Don't Let the Wind Catch You Page 22

  He grunted.

  I sat up on one elbow. "You okay?"

  "Nein."

  "That was a stupid question. Sorry."

  I suffered through a long pause.

  After a minute, he whispered. "It's okay."

  "Your mother will be okay. You'll see."

  Another pause.

  I tried again. "You know that, right? She just has to get over this."

  He finally turned toward me, his eyes filled with pain. "What if she doesn't get over it this time? What if I never see her again?"

  "Oh, no. No way. She'll get the best help, and you'll see. She'll be home in no time."

  "But what if she has to stay in that place for more than a few days? We can't stay here. Your parents are leaving the day after tomorrow."

  "It's no biggie. You'll just come with me to the Stones." I sounded confident about it, but hoped they wouldn't mind having three extra kids and a sick old man stay at their house.

  "You're sure? My father has to go to work during the day, and probably will want to be with my mother in the evenings."

  "Sure I'm sure. Your father has his hands full. He doesn't need to worry about you guys, too." I figured the twins might feel better out of their father's way during this crisis, anyway. He was probably having to face his own fears about people "knowing." I didn't understand the shame of it. Mrs. Marggrander had been through Hell and back as a young woman, and it still bothered her. Where was the shame in that?

  "Gus?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Danke."

  "You're welcome."

  Elsbeth cracked open the bathroom door and sneaked past us with a towel around her hair and my father's t-shirt billowing around her slim body. "Night, guys."

  We both answered. "Night."

  I finally fell asleep with Shadow's head on my feet and to the sound of Siegfried's soft snoring.

  Chapter Fifty-nine

  It was a tight fit, but we all moved in with the Stones two days later, including my beagle, who acted as though he'd lived there his whole life. Doctor Henderson said Mrs. Marggrander needed some intense therapy, and he recommended she stay in the hospital for a few weeks. Nobody liked the idea, but even Mr. Marggrander agreed that it sounded like the right thing to do. I knew what they were talking about, because after last summer when I discovered the waterlogged body of Sharon Adamski in the weeds beneath a Maine lake, I'd needed therapy, too. I'd stopped going last spring, but realized that it really could help you when bad things happened.

  Millie's heart melted when she saw the twins' woebegone faces, and Oscar and I went to work taking care of Tully. Somehow, the house didn't seem crowded after a few hours of adjusting. As luck would have it, William had been invited camping with a friend. His cast was off, and he would be canoeing in the Adirondacks for the next two weeks. It was a huge relief, because I worried he'd pick on me in front of the twins.

  Siegfried and I took his room, Elsbeth settled into the little room under the eaves in the attic, and Tully was moved into the guest room.

  He was already up there when we arrived, with pill bottles, books on heart health, and several sets of new pajamas folded neatly on the table by the window. Eudora had arranged for a nurse to come check on him every day, and the woman was due for a visit in a few minutes.

  I sat with Tully in his room, watching Penni flip open a magazine and occasionally lift the curtains.

  "She's bored," Tully said. His complexion had improved and a bright light shone from his eyes. He looked almost like his old self.

  "Yeah." I sat back in the chair by the bed and closed Huck Finn. Why was it so hard to read aloud, and so easy to read to yourself?

  Tully grunted. "I think Penni needs to go home now."

  I sat up and stretched my legs. "To your house?"

  "No. To join her brother and family."

  It took me a few minutes, but I finally got it. "Oh. You mean to Heaven?"

  "Right. She needs to pass on to the happy hunting grounds."

  "But how?"

  Tully scratched his beard. "I'm not so sure. I need to think about it."

  "I'll bet she's happy we finally figured out the truth about the Ambuscade."

  "Oh, she is. It's been torturing her all these years. Hundreds of years. Poor little thing."

  "She wasn't so little, Mr. Tully. She was a teenager."

  He chuckled. "When you're looking back from my age, boy, anything under forty looks little."

  A rustle from the hall caught my attention. Tully rolled his eyes. "Oh, God. She's here."

