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Chapter 20

1941

The wind teased Lucy's hair, dragging it across her face as she stood with the small crowd of mourners at the graveside. She held herself very still, ignoring the chill the wind now carried. Her right hand was warm, caught tightly in Walter's, but that was just about all of her that was.

Walter was here. Thank God he'd made it in time for the funeral. There'd been some doubt, even with all the work Reverend Jones had done to get him his emergency leave. As it was, her mama had convinced Reverend Jones to delay the service almost an hour until Walter had arrived. She didn't think Walter would ever forgive himself if he'd missed his mother's funeral. She knew he'd have a hard enough time forgiving himself for not knowing Mrs. Briggs was so sick, even though she had made them all promise not to tell him.

He stood straight and tall and proud beside her after the brief graveside service, while friends stopped to shake his hand, to clap a comforting hand on his shoulder, to tell him what a fine woman his mother had been. And he thanked these people, even smiled at some of them, but his eyes had a funny closed-off look, like he wasn't really listening, as if he wasn't really there.

She knew where he was. She'd gone the same place when her papa died, when people who hadn't been his friend in life tried to tell her they had been.

Walter had come there for her and had brought her back. She would do the same for him. But not now. Now was the time for grieving, for saying good-bye. Not for celebration. But it would be soon; so much had to be done in the three days he had been allotted.

But finally all of the mourners were gone. Only Reverend Jones, Lucy and her mama, Walter, and the two men who would close the grave remained. Reverend Jones clasped Walter's hand one more time before leaving, and Mama stepped up.

"Now you come to our house, Walter Briggs. Sara would have wanted that."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered. This time when he smiled, it was real. "I can't thank you for all you did for my mama, Mrs. Hansom."

"Hush, now. There's no talk of thanks between family. And you're family. Have been for a long time." She pressed a key into his hand. "This is to Marian's car. It's parked just outside the gates. Now you hurry on back to your house and change out of that good uniform, gather up your things, and come on home. Lucy? You'll be going with him?"

"Yes, Mama."

"Good. Bring him home now. Real soon."

Walter's house was small and plain and had always been kept scrupulously clean until Sara Briggs took sick a week after he'd left to go to basic training at Fort Sill. The ladies of the church had come in and cleaned it—after it looked like she wasn't going to get any better, and Mama had moved her into their second best upstairs bedroom—but it wasn't clean like Mrs. Briggs had always kept it. And it didn't have the good smells that had always come from her kitchen or the feeling of home that somehow she had always given it.

Walter looked around the empty house and knew. "How long has she been gone from here?"

"A month," Lucy told him. "Mama couldn't convince her to come any sooner."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"I tried, Walter. I begged her to let me. But she was so proud of you. She didn't want to do anything to upset you; she didn't want you trying to get out because of her, and she knew you would if you ever guessed how sick she was."

"Yes. I would have."

Lucy stood just inside the front door studying him. Maybe his mama shouldn't have kept her secret from him; maybe she owed him the right to love her. But he looked so handsome, so right, standing tall and strong in the army olive green. She knew he hadn't had the wool uniform specially tailored, but it looked like he had. Just like the Sam Browne belt, the smart-looking tan leggings and the brown shoes—shiny enough to catch a reflection even after all the miles he'd worn them coming home—looked like they had been made just for him.

Walter belonged in the army. She knew he'd talked about using it as no more than a job. But that had changed. She'd read it—yes read it—in his letters, beyond the words he'd written. And he would have left it for his mama. He'd leave it for her if she wasn't careful. But she wasn't in the same situation as Sara Briggs had been. She was healthy and young, and she had her mama and all her mama's family to help her while he was gone.

But if he looked right in his uniform, he didn't look right in this house. Not anymore. He'd taken his cap off and folded it, and now he slapped the soft fabric against his thigh as he looked into what had been his mama's bedroom.

She reached behind her and twisted the key in the front door. Yes. It was time to bring him back.

She walked up to him and lifted her hands to his tie. He looked startled for a moment, but she was smiling, and soon he did too. "Careful," he warned her. "That thing has to be ironed."

"You've learned how to do that?" she asked in mock alarm. "My, my, the United States Army must really be something special."

She slid her arms around him. It felt so strange to find wool and leather beneath her touch where always before she had found cotton, or just Walter. But she hugged him, and she held him close, and she knew it the moment he let go of his smile and let go of just a little of the pride that held him aloof and away from his pain.

"Blood brothers, Walter," she reminded him. "We've shared our blood, and we've shared our love, and we can share this. I can help you with this, like you've helped me so many times. Let me. Please."

