Нора Робертс - The Perfect Hope

“It’s a start,” Hope said. A frustratingly slow one. “I can’t find any Joseph William Ryder listed as buried at the National Cemetery.”

“I’ve got nothing so far,” Owen added. “But there’s still a lot to go through.”

“Daddy said he knows there was an old Civil War bayonet, and some other things—shells, a uniform cap. Even old cannonballs,” Carolee added. “What he didn’t know is if they came down in the family or if they just got dug up in the farming. A lot of old stuff gets dug up.”

“I barely remember the farm,” Justine told them. “It got sold off before you boys were born. Houses planted on it now, and the Park Service bought some of it. But Daddy said—and this he was sure of—there was a little family cemetery.”

Hope straightened. “On the farm?”

“People buried their own in the country sometimes rather than in churchyards or cemeteries. He said it was down an old, rutted lane, backed by some trees. It might still be there.”

“I can find out,” Owen said. “If they exhumed, it takes paperwork to move graves.”

“On the old Ryder farm.” Frowning, Ryder considered his beer. “There’s a pond. A little one.”

“Daddy said they had a little swimming hole. How do you know that?”

“I dated a girl who lived in one of the houses they put up. There’s a small cemetery, an old one. It’s got a low stone wall around it, and a plaque. The Park Service type. I didn’t pay much attention. I was more focused on trying to get her naked and into the pond.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?” his mother demanded.

“I don’t usually tell you about girls I’m trying to get naked.” And he smiled at her. “Mom, I was like sixteen. She was the first girl I took around after I got my license. What the hell was her name? Angela—Bowers, Boson—something. I didn’t get her naked, so it didn’t stick. And I didn’t think of any of it until now. I do remember thinking, shit, some of those dead people are relatives, then it was back to hoping for naked.”

“A guy’s attention span’s short at sixteen,” Beckett put in. “Except for naked girls.”

“It’s still there,” Justine remembered. “We should’ve known that. It’s disrespectful we didn’t, Carolee.”

“Daddy just wanted off the farm,” Carolee reminded her. “He wanted away from everything to do with farming. And he and Grandpa were at odds over that for so long. It’s no wonder we didn’t know.”

“We know now,” Owen reminded them. “We’ll go take a look.”

“All right.” Justine rose. “Let’s corral the kids and dogs.”

“What?” Owen blinked at her. “You want to go now?”

“What’s wrong with now?”

“The sun’s going to set before long, and—”

“Then we shouldn’t waste time.”

“If we wait until tomorrow, I can go, take a look, let you know what—”

“Why are you wasting your breath?” Ryder asked him.

After a rush, a pause for debates, much excitement from the boys on what promised to be an adventure, they piled in various cars and trucks. One debate involved dogs, and in the end, they left Ben and Yoda with Cus and Finch—cutting the numbers.

Hope found herself riding shotgun in Ryder’s truck, D.A. sprawled on the seat between them.

“Tomorrow would’ve been more sensible,” Hope commented.

“None of this is about sense.”

“No, it’s not. And I’m glad we’re going tonight. He may not be there, or the headstones may have been damaged. It may never have been marked.”

“Good. Keep up that positive thinking.”

“Just preparing for possibilities.”

“There’s a possibility you’ll find what you’re after.”

“I guess I’m a little nervous that we won’t find anything, and a little nervous that we will.”

He took one hand off the wheel, reached over to take one of hers in a gesture that surprised her heart into thudding. “Stop, and relax.”

Because the abrupt order struck more in line with what she was used to, she did just that.

“This was all farmland,” he told her as he turned onto a winding road with homes spaced wide enough for some decent elbow room, for sloping lawns, shady trees.

“It must’ve been beautiful. All fields and rolling hills.”

“People have to live somewhere. And they didn’t crowd them in, so that’s something. We got some work out here during the boom. People adding on, remodeling.”

She leaned forward. “Is that—”

“Yeah, the old Ryder farmhouse. The developer was smart enough not to tear it down, to put some money into it—and I bet he got plenty out of it.”

“It’s beautiful, the stonework, the gingerbread. And it’s big. Pretty gardens and trees. They must’ve added on that solarium, but it’s well done. It’s a nice spot.” She looked at him as they drove past, turned again. “Have you ever been inside?”

“We did some work in it about three years ago. Updated the kitchen, two baths, added on a bonus room over the garage. And that sunroom you liked.”

“How did it feel?”

“At the time? Like a job. A good one. Now?” He shrugged. “I guess I get what Mom was talking about. Maybe we should’ve paid more attention to this part of us, had more respect for it. My grandfather pretty much hated the farm, and it was clear he didn’t get along with his old man, so I never thought much of it.”

He turned yet again, onto a narrow gravel lane.

“Is this private property?”

“Maybe. Might be Park Service. We’ll deal with it if we have to.”

“They fought here? North and South, boys and men.”

“All over hell and back,” Ryder confirmed. “See there?”

She saw the little pond he’d spoken of, its water dark and deep in the lowering light. Cattails crowded around it with their brown velvet heads, and ferns green with summer formed a verdant carpet.

Beyond it, before the trees thickened, stood a low stone wall. The sort, she thought, Billy Ryder might have built. Headstones tilted in its center. Hope counted sixteen—small markers, pocked by time and weather, some tipped in the rough ground.

“It looks lonely. Sad and lonely.”

“I don’t think dead’s a party.”

He parked, got out with the dog scrambling behind him. When Hope simply sat, he walked around, opened her door as the rest of the family convoy pulled up.

“He’s here or he’s not. Either way, we are.”

She nodded, stepped out beside him.

