Secrets at Dillehay Crossing - Chapter 15 - A Pile of Twisted Yarn

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Lilly left Hickory Pines and hastily drove along Old Mill Road toward her house, gravel crackling beneath her tires. She was eager to get home and compare the pendant she’d found in her attic with the one Grammy had given her, convinced that the two were identical. As she rounded the bend at Dillehay Crossing, she intentionally slowed her car. Through her car’s open windows, she watched the trees dancing in the wind and listened to them chattering to one another, hoping their leaves might divulge the secrets hidden within their boughs and branches. How could it be, that on the same day I have two pendants, one discovered and one received, both with the same markings? Is it merely a simple, quirky twist of fate? Or is it coincidence? destiny? synchronicity?

“Nothing happens by chance. Everything happens for a reason and is part of a larger design,” Nana Dulce frequently told her. What if everything I’ve seen and heard is connected and part of a larger design? Her mind raced, unable to shake the inkling tugging at her heart. What if Willie and Grammy are part of that design, and they’re somehow connected to John and Francine? But what is that connection? They must have something in common, but what is it? What am I missing? How will Granddaddy Dave and Nick react if they’re connected? Uneasiness slowly churned in her stomach. And—and what if I was destined to find these pieces and put them together? Then what?

Destiny had always been a perplexing concept for Lilly, especially when she was young and impressionable struggling to understand her own destiny.

“How will I know my destiny?” she asked Grammy.

“You’ll have an inkling, a moment when you’ll sense a choice you’ll need to make. Don’t ignore those moments and those intuitions. Trust in yourself, and never let someone keep you from your destiny or keep you from those moments to do what you’ve been created for. Pay attention, for in those moments is the measure of who you truly are, why you’re here, and whom you serve. They’re the key to your mission.”

In my heart of hearts I know unraveling this mystery is my destiny, my mission. I’ve got to find out even if Nick and Granddaddy Dave don’t want me to do so, even if they don’t believe in ghosts and things unseen! Lilly rushed up the stairs determined to face her destiny head on, a fluttery feeling filling her chest. She stood on ballerina toes reaching into the back of her closet retrieving the two boxes she’d hid earlier that morning. Her hands tingled as she rummaged through the contents of the trinket box unearthing the pendant she came upon earlier that morning earlier. I was right! She pressed her hands on her stomach letting out a huge breath. They’re identical. I’m not crazy after all. But what comes next?

Countless questions swirled in Lilly’s mind, and considering each one was like pulling a stray thread loose in a sweater. She could tug at them all she wanted. Until she talked with Relda and got some answers, all she had was a pile of shapeless, twisted yarn.

It was almost sundown by the time Lilly made her way to Dave and Relda’s house. She walked toward the house with a fast-paced strut and saw Relda sitting in her front porch swing, a glass of her Texas lemonade in her hand.

“Lilly?” Relda turned, doing a double take. “What brings you here this time of day? And what’s that in your hands?”

“I—I—don’t know quite where to begin. Y—Y—You just won’t believe it!” Lilly sat next to Relda and pulled the oval pendant from the contents of the cigar box and handed it to her. “While rummaging through my attic this morning, I happened upon this pendant. Do you remember where it came come from?”

Relda held the pendant in the palm of her hand, flipping it over for close examination. “Goodness, Lilly. I haven’t seen that pendant in decades! Hmmm…let me think. As I recall, my sister, Rose, received it when she and Charles adopted Willie at the Catholic maternity home. She was quite taken with it.”

“Do you remember the name of the maternity home?”

“Uhhh…Yes. It was the Sisterhood of the Children of Mary. Although Rose wasn’t Catholic, she wore it regularly and kept it close at hand inside her trinket box for safekeeping believing it provided her and Willie with Mary’s grace and protection.

“And Willie was born on this day,” she asked, placing the birth announcement in Relda’s hand, “August 15, 1936?”