  A husky woman with gray hair marched into the room. "Well, how are we today, Mr. Tully?"

  His eyes rolled even farther this time. "We are just fine, Mrs. Butler."

  She ignored his sarcasm and whipped a thermometer back and forth in the air. "Let's take your temperature." When she got the mercury down, she thrust it under his tongue and stared at her watch. "Three minutes. Now breathe through your nose."

  I sat and watched him fume. He did as she said, but hated it. Three minutes felt like a year.

  "There we go. Good. Ninety-eight point six. You're doing just fine."

  With a familiarity that seemed almost intrusive, she reached down to roll up his pajama sleeve. "Here we go. Blood pressure time." She pumped the cuff up until I thought he'd burst like a balloon.

  "That's too tight." He grimaced and squirmed.

  "Now, just lay still. You're such a grump, Mr. Tully." She listened with a stethoscope and looked at her watch. "Okay. Good. Now the other side."

  "Why?" He muttered and grumbled while she repeated the action on his left arm. "Isn't one reading enough for you?"

  She laughed. "Oh, Mr. Tully. You know we need to see if your heart's pumping well on both sides. Now. Have you moved your bowels today?"

  My face grew red. Why did she have to ask such an embarrassing question?

  He grumbled again. "Good God, woman. Why do you need to know?"

  "Just answer the question, dear."

  "Oh, good Lord. Yes. Yes. I pooped today."

  I got up and walked to the window, barely stifling a laugh.

  "And have we been doing our constitutional?"

  I thought she meant something about going to the bathroom again, but when he answered, I figured it out.

  "Yes. I walked for fifteen minutes yesterday, with the cane. I went out back, to that group of trees there. And back again."

  She peered out the window. "Oh. Very nice! You're coming along well, Mr. Tully."

  "I know." A small smile appeared, disappearing in a second. He winked at me.

  "All righty, then. Do you need me to change your sheets?" She bustled around the room, adjusting this and that.

  "Hell, no. I just got here yesterday."

  She wagged a finger in his face. "Language, Mr. Tully. There's a child present."

  "I'm not a child. I'm twelve."

  A laugh burst from Tully.

  She stiffened and huffed a little. "Well, I guess you two men are all set, then."

  Tully looked contrite. "Thank you, Mrs. Butler."

  She melted. "Oh, for Heaven's sakes. You're welcome."

  We watched her swish out of the room, smiling at each other.

  "Time for my walk, Gus. Wanna come?"

  "Sure." I hadn't told him yet about what I'd read on the back of the picture. I'd been waiting to get him alone before I came clean. "I have something to tell you, anyway."

  He moved his legs to the side of the bed, heaving himself upright. "My cane. Over there."

  I grabbed it and pushed it into his hand. "There you go."

  "Okay. Day two. Walking hurts like hell, but they say the more I do, the faster I'll get back to my own house."

  "After you," I said. I followed him downstairs and helped him hobble around my sleeping dog and out toward the grove in the back of the property.

  Chapter Sixty

  Tully and I sat on two white iron benches under the willows in the grove. A squirrel chat
tered overhead, leaping from branch to branch with a walnut in his mouth. The trees shaded the spot and cooled it down at least ten degrees. I found a little rubber ball nestled in the grass on the way out and tossed it up and down in one hand, enjoying the shade of the glen.

  Tully closed his eyes and leaned back against a trunk. "Okay, son. What's been eating you?"

  It took me a few false starts, but I finally spilled the story about the photo. I told him how I'd tried to hide it from his sister, how it ended up in my jeans pocket, how I tried to keep it from my mother by putting it under my pillow, and how my curiosity finally got the better of me.

  He kept his eyes closed the whole time. I wondered if it made him feel better to be protected from me somehow. Sometimes during a sleepover, Sig and I would talk about really personal stuff in the dark. It seemed easier.

  "I'm really sorry I looked," I said.

  "So. The truth is out." He sighed. "How do you feel about it?"

  I tented my fingers and thought about it. "Well, at first it was kind of weird. But now I think I get it. Sort of."

