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Gracie laughed.
Aw, hell. These kids. Tugged at a man’s heart. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry ’bout that.”
Chapter 50
After dinner, Gracie was ready to skip dessert and head to bed. She was nervous about tomorrow, about leaving the safety of campus and going back to her club. But then the dessert trays were brought out and she caught Dusty’s gaze, and knew she’d be staying for dessert.
He leaned over to her. “I grew up with an aunt who could make a mean pecan pie, but this is Cake Boss–type material.”
She kissed him on his cheek. “For such a strong-looking guy, sometimes you’re just a big kid.”
He grinned at her. “Who doesn’t like cake?”
The servers carried the artful cakes around the table as her siblings oohed and aahed.
After everyone had a chance to appreciate the cakes, they were taken to a serving station. One of the servers, a big guy with an easy grin and a Pacific Islander tan, took out a gleaming silver knife, and with a flourish that sent the kids clapping, began to cut pieces.
Gracie decided on the Mantua Home’s world-famous cheesecake and Dusty had red velvet because he’d never had it before. Once he’d made this announcement to the table, the kids around him watched intently as he took his first bite.
It was kind of adorable. Gracie watched too. Dusty, the adorable show off, exaggerated with a raise of his eyebrows, then he closed his eyes and declared it, “Good enough to make the angels sing.”
With the addition of sugar, the conversation at the table reached earsplitting levels, a near deafening sound broken when Momma stood and clapped her hands twice. The room echoed her claps. Then silence. She nodded in approval. “It’s time for us to share a story.”
Gracie startled. They were doing that tonight? She grabbed Dusty’s arm. “Let’s go to bed.”
“You sure?” he said, sounding as if he wanted to stay.
Momma passed behind them on the way into the other room. She put her hand on Dusty’s shoulder. “I’d like you to hear this. It’s my story. The way this all”—she waved around—“came to be.”
Fudge. Gracie looked down as she heard Dusty tell Momma he was “Looking forward to it.”
Gracie wasn’t sure…scratch that, she was sure. She didn’t want Dusty to hear this, but she had no idea how to stop it without causing a huge scene.
The girls left their dessert plates and headed over to the room with the large hearth visible through an arched doorway.
Her heart hammering, Gracie escorted him into the paneled room. They watched as the girls took seats around the brick hearth, plopped down on blue-and-gold pillows, and formed a circle. Unlike at the table where everyone sat with others their age—their units—the girls mixed it up. Older girls called the younger ones to sit beside them.
Dusty grabbed two cushions and they settled on the floor.
He put one arm behind her, leaned on it, so that her entire side warmed with his large, comforting presence. “So this is a big deal?”
“Yeah.” She put a hand on his arm. She at least owed him a warning. “It’s another way we stay close. Each person here has a story that tells us about them, where they came from. Even me. Our stories are told in second person, read by a professional. The idea is that you feel the others’ stories, and that we join and know one another that way. Tonight, it’s my mother’s. It’s kind of brutal.”
“And the kids are okay hearing it?”
She looked around at her siblings. “They’ve lived it, Dusty. And just