Chapter 13 Audrey #5
For Mattie’s eighth birthday, I bought her an Irish setter puppy, hoping a little canine love would melt that hard little heart.
It did . . . just not toward me. She took the dog, gave me a suspicious look, then beamed down at the wriggling little body.
“Thanks,” she said. That was all. Then she carried the puppy into her room and started trying to teach her tricks.
Of course, when Gracie pooped or peed or barfed, that was my job.
I did the real training—don’t jump, don’t eat shoes, don’t drag us on the leash.
At least I had an ally, though. Some days, it felt like the most meaningful interaction I had was brushing Gracie and getting her doggy sighs of adoration.
At night, Gracie would sit next to Mathilda on the couch, loving and patient and waiting for affection. Gracie and I had a lot in common.
But someday, I told myself as I made nutritious dinners and drove Mathilda to her lessons and extracurriculars and ordered expensive conditioner for her difficult hair, the kid would crack.
Like Sam in Love, Actually, who calls Daniel Dad just before they go to the airport.
I sobbed every Christmas during that scene.
As for another baby, well, Clay was lukewarm. “I think it’d be a little too much for Mathilda,” he said. I couldn’t disagree. Besides, I was already in the “geriatric pregnancy” years.
Then Pop-Pop died of a heart attack while chopping wood at the age of eighty-six.
It wasn’t exactly a tragedy, but still a shock.
Stephen and I were comforted by the fact that he died the same way he lived, hard at work.
Clay and Mathilda came up for the wake and funeral, staying for three days.
Stephen and I stayed longer, weeping over my stoic, kind grandfather, finally reunited with his only child.
We baked in the kitchen of our childhood.
The green hills and crisp air, the blindingly beautiful autumn leaves, the sounds of owls and coyotes at night filled my soul.
It was so good to spend some real time with Stephen again, talking, getting teary and laughing, taking a ride with Gran on the three remaining horses, then sitting around the fireplace at night with her, drinking bourbon and just being together.
The day before I was supposed to go back, Gran sat me down.
“I’m moving,” she said in her direct way.
“The farm is yours now, and it’s high time you and your family moved here.
” She’d never been overly fond of Clay, mistrusting Southerners as much as my Georgia neighbors mistrusted Yankees.
“This farm is your heritage. Time for the next generation to take over.”
“What about Stephen?” I asked.
“You’re the oldest, and I’ve already discussed it with him.
He needs to be near a big hospital, anyway.
” Fair point. Stephen worked at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester and had recently bought a beautiful home in a posh neighborhood.
“Besides, Stephen’s fine on his own. A very impressive young man.
He doesn’t need this place the way you do. ”
I opened my mouth to object, then shut it. Gran wasn’t wrong.
To my surprise, Clay was thrilled at the idea of moving north. “I gotta agree with your mee-maw,” he said, making me cringe. Gran was so not a mee-maw. She probably didn’t know what a mee-maw was. “The farm is your home, baby. The fresh air will be good for Mattie.”
Pop-Pop had left both Stephen and me some money as well, a soft pillow for our life should we come across hard times.
But we wouldn’t, I thought. In Vermont, Clay would be able to return to master carpentry and get paid what he was worth.
We could even start a business together, renovating houses, the Chip and Joanna Gaines of New England. And I’d be home.
Home. Home. Home. The word was my heartbeat.
Of course, Mathilda was furious with the idea of the move.
She screamed that we were ruining her life, taking her away from her friends, making her live on some “stupid cow farm that probably stinks.” She told us she wanted to live with her grandparents.
Betty did then finally come to our house .
. . to serve us with a custody challenge that was promptly thrown out by the judge.
Clay told his former in-laws that Mathilda could visit for winter and spring vacations and a month in the summer.
I thought it was generous. They did not.
“I think you’ll really like it in Vermont, honey,” I said to her at dinner the week before we moved. “You can pick whichever bedroom you want, and we can get you a horse, maybe. The schools are great, and I’m sure you’ll make a lot of friends.”
“I will hate it there,” she hissed, her eyes slits of rage.
“Well, adjust your attitude, baby girl. We’re doin’ this,” Clay said, and he and I smiled at each other across the table, finally on the same page.
This could be a fresh start for us, too.
I’d be on my home turf, back where I knew people, knew the way of life, understood how things worked.
I’d have friends again. I’d get to see Stephen more often, and Dad, too.
Gran had already moved to her posh senior residence in southern Vermont, only forty minutes away.
Away from her grandparents’ toxic river of disapproval and undermining, Mathilda and I would finally bond.
We could do all the things my mother and I had done, and finally, finally, I’d mend the tear in Mattie’s heart left by her mother’s death.
At last, we could have the life I’d envisioned.
I’d bring another generation of Chevaliers to Bitter Creek Farm, the last name just a technicality, and we would all thrive.
Hope, that thing with feathers, gave a flutter. Or maybe it was a death spasm. Hard to tell.