  "Some people think it's a sickness. I won't pretend they don't, Gus."

  "Really? Why?"

  "Because they don't understand. To me, it was the most natural thing in the world. I fell in love with Marlowe as a boy, and my affection never wavered, up until the day he died in my arms after saving Eudora and me from that fever. He was my destiny. And I'll never regret a moment of it."

  "Wow."

  He opened one eye. "Yeah. 'Wow' about covers it."

  "But I thought your sister didn't know about it? You said you didn't want her to find out."

  "It's still true. She was sleeping when he died. She never saw us holding hands or anything like that."

  "Oh."

  "I'm just afraid after losing her husband, and being kidnapped all those years, that it would be too much for her to absorb."

  "Huh."

  He chuckled. "What's that mean?"

  "I think you should tell her. Maybe not now. But sometime. She deserves to know."

  He thought about it for a while. "You're a pretty smart kid. Anybody ever tell you that?"

  I laughed. "Not really. I get good grades, but it's just expected of me. It's not hard. I don't really study much."

  "God gave you a good memory, huh?"

  "I guess." I rubbed an itchy spot on my nose. "Do I really have my grandfather's nose?"

  With a winsome smile, he leaned over and tapped the side of my nose. "You do, my boy. It's clearly a Marlowe Wright nose. And don't forget the eyes. He had the same hazel eyes."

  I smiled and looked up to the leaves overhead, picturing my grandfather watching us. "Neat."

  "Time to head back, then." He moaned and groaned, but got to his feet. His cane shook, and it seemed to hurt him more to move now.

  "Let me help you, Mr. Tully." I put my shoulder under his arm. "Here we go."

  He stopped and looked down at me. "You're a good boy, Gus LeGarde. Your grandfather would be damned proud of you."

  I had a million more questions I wanted to ask him, but held back. "Come on. It's getting close to dinnertime. I told Millie we'd shell peas."

  "We?"

  "Sure. I figured you've got nothing else to do."

  A raucous laugh burst from him. "You're right, boy. Let's go."

  We walked slowly back to the house under the glare of the late afternoon sun.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  The next day, after bringing us up the hill to feed our animals at both houses, Oscar drove the twins to the hospital to visit their mother. I hadn't realized she was staying at Stark Lodge, the mental hospital, until I heard Oscar mention it while on the phone with Mr. Marggrander. I'd pictured her at the same hospital I'd been after the fire. But I'd been wrong. Dead wrong. She was stuck in that place with all those disturbed people, the ones who people called "loonies." It scared me to think of the twins' mother up there.

  At two in the afternoon, after I'd walked Tully to the grove and back, and after he'd fallen asleep, Millie collared me to help snap green beans. We’d worked on buckets full of peas the day before, and now it was onto the beans.

  We sat alone together on the front porch, on the metal glider with the ripped vinyl cushions, each with a giant mound of beans in a bowl on our laps, with two bowls between us—one for the stems and one for the snapped beans.

  "I haven't cooked for such a large crew since I was a young girl. It's nice of you to help me, Gus." She bent over her bowl, methodically going through the pile.

  Roses climbed up the trellises and perfumed the air with a sweet spicy scent. Shadow lay by my feet, snoozing.

  She looked up at me with a dreamy expression. "Do you remember when you were a little boy, and I babysat for you?"

  "Sure. I mean, kinda."

  "What's your earliest memory of us?"

  I looked into the distance and thought back to my childhood. "I think I was about two. I remember running with you under sheets blowing on the line, and laughing as I held your hand. You used to say something about the wind."

  "Really? You remember that far back?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "You were two and a half. Your folks went up to Maine to help your grandfather LeGarde when he broke his ankle. And the game we used to play was ‘Don't Let the Wind Catch You.' I took your little hand and we'd run and laugh and try to outrun the wind." She looked at me over the tops of her spectacles. "Remember?"

  "I do." I laughed out loud. "It was a blast." I picked up a handful of beans and thought about my childhood. Millie and Oscar had always been a part of my life.

  "Millie?" I stopped snapping and stared at her, wishing she could read my mind and just answer all my questions.