“Yes! Oh, he was such an adorable little tyke, full of love and abundant energy. I do miss him. I miss Rose, too.” She swiped at the tears on her face and took a long, hard look at the pained expression on Lilly’s face. “You look troubled, deeply troubled, Lilly. Why all these questions? What’s going on?”

“I’m at a loss for words, Lilly replied, her voice quivering. “Look what Grammy showed me today. It’s the same exact pendant as Rose’s and the one she received the day she left the maternity home, The Sisterhood of the Children of Mary, after giving birth to a baby boy whom she gave up for adoption.”

“Your grandmother gave up a child for adoption? When? Why? How odd. What a coincidence that she gave birth at the same maternity home where Willie was adopted.” Relda’s lips formed an oval of surprise. “But wasn’t Grammy married? I don’t understand.”

“All of that’s a rather long story Grammy just told me and one I wasn’t privy to growing up,” Lillie answered, her mouth tensing around the words. “What I can tell you is that Grammy conceived a child out of wedlock, and she moved into the home for the duration of her pregnancy until her baby boy was born August 15, 1936, the same day Willie was adopted.”

“Exactly what are you implying here?”

“I believe that Cousin Willie was Grammy’s son.”

“That doesn’t make sense! That just doesn’t seem possible,” her stomach suddenly clenched. “If you’re right, Cousin Willie is—is—was your uncle! Are you sure?”

“I don’t KNOW for sure, Relda; but there’s too much coincidence for me to ignore the possibility. I do believe in my intuition, though, and I just FEEL that I’m right.”

“If you’re right, our families have been connected long before you and Nick met and married,” Relda replied, astoundment in her voice.

“I’m just as stunned as you,” Lilly responded, her voice sounding suddenly strained. “I have to tell Grammy, don’t I?”

“Of course, you do.”

Lilly opened her mouth to speak but paused, collecting her thoughts before continuing. “How will I do that? I just don’t know where to begin.” She repeatedly dragged her hands through her hair. “Grammy will be devastated, absolutely devastated.”

“Devastated? You don’t know that. I met your Grammy only once, but she strikes me as a tough woman. Having closure on a decision she made decades ago may give her some peace. Telling her will be difficult, though. I agree, and I’m not sure how to guide you. I believe in the strength of your soul, Lilly, and the kindness in your heart. You’ll find the words, of that I’m certain. She’ll see and understand your intent, of that I’m equally certain. How ‘bout I get you a glass of my Texas lemonade?, she asked, seeking some way of easing Lilly’s discomfort. “Drinking it may calm you down.”

“Sure,” was the only response Lilly could muster.

Relda disappeared, returning minutes later with two large glasses of Texas lemonade, heavy on the vodka.”

“Here, dear. Drink this slowly and let the situation wash over you.”

The two women sat in silence, sipping on their lemonade and basking in the comfort of the shade of the oak tree and the invite of the warm late afternoon rays. They searched for meaning, for words, for something to say to one another. Dusk faded in so slowly that they failed to notice until the path ahead of them disappeared into darkness. Moonlight settled over them with graceful ease, its soft glow gently lighting the gravel country road.

In the distance a truck rumbled down the gravel road, its bright headlights reaching through the darkness as it made its way down Old Mill Road headed straight towards them. Lilly stood up but faltered, weakness filling her body. She fought the urge to jump in her car and escape the now dreadful confrontation. But there was no escape, no turning back.

Nick and Granddaddy Dave were returning from their day in Ft. Worth, and she’d have to tell them about the pendants knowing they’d be none to happy with her jaunt into the family’s forbidden attic—the place where unspoken and misunderstood secrets hid, secrets that had festered over time contaminating the Mason family.

Within just a few short minutes the men arrived. “Follow my lead,” Relda whispered to Lilly as she rose to greet them. “Put the pendants and birth announcement out of sight, in your pocket perhaps. Remember, the Universe doesn't like secrets. It conspires to reveal the truth, to lead people to it.”

