Chapter Twenty-Nine #3
The care home was quiet except for the soft chatter of a TV and the hum of medical equipment.
I felt like an intruder as we followed Marly across the foyer.
She gave the nurse at reception a wave and led us down a corridor.
As we reached the end, she turned and held her finger to her lips, gesturing for us to be quiet.
I felt Jake squeeze my hand as Marly silently eased open the door to the last room in the corridor. Buttery light spilled out and there was the soft rasp of a voice reading aloud. Marly gently pulled me forward, so I had a clear view through the crack in the door. She peered over my shoulder.
Jake’s mom was sitting up in bed. She was surrounded by stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes.
The yellow lamplight caught the planes of her face; she had a net of lines around her sea-glass-colored eyes and bracketing her mouth, and her long gray-streaked hair was braided.
Her eyes shone as she smiled and listened to her visitor read to her.
My gaze settled on the man beside her bed, and I felt a shock zip through me.
Freddie de Marche.
He was older and his hair was thinner and his jaw softer, but it was clearly the man from the photographs. An old Montgomery Clift. His chair was pulled up close beside the bed, and he was reading softly. To his daughter.
“It’s always the same books,” Marly whispered behind me. “He must be bored to death, but he reads them just the same, because she loves them.”
I couldn’t believe it. Freddie de Marche had stepped out of the past and into my life. He wasn’t dead. Marly wasn’t a widow. All my assumptions of heartbreak and grief were wrong. Again.
I listened to the peaceful rasp of his voice and felt another shock. He was reading one of the Anne of Green Gables books.
“ ‘Gilbert, darling, don’t let’s ever be afraid of things,’ ” he read. “ ‘Let’s be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let’s dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!’ ”
It was from Anne of Windy Poplars. I’d read it so many times I almost knew it by heart.
As I listened, I saw Freddie de Marche reach out a hand and pull a tissue from a box on the nightstand.
Without breaking stride in his reading, he wiped his daughter’s damp lips.
She let him, as though she were a small girl.
“Nobody told me he was still alive.” I was stunned.
“Nobody told you he was dead either,” Marly whispered back. “You just assumed the worst.”
Hearing the whispers, Freddie looked over to the doorway.
He peered over his reading glasses, saw us there and grinned.
He had thick expressive eyebrows, just like his grandson.
“Hey, Amber, sweetheart, it looks like Mom’s here, and she’s brought visitors.
” He pulled his glasses off and gestured to us.
Jake’s mom looked over at us. She frowned, clearly not pleased that her book had been interrupted.
“Hi, Mom,” I heard Jake say softly, as he ushered me into the room. He bent to kiss his mom, even though she seemed confused by his presence.
“But I want the book,” she said.
“Keep reading,” Marly told Freddie airily. “We were just in the neighborhood. We didn’t mean to upset story time.” She also dropped a kiss on Amber’s cheek. “I just thought you might want to meet Jake’s Zoe.”
I flushed. Jake’s mom gave me a confused looking-over.
“Zoe from Tinker Street?” Freddie rose from his chair, delighted. He oozed charm, just as I imagined he would from reading his letters. “The girl who found my postcards?” He winked at me. “And here I thought Marly had thrown them away.”
“I told you I hadn’t.” She poked him. “They were just lost in the house.”
“I want the book,” Amber said, sounding distressed.
“You’d best get reading.” Marly pushed Freddie back down into the chair. “Don’t upset her. You can charm Zoe later. Jake will be bringing her to dinner later this week.”
“I will?” Jake sounded disgruntled.
“You will if you know what’s good for you.”
I watched, struck, as Freddie kissed his wife goodbye. It was like seeing a character step out from a book, long after you thought the book had ended.
“Don’t be too late,” Marly murmured to him as she pulled away.
“I’ll stay until she doesn’t need me anymore.” And then he put his reading glasses back on, picked up the book and started reading aloud again. Amber settled, her gaze riveted on her father’s face, hanging on his every word.
“He was always better with her than I was,” Marly admitted as she closed the door behind us on the way out.
“You’re too similar is all.” Jake sighed. He seemed drained by the brief interaction with his mom.
Marly shot him a look. “I don’t collect junk.”
“Similar but not exactly the same,” he amended. “You’ve both got sharp tongues.”
Marly took pity on him and looped her arm through his. “It gets easier when you stop looking for your mom in her.” She sighed. “And just accept her for who she is.” She threw me a glance too. “Same goes for you. There’s no point trying to turn the tides.”
“Says the woman who’s spent her whole life turning tides,” Jake said dryly.
“He gets his sharp tongue from me,” Marly told me.
We drove back to Marly and Freddie’s house, and I slid out from Jake’s car and into mine.
“I’ll follow you home,” he promised.
Marly bent over my open car door. “You come by any time,” she told me. “And Zoe?”
“Yes?”
“Not all stories are tragedies, honey, even if they inevitably end.” She patted me on the cheek with her cold glove.
“Enjoy what you have, hmmm?” She glanced over at her grandson and then winked at me.
She laughed when I blushed. “And you remember: that house of mine was happier than it was sad, and full of more love than it could hold. You keep it full, okay?” She leaned in closer.
“You are very loved,” she told me firmly. “Don’t ever doubt it.”
“How do you know?” I said in a small voice.
“I just do.” She stared into me. “Sometimes people can’t tell you, or show you, for reasons entirely out of their control. It took me a long time to learn that.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Take care of my place, won’t you? And take care of you. I’ll see you for dinner next week.”
She closed the door and waved me off. As I drove away, I saw her in the rearview mirror, standing on her porch, making sure we went safely into the snowy night.