Then he was holding her, tight. Tighter than he ever had. So tight she could feel the shudders wracking through him.

"Lucy. Oh, my God, Lucy. She was so sick, and I didn't even know."

"Sshh," she told him. "She didn't want you to know. She loved you so much, and she knew you loved her. She wanted to give you this, Walter. We had to let her. And you have to accept it the way she meant it, with love. Miss her, yes. I know you will, but she wouldn't want you feeling guilty because you weren't here."

He hugged her again, a quick, fierce hug, and she felt him pulling his strength back around himself because he couldn't let himself be weak very long. Not even with her. "How did you get to be so wise?" he asked.

"I had help. A skinny little red-headed boy taught me that I wasn't dumb. He taught me that someone besides my mama really can love me. He taught me to love. And Walter, I do love you. So much that sometimes I can't believe it's all coming from just the one person inside me."

She felt tears on her cheeks. She'd already done her crying for Sara Briggs. But Walter hadn't. Maybe he couldn't. But she could do it for him.

He brushed at her tears with incredibly gentle callused fingers. "I love you, Lucy Hansom."

"I know that. I've known that since the day you pulled out that nasty-looking knife and asked me to cut my finger."

"And I want to marry you," he said in a voice thickened by the tears he would not shed. "Today, tomorrow. Before I leave I want you wearing my name. I want everybody knowing you belong to me."

Lucy felt a chuckle building right alongside the sob that forced its way out of her. "I don't think there's going to be any doubt about that. At least not for very long."

He put her away from him slightly, frowning down at her. "What are you talking about?"

"I told your mama. I hope you don't mind that I told her before I told you, but she needed to know. She was happy, Walter, real happy, knowing that you're going to have me to love you all the rest of your life. And that you're going to have our baby to love you, too."

He looked at her for a moment longer, stunned into silence, before his whole face seemed to glow. "You're sure?"

Yes. She'd known he'd be happy. She nodded and touched the wide band of leather that belted his long jacket. "Just as sure as I am that I can't figure out how to get you out of this sophisticated harness."

He whooped and picked her up and spun her around, laughing. "Lucy, honey . . ." He set her on her feet and stroked his hand down over her belly before he knelt and pressed his face against it. "Give me a minute," he said, and she heard his words all choked with the emotion he hadn't let himself show before. "Give me a minute," he repeated, "and I'll give you a lesson in a most improper way to get a soldier out of his uniform."

 

Marian seldom came to the kitchen for any purpose other than to gather her meal and carry it into the dining room. When Walter and Lucy arrived at the Hansom house, though, hours later, after laughing and loving, and crying as they stripped the rental house of the last of the personalities of Walter and Sara Briggs, Marian waited for them in the kitchen.

She rose from a chair at the round table and raked her eyes up and down the cotton and denim work clothes Walter had changed into. She held out her hand. "My key," she said.

Lucy had wondered about Marian's generosity; it had seemed completely out of character, and apparently it was. Walter juggled the duffel bag and bag of his clothes he carried into one hand, and held out the key to the woman. She snatched it away.

"I've already told Ellie," she said. "Now I'll tell you so there will be no chance for misunderstanding. That is my car; not hers, certainly not yours. The next time your mother takes it upon herself to lend it to someone, I will see that the person driving it is arrested."

She didn't wait for a response, but she did make a terrific exit, even if that exit had to be through a pantry.

Walter set his duffel and bag on the floor and took the small box containing his mother's treasures from Lucy's hands. "My God, what kind of hold does that woman have on your family? I thought she was bad enough before your father died, worse still when I left two months ago, but this? Lucy, why does your mother put up with her?"

Lucy shook her head. She didn't want to think about Marian now. She didn't know why her mother put up with her. But she did. But for the most part Mama had ignored her after finally telling her that she wasn't her maid, and any cleaning up Marian wanted done, she'd have to do herself.

But she was getting stranger every day. Long before Papa died, Marian had locked the bedroom off her sitting room. She hadn't complained when Mama had asked Walter to close off the windows so no one would accidentally look in and see the man in copper. But lately she had taken to unlocking the door and going in and sitting on the floor by his side. Aunt Marian. On the floor. And—Mama didn't know this—picking up pieces of shell or copper and holding them close while she rocked back and forth.

Marian thought they were hers. Lucy knew that. Her papa had made provisions for Aunt Marian in his will, leaving her some of his business holdings. The only problem was, by the time he died, there were no business holdings.

Only the dead man.

And Mama had been real clear about him. He was in the house, so he was part of the house. Her house. Enough people had died already. Mama was not going to let Marian even try to get rid of him again.

