The Four Corners of the Sky_ A Novel - Michael Malone [220]
Headed back downstairs, on the second-floor landing, Sam had to sit on the step, holding the wedding dress and the child-size witch’s cape, leaning her head against the stair rails, because she couldn’t stop crying.
Coming home from the hospital, Clark heard her and ran quickly up the stairs from the hallway. “Sam? Sam?”
“I’m fine.”
He sat beside her, his long legs bent to his chest. They sat there a while. Finally Clark said, “She’ll be okay. Nothing will happen to her in Iraq.”
“It’s a war, Clark.”
He looped his arm around his friend. “I sure did think we’d leave her a better world.”
Sam kept crying.
“You know what, Sam?” Clark hugged her next to him, held up the laced satin sleeve of the wedding dress in her lap. “You know what? You’re just crying because mothers in movies always cry.”
“Oh Clark, stop it.” She rested her head on his shoulder, her hand patting the small black cape. “Mothers cry in movies because mothers cry.”
They sat at home, on the porch at Pilgrim’s Rest, hoping, waiting.
Epilogue
January 2008
In January in North Carolina between the Piedmont and the coast, by late afternoon the sky gathers darkness and dreams of night.
The old cemetery of St. Mark’s Church in Emerald had new graves this winter. The newest was the red-mounded earth where Anne Peregrine Goode-Hart now stood quietly. She wore a dark-blue winter uniform, with the badges and ribbons and insignia of a Lt. Commander of the United States Navy.
There was no tombstone yet on the new grave because Sam could not yet bring herself to choose what the marker should say. Maybe, she told Annie, they should put a pun on it. The whole idea of the final choice of what to say was going to be, Sam worried, too much of an ending for her.
Annie’s six-year-old daughter, impatient, ran up and down the gravel path among the gravestones. She wore a wool Florida Marlins baseball jacket that her father had given her. Tripping on an old uneven stone, she fell, bracing her fat pink gloves in the gravel.
“Samantha, be careful.”
The child ignored her. “Is it going to snow? Daddy says it’s going to snow. We never get snow in Florida.”
Annie studied how the clouds were rolling over the corner of the sky. “Maybe,” she conceded.
“Mom!” Samantha shouted. She stood near a large bush of browned rhododendron blossoms. “Is this Grandpa Jack’s grave?”
Annie walked over to her and looked at the sunken small gray marker.
John Ingersoll Peregrine
1946–1948
Taken From Me
Kneeling, she brushed dry leaves from the gray curve of the little carved wings. “No, that’s his brother’s grave. Grandpa Jack’s not dead.”
“Then he ought to come see us,” the child solemnly said. “If he does, I’m going to thank him for all my money. Daddy said Grandpa Jack gave me a lot of money and I ought to give it to you and him when you’re old. But I don’t want you to get old.”
“We won’t for a long time.” Her mother smiled but was preoccupied, turning sadly back to the red upheaval of earth.
Her daughter ran after her, reached for her hand. “I’m sorry Uncle Clark died. He was nice.”
Annie agreed that Clark was very nice.
Samantha frowned. “Aunt Sam is so sad. She says she misses Clark’s stupid jokes.” The little girl looked up at her mother, hoping for confirmation. “She misses her dog Teddy too. But Sam’ll be okay, right?”
Annie squeezed her daughter’s hand. “She’ll be okay. She’s got Sarah and us and the Destin family and Malpy and all her friends. Your daddy’s her good friend.”
The child found the large number of Sam’s acquaintances consoling. “Daddy says his name is Hart because he’s got a big heart. Is that true?”
“He does have a big heart.”
“He says his heart hurts because you’re sad about Clark. He wants Sam to take all the crap out of Pilgrim’s Rest and put it in the yard and sell it. He says she should make one of her big signs that says “Crap for Sale,” because you don’t sell your garage when you have a ‘garage sale’ and you don’t sell your ‘yard’ when you have a ‘yard sale,’ but Sam sure would be having a ‘crap sale’ if she sold all that junk