Chapter Four
Four
A Pearl of Wisdom
from Maeve Hearnshaw
“Sometimes, honey, you’ve got to listen with your heart, not your ears.”
Tallulah
“Lu, you hear that?” Papaw asked early the next morning from the dining room, where he was working on his latest printmaking project.
It was a quarter to nine, and I stood at the kitchen’s butcher-block island eating one of Vera’s monstrous cookies while busily packing lunches for Katy and me and getting Mary Joy’s diaper bag ready for the day.
I was due to drop Mary Joy off at Miss Edie’s house in just fifteen minutes, and then I’d have another fifteen minutes to get to the library to start my shift.
Papaw would drop Katy off at day camp at nine thirty and pick her up at three.
Dinner was usually at six. Then it was playtime and baths and bedtime for the girls.
It had taken us weeks to smooth out the wrinkles of this schedule, but it was working well now. We’d found our rhythm.
I listened for something out of the ordinary, something other than Papaw’s ever-present music. Like the sound of Katy moving about upstairs as she gathered items for her backpack. Or Mary Joy in her playpen, banging one toy or another. She was in a banging phase.
“I don’t hear anything,” I said, taking another bite of the cookie.
There was oatmeal and egg in it, so I counted it as a breakfast food.
It was good, too. Great, even. But it didn’t hold a candle to the cookies my mamaw used to make.
Unfortunately for us all, after she passed away, no one had been able to find her recipe box—a box she’d promised to set aside for me.
In a fit of nostalgia, I started opening cabinets, but just like all the other times I’d done the same, there was no box to be found—and it would’ve easily been seen on the nearly empty shelves.
Papaw was a man who liked to live simply.
In the years since Mamaw had been gone, he’d been slowly downsizing his belongings, giving away what he deemed to be no longer needed.
Other than his craft room, which was chock-full of supplies, one could only describe the decor of the house as minimalist. Bare-bones. He spoke often about moving to a smaller house, but so far it was only talk.
“Strange,” he said. “I hear it clear as day.”
I finished off the cookie, wiped crumbs from my hands, and gave another listen. Still nothing.
There wasn’t even a hint that another person was here with us—a stranger. If Juliet was awake, the house didn’t reveal it.
My jaw set, and I slid it side to side, to loosen it. Tried to loosen my whole self up. To be more open. Welcoming.
After all, Juliet seemed like a perfectly lovely person. Truly.
And I felt for her. I did. From her car troubles, I knew she was hurting.
Blue smoke when a car broke down in Forget-Me-Not meant that someone had lost a loved one recently and was grieving deeply.
Because that kind of pain was soul-deep, it always took the longest to heal, so I knew she’d be in town awhile.
Living here. With us.
Which was way out of my comfort zone. Miles out.
It felt all kinds of wrong to want her to stay somewhere else, but I did.
I wanted it badly, despite the fact that she was exactly where she was meant to be.
Her car had broken down here. Out front. According to Forget-Me-Not folklore, that meant my family was supposed to help guide her toward healing.
But still. It didn’t mean she had to live here. We could help without her being under the same roof. Yet Papaw was insistent about going above and beyond.
On the countertop, my silenced phone vibrated with an incoming message.
Uncle Renny: I heard you have a crush on the new guy in town
I sent an eye roll emoji, then typed in: You heard wrong
Uncle Renny: I’m going to need a picture
I took a quick selfie and sent it to him.
He returned an eye roll emoji and added: You know I meant of the new guy
Papaw’s voice carried as he said, “How about that? Did you hear that?”
I listened. “Nope.” Then I returned to the text conversation.
Me: I’ve got to go. Papaw’s hearing imaginary noises
Uncle Renny: It was only a matter of time. I should go as well. Maeve is making me run laps.
He was joking, of course, but I could feel my chest knotting up, wishing he could run laps. Or even walk them. Wishing lots of things where he was concerned.
Me: Pace yourself
Uncle Renny: Always, sweetheart
Eighty-two-year-old Lorenzo “Renny” Russo wasn’t really my uncle.
Before retirement, he’d been a librarian alongside Mamaw and had become a close family friend.
The kind of family friend who, before you knew it, simply became family.
Last year, he’d been diagnosed with a lung condition, and a few months ago, he’d gone into hospice care at Juneberry Cottage, Aunt Maeve’s respite house.
