Black Cake(48)

Gibbs ran across the road and caught Covey before her face could hit the ground. When Covey came to, Gibbs was holding her in his arms and he never did let go again until the day he died, four decades later. Covey and Gibbs had found each other again.





Back Then





Back then, it was easier to disappear. Back then, you could open a new bank account or get a driver’s license with just part of your birth name and maybe even your nickname. They didn’t fingerprint and face-recognition everyone and digitize your orthotic model and send your blood-test results by email. They didn’t save your shopping preferences and the birthdays of everyone who’d ever received a chocolate-and-cheese gift package from you. They didn’t make money by posting your age and address and so-called facts about you on the Web to lure other people into paying for somewhat-true-but-mostly-imprecise information.

Back then, it was easier for a young man, an only son whose parents had already died, to shorten his name and turn himself from Gilbert Bennett Grant into Bert Bennett, slowly change his documents to match, and cut all ties with his past to be with the woman he loved. It was easier then for a young woman to believe that you could build a family of your own in a vacuum because love and loyalty were the only true things in this world. So this is what Bert and Eleanor did.





So her father, too, had lied about his past. Benny doesn’t feel angry so much as sad. The more Benny learns about her mother, in particular, the more she sees that Benny wasn’t the only one in her family who had paid a price for going against other people’s rules.

True, Eleanor Bennett had, in the end, been much more fortunate in her life than many people. She had been reunited with her first love and they had gone on to have two children together. But Benny’s mother would continue to mourn a series of losses so great that not even Benny can begin to imagine. Her first family. Her identity. Her first child.

Benny used to think she’d been a brave soul, insisting on being herself despite the bullying, despite the alienation from her family, despite the loneliness. She was proud that she hadn’t run back home with her tail between her legs just because things hadn’t worked out with Joanie, or with Steve, or with her plans. But lately, Benny has felt a bit ashamed of not having more to show for it all. Her mother, at least, had something to show for what she’d been through.

After all that she had experienced in her early years, why couldn’t Ma imagine what was happening with Benny? Why didn’t she give her advice? Why didn’t Ma do more to hold on to her? And what is Benny supposed to do with these feelings, now that Ma is no longer around?





Byron





Had Byron’s parents ever told the truth about anything?

Had they been that good about covering things up? Or had Byron just not wanted to see? The more Byron learns, the more some things begin to make sense. A year ago, his confident, go-get-’em ma had become quieter, even clingy. More touchy-feely than usual, more distracted. He could sense that she was undergoing some kind of internal shift. He could sense that it went beyond losing his dad, or missing Benny. But he didn’t want to go there.

Byron didn’t want to think that whatever was ailing his mother wouldn’t go away on its own, the way it used to when he was a kid and she was feeling down. Byron himself was feeling increasingly restless. Disappointed with the way things had gone at the office. Surprised that they still bothered him as much as they did. Frustrated that Lynette, who was still living with him then, was demanding more of his private time, just as he was trying to get as much mileage as possible out of his public life.

Byron was being selfish, he can see that now. He needed his mother to remain the clear-eyed, positive thinker who had always been there for him, who had always told him to find his center and hold on to it and, You’ll see, Byron, things would work out all right. After all, he thought back then, things had worked out all right for his folks, hadn’t they?





Etta Pringle kicked off her sandals and stepped onto a wooden platform set in the sand, waving to the crowd as she walked. The applause gave way to the sounds of her childhood. The sea, the palm fronds in the breeze, the memory of her mother’s voice, admonishing her. A young lady never removes her shoes in public! her mother would have said. Etta smiled at the thought, then braced herself for the deep tug of nostalgia. At least her mother had lived long enough to see what Etta had accomplished. To see her grandchildren growing up. To believe that all was well with her only daughter.

Etta lifted her face to breathe in the sun and opened her arms. The crowd cheered. Just twenty-four more hours and she’d be on a plane out of here. With her mother gone and her brother in England, Etta had no reason to linger, even though she was the one who had wanted the ceremony to take place here, in her hometown, in this cove where it had all begun. And where so much had gone wrong.

“Etta Pringle isn’t just a local girl who’s made good,” the prime minister was saying. “Etta Pringle is a woman who has conquered the world, one swim at a time, starting with this bay right here.” Someone shouts her childhood nickname and Etta laughs and gives a thumbs-up.

“And now,” the prime minister said, “this homegrown champion rightly nags politicians like me to do more to safeguard the environment, because no sea, not even ours, the most beautiful in the world, is immune to runoff, to the plastics, to the rising water levels, to increasingly severe weather.”