Page 26 of The Cadence

“You weren’t, and I was glad that I could help when…anyway, I don’t mean when I was with you. I drove by a few times when you were gone.”

“Oh.” He stopped the car and put it in park.

“I’m sorry. That probably brings up bad memories of other people doing the same thing,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter now. Let’s go in together,” he told me, and got out.

The Bodines had lost their ancestral home, which one of them had built after the Civil War and they had occupied until their money problems drove them out.

I believed that his grandfather finally sold it or gave it up to the bank and afterwards, the family had downsized.

This place was about half the square footage of their original mansion, which still made it very, very large, especially since only Will’s mother and father had lived in it for so many years.

From the front, it looked just like the others on this beautiful street: freshly painted and with a large, neat lawn and flowering plants that my grandmother would have admired a lot.

Will walked up to the front and opened the door with a key from his ring. “Mama?” he called, and she came to the top of the stairs and slowly walked down, just like in a movie.

“William,” she said, and they hugged. She looked like him in a way, with the same dark hair and beautiful grey eyes. But she was small and delicate, like a little bird, and he loomed over her. So did I, when she turned to me.

“Who is this?” she asked her son.

“I let you know that Calla was coming with me,” he answered. “You must remember her.”

“Hello. I’m very sorry,” I said, and I sounded just like all the people who had spoken those words to me, not too long before.

I swallowed hard because the memory, as well as the stress of all this, started to make me get tearful…

and this wasn’t my pity party, because I was here for Will just like he had been there when I needed him, too.

“Oh. Thank you.” Ophelia Bodine turned and walked down the hall, her steps dragging a little, and we both followed her.

The rest of the night was terrible. Will planned out the funeral, asking his mother questions while she sat on the couch and cried.

He held her hand while she looked at his father’s bed, where she’d found him, and cried.

Then I fixed something to eat and she sat at the kitchen table that I remembered, and cried more.

By the time we left for the hotel where he liked to stay when he was at home, I was exhausted.

It was probably how Miss Mozella and the rest of my grandma’s friends had felt about dealing with me, too.

At the time, I’d thought that I was handling everything so well and that I had been comforting them, but now I recognized how they had also held me up.

“We probably should have stayed in the house with her.”

Will hadn’t spoken in a while and I jumped in surprise. “What?” I asked.

“I wasn’t thinking when I made the hotel reservation,” he explained.

“I never spent time at the house when my father was there, but we could have now.” He paused.

“I don’t know if there are even beds in the guest rooms anymore.

My old room is empty because I took everything out when I left for college. ”

“Do you want to turn around? You can cancel the hotel and I can bunk with Miss Mozella,” I suggested.

“Did you tell them all that you’re here?”

“I did.” They were thrilled, of course, but I also related to him how sorry they were for his loss.

“Right, my loss. No, I think it’s better that we go to the hotel.”

By this point, it was very, very late. I watched him check behind the car several times and I watched his hands grip the wheel just like mine did when I was worried.

That was why, as we rode the elevator I’d liked so much before, I suggested that he might want to get right into bed.

Tomorrow promised to be a very long day.

“Grief makes you really tired,” I noted.

“Is that what happened to you?” He opened the door to his room, which was right next to a separate one he had rented for me.

“At first, it was like I had weights hanging on my body,” I said. “My muscles ached like I’d been working out really hard, but I hadn’t done anything except sit in her rocking chair and cry.”

Will looked at me and then opened his bag. He retrieved a box of tissues, because he’d thought to bring his own. He silently handed them to me.

“I apologize for doing this. You don’t need to take care of me,” I told him as I wiped my eyes. “That was smart thinking to pack these. You and your mom will both need them.”

“No, I won’t. I brought them because I thought that all this would make you sad, because of the parallel to what just happened with your grandmother. I won’t need any for myself because I wrote the guy off a long time ago.”

“The guy?”

“My father,” he answered. He sat down on his bed.

“You said you were sorry, but I’m not. I won’t cry over the loss, because I didn’t experience one.

