The Lost Husband (8 page)

“Me?” Jean wrinkled her nose. “Oh, Lord. I’d turn him into a topiary.” I gave a courtesy laugh just as she turned to me with intention. “What could I bribe you with to get you to cut it?”

I let out a whistle. “Pirate treasure?”

“I’ll get digging,” Jean said.

“So,” I said, “you’re not asking me, then?”

“No,” Jean answered. “I’m not asking you. Yet.”

I was grateful she wasn’t. Because if I knew one thing for certain, it was that I wouldn’t be able to refuse Jean anything.

It wasn’t too many days later that Jean came up with a way to get the kids to eat her food. She started putting it on skewers. Everything became a kebab. Fruit kebabs, meat kebabs, pickle kebabs. Anything on a stick was fun, and once she’d stumbled on that principle, we were good to go.

We fell into a routine pretty quickly. I got the kids ready in the mornings and drove them to school. Then Jean picked them up at the end of the day in the minivan while I finished my chores,
and I met them in the yard at around five-thirty before we went in for dinner. It wasn’t that different from our city schedule, really, when I’d picked them up from aftercare after work. But something about the fact that they were so nearby—that I could look out the little window and see them—made it harder.

Still, I had to admit that they seemed happy. Jean was phenomenally great with children. Even-handed, calm, fully engaged. She never got fussed by them, and she had unlimited imagination. I’d look out the window and watch them make her crowns out of leaves. Or she’d stir a stick in a bucket as the kids gathered rocks, mud, and feathers for magical concoctions. Sometimes they’d all sit on the porch swing, reading. I never heard a cross word from her. Her patience far outlasted my own, not to mention that of my mother.

By the end of January, I was convinced that the move to Atwater had been a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t want to live in this beautiful, magical, pastoral place? Who wouldn’t love small-town life? Especially a small town like this one—such a great mix of old-school rural and New Age goofy. Plus I was learning things. I’d forgotten how satisfying it was to work hard at something. I’d had weeks of uninterrupted sleep at night. I was working my way through all the different recipes for chevre—with O’Connor’s help—and starting to turn my eye toward conquering feta. I was getting to know the goats, all named after famous women in history and literature: Harriet Tubman, Pocahontas, Jane Austen, and Lois Lane were my favorites so far. And there was nothing funnier than hearing the kids talking about the goats once they knew their names, too.

“I think Helen Keller looks pregnant,” Abby had said the day before.

“Does she?” I asked. “I don’t know.”

“She’s way fatter than Toni Morrison or Lady Bird Johnson,” Abby went on.

“But not nearly as fat as Helen of Troy,” I pointed out, “who isn’t pregnant at all.”

Jean and Abby were also making little decorations for the goats’ collars, cutting shapes out of felt to glue onto the backs, and Abby very seriously referred to their work as the “spring fashions.” As she had explained to me, “Just because they’re goats doesn’t mean they can’t look pretty.”

Moving to the country had opened things up in every possible way. It was like I had braced myself against the onslaught of my life, but now in little unexpected moments, like when a breeze swept over the farmyard, I felt twinges of something I could only describe as happiness.

And then I ran into Sunshine again.

Chapter 6
 

Trips into town were always a little frantic. Everybody I saw wanted to stop and meet me and hug me and tell me about how much they loved Jean. Being her niece made me a minor celebrity in Atwater, and everybody seemed to know somebody she’d sat with in the hospital, or said just the right thing to when nobody else could find the words, or jumped off the trestle bridge with to go skinny-dipping.

All I could really do was nod and say, “She seems very wonderful.”

On the particular day that I saw Sunshine again at the feed store, I had just received a free pair of bird feather earrings from a lady named Selma. When I turned to the register, and saw Sunshine standing right behind it, I almost dropped my bag of goat treats. I’d forgotten all about her.

I hauled the bag up onto the counter, trying to covertly double-check her name tag at the same time.

“Hello, Sunshine,” I said.

She just gave a little wave.

“I’m sorry again,” I said, “about almost killing you that day.”

The people behind me started listening.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sunshine said. “It was fate.” She had colored her fingernails black with a Sharpie.

“I think it was just bad driving,” I said, handing over some twenties from my envelope.

“No,” she said with a shrug, “it was destiny.” She took the bills, but instead of making change, she just held them in her hand, leaned in, and said, “I wasn’t kidding about your husband.” She blinked. “I can find him.”

I looked at the name tag again, just to have a place for my eyes.

“I’m not looking for my husband,” I said. I knew I had to explain, but my throat seemed to close up and I had trouble saying the words. They felt like the most private words I could possibly speak, and this total stranger was going to force me to say them—now in front of every single person in the long line behind me.

“My husband is not lost,” I said. “He died.”

Now she had it. The whole room did. I felt a collective sigh of sympathy like a little breeze. I looked down at the counter. Whenever I had to tell anyone about Danny, I always got the exact same look of sympathy. Every time. Different people, different times of day, exact same face.

Not that day, though. Not with Sunshine. In fact, her face went the other way.

“I know!” she said, her eyes bright with excitement. “That’s what I do.” And then she glanced over at our audience, both in the line and peeking out from the aisles, and waved me to lean in closer. I tilted across the counter, near enough for her to cup her hand over my ear and say, in words that seemed to blow straight into my head and swirl around like smoke, “I call up the dead.”

“Okay!” I said, too loud, straightening back up. “Thanks!”

I grabbed the bag and didn’t even wait for change. I walked straight out of that store, countless puzzled faces behind me, and before I knew what I was doing or where I was going, I found myself not back at the farmyard but driving too fast down the highway in the wrong direction, pedal to the floor, in hopes of getting as far away as possible.