“You Mason men are back earlier than expected. I bet you’re hungry. How ‘bout some of the fried chicken, coleslaw, and yeast rolls I prepared for the shindig? Whatta you say?”

The comforting smell of Relda’s fried chicken wafting through the air reminded Nick of days gone by—days when he and Cousin Willie spent endless hours playing outside. At the end of those days, they would rush home and find Relda in her patterned apron, the same one she was wearing tonight, standing over the stove frying chicken and baking yeast rolls. He smiled thinking back to the savory smell of Relda’s yeast rolls baking in the oven and running towards her, her arms wide, just steps away.

“I’m pretty tuckered out, but my Ma Maw’s yeast rolls and chicken are mighty hard to resist,” Nick winked at Relda.

“How’s my Lady Bug?” he stepped towards Lilly, planting a huge kiss on her lips. “I missed you. Why don’t we let bygones be bygones?”

Lilly smiled and nodded, quietly exhaling, unable to speak or find the right words to say. Relda ushered everyone into the kitchen, retrieving plates and silverware and placing them on the kitchen table. “Everyone gather round.” She announced. “Eat up.”

“You’re unnaturally quiet and still, Lilly. Something bothering you?” Nick asked, licking his fingers as he finished his first piece of fried chicken.

“Me? Oh, I’m just tired. I had a rather exhausting day with Grammy. She gave me a lot to think about, some pretty startling revelations.”

“Like what?”

“You won’t believe what she told me--”

“Wait Lilly!” Relda interrupted. “Are you sure now’s a good time with your being tired and all?”

“Yes. No better time than the present. Grammy will be here tomorrow, and I need to get some things out in the open beforehand.”

“Out in the open? What’s going on, Lady Bug?” Nick asked, gazing at Lilly with sudden focus.

Lilly took a swig of her lemonade and squared her shoulders. “Grammy told me her lifetime secret, a secret that changes everything, literally everything.”

“Hold on, Lilly. I think I should tell Nick and Dave about the attic first.”

“The attic!” Granddaddy Dave stood and paced around the table, the veins on his head beginning to throb. “You know that place is off limits. What in tarnation does the attic have to do with Grammy?” Granddaddy Dave asked with animosity in his voice.

“Sit down, you belligerent, bitter old coot! I’ve been quiet way too long and let you keep our family’s past locked up inside that attic,” Relda raised her voice. “But no more!” She shook her index finger at Dave. “Now sit down!”

Dave retreated to his place at the table, folding his arms defiantly across his chest. “I’m a listenin’, but you best make it snappy. I gots things to do to get ready for the shindig.”

“What Lilly has to say will make sense. So sit tight and listen. What she uncovered hidden in the attic has everything to do with her Grammy, and it changes everything. First you don’t need to be blaming Lilly and glaring at her for going into the attic. She’s a Mason now and has every right to go into her own attic if she so choses. Since she was curious about Nick’s childhood and his parents, I gave her the key to the attic. I didn’t see any harm in her seeing the Mason family scrapbook, the one I packed in the attic years ago. I also gave her another key—one I thought might unlock the antique desk, the one Stella once used, thinking the scrapbook might be inside it. While going through Stella’s desk, Lilly came upon the pendant Rose received the day she and Charles adopted Willie at the Catholic maternity home. You remember that, don’t you Dave.”

“Vaguely,” he snapped. “But I ain’t gettin’ what any of this has to do with Grammy.”

“Let me take it from hear,” Lilly said, reaching into her jeans pocket, retrieving both pendants and Willie’s birth announcement and placing them on the table. “This pendant here is the one I stumbled upon along with the birth announcement.” She pointed to the first pendant. “This other pendant is the one Grammy gave me today, the one she received at the maternity home, the Sisterhood of the Children of Mary, where she stayed before putting her son up for adoption.”

“Stop right there! Adoption?” Nick stared her down, his voice shaking with outrage. “Why would a married woman put her child up for adoption? I never heard of such a thing!”

