The Pieces We Keep(111)

Unsure what to do now, she noted a lady on her knees in another row, placing roses in a receptacle. Audra followed suit by kneeling in her jeans and brushing some dried blades of grass from Devon’s name.

“I guess,” she said quietly, “this is when I’m supposed to pretend you can hear me.” Speaking to a slab of granite seemed ridiculous, but then, there weren’t many things she had done this past month that didn’t fall into that category.

“Let’s say for the sake of argument that you’re listening—just so I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself. Which I am. But all the same, I’m hoping this will help stir up some ideas. As you might know, Jack has been having a rough time. We both have, actually.” Tears gathered in her eyes, a downfall of expressing the words aloud. She tried to blink them back, but a few blatantly defied her.

She picked up her pace. “I feel like I just keep screwing up. I want so badly to help Jack, but I don’t know what he needs. Is it more attention? What am I not doing right?”

After soothing Jack from his dream the night before, she had curled up in his bed and held him as he slept. But any bond of closeness had vanished by breakfast.

Again, she thought of another kid, the boy who had deliberately wounded a cocker spaniel. Perhaps attention, of any kind, was all he’d been after. Audra just wished she knew what Jack yearned for, beyond the usual praises and smiles and hugs.

“ ‘Talk—Trust—Heal,’ ” she said. “That’s the motto for the therapist Jack’s been seeing. Sadly, I think I’ve broken the second part of that in a pretty big way.” Absent of trust, she feared talking and healing were gone as well. “Bottom line, Devon, I could really use your advice right now.”

There was no reply of course. She closed her eyes and listened for the memory of his voice. But still, nothing came. No whisperings of wisdom.

Then again, who’s to say he would have tackled the issue any better. For two years now, while far from perfect, she had managed as a single parent. Her husband wasn’t ever coming back, regardless of anyone’s hopes or prayers. Rather than asking what Devon would do, maybe she ought to start trusting in herself.

From the soft chirping of birds and clean scent of grass she absorbed the peacefulness of the grounds. Out of this, a recollection came to her: of their family on a camping trip.

This time, she deliberately held on to the vision instead of pushing it away, and more images rolled over the tracks of her mind. She recalled Devon’s specialty of breakfast-for-dinner, and how at the movies he would finish his popcorn before the film even began. On one of their early dates, she’d laughed hysterically over his shocking realization that the Kenny Rogers song was about four hungry children, not four hundred. Then there was Devon’s amusing infatuation with marshmallow PEEPS and how he’d make Jack giggle by transforming candy corns into vampire fangs.

When at last Audra opened her eyes, she registered tears hanging from her chin. They had spilled from a bittersweet pool of sadness and joy. She dried them with her shirtsleeve, surprisingly not bothered by their existence. For they signified both a parting and reuniting in one.

So finally she can be with him.

The phrase had persisted in her mind, but suddenly with a different perspective. Could it be, subconsciously, that this visit—this reunion  —was what Jack wanted all along?

Maybe Meredith was right. Maybe in an effort to evade the bad, Audra had blocked out all of the good, and that goodness was what Jack needed more than anything.

“Audra,” Tess said.

Nearly having forgotten she was there, Audra twisted around to find Tess close behind, motioning at an angle. Audra’s eyes traced the gesture and discovered a couple standing three rows down. It was Robert and Meredith with a bouquet of lilies. Naturally they would pay their respects on their son’s birthday and with his favorite flowers.

That’s when it dawned on Audra. This could be the place to make amends. Their commonality of love and loss over Devon could surely bring them together. Same for their care of Jack.

Meredith appeared to read these thoughts.

Prodded by hope, Audra took a step forward, yet just then the woman pursed her mouth and cut her gaze away. An unmistakable message.

It was time for Audra to leave.





52


Late July 1942

Brooklyn, NY





The message arrived on a Saturday morning. Vivian had just made her way down the stairs for breakfast when the courier arrived with a telegram. After assignments at three bases for a total of six weeks abroad, double the length first expected, Gene was taking a train ride home.

Vivian would have attributed her sudden nausea solely to anxiety over their impending discussion if not for news from the day before. Her fainting spell at work, along with fatigue and absentmindedness, had led her to see a doctor at Mrs. Langtree’s urging. Given that July heat and humidity were likely culprits, it had seemed an excessive chore-until the white-haired doc, with his deductive line of questioning, jarred Vivian with the truth.