He was an asshole for my entire life. I learned very young not to depend on him, not to trust him, and not to give one single shit about his behavior. ”

I nodded. “I can understand that.”

“Once I left their house, the only time I had to pay attention to him was when he tried to drag me into his problems. That was what he did when he got into the accident with the ambulance. I told him I’d pay his legal bills if he pled guilty and accepted responsibility.

I told him that I’d pay for treatment, too, so he could get sober.

He could at least have tried. But he had no interest in any of that, because alcohol was always more important than his family and so was weaseling his way out of any trouble.

My father was just so damn low. Just a low, terrible person. ”

He dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, and he breathed hard for a moment.

“I’m sorry anyway,” I said again.

“Don’t be. Now he’s dead and he won’t give my mother any more trouble. It’s for the best.”

“That may be, but it’s still hard for her and for you, and that’s what you should think when people offer you condolences.

You’re right that you will hear it again.

They may not miss him either, and they may also think that he was a bad person, but they don’t want you to have to go through this.

That’s what I meant when I said that I was sorry,” I explained, “and I’m also sorry that he was so low and terrible. You didn’t deserve it.”

“I don’t know why my mother stayed with him.” He sighed. “Maybe it was for financial reasons when I was a kid, but that changed when I signed my first contract. I can afford to take care of her and I’ve been paying most of their bills for years.”

“Maybe she loved him,” I suggested.

“How could anyone have loved him?” he asked me disbelievingly, and I only shrugged. She very well could have. You couldn’t really choose what your heart wanted, even if you knew that it wasn’t any good for you.

But you could choose how you acted on those feelings and I didn’t understand his mother’s behavior either. She should have kept his son away from that man, but it was too late. “Does the reason matter now?” I asked.

“No. Nothing matters, except that he’s gone.” Will rubbed the heels of his palms into his eyes, pressing so hard that I thought he would hurt himself. That was why I took his hands to pull them away.

“You should go to sleep,” I said. “Just try.”

Our rooms adjoined, which I’d learned meant that they had a connecting door—two doors back-to-back, and either side could shut theirs and make totally separate spaces.

When he nodded, I walked through that opening but I didn’t close anything behind me.

I went into the bathroom to change and brush my teeth, and when I came out, the doors remained open.

The lights were off but I could see the outline of a large, solid form under the covers.

He shifted, turning toward me. “Calla.”

“Yeah?” I took a few steps in.

“Tomorrow’s going to be bad for my mother. I appreciate your help with her.”

“I don’t know how much help I was tonight,” I admitted. I had gotten the feeling that I was mostly in the way, actually. “I’m happy if I am.”

“I’m happy that you’re here,” he answered, and that was enough for me.

We couldn’t stay that long in Tennessee.

It was lucky that there was a bye in the Woodsmen schedule, a week with no football game, but Will still needed to get back and I could tell that he wanted to be away from here.

We spent the next morning whipping together details for the service for his father, which would be private and very, very small, and then I took some time to go see Miss Mozella and the other ladies.

“I’m sorry that you had to come home because of this, but I’m so happy to see you, Bug,” she told me, and hugged me for a long time.

So did everyone else, and I was glad I’d brought a box of those tissues with me because many of us needed them.

We talked together for a little while and they caught me up on all the news. They also asked about mine.

“Look at this,” I said, and showed them the pictures that Will and I had taken of my furniture. “I’m selling some online right now, but two people already asked me if I can do custom pieces for them. And Annie, Will’s house designer, wants me to paint something for one of her clients, too!”

They were all very, very pleased, and said things like they knew that I was talented, I’d always had a good eye, and wasn’t that beautiful!

But actually? They had been asking about something else, something besides my work life.

Miss Valerie mentioned a few things about relationships blossoming but when I didn’t immediately answer, Miss Theresa stepped in.

“What’s happening between you and Will Bodine? Personally, not professionally,” she asked. “Are y’all still living together?”

“We are not,” I said grandly.