“Let me finish, Nick.” Lilly replied, keeping her voice calm and steady. “Although the reasons aren’t important to the outcome—which is the point of my story—I’ll tell you. After her first husband died, Grammy was lonely and had a pretty serious fling with a man who hastily left town. A few months later she learned—how do I tactfully say this?—that she was in the motherly way. She was widowed raising my father on her own and was hard strapped for cash. She was at her wits end, so she put her child up for adoption believing it was best for him.”

“For Christ’s sake, Lilly? Why are you just now telling us? Why were you keeping this from us?”

“I wasn’t keeping it from you! Grammy only revealed this secret part of her past with me today. I’m just as dumbfounded as you are. Please,” she all but begged, “let me finish.”

“I—we’ve got no choice. Go ahead.”

“The point I’m making here is that the pendants are the same. ‘What are the odds?,’ I thought when I compared them. But when Grammy gave me her pendant, she told me her boy was born on the exact same date written on Willie’s birth announcement. That’s more than odd, more than a mere a coincidence. There’s a connection—a connection between her son and Rose’s adopted son, Willie. You need to know about that connection, and Grammy deserves to know.”

“Hold on, jest hold on for a minute.” Dave stopped Lilly, his voice cutting like a whip. “You jest had to go diggin’ things up, didn’t ya. You gots no proof of nuthin’, absolutely nuthin’ concrete. You got no business getting your Grammy all riled up with such foolish notions. Besides, now you’ve gone and dug up the past about Willie. You shouldn’ otta done that either.” His teeth bit out the words. “I never shoulda let them boys wander off like that, and I don’t need to be reminded of it.”

In one swift motion, Dave stood up, picked up the chair, slammed it to the floor, and stomped out of the room.

Nick glared at Lilly, his eyes hard and scornful. Lilly fixed her eyes on Nick’s face and waited. “Nick, say something.”

His lips moved, his words refusing to immediately form.

“Say something, Nick. Please say something,” Lilly pleaded. “This is hard for me, really hard.”

“This—this isn’t happening. It’s just not possible, is it?” he asked, his gaze softening somewhat.

“There’s just no other explanation,” Relda offered. “To think that Grammy is Willie’s birth mother came as a shock to me, too.”

“But—but I can’t face Grammy knowing I caused Willie’s death.” His face suddenly paled, bearing a haunting look.

“Nick, look at me,” Relda insisted, placing Nick’s face in her hands. “How many times do I have to tell you, you aren’t responsible for Willie’s death.”

“But Ma Maw, if only I hadn’t asked him to find that raccoon, he never would’ve been bit. He’d still be alive.”

“You don’t know that for sure, Nick. That racoon was rabid and unpredictable. Chances are, it would’ve bit Willie anyway. Don’t misunderstand. I readily admit that what happened to Willie was awful, no doubt about it. But it happened a long time ago, and no amount of guilt will change the past. That’s all there is at this point.” Relda spoke bravely and in a steady voice. “You’re confusing your grief with guilt and then punishing yourself with it.. Guilt is a ghost you created in your mind, and you’ve let it haunt you all these years. Don’t become bitter like Dave. Move on. Forgive yourself. That’s what Willie would want you to do. Do it for him. Do it for me. Do it for Lilly. Do it for yourself!”

Nick steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and stared blankly at the wall in front of him for a few seconds. “I just don’t know, Ma Maw. You’re asking a lot of me. I need to feel guilty so I can—"

“Can what?”

“I just don’t know, Ma Maw.” He chokes out the words. “I just—"

Lilly reached out, gently touching Nick on the shoulder. “You have a lot to process. Why don’t we go home? We can stay up and talk or you can quietly mull things over in your mind. Whatever you need.”

“I suppose,” Nick shrugged and let out an uncontrollable moan. “What—what—what about Granddaddy Dave?”

“Don’t worry about Dave. I’ll deal with him,” Relda began clearing the dirty dishes from the table. “You know how he is when he gets rankled. Best to let him stew in his own juices for a while on his own.”

