Best Kept Secrets(113)
"No, she knew better than that. Neither of us had wanted
her to go away for the summer, but there wasn't much we
could do about it once she'd made her mind up," Junior
replied. "She went. She was there. We were here, three-hundred-plus
miles away. One night, Reede decided to borrow
a plane and fly us there to bring her back.
"That son of a bitch had convinced me that he could get
us there and back safely before anybody realized the plane
was missing. The only person who would notice would be
Moe Blakely, and in his book, Reede could do no wrong."
"My God, you didn't do it?"
"No, not then. One of the stable hands--Pasty Hickam,
in fact--overheard us plotting it and told Dad. He gave us hell and threatened us within an inch of our lives not to ever try something that crazy. He knew all about Celina trying to
make Reede jealous and advised us to let her have her fun.
He assured us that she would eventually tire of it and come
home, and everything would be just like it had been before."
"But Angus was wrong. When mother came back to Purcell,
she was pregnant with me. Nothing was ever the same."
She toyed with her iced tea spoon for a long, silent while.
"How much do you know about my father, Junior?"
"Not much. How about you?"
She raised her shoulders in a small shrug. "Only that his
name was Albert Gaither, that he was from a coal-mining
town in West Virginia, that he was sent to Vietnam within
weeks of his marriage to my mother, and that he stepped on
a land mine and died months before I was born."
"I didn't even know where he came from," Junior told
her regretfully.
"When I got old enough, I thought about going to West
Virginia and looking up his family, but I decided against it.
They never made any attempt to contact me, so I felt it best
to leave it alone. His remains were shipped to them and
interred there. I'm not even certain if my mother attended
his funeral."
"She didn't. She wanted to, but Mrs. Graham refused to
give her the money to make the trip. Dad offered to pay her
way, but Mrs. Graham wouldn't hear of that, either."
"She let Angus pay for Mother's funeral."
"I guess she thought that was different, somehow."
"Al Gaither wasn't any more to blame for the hasty marriage
than Mother."
"Maybe he was," Junior argued. "A soldier going off to
war, that kind of thing. Celina was a pretty girl out to prove
her allure."
"Because Reede wouldn't sleep with her."
"He told you about that, huh?"
Alex nodded.
"Yeah, well, some of the girls he did sleep with flaunted
it in Celina's face. She was out to prove she was woman
enough to snare a man. Gaither no doubt took advantage of
that.
"To your grandma, his name was a dirty word. Because
of him, your mother missed her senior year of high school.
That didn't go down too well with your grandma, either. No,
she had a real ax to grind with Mr. Gaither."
"I wish she had at least saved a picture of him. She had
thousands of pictures of Celina, but not a single one of my
father."
"To Mrs. Graham, he probably represented evil, you
know, the thing that changed Celina's life forever. And for
the worse."
"Yes," she said, thinking that Junior's words could apply
to how her grandmother felt about her, too. "I don't even
have a face to associate with the name. Nothing."
"Jesus, Alex, that must be rough."
"Sometimes, I think I just sprang up out of the ground."
In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, "Maybe I was the
first Cabbage Patch kid."
"No," Junior said, reaching for her hand again, "you had
a mother, and she was beautiful."
"Was she?"
"Ask anybody."
"Was she beautiful inside as well as out?"
His brows drew together slightly. "As much as anyone is.
She was human. She had faults as well as virtues."
"Did she love me, Junior?"
"Love you? Hell, yes. She thought you were the most
terrific baby ever conceived."
Basking in the glow of his words, Alex left the country
club with him. As he held open the passenger door of his
Jag, he stepped close to her and laid his hand along her cheek.
"Do you have to go back to that stuffy old courthouse this
afternoon?"
"I'm afraid so. I have work to do."
"It's a gorgeous day."
She pointed at the sky. "You liar. It looks like it's about
to rain--or snow."
He bent his head and kissed her quickly. Leaving his lips
in place, he whispered, "Then an even more pleasurable way