“But why did you ask the question in the first place?”
“Because I’m a curious person,” he said. “I’ve always been curious about everything.”
She crossed the street. “No,” she finally said, “I don’t agree. If anything, you lived your life with an almost stoic acceptance of the way things are. But I know exactly what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing?”
“You’re trying to change the subject.”
He didn’t bother to deny it. Instead, he shifted the box beneath his arm. “You didn’t answer my question, either.”
“What question?”
“I asked what you were doing for lunch. Because if you’re free, I know a great place.”
She hesitated, thinking about small-town gossip, but as usual Dawson was able to read her.
“Trust me,” he said. “I know just where to go.”
Half an hour later, they were back at Tuck’s, sitting near the creek on a blanket that Amanda had retrieved from Tuck’s closet. On the way over, Dawson had picked up sandwiches from Brantlee’s Village Restaurant, along with some bottles of water.
“How did you know?” she asked, reverting to their old shorthand. With Dawson, she was reminded of what it was like to have her thoughts divined before she uttered them. When they were young, a momentary glimpse or the subtlest of gestures had often been enough to signal a world of thought and emotion.
“Your mom and everyone she knows still live in town. You’re married, and I’m someone from your past. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that it might not be a good idea for us to be seen spending the afternoon together.”
She was glad he understood, but as he pulled two sandwiches from the bag, she nonetheless felt a quiver of guilt. She told herself that they were simply having lunch, but that wasn’t the full truth, and she knew it.
Dawson didn’t seem to notice. “Turkey or chicken salad?” he asked, holding both of them out to her.
“Either,” she said. Then changing her mind, she said, “Chicken salad.”
He passed the sandwich to her, along with a bottle of water. She surveyed her surroundings, relishing the quiet. Thin, hazy clouds drifted overhead, and near the house she saw a pair of squirrels chase each other up the trunk of an oak tree shrouded in Spanish moss. A turtle sunned itself on a log on the far side of the creek. It was the environment she had grown up in, and yet it had come to feel strangely foreign, a radically different world from the one she lived in now.
“What did you think about the meeting?” he asked.
“Tanner seems like a decent man.”
“What about the letters Tuck wrote? Any ideas?”
“After what I heard this morning? Not a clue.”
Dawson nodded as he unwrapped his sandwich and she did the same. “The Pediatric Cancer Center, huh?”
She nodded, thinking automatically of Bea. “I told you I volunteered at Duke University Hospital. I also do some fund-raising for them.”
“Yes, but you didn’t mention where at the hospital you worked,” Dawson replied, his sandwich unwrapped but still untouched. She heard the question in his voice and knew that he was waiting. Amanda absently twisted the cap on her bottle of water.
“Frank and I had another child, a baby girl, three years after Lynn was born.” She paused, gathering her strength, but knowing that, somehow, saying the words to Dawson wouldn’t feel awkward or painful the way it so often did with others.
“She was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was eighteen months old. It was inoperable, and despite the efforts of an incredible team of doctors and staff at the Pediatric Cancer Center, she died six months later.” She looked out over the ancient creek, feeling the familiar, deep-seated ache, a sadness she knew would never go away.
Dawson reached over and squeezed her hand. “What was her name?” he asked, his voice soft.
“Bea,” she said.
For a long time, neither said anything, the only sounds the burbling of the creek and the leaves rustling overhead. Amanda didn’t feel that she needed to say more, nor did Dawson expect her to. She knew he understood exactly how she was feeling, and she had the sense that he felt an ache as well, if only because he couldn’t help her.
After lunch, they gathered the remains of their picnic along with the blanket and started back toward the house. Dawson followed Amanda inside, watching as she vanished around the corner to put the blanket away. There was something guarded about her, as if she were afraid of having crossed an unspoken line. After retrieving glasses from a cupboard in the kitchen, he poured some sweet tea. When she came back to the kitchen, he offered her one.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said, taking the glass. “I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry if I upset you.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “It’s just that talking about Bea is still hard for me sometimes. And it’s been an… unexpected weekend so far.”
“For me, too,” he agreed. He leaned back against the counter. “How do you want to do this?”
“Do what?”
“Go through the house. To see if there’s anything you want.”
Amanda exhaled, hoping her jumpiness wasn’t obvious. “I don’t know. It feels wrong to me somehow.”
“It shouldn’t. He wanted us to remember him.”
“I’ll remember him no matter what.”
“Then how about this? He wants to be more than just a memory. He wants us to have a piece of him and this place, too.”
She took a sip, knowing he was probably right. But the idea of rooting through his things to find a keepsake right now just felt like too much. “Let’s hold off for a bit. Would that be all right?”
“It’s fine. Whenever you’re ready. You want to sit outside for a while?”
She nodded and followed him out to the back porch, where they seated themselves in Tuck’s old rockers. Dawson rested his glass on his thigh. “I imagine that Tuck and Clara used to do this quite a bit,” he commented. “Just sit outside and watch the world go by,” he said.
“Probably.”
He turned toward her. “I’m glad you came to visit him. I hated the thought that he was always all alone out here.”
She could feel the moisture from the sweating glass as she held it. “You know he used to see Clara, right? After she was gone.”
Dawson frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“He swore she was still around.”
For an instant, his mind flashed on the images and movement that he’d been experiencing. “What do you mean, he saw her?”
“Just what I said. He saw her and talked to her,” she said.
He blinked. “Are you saying that Tuck believed he was seeing a ghost?”