Nick absently stood up, placed Lilly’s hand in his, and they silently walked to their car. They passed Granddaddy Dave who was sitting in the shed adjacent to the driveway. He gave them a curt nod. “Goodbye,” he said in a gruff tone. “See you tomorrow grandson.”

Nick nodded then climbed into the car where he sat limply in the passenger side, his dull eyes gazing flatly out the window. At home, Nick crumpled onto the sofa next to Lilly propping his feet on the coffee table

“What’s this?” he asked, picking up the old family scrapbook Lilly had placed on the coffee table earlier that morning.

“In all the ruckus over the pendants, I forgot all about it. It’s the antique family scrapbook I found in the attic earlier this morning. I brought it downstairs thinking we could we could look at it together sometime. Now’s probably not a good time, though, right?”

“Definitely not,” Nick said in a flat voice, laying the scrapbook aside, exchanging only a few cursory words and phrases here and there with Lilly.

“Let me reassure you, Nick,” Lilly said before venturing off to bed, “Grammy’s not the blaming type. She’ll be glad that you were a part of Willie’s brief life. I would expect her to ask you about Willie, though—what he liked and didn’t like, what you two did together, and what you remember about him. Getting details about him will comfort her. She won’t press, though. Just tell her what you feel comfortable sharing. Good night, Nick, she said softly, kissing him on the cheek. “Wake me if you need anything.”

“Good night, Lady Bug. See you in the morning.”

Nick lay on the couch blankly staring up at the ceiling, wanting desperately to bring forth any memories of Willie. He occasionally closed his eyes hoping to ease off to sleep. But sleep alluded him. So he went to the kitchen; grabbed a beer from the refrigerator; returned to the couch, propping himself up with some pillows; and flipped through the scrapbook’s flimsy, timeworn pages not just looking at the photographs but looking into them, devouring each one, each page, each scrap of life that unfurled before his eyes igniting the pilot light of his memory.

“I miss you, buddy,” Nick whispered, remembering how Cousin Willie’s eyes shined like pebbles washed by the ocean waves and how his smile brought laughter to all who saw him. He recalled how Willie loved the outdoors and how he played as if every drop of sunlight was sacred. Memories whizzed by, and Nick suddenly remembered many of the things he and Willie did together—fishing at Hawkes Pond, flying kites, constructing a treehouse, riding horses across the Mason property, exploring the old abandoned farmhouse, and building a makeshift raft then launching it into Dillehay Creek. He thought about the almost magical Sunday evening picnics he spent with Willie and Aunt Rose in the gazebo, waiting for the sun to set then catching lightning bugs in a jar with Uncle Charlie.

The memories warmed Nick on the inside, but they also tore him apart. “Your death was a heartache that won’t heal,” he said as if Willie were on the couch with him. “I wish I could turn back time and undo what happened to you that day along Hawkes Pond. I’m sorry, cuz, sorry for sending you after that racoon, but I didn’t know he’d bite you. A thousand times, I wish the racoon had bitten me rather than you. I wish I could take away the sadness and emptiness I feel. I wish I could have you back for just one more day. I’d sit with you on the pier at Hawkes Pond and tell you all about my new wife, Lilly. Like you, she’s fascinated with that old abandoned farmhouse and loves the woods around Dillehay Creek. She even thinks she saw you in the woods the other day. Imagine that! Me? I don’t believe in that mumbo jumbo. What’s that? Yes, she’s a bit quirky, but she’s the love of my life. Yes, you two would probably be best buds.”

Nick draped the scrapbook across his chest and stretched his arms over his head. He yawned and closed his eyes, relaxing his mind and letting go. His eyelids slowly became heavy with slumber, and he drifted off to sleep. He dreamed, his dreams taking him back in time. From the beauty of the dreamscape, in the place between his thoughts and the movies of the nighttime, came Cousin Willie.

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