By the time I slowed down, I was passing the sign for the Atwater Spring. And so I followed it, turning right and then left, passing a picnic area, then cruising to a stop in a parking lot. The sky had been darkening all afternoon. I got out and felt a heavy breeze brush my arms and face. Without thinking, I followed the trailhead through mesquite trees down toward the spring.

I did not, of course, believe that Sunshine could really talk to the dead. I did not believe in ghosts, séances, or even—if I’m being really honest here—an afterlife. Even though I’d painted some pretty vivid pictures for the kids of their daddy up in heaven with a cloud of marshmallows for a bed, I didn’t actually believe it was a real place.

So I wasn’t sure, stepping along the path, what had spooked me so much. But I could still feel that girl’s breath in my ear. All I knew was this: I was finally moving on. Houston had been drenched in memories of Danny, but now I was in a new place with no reminders of the past. I didn’t want to talk about Danny, think about Danny, or chat in the feed store with people who thought they could have conversations with Danny.

He didn’t belong here, and that was that.

And so I knew what I had to do. I had to tell O’Connor that I couldn’t make any more trips to the feed store. I had to convince him to do them himself. Then I could stay away from that girl. I
could stay on the farm, where no one would ever bring Danny into the conversation without my permission again.

When I came to a ravine, there in the crease was the famous spring, which was disappointingly small and looked a little like a hot tub.

I stepped to the edge of the water, and then I kneeled down. Here, in this quiet place, surrounded by gusts of storm winds, I felt something rise around me that I couldn’t quite articulate. Suddenly, under that heavy and darkened sky, everything really did seem connected. It’s one thing to see those words on a bumper sticker, and it’s a hell of another thing to actually feel them.

Then the rain hit, and I took the path back up to the truck at a run. By the time I had the key in the ignition, I was out of breath and wet down to my underpants.

I drove back going ten miles an hour, and that felt fast under the downpour. The truck’s wipers did their best, but they weren’t much use. The water was so thick I could barely see out, and I wondered if I should just pull over to the shoulder and wait for a break in the sky.

But it was time to get back. And so I crawled the truck back to town, around the square, and onto Broken Tree Road, where the rain began to ease a bit and I could see a little better.

Past town, the road slanted down to a creek before rising back up a long hill toward Jean’s house. Climbing that hill, I noticed a bicyclist pumping up the road toward the crest, and I wondered about how crazy he’d have to be to ride the hill in this weather. He’d barely been in my sights for a second when I saw his front wheel go sideways and the bike flip forward over the handlebars all in one surreal moment, tossing its rider up and over into a skid along the shoulder. I slammed the brakes and pulled over. By the time I’d climbed out and run up to help him, he was already up
on his feet. When I got close enough to peer through the rain, I realized that it wasn’t a
him
. It was Sunshine.

“I’m good,” she said, but her face was scraped and bloody, and so were her hands.

“Sunshine,” I said, “I saw it happen!”

She pushed strands of wet hair off her face with the back of her wrist. “Probably looked worse than it was.”

“It looked horrific,” I said.

“I’m fine,” she insisted. She held out her hands to let the rain wash them off, palms up. I could see bits of gravel embedded where she’d hit.

“I’ll get the bike,” I said, turning.

“I’m not far from home.”

“You can’t ride,” I told her, gesturing at her palms.

She didn’t fight me. I picked up the bike and set it in the bed of the truck while Sunshine stood by the passenger door, unable to open it. After I popped it open for her, she edged in, keeping her hands cradled in her lap, palms up, trying not to bleed on anything. I buckled her seatbelt for her, the way I sometimes did for the kids.

When I got in on my side, she said, “Now it’s starting to hurt.”

“Okay,” I said. “Where is the hospital?”

“Oh, no. Home’s fine,” she said. “I’m just scraped up.”

I stared.

“Really,” she said. And then, stronger, “Really.”

So we pulled back onto the road.

She took a breath. “I’m sorry about before—”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I still have your change, by the way,” she said.

“Keep it.”

“I didn’t mean to freak you out.”

Hadn’t I just said I didn’t want to talk about it? “Where to?”

“My grandpa’s house,” she said, gesturing ahead with a palm-up hand.

There was a little silence as we crossed the creek bridge, and then Sunshine said, “You know, he’s friends with your aunt.”

“Everybody’s friends with my aunt,” I said.

“No. I mean, he’s
friends
with her.”

“What?” I looked over.

Sunshine wiggled her eyebrows.

“No way,” I said.

“Totally. It’s totally true.”

“That can’t be right!” I said, kind of delighted. “How do you know?”

“Everybody knows,” she said. “They’re an official couple. Except she’s ignoring him now that you’re here.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling bad for him on principle.

“It’s okay,” Sunshine said. “He says it’s good for him. Keeps him in his place. He says he can get kind of uppity, being so handsome.”

The gravel road that led up to Sunshine’s house was a sharp turn off the highway. We followed it deep into a pasture before stopping at the farmhouse. I parked in front and went around to unbuckle Sunshine and help her out. Then I lifted the bike out and set it up against the steps.

On the porch, I asked if she needed help with bandages, but she assured me that her grandpa was home and he’d get her fixed up.

“I’m sorry again about before,” she said as I turned the doorknob for her.

“It’s okay,” I said, less spooked now that we were practically family. I gave a little wave as I jogged down the porch steps into
the rain. But before I made it to the truck, I heard her call my name.

“What?” I shouted back.

“I promise I will never try to contact your dead husband,” she called out.

“Okay,” I shouted back. “Good.”

But Sunshine wasn’t quite finished. “Unless, of course,” she added, “you ask me to.”

The next morning, as Jean scrambled some hand-gathered barn eggs for the kids and I wriggled them into their clothes for school, I said to Jean, “What do you think of Sunshine?”