Chapter 19 #2
The family had set out exactly enough chairs for the family, which told Sunny everything about what they expected. The pastor stood at the head of a grave dug by a Bozeman crew because no local backhoe operator had been asked.
Seven children stood in a row, not touch one another, and Lincoln Sutter stood beside them.
Up and down the long driveway, and on both sides of the county road beyond, cars and trucks were parked bumper to bumper.
The entire valley had come in its Sunday best, somber and standing back from the family far enough to give it privacy.
Hank stood on the far side of the grave with Madison, Lucas’s doctor, and then the town’s doctor to the end of this slow-moving tragedy.
He didn’t try to speak to Lucas’s children.
He was just there, present and steady and solid.
His eyes found Sunny’s across the grave for a moment.
She held his gaze, her eyes full of gratitude and sadness.
He was the one who looked away, first and she filed that, gently, where she was filing everything now.
The eight widows came up the hill at five minutes to ten, together, on foot.
Eight women in their Sunday best walking slowly through a shimmer of heat.
They reached Sunny who was closest to the grave of anyone there except the family, but even she was well back at the foot of the hill crowned with a giant, spreading oak tree.
As the widows passed by her, Jenna’s hand had closed on her wrist and Jenna murmured, “You, too. You especially.”
Sunny looked up the hill and watched the seven children see them come.
She knew that exact stillness, had felt it all the way down to her bones so many times she’d lost count of the bracing, the rapid wondering of how bad this was about to be.
The tall daughter recognized Rose and went white.
The Navy son squared off like a man preparing to face a firing squad.
The widows said nothing. They just lined up beside Hank on the other side of the grave and stood there, silent witnesses to the end of Lucas Shoemacher.
The pastor said the old, traditional words of the burial service, and mercifully did not add any kind of sermon or eulogy to them. He read the Bible verses Lucas had asked for, and when he closed his Bible, silence opened up and swallowed the entire hilltop.
Not one of the children moved to fill it.
Rose stepped forward to the edge of the open grave with Lucas’s coffin sitting at the bottom of it. The other widows joined her, standing shoulder to shoulder with her. They looked not at the coffin, but at the children.
“We won’t take but a minute,” Rose said.
Her trained voice carried down the hill and across the crowd clustered at the foot of it without seeming to try.
“And we want no misunderstanding, so I’ll say the first part plain.
We did not come up this hill for your father.
What your father did was monstrous, and the eight of us will spend the rest of our lives paying for it.
We have nothing to give him, today or ever. ”
She let that stand in the sun.
Then she turned her direct, honest gaze on the seven Shoemacher children who’d grown up in this valley. Who knew most of the people here today. And who’d been shunned by every single person in the valley these past few days.
Rose said in a strong voice laced with compassion, “We came today for you. You lost your father twice. Once five years ago for reasons that I would venture to guess were his fault too. And again this week, in front of God and everybody, in the worst way a family can lose one of its own.”
She paused. When she spoke again, her voice raised in volume even more. It was clear she wanted every single person here today to hear her with crystal clarity.
“We widows came today to look all of you in the eye and tell you that you did nothing wrong. We know you knew nothing of what your father did. We know you had no part in it whatsoever.”
Sunny saw the impact those words had on every single one of the children. They were still braced, still rigid with shame, but the very first beginnings of understanding were starting to dawn in the seven sibling’s red-rimmed stares.
Rose continued, “You’ve spent this whole week here learning what it costs to wear a guilty man’s name in a small town.
” Her voice didn’t waver. Didn’t break. Instead, it filled with a note of truth that rang out across the whole crowd.
“We happen to be the nine women on this earth best qualified to tell you that the guilt attached to your name is not yours to pay for.”
All seven of the Shoemacher children, now adults and carrying an adult’s understanding of what she’d just said, stared at Rose. After a moment, their questioning looks turned to take in the other women standing with her.
“So here is what we came to say,” Rose declared.
“This valley is where your father’s debt lives.
It is also the only place on earth where people know, down to the last penny, exactly what you lost. Because we lost it the same day, out of the same fire.
The nine of us are inviting you, asking you, for just one thing. ”
She closed her eyes and paused for several long seconds, seeming to gather herself. Then she lifted her head and looked the Shoemacher children in the eyes.
“Come home. Stay for good, or come back to visit, or just pass through from time to time. Grieve him here, where the grieving is shared. Where the good, bad, and ugly of it are understood. Where we can honor your loss and you can honor ours. There’s room in this town for every one of you, and there are nine women, nine families, in it who will stand up in any room in this valley and say so. ”
For a moment the hilltop held perfectly still, seven children and nine women and a coffin and the heat.
Then Ellie Shoemacher crossed around the end of the grave and walked into Rose Henderson’s arms like a lost child finding her mother after being alone and afraid.
The entire row of children broke apart and they streamed toward the widows, every one of them. Hugs were given and hugs were received. Tears were shed at long last. Tears shared five long years too late and new tears shared just now, together.
The people of Cobbler Cove came up the hill, hats in hands, by twos and tens, Walter Meeks and the Petersens and the Brays.
Women carrying casseroles against their chests like penance made portable.
Ranchers holding their hands out to the Shoemacher men saying words Sunny couldn’t hear that made the Shoemanchers’ jaws buckle.
Molly told Trent the south fence lines were straighter than when they’d been built, which from Molly was a psalm.
Bonnie took up a post beside the Shoemachers, the family’s self-appointed honor guard.
Grace went back down to her car and returned with boxes of cookies for the whole town because she’d known everyone would need something sweet to keep their hands busy and feel a little closer to normal.
Sunny stood in the middle of it with her throat aching, watching a town she’d only lived in a few months do the thing she had not known anyone anywhere could do.
The people of Cobbler Cove offered grace to seven of its own, children they’d watched grow up in this place and then leave.
They opened their arms as one and welcomed the Shoemachers back home.
It was beautiful, almost a sacred sight to see.
She noted that, on the far side of the grave, Hank stood with his arm around his daughter’s shoulder watching it, too. Funny how he was the one person in this town most responsible for the healing starting here today, and nobody was holding him at all.
On the way down the hill, the tall daughter who introduced herself as Tori, caught up to Sunny and walked beside her. Up close she looked younger and wrung out like she’d been crying for a week.
“Bonnie says you’re the accountant who audited the town’s books and uncovered my father’s negligence,” she said.
“The one who made it possible for Bonnie to put things right in this town.” A breath.
“Thank you for finding it. Getting all of it out in the open at once is . . .” she hunted for words, “. . . it’s the only thing that’s made this week survivable. ”
“I know,” Sunny replied sympathetically. “The truth is the only thing that makes things get better.”
“I don’t know yet if any of us will stay,” Tori said, looking out across the valley toward town. “Ellie will, I think. Maybe Trent.”