I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(81)
“What?”
Her eyes gleamed, silver-blue as the silver-blue summer sky outside the kitchen window.
“Edith was crying, so bitterly, poor girl, and Gareth swore to her that he would take the best care in the world of her son. He told her that of course he would, of course, because the baby was his son, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Clare
Dev came to Edith’s house early on an azure-soaked, gold-dusted, jade-green Friday evening in mid-August, and even though our plan had been to leave for North Carolina right away, as soon as he saw the canoes, he said, “Look at those. How can we not take them out?” with his own special brand of arms-thrown-open, face-to-the-wind, conspiratorial, little kid enthusiasm, and I said what I vowed from that day forward to always say to his proposals, however spontaneous or goofy or madcap or impractical, which was yes.
We glided through water that was sun-spangled steel blue from a distance and tea-colored up close. We wove, parting ways and coming back together, again and again. We talked and didn’t talk. We startled birds and were startled by birds. We steered in single file through a narrow channel, the mussels gleaming like spilled oil on either side, our paddles brushing the feathery reeds and marsh grass, and then we slipped out into a wide-open pool edged with woods, where we drifted in a hot, hazy, rustling, bird-call-scattered quiet. I tipped back my head and let myself be entranced by the sky.
When I came back to earth, I saw Dev across the shining water, at least fifty yards away, and I understood that some things you decide and some things you choose and some things just are. Dev and I just were.
And then he was calling out, “Come over here and watch these water bugs with me. You know it’s surface tension, but it still looks like a miracle,” and I took up my paddle and, as fast as I could, even though the two of us had all the time in the world, I made my way to where he was.
*
When Edith departed from Canterbury Mills, she left behind her baby and her entire life and her name; by the time she got to the tiny town in western North Carolina, sixty miles outside of Asheville, that Gareth had found for her, Edith Herron had become Edith Waterland. When Thomas Farley got home and found Dev and me, Edith’s granddaughter, sitting in his living room, he told us this; it was all he knew. After just a little Internet searching, Dev and I found her, not in the original town she’d been sent to, but in one just an hour’s drive away. A town that was hardly a town at all, just a handful of houses near a lake. The fact of the lake made me happy: Edith Waterland near water, where she belonged. On the other side of the lake was a summer camp, and I imagined the campers’ shouts and laughter winging like birds over the water to where Edith sat or hung laundry or read in a hammock in her yard. I hoped the sound of children was sweet to her; I hoped it didn’t hurt. Apart from an address, we could find out nothing about her, and, after all my digging and sleuthing, my burning need to discover her complete story, I was at peace with the blank pages, all the missing chapters. I knew what I needed to know: Edith had loved my father enough to give him away; she had loved me enough to find me.
Still, I wanted to see her house. Just to see it, to stand and look at the place she had lived, her last safe place, although surely not her only one. Edith carried Blue Sky House with her wherever she went; I felt sure of it.
Dev showered while I packed the car. We would spend the night with our families in Charlottesville and then would drive the seven hours to Edith’s house the next day. When our bags were in the trunk of Dev’s car, I clipped some hydrangea blooms from the plants in Edith’s garden, wrapped the stems in wet paper towels and aluminum foil, and walked out into the newly fallen dark. A few steps from the car, I heard not so much a sound as a shift in the night noises, and I turned to see a figure half stumble from the shadow of the dogwood tree in the front yard. Tall, broad shouldered, lurching toward me. A scream caught in my throat, and I dropped the flowers.
“Clare, goddamnit, it’s me.”
Zach. Drunk. Angry. His words slurring. Before he reached me, I stuck out my arm. He ran into my open hand and staggered backward.
“What the hell?” he said. “I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
“How did you know I was here?” I asked.
He laughed. “I’ve known about this place for a while now. Your little love nest.”
“How?”
“I’ve been staying at Ian’s in Baltimore. Getting myself together, which is working out pretty well, as you can see.” He made a bitter sound. “Ian hired someone to track you down.”
Cold anger filled me. “Hired someone? That’s sick, even for Ian.”
Zach waved his hand in front of his face, dismissing what I’d said. “He hired a guy to watch your parents’ house a few weeks ago, waiting for you to show up.” In the dim light, I could see his face break into a grin. “And then, you know what?”
I kept silent.
“You did,” said Zach. “Showed up with your pathetic little boyfriend and then went to Richmond with him to do God knows what, and then you came back here.”
I thought of a stranger watching me open my front door, peering at me through windows, treading all over my sacred ground. I thought of the trip to Canada, of him trailing us all that way. I shuddered.
“And?” I asked, relieved when my voice came out hard instead of shaky.