  "Yes, dear?"

  "I know about Tully and my grandfather."

  She looked sideways at me, then back at her bowl. "I know. Zak told me."

  "He did?"

  "Yes."

  "Will you tell me the details now? You said someday, remember?"

  She stopped for a moment, looked across the yard to the drifts of orange daylilies that decorated both sides of the road, and set aside her bowl. "All right. Since I have Zak's permission to discuss it with you, I guess it's okay. What do you want to know, dear?"

  "Everything. But mostly why my mother is so upset about Tully."

  She stretched her legs out and smoothed the lap of her flowered housedress. "I think she was influenced by your grandmother, Sarah."

  I ran my fingers through the beans in my bowl. "I figured as much."

  "Sarah married Marlowe after he graduated from med school. But it wasn't your traditional arrangement, don't-you-know. Marlowe was very fond of her, but he told her the truth—that he loved Tully."

  "Really? He told her right in the beginning?"

  "Yes. And Sarah loved him so much that she said she'd help him get over it, she'd be the best wife in the world to him, and make him love her just as much."

  "Did he?"

  "Oh, he was very, very fond of Sarah. He tried to be a good husband to her."

  "Why couldn't Tully and my grandfather just be together? Why'd he even get married to my grandmother in the first place?"

  "He knew he'd never be able to practice medicine in our small community without being married and appearing 'normal.'"

  "That's so dumb. Why?"

  "Well, because people are prejudiced against anyone who's a little different. Whether it's skin color, or which sex they are attracted to… it scares them. And they tell each other that people like Tully and Marlowe are 'sick.'" She shook her head in disgust. "It's so ridiculous. I never knew two healthier men than those dear fellows."

  "I think Tully's mother thought he was sick. She said something in the journal about it."

  "Probably so. Such a shame. So Tully felt he had to hide it all those years."

  "Is that why they went to Europe?"

  "Partly, yes. Things were a lot freer over there. Apparently Zak and Marlowe h
ad a great romance in Europe, were finally able to be liberated."

  "Mr. Roberts went, too. Didn't he feel left out?"

  "Well, poor Mr. Roberts never found anyone to love. So sad. But your grandfather and Zak waited until he went home before they professed their love for each other. It happened in Switzerland, so they told me."

  "Did they see each other after my grandfather married Sarah?"

  "Well, only as friends, of course. Your grandfather made a vow to your grandmother, and he wouldn't break that. But the two men still loved each other so much it hurt. At least that's what Zak used to tell me."

  "It's so sad." I'd stopped snapping beans a while back. Even if Tully and my grandfather weren't considered "normal," I felt bad for them. They'd lost something very special, the chance to spend their lives with each other.

  "It was sad. When they'd pass each other on the street, I could see the terrible sadness and longing in their eyes."

  "Did everyone know?"

  She shook her head. "No. Just me. And Sarah, your grandma. It was a well-kept secret."

  "Tell me more about what happened when Tully's parents got sick."

  "Well, I told you a little about that already. Marlowe insisted on taking his bag and moving in with them, in spite of the risks. He had a terrible fight with Sarah just before he went, saying it was his duty. She, of course, said he was only doing it because of Tully."

  "It was probably both, I'll bet." I picked up a bean and listlessly turned it in my fingers.

  "It was a tragedy when Mr. and Mrs. Tully died. They were wonderful folks. Real adventurous and full of life. But your grandfather saved Zak and Eudora, which was a miracle in those days. He stayed up all night long, applying compresses and using poultices he made from scratch from herbs in the fields. He worked very, very hard to save those two."

  "But then he got sick, right?"

  "Indeed. Zak told me he tried to nurse Marlowe back to health the way he'd done for them, but it was to no avail. Poor Marlowe got sicker and sicker. After a few weeks, he passed away."

  "Wow."

  "Your grandmother went berserk with grief and anger. And I guess it influenced your mother, too. She didn't see the other side of the issue. How could she? All she knew was her daddy died for Zak, and didn't come home to them."