The Girl Who Came Home(11)

With her almost luminous, fair skin and velvet-black hair, there was little doubting Grace’s Irish heritage. It wasn’t spoken of very often in the family, but she knew that her Great Nana Maggie (her great-grandmother on her mother’s side) had travelled as a teenager from Ireland to America, as indeed had her great-grandfather James, the man who Maggie had married soon after settling in Chicago. There were very few photos of Maggie as a young girl, but in the rare ones that did exist, Grace could see the unmistakeable likeness between them, particularly since she’d hit her teenage years. It was her dream to travel to Ireland one day to see the country of her origins for herself. She’d been planning the trip with Jimmy when her life suddenly fell apart.

She met Jimmy Shepard at the University of Illinois where they were both enrolled to study Journalism. He sat next to her in their first lecture and asked her if he could borrow a pen. She’d spent the next forty minutes trying to sneak a better look at him out of the corner of her eye, catching just the occasional glimpse of his sandy-coloured hair, broad jawline and long, dark eyelashes. In reality, she’d spent most of the lecture admiring his battered Converse sneakers. By the time the bell rang for recess, she hadn’t written one word on her notepad and had absolutely no recollection of anything the Professor had said. Jimmy returned her pen, along with a piece of paper on which he’d scribbled Thank you gorgeous. Can I buy you a coffee? They’d been inseparable ever since.

The vibrant, cosmopolitan existence she experienced as a nineteen-year-old in her first semester at college couldn’t have been further removed from the tranquil, innocent days of her childhood, but self-assured and poised as always Grace excelled in her new life. While she loved her old school friends for their uncomplicated lives and their reliability, she grew to love her new student friends for their complex lives and their spontaneity. They introduced her to different music, new, innovative writers and completely new fashions and she realised how sheltered her life had been until then. Jimmy himself was a revelation to Grace; a city boy, he was self-assured, witty, street-wise and a far cry from the awkward, uncertain fumblings of Sam Adamson in the barn.

She was a popular girl in her dorm and her talent for writing had not gone unnoticed by her Professors. ‘You have a genuine gift,’ Professor Andrews had told her towards the end of the fall semester of her first year. She liked Professor Andrews. He was a tall, narrow man with angular features and a crooked smile; he reminded Grace of her Grandpa. She coughed as he wiped the blackboard vigorously, sending dust flying around the room. ‘Yes, you have a real talent young lady,’ he continued. ‘So, tell me, who do you get it from, mom or dad?’

Grace thought for a moment. ‘My dad, I guess.’ She felt a little embarrassed then, afraid that he might think her dad was a successful writer himself. ‘But he’s just a farmer. He doesn’t actually write anything himself.’

‘Ahh, a man of the earth.’ Professor Andrews perched on the edge of the desk. ‘They make the best poets in my estimation; full of senses and emotions and in touch with their surroundings.’

Grace had never thought of it like that, but it kind of made sense. She had always attributed her love of reading and writing to her father who had read to her every night at bedtime, no matter how exhausted he was from a hard day’s work. ‘Just one more chapter Daddy, please,’ she would plead when it was time to turn out the light, especially when he read from The Little House on the Prairie, her favourite. She liked to imagine herself as Laura Ingalls Wilder and her father as Pa, re-living their adventures in her mind and basking in the warmth of their family’s unfaltering love for one another. She adored the book so much that she’d cried inconsolably into her pillow when Laura’s sister Mary went blind.

It was her father who had taught her to read long before her school teachers did; he who had encouraged her to keep writing her little stories about a family travelling across America in a small wagon and of princesses locked in towers by evil witches. It was he, a hard-working, unassuming, uneducated farmer who had uttered phrases such as one last dance before harvest time, who had told her about the memory of water, who had inspired her to observe the world around her and make it as beautiful written down on a page as it was to see in reality.

‘So Ms Butler,’ Professor Andrews continued, folding his arms casually over his grey sweater which, Grace noticed, was wearing thin on the elbows. She wondered whether there was a Mrs Professor Andrews who might take him shopping to buy a new one, although for some reason, she got the feeling he still lived with his mother. ‘You’re probably wondering why I asked you to stay back.’ He paused for dramatic effect, as he was prone to doing, before continuing. ‘Well, you see I was speaking to a colleague of mine at the Chicago Tribune earlier this week and I happened to mention to him that I have a very talented young lady in my tutorial group.’ Grace felt herself blush a little at his compliment and shuffled her feet awkwardly. ‘He has agreed to take a guest feature article from you.’ He stood up then, striding around the heavy desk to collect his briefcase. ‘So, what do you think of that? You up for the challenge?’