Chapter 55

The Unthinkable

Wednesday’s breakfast grows cold on the table, and Chance has not returned with the daily breakfast buns. Florence insists we eat without him, while I wonder if the bakery lady has a new tale to tell him.

I am about to take my first bite, when Chance appears at the table, bakery box in hand, face flushed like a ripe tomato.

“Was there a problem?” Florence asks.

“Everything’s fine,” he says. “The bakery was crowded.”

My forkful of egg remains in midair as Chance dishes his plate. I watch his eyes, those silvery telltale orbs that reveal more than a gypsy’s crystal ball. Chance is notfine.

He doesn’t speak through the whole ordeal of breakfast, and he doesn’t look at anyone.

For me, swallowing is a struggle. When I carry my not-empty plate to the kitchen, he follows and grabs my arm. I barely have time to set down the plate before he pulls me outside.

“I need to talk to you.” His words sound urgent, and I expect his next words to keep up the urgency, but he chews his thumbnail and looks at his shoes. His weight shifts from one foot to the other. No words.

Finally, he says, “I know you spoke to your grandfather about me. “I know we have…” His thumbnail will bleed soon if he keeps chewing it. “I know that you…” He looks up from his shoes slowly. “You and I have affection for each other.”

Before the words reach my brain, his eyes go back to his shoes. “I care for you, but…” More silence.

“Chance! Talk!”

“I’m going to college.” His eyes rise to meet mine. “I’m not ready to think about marriage yet.”

Marriage! I am stunned. “Neither am I. Who said anything about marriage?”

Now Chance is the one who looks stunned. “Your grandfather. Didn’t you tell him to?”

I shake my head slowly, trying to make sense of his words.

His face reddens. “He knew things only you could have told him.”

My mind is still muddled. “What things?”

“He knew about…he knew I kissed you.”

“I didn’t tell him.” The memory of our kisses is between Chance and me. How could…?

I see the corn patch over Chance’s shoulder and recollect the sway of the cornstalks. The muddle in my brain starts to untangle. Grandpa was spying.

All my anger with Grandpa that has lapped inside me surges and swells and pushes. That inner sluice gate flies open, and my heart pumps anger. “Where is he? Where is Grandpa?” 

“He was waiting for me at the bakery. I don’t understand. Didn’t you know he planned to ask me to move to West Virginia so we could…? I thought you knew. I thought you told him to ask.”

Grandpa did the unthinkable. My breath seethes in and out. My hands ball into fists, and I need to talk to the man who has been impossible to find since we came here.

My hand reaches for the screen door and freezes on its handle. My eyes notice the heavy stitches securing its patch. One by one, discombobulated things fall into my mind—and make sense. 

The screen door turned up patched, the way Grandpa patches them at home. Flypaper appeared, the kind Daddy makes. Mrs.  Grome’s carpet cleaner smelled just like Mama’s. She even made red-clover cough syrup like Aunt Freddie’s. Who, but Grandpa, knows all these things? He must have been right here the whole time, helping Mrs. Grome.

I recollect the soft thump of a door’s closing in the night, but finding no one. Footsteps on the stairs when I was in the bathtub. And the red clover on the attic step when Chance and I came home unexpectedly.

I race upstairs and fling open the attic door. “Grandpa!” I screech as my high-heeled shoes hurry up the attic steps.

Only heat and silence. And Grandpa’s bedroll spread out on the floor. So this is where he spends nights. He spent his days making money and helping Mrs. Grome. And spying on me and Chance.

How could he shame me like this? How could he offer me to Chance like a pick-of-the-litter hound? He even dressed me up in a fancy hat and shoes. Like tying a ribbon on that dog.

I run to my room and grab my goldfinch hat. As I climb the attic steps again, I tear off its ribbons. I rip the bird from its brim, and throw the remnants on the bedroll. My high heels stomp that hat into kindling. I plop down on the attic floor and strip off those shoes and fling them on the bedroll.

In my rage, I don’t hear footsteps on the stairs. Mrs. Grome, Florence, and Chance all bear witness to my hissy fit. Smothering from pain, anger, and humiliation, I need to get out of this attic. I need air.

“Virginia,” Florence says.

“Calm down, Child,” Mrs. Grome says. Mrs. Grome, who conspired with Grandpa behind my back! How dare she tell me to calm down! How dare she!

I get to my feet, snatching up the goldfinch. I fling it against the red-brick chimney. It bounces off the brick and lands with a quite thunk at Mrs. Grome’s feet.

I storm past them, down the stairs, and out the front door. I walk quickly, so they can’t follow, even though the rough ground chews my stockings to shreds.

Halfway through town, I sit behind a monument and pull off the ragged stockings. I let myself breathe, every breath catching like a hiccup.

Folks stare as I walk barefoot through the crowds, but I don’t care. I can’t go back and face Chance. Grandpa saw to that.

I keep walking. From the edge of the Camp, I see veterans, soldiers, and Boy Scouts. I hear voices and laughter.

I walk on, ending up at the soldiers’ cemetery. The section of Unknowns stands before me, graves marked with no names, only numbers to count how many died with no one to identify them. Grass is soft beneath my feet, as I think about the dead ones.

I seek solace by talking to my dearest friend. “How tragic it was, Jackson, to die far away from home with no one to say who you were, no one to put a name to your gravestone.”

I feel tears on my face, but I’m not sure for whom they fall.