No one knew how much time he had left, but whatever it was, it wasn’t nearly long enough.
Yawning, I finished packing what was needed for the day. Last night, I’d had Katy sleep with me and Mary Joy, just to set my mind about having a stranger in the house. If there was a silver lining to that choice, it was that Katy hadn’t had a nightmare. A small mercy.
The bad dreams had caught me off guard. I’d expected issues when Scott and I split up eighteen months ago.
Or when he moved to Dallas. Or when the divorce was finalized.
Or in May, when the school year ended and our house was finally sold—the timing was one of the terms of the divorce—and the girls and I moved to Forget-Me-Not.
Not now, though, when our turbulent life finally felt like it was settling down a little.
In addition to camp, Katy had lots of time to read and play with new friends and go on nature hikes with Papaw.
Life had seemed … if not good, then steady.
Yet last week, Katy began having nightmares, and I wasn’t sure how to help her deal with them.
The downside of having Katy in bed with me last night was that I’d barely slept a wink. I’d whiled away the time by thinking about her upcoming birthday party, which was fast approaching. I’d spent more time than I cared to admit wondering if Scott would show up.
He’d been wishy-washy about it, saying he wouldn’t know until about a week before the party if he could make it. I’d done my best to prepare Katy for the fact that he might not be there. He was busy. Blah, blah. Lies to protect her tender heart.
Scott and I’d had more arguments in the last eighteen months about his infrequent visits than I cared to admit. He always had one excuse or another why he couldn’t make the time, and I was the one left picking up the pieces of Katy’s shattered hopes.
Sighing, I set the lunch boxes and diaper bag by the front door and glanced at my watch.
I needed to get a move on. I had some wiggle room with Mary Joy’s drop-off time, but Evanthe was a stickler about tardiness, and I didn’t want to start the day by getting written up.
As a new hire, I was desperately trying to make a good impression.
I’d spent some time last night thinking about Evanthe, too.
And why I didn’t know her well. I’d love to ask my mama, but she and my daddy were currently off the grid, somewhere in Asia, and would be for months.
As travel writers, they were always on the move—and always had been.
I’d traveled with them right up until I was eighteen, when I finally had a say-so about staying put.
Suddenly the music drifting through the downstairs cut off, and Papaw said, “Do you hear it now?”
“Hold on,” I said, checking on Mary Joy, who was cooing at herself in a play mirror, her mouth glossy from the ointment I’d applied around her lips. Her endless drooling these days had given her a rash.
“Hey there, cutie.” Smiling, I bent down and tickled her belly, and her blue eyes crinkled as she gave me a big gummy grin.
I handed her a rattle, and she immediately started banging it against the mirror, babbling sweet sounds as she did so, as if creating her own kind of music to fill the unusual silence.
I then made my way to the dining room. The intended purpose of this space was lost. Nearly every inch of the big table was covered with carving tools, gray linoleum blocks, inks, rollers, and paper.
Papaw had been carving this morning, so there were thin tendrils of gray scattered around where he sat.
For a moment, I simply looked at him, my heart full.
I owed him so much, for letting the girls and me move in with him.
Also for babysitting Katy this summer, which, at seventy-nine, was asking a whole lot of him, even though he insisted he could handle it.
He meant the world to me, and I hoped he knew it.
Lighted magnification glasses were attached to the orange headband he wore, and tufts of white hair stuck out every which way as he said, “Might could be birds in the eaves.”
I tried to ignore the hint of excitement in his voice. He’d been a field biologist most his life and loved when nature collided with his everyday living.
The eaves were a fine place for birds to nest. Great, even.
It was when the critters made their way inside that bothered me.
Like the time with the little brown bat, shortly after the girls and I moved in.
I shuddered at the memory and said, “I still don’t hear anything. It’s probably just the wind.”
Papaw frowned and scratched his beard. “When’s the last time you done had your hearing checked, Lu?”
I rolled my eyes. “My hearing’s just fine.”
He set down the block he’d been working on and took off the headlamp, which left behind red marks at his temples. His eyes danced with amusement as he said, “Not if you can’t hear the scratching, it ain’t.”
Shaking my head, I glanced at my watch. My morning schedule was falling apart. Still, maybe I had time to ask him a question or two—about Evanthe. “Can I ask you something real quick? About Evanthe?”