if it did qualify her for Pathetic Female status.
Nothing except a note from Sharon Wiles saying she had a permanent tenant for the apartment, so if Faith could pack up her stuff and be out by the end of the month, that’d be great.
Crap. She liked it here, across the hall from her man. Who might not be her man anymore.
No, no. No reason to think that (yet). Faith shut down the computer and went back to the couch. Fluffed the cushions. Folded the blanket.
This was where a mother would come in very handy. Pru would listen, but she wasn’t great with advice, and given her recent marital roller coaster, might well be wearing Vulcan ears and doing her husband. Jack—no. Dad, ditto. Honor’s mysterious boyfriend hadn’t materialized, and she probably wasn’t in the mood to listen to Faith’s relationship woes. Also, it was 2:32 a.m.
But a mother...
Faith stopped at the picture of her family on Pru’s wedding day, the last one taken of all of them. Next to it was the rose quartz heart. Levi hadn’t denied giving it to her, but he hadn’t admitted it, either.
Of course it was from him.
Faith picked up the photo.
The tarry guilt she’d felt all these years wasn’t easily scraped away. Faith could feel it lurking, waiting for another chance. But there’d been flashes since Levi had unveiled the facts of that day. Flashes of pure memories undimmed by the belief that she’d caused the accident. Memories of her mother’s love so pure and bright and strong, they were shocking.
2:47 a.m.
“Want to go for a ride, Blue?” she asked her dog, whose ears pricked up at the magic word. “Want to go in the car?”
* * *
FOR TWO DECADES, FAITH had not been on either Lancaster or Hummel Brook roads. It had taken some doing. Hundreds of miles of avoidance. Her heart began thumping as she approached the intersection, and she exhaled shakily as she pulled over and turned off the engine. Rolled down the windows halfway so Blue could have some cold, fresh air.
It was beautiful here, the place her mother had died. The night was clear, the fields bathed in white from the nearly full moon. Faith had been afraid that the land had been sold to a developer, who’d slapped up some McMansions and stuck in a painfully awkward street named Ciderberry Circle or Owl Hollow Lane or some such ghastly moniker.
But no. It was the same.
Blue whined, wagging his tail, eager to go out.
“You stay here, boy,” she said, her voice loud in the perfect quiet.
Pretty soon, maybe even later this week, Dad would start the ice harvest, calling up the troops at two o’clock in the morning at the very second the temperature fell to seventeen degrees. But tonight, it was only in the twenties.
Only the twenties. Spoken like a true upstater.
Their car had been broadsided right here. Right in the intersection. Maybe her mom had died on impact, maybe it had taken a few minutes. She hoped with every molecule of her heart that her mother hadn’t suffered, but the truth was, she’d never know.
Faith went to the bank that ran along the edge of the road, climbed down. This was where the car had rolled. A long way, all the way to the maple tree. Kevin Hart had been going fast indeed.
Over the years, she’d looked him up on Google from time to time; he’d had a concussion from the accident, and broken the ring finger on his left hand. A college student at the time, not drunk, just driving far too fast on the lonely country road, unaware that during his first semester, a stop sign had been put up at the intersection. The judge had given him community service. He was a civil engineer now. Maybe the kind who studied where stop signs should go.
Faith had never blamed him, not really.
She walked through the field, the brittle grass crunching softly under her feet, and came to the tree that had stopped their car. She remembered that sound, that final crunch, the shiver of the car, the patter as the splintered safety glass let loose.
Running her hand over the rough bark, she felt the smoother place where the tree had healed from the gash their car had left. The wood was still strong and smooth, all these years after that long-ago afternoon when the sky had been so blue.
She sat under the tree, distantly noting the cold, unyielding ground. It was so quiet tonight. No crickets, no coyotes yipping, no night birds. Just the quiet.
Maybe her mother had been planning to divorce Dad. Maybe not. Maybe, Faith thought, her mother had just been having a bad day and vented, inappropriately perhaps, to her youngest child. Maybe, for some reason, she thought her frustrations would be safe with Faith, that for whatever reason, Faith would understand. Maybe wanting more for your child than you had yourself didn’t mean you were unhappy.
That was the thing with a sudden death. Some questions would never be answered.
Faith would keep her mother’s secret. She’d let the guilt slink away, but she wouldn’t sully the memories her family held. The truth was, they all probably knew Constance wasn’t perfect; they were all intelligent, sensitive people, more or less. Maybe their beatification of St. Mom was more a choice than ignorance, and each one of them had tiny shards pricking their hearts, memories of Mom’s imperfections kept to themselves.
Mom had loved them all. She’d been a good mother, and John Holland had been a happily married man. Nothing could ever erase those truths.
Faith looked over to the spot where she’d thought she’d seen her mom standing that day, telling her she’d be fine.
Mom had been right, hadn’t she? Faith had survived the wreck, had turned out pretty well for a girl without a mother. Had found a profession she loved and had become successful, had survived heartbreak, had created a life in a strange city, had become somebody who loved the life she was living.
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