“What? He never told you?”
“He never talked to me about Clara, period.”
Her eyes widened. “Ever?”
“The only thing he ever told me was her name.”
So Amanda set her glass aside and began to tell him some of the stories that Tuck had shared with her over the years. About how he’d dropped out of school when he was twelve and found a job in his uncle’s garage; how he’d first met Clara at church when he was fourteen years old and knew in that instant that he was going to marry her; how Tuck’s entire family, including his uncle, had moved north in search of work a few years into the Great Depression and never came back. She told Dawson about his early years with Clara, including the first miscarriage, and his backbreaking work for Clara’s father on the family farm while he worked on building this house at night. She said that Clara had two more miscarriages after the war and talked about Tuck building the garage before gradually beginning to restore cars in the early 1950s, including a Cadillac owned by an up-and-coming singer named Elvis Presley. By the time she finished telling him about Clara’s death and how Tuck talked to Clara’s ghost, Dawson had emptied his tea and was staring into the glass, no doubt trying to reconcile her stories with the man he’d known.
“I can’t believe he didn’t tell you any of that,” Amanda marveled.
“He had his reasons, I guess. Maybe he liked you better.”
“I doubt that,” she said. “It’s just that I knew him later in life. You knew him when he was still hurting.”
“Maybe,” he said, sounding unconvinced.
Amanda went on. “You were important to him. He let you live here, after all. Not once, but twice.” When Dawson finally nodded, she set her glass aside. “Can I ask a question, though?”
“Anything.”
“What did the two of you talk about?”
“Cars. Engines. Transmissions. Sometimes we talked about the weather.”
“Must have been scintillating,” she cracked.
“You can’t imagine. But back then, I wasn’t much of a talker, either.”
She leaned toward him, suddenly purposeful. “All right. So now we both know about Tuck and you know about me. But I still don’t know about you.”
“Sure you do. I told you about me yesterday. I work on an oil rig? Live in a trailer out in the country? Still drive the same car? No dates?”
In a languid motion, Amanda draped her ponytail over one shoulder, the movement almost sensual. “Tell me something I don’t know,” she coaxed. “Something about you that no one knows. Something that would surprise me.”
“There’s not much to tell,” he said.
She scrutinized him. “Why don’t I believe you?”
Because, he thought, I could never hide anything from you. “I’m not sure,” he said instead.
She grew quiet at his answer, working through something else in her mind. “You said something yesterday that I’m curious about.” When he fixed her with a quizzical expression, she went on. “How did you know that Marilyn Bonner never remarried?”
“I just do.”
“Did Tuck tell you?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know?”
He laced his fingers together and leaned back in his rocker, knowing that if he didn’t answer, she’d simply ask again. In that, she hadn’t changed, either. “It’s probably better if I start from the beginning,” he said, sighing. He told her then about the Bonners—about his visit to Marilyn’s crumbling farmhouse so long ago, about the family’s years of struggle, that he’d begun sending them money anonymously when he got out of prison. And finally, that over the years he’d had private detectives report on the family’s welfare. When he finished, Amanda was quiet, visibly struggling with a response.
“I don’t know what to say,” she finally burst out.
“I knew you were going to say that.”
“I’m serious, Dawson,” she said, her anger evident. “I mean, I know that there’s something noble about what you’re doing, and I’m sure it made a difference in their lives. But… there’s something sad about it, too, because you can’t forgive yourself for what so clearly was an accident. Everyone makes mistakes, even if some are worse than others. Accidents happen. But having someone follow them? To know exactly what’s happening in their lives? That’s just wrong.”
“You don’t understand—,” he started.
“No, you don’t understand,” she interrupted. “Don’t you think they deserve their privacy? Taking photos, digging through their personal lives—”
“It’s not like that,” he protested.
“But it is!” Amanda slapped the armrest of her rocker. “What if they ever found out? Can you imagine how terrible that would be? How betrayed and invaded they’d feel?” Surprising him, she placed a hand on his arm, her grasp firm and yet urgent to make sure he heard her. “I’m not saying I agree with what you’re doing; what you do with your money is your business. But the rest? With the detectives? You’ve got to stop. You’ve got to promise me you’ll do that, okay?”
He could feel the heat radiating from her touch. “All right,” he said finally. “I promise I won’t do it again.”
She studied him, making sure he was telling the truth. For the first time since they’d met, Dawson looked almost tired. There was something defeated in his posture, and as they sat together she found herself wondering what would have happened to him had she never left that summer. Or even if she’d gone to visit him while he’d been in prison. She wanted to believe that it might have made a difference, that Dawson would have been able to live a life less haunted by the past. That Dawson, if not happy, would have at the very least been able to find a sense of peace. For him, peace had always been elusive.
But then he wasn’t alone in that, was he? Wasn’t that what everyone wanted?
“I have another confession,” he said. “About the Bonners.”
She felt her breath as it left her lungs. “More?”
He scratched the side of his nose with his free hand, as if to buy time. “I brought flowers to Dr. Bonner’s grave earlier this morning. It was something I used to do when I got out of prison. When it got to be too much, you know?”
She stared at him, wondering if he was about to tack on another surprise, but he didn’t. “That’s not quite on the level of the other things you’ve been doing.”
“I know. I just thought I should mention it.”
“Why? Because now you want my opinion?”
He shrugged. “Maybe.”
She didn’t answer for a moment. “I think flowers are fine,” she finally said, “as long as you don’t overdo it. That’s actually… appropriate.”