come, too, Daddy. Maybe you can carry her like you carried Mama.”

“I knew you all would find me,” Marian said, putting a bookmark in her Ann Patchett novel as they approached. “The spirits told me the whole story to keep me warm at night out here. Though I wished they would have told me it before I fell. I would have brought a few more books with me to read.”

“Oh God, Mama,” Willa said, dropping down beside her and running her hands over her body with medical efficiency.

“It’s my right ankle, dear,” her mother told her before she got too far down her arm.

The same as if she’d been given an actual x-ray, Willa’s hands immediately dropped to her mother’s right ankle, and she started to take off the old hiking boot Marian was wearing.

“You don’t have to bother with checking me out. It’s a break,” her mother informed her, before adding morosely. “And it’s going to take a whole twelve weeks to heal, because I’m rather old now.”

“Also, because you didn’t get immediate attention, which you would have if you’d brought your sat phone with you,” Willa answered in a chastising tone.

Her mother glared. “I no longer work as a nurse, my dear. I carry no chains, technological or otherwise.”

Willa rolled her eyes. Her mother hadn’t held a nursing job for nearly six years now. Not since she quit a week before she and Thel came home, stating as her reason, “the spirits told me my daughters would need some taking care of for a while.”

But she still held a general mistrust of the technology she’d been forced to use back when she still held a job. And she always managed to “forget” the special satellite phone Willa bought her for her “reunion walks.” She also refused to so much as touch a smart phone. And friend, don’t even get her started on Kindles, unless you wanted to hear her rant for days.

But computers—those were totally all right with her because you could use them to order books from Amazon, EBay, and any number of other places. Ironically that was what made Willa also start to resent technology. But not nearly for the same reasons as her mother.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked Marian with a heavy sigh.

“Five days. But don’t worry, the River Boys brought me fresh water to drink and plenty of berries to eat. Though I was truly glad when Trevor came around to give me some company and this book here. Those River Boys don’t want to talk about anything but swimming.” She dropped her voice to a loud whisper. “And you know they can’t read, so…”

She gave her head a pitying shake, then brightened up with a thought. “Maybe you should teach them like you did Daddy.”

“I could teach them, too!” Trevor volunteered.

“What a good boy,” Marian said, giving him a fond smile. “Who would have thought you and that young Grant would make such a good boy?”

She then looked over Willa’s shoulder at Sawyer. “You grew up rather well for Greenlee stock, Sawyer Grant. They always were a snaky lot, those. Bunch of alcoholics birthing more alcoholics. And believe me, I did not have high hopes for you in high school, but ‘No, no, we are free to change. And love changes us’ as Walter Mosley said in
Blue Light.
And the spirits assure me you’ve undergone a sea change since having relations with my daughter.”

Willa could almost feel Sawyer’s disquiet at this point. Could almost hear his mind yelling,
My God, this whole family is completely certifiable.

But instead of saying that out loud, he stepped around Willa and said, “Alright, Ms. Marian. Let’s get you out of here.”

Sawyer bent down and picked her up easily. These days she couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds.

Marian batted her eyes at him like the irrepressible flirt she used to be.

“Oh, who would have ever thought that one day a
Greenlee
boy would be carrying little ol’ me out of these woods—and alive, too. Folks will be talking about this for months!”

“Mama, this isn’t really anything to be proud of,” Willa said, taking Trevor’s hand as she fell into step beside Sawyer.

“That’s true, I suppose,” Marian answered with an airy sigh. “People don’t care so much about that old story these days. And even if they did, it’ll get upstaged when you two get married.”