And she was not going to run the risk of young Joseph or one of the cousins accidentally wandering into the room where he lay in final rest. She'd changed the lock once already, but Marian had managed to get it open, and it was downright creepy the way she'd go in there at all hours of the day and night and talk to him. Just like he could hear her. Just like he'd want to hear anything she had to say to him.

"I don't want to talk about Aunt Marian." Lucy walked to his side at the table and took the small box from his hands. She ran her hands over it reverently as she set it on the table. It contained so little: Sara Briggs's wedding picture, her silver thimble and hand-carved ivory crochet hook, a few school papers Walter had given her years before. The few dishes and quilts, which they had transported in Marian's car and which now sat in a trunk in the barn. These were all that remained of the things Sara had considered special—so little compared to the pile of grave goods that had been buried with the man upstairs. Yet Sara was at peace. Was he?

 

Mama made up the big downstairs bedroom for Walter, the one she hadn't slept in since Papa died. She hugged him when they told her they were going to be married before he went back to Fort Sill. Lucy saw a glint of tears in her eyes, but they were happy tears. Mama wouldn't let herself cry any other kind.

The church folks had come and gone by the time Lucy and Walter got back to the house, but they had left their offerings of food. Mama had them all set out on the dining room table and sideboard. Now she took a bottle of her grandma's muscadine wine from the back of the buffet and three delicate stemmed glasses from the bow-fronted china cabinet. She poured each of them a glassful and raised hers. "I've thought of you as family for years. Now I'm pleased to welcome you as an official member. May the two of you be as happy together the rest of your lives as you have been till now."

Walter hugged Lucy, and then he hugged her mama. "Thank you, Mrs. Hansom. I couldn't ask for better family. I just wish—"

Lucy watched Walter change what he'd wish for in mid-sentence.

"I just wish there was some way I could repay you for all the good things you did for my mother."

Mama would say thank you, but payment wasn't necessary. Lucy had heard her say that too many times to think she would ever change. But she did.

"Actually, there is something," she said. "I'd planned to wait a little while before asking you, but it seems we don't have all that much time after all. I have the supplies in the attic; I've had them for months now. Walter, while you're home on leave, I really would appreciate it if you'd build me a wall."

 

Marian hated the wall. She hated Walter for building it, Lucy for helping, and Mama for asking for it. She screeched out her hatred the next morning until Mama took her arm and shook her and said in a cold, tight voice Lucy had never heard before, "Marian, be quiet, or you and your son are out of my house, forever, and damn the consequences."

Marian got quiet, watching sullenly from her green-striped couch until Joseph wandered into the room. Mama was real quick to close the door then, shutting Lucy and Walter in the room with the skeleton while Walter worked on framing in what would soon look like the back wall of a closet.

Walter rested his hammer on a cross bracing. "She wants to be able to get to him," he whispered. "To sell him?"

Lucy shook her head. "I don't know anymore. Maybe. Maybe just to be near to him. But with this in place she won't be able to do either. Ever again."

He leaned against one of the many studs already in place. "Lucy, with this wall in place, we won't be able to get to him, either. We won't be able to return him, even if we figure out how, unless—"

"Unless what, Walter?"

"Unless we move him before I finish the wall. Unless we hide him somewhere safe until we can figure out what to do with him. Unless we convince Marian and—damn, I hate this—unless we convince your mama he's still here, behind this wall."

"Mama wouldn't mind us moving him. She thinks he belongs—"

"Where, Lucy? Where does he belong?"

But of course she didn't have the answer for that. "Not here," she said. "Not in a closed-off, dark room behind Aunt Marian's clothes."

"No. And your mama knows that. But she wouldn't want us to move him. Not because we're greedy or malicious or even disrespectful. But because she'd be afraid something would happen to us. And it might."

"Papa moved him before. Nothing happened then. But he came back. He always comes back."

"Maybe because no one's ever moved all of him. Not since he was brought here. We could do that."

"Where, Walter?"

"I don't know. But I could find out. Abe McPherson's got a telephone. I could make some calls, ask around, maybe talk to the people from the University of Oklahoma or the Historical Society who've been digging up at Spiro."

Lucy glanced down at the man on the litter. The only light in the room came from a small bulb hanging from a broken fixture. He'd been buried with pride and ceremony. Surely he deserved a better tomb than this. And if anyone could find out, Walter could. They were old enough now, big enough now to do something other than hide and watch. And nothing would happen to them. Nothing could happen to them if all they meant was to bring him peace, could it?"

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