Love Letters From the Grave(63)

‘Did you?’

Luther laughed. ‘I like a fast car as much as the next man,’ he said, ‘but I believe the other things that Molly and Charlie have always stood for are more valuable. Learning and education, firstly. Living lightly on the land. Taking personal responsibility for your actions – and loving until there’s enough to spread around. I took it all seriously and became an accountant. Like my grandfather.’

‘Those are pretty good values,’ I said with a smile.

‘And redemption,’ added Luther suddenly. ‘Uncle Charlie has always believed in second chances. He reckoned that God gave him several – avoiding the chair, learning so much in prison, getting paroled, his wonderful children …’

‘And Molly,’ I finished for him.

Luther didn’t say anything, but his smile spoke volumes.

We paused, staring out over the lake as the cool breeze ruffled its surface into foamy waves. Sitting here, with the calm blackness of the water ahead of us and the rustle of the trees behind, it was easy to believe in redemption. In all of it, in fact.

‘Hey,’ I said to Luther as he handed me another beer, ‘do you think I could meet them?’

He checked his grandfather’s gold watch, then pulled a face. ‘It’s quite late. I don’t think they’ll want to be disturbed.’ And he gave me a slow, deliberate wink.

‘Really? At seventy plus?’

‘Love until there’s enough to spread around,’ he repeated.

We both laughed, and took a slug of our beer.





Chapter 21




* * *



Together Again



* * *





Don’t you think that everyone looks back on their childhood with certain amounts of bitterness and regret? It doesn’t have to ruin your life!



Ethel, On Golden Pond



I didn’t hear from Luther for many years, long after I’d broken down the story and sold it to my editor as the most interesting tale he would ever hear of things we’d all thought were going to be boring. I sectioned it down into its component parts, researched it more thoroughly, and managed to parlay it into four or five different features focusing on Vanity Fair articles about the infamous bank robbers of the thirties, the prisoner squads in the military services, the incidence of Aids among the police force. Somehow the tale of Amish progress never made it into print.

I always felt it was a shame that I hadn’t gotten to meet Charlie and Molly. They’d left for the mini-farm by the time I emerged from my cabin the next day, slightly jaded from the beer and my extended concentration on Luther’s story. Besides, I got the feeling from Luther that they would have eschewed any focus on them as protagonists in my column or a feature. They just believed in making the most of what they had, like anybody would in their shoes – so they thought.

Almost two decades later, however, I received an email from one Luther Bendon, CFO at a multi-national manufacturing company in Denver, saying:



Dear Brendon,



I know this will be a bolt from the blue. It’s been a long time since our lakeside discussion about my great aunt and uncle, Molly and Charlie.



Aunt Molly died just a few days ago. Her funeral is going to be held at the end of the week at the mini-farm, and I thought you might like to attend. Uncle Charlie died nine years ago, and Molly’s been running the farm herself since then.



Give me a call if you’d like to come along. I’m sure you’d find it interesting to see how it all turned out.



Best wishes,



Luther



I reached for my phone immediately.



Luther met me at the airport, shaking my hand warmly. He looked exactly the same, apart from some white dusting to his hair, while I looked and felt like I wouldn’t be long after Aunt Molly, particularly after a five-hour flight.

He led me to his car, a rather impressive BMW.

‘Do you like to drive fast?’ I asked him wryly, and he grinned.

‘Yes, I do,’ he said, ‘and now I can – but only at the race track when I pay for a lesson.’

We settled into the car, and Luther filled me in on what had happened.

Later in life, Molly and Charlie had purchased a holiday home on an estate in Florida, where the weather was warmer for their joints and the community like-minded and convivial. One evening they were playing hand-and-foot (a version of their beloved canasta) at a neighbor’s, two doors away, where they and the three other couples had provided a dish for a pot-luck supper. They’d had an incredible night, and couldn’t remember every playing so well.

As they departed, carrying their dishes, Charlie almost fell on the porch steps. He caught himself, but after a few steps on the neighbor’s flagstone walkway, he tripped and fell into the darkness beyond the area lit by the porch-light. The casserole dish slipped from his hands, shattering noisily against the doorway, and Charlie, whose legs were often numb because of his diabetes, struck his head very hard on the rocks of a raised-bed flower garden.

Molly flew immediately to his side, kneeling, trying to find out what had happened. When she was unable to rouse him, a feeling of dread began to creep over her. Soon the others were at her side; one of them called the emergency services while others brought a blanket, a pillow, a flashlight. When they lifted his head onto the pillow, there was a large pool of blood where his head had lain. Several of the friends were attempting to hear a heartbeat, feel a pulse or rouse Charlie by talking to him. Molly’s feeling of dread intensified. Without knowing, she began swaying her body and humming some of Charlie’s favorite tunes.