It felt less lonely with people, with voices. With boys running and dogs sniffing. Still, she felt unsteady enough to reach for Ryder’s hand, to be grateful when he linked his fingers with hers.

More than sixteen, she realized as they approached. Some of the markers were hardly more than a stone set flush with the ground.

Not all had names, or if they had once, time had erased them. But she read those she could. Mary Margaret Ryder. Daniel Edward Ryder. And there a tiny one, marking the grave of Susan—just Susan, who’d died in 1853 at the tender age of two months.

Someone tended to the grass here, she mused, so it didn’t grow wild. Still, there was that sense of wild. To offset the infant, she found the grave of Catherine Foster Ryder, who’d lived from 1781 to 1874.

“Ninety-three,” Justine murmured beside her. “A good, long life. I wish I knew who she was to me.”

“You’ll get the Bible, then you’ll know.”

“How come they can’t stay at the inn like Lizzy?” Murphy asked her. “How come they have to stay here?”

“Lizzy’s special, I guess.” Justine lifted him up, pressed her face to his throat as Hope turned.

She’d thought Ryder stood beside her, but saw now he’d walked off, to the right, stood alone by a trio of graves.

She walked toward him, realized her heart began to thud as she did.

“He’s the middle one.”

“What?” Her hand trembled as she reached out for his again.

“He was born last, died second. They were brothers.”

“How can you—I can’t make out the names.”

“Light’s going,” he said as she dropped down to her knees to peer closer.

“Oh God. Billy Ryder. They didn’t put his formal name on his grave. Just Billy. March 14, 1843, to September 17, 1862.”

“And Joshua, earlier that same year. Charlie, twenty-two years after. Three brothers.”

“It’s Billy.” It was all she could think at first. Here. They’d found him. “Is she here?” Hope’s head came up. “How could she be here?”

“It’s not her.” Understanding, Ryder gestured. “Honeysuckle. It’s about buried the wall behind these graves.”

He turned, looked at his mother. As their eyes met, he didn’t have to call out to her, to speak. Hers filled as she started toward him.

“You found him.”

“Time’s dulled the carving, but you can make out the name. He died the same year as Lizzy. The same month, within the same day.”

Owen stepped to his mother, slipped an arm around her waist, kept Avery’s hand in his. Then Beckett with Clare, and the boys miraculously quiet. And Willy B, patting Carolee’s back when she let out a little sob.

The sun slid into twilight, and the air stirred the thick scent of honeysuckle.

Hope traced the name with her finger, then laid it against her heart.

“We’ll bring flowers next time.” Justine leaned her head against Owen’s arm, touched Beckett’s, touched Ryder’s. “It’s time we remembered them. We’re here because they were, so it’s time we remembered them.”

On impulse, Ryder took out his pocketknife, cut through honeysuckle vines. He laid it down.

“That’s something anyway.”

Inexpressibly moved by the simple gesture, Hope rose, took his face in her hands. “That’s perfect,” she said, and kissed him.

“It’s cooling off. You’re going to get cold,” Beckett told Clare. “I’m going to swing by, pick up the dogs, take Clare and the boys home.”

“We need to tell her.” Clare looked at Hope. “I feel like we should all be there when you tell her.”

“It can wait until tomorrow. You get pale when you’re tired.” Beckett trailed a finger down her cheek. “And you’re pale. It can wait until tomorrow.”

“Maybe that’s better anyway.” Avery lifted her hands. “We can think about how to tell her. I mean we found him, here he is. But what does that mean? It seems almost cruel to tell her he’s buried out here, miles away from where she is.”

“In the morning,” Justine agreed. “Let’s say about nine. Yes, it interrupts your day,” she said to Ryder before he could speak. “But it’s before Clare and Avery open, before Hope and Carolee have anyone checking in.”

“Nine’s fine.”

“Will you come, Willy B?” She turned to the big man with the little dog in his arms. “Can you take the time?”

“If you want me, Justine, I can be there.”

“I’d appreciate it. I want to know which of these is their mama. She lost two of her sons, maybe the third, too, before she died. That’s a cruel thing.” Justine’s voice thickened before she breathed deep to steady it. “I want to know her name and remember her.”

“It’s getting dark.” Willy B patted her arm, stroked it. “Let me take you home now, Justine.”

“All right. Let’s all go home.”

But Ryder lingered as the others started away. He made himself step back from the trio of graves when Hope touched his arm.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I don’t know. It’s weird.”

“That there are three of them. Like you and Owen and Beckett?”

“I don’t know,” he repeated. “It hits home, I guess. He’s my mother’s. He’s ours. She’s yours. I’ve got his name—the last of it for my first. And—” He shook his head as he wanted to shake this feeling away. “Let’s go.”

“What? And what?” she insisted as he drew her away.

“Nothing. It’s just weird, like I said.”

He didn’t tell her he’d known, the minute he’d stepped inside the low stone wall, where to find Billy. He’d known where to walk, what he’d find.

Imagining things, he told himself as they got back in his truck. Just that graveyard at dusk deal.

But he’d known something, felt something still, like a shiver just under the skin. As he drove away, his gaze shifted to the rearview mirror. He took another long look at the stone wall, the markers and the madly thriving honeysuckle.

Then he turned his eyes to the road ahead.

HE KNEW THIS LAND, THE RISE AND FALL OF IT, THE spread of the fields, the rough shoulders of rock that jutted out. He knew the stone walls that kept the fat cows grazing on the green. His hands had helped build some of them, with his uncle’s patient tutelage to guide him.

Though he’d traveled some distance from this land, its rise and fall, he’d always planned to come back to it. To make his home near some bend in the creek that ran over rocks and cooled its water under the shade of the woods.

He loved this land as he’d loved no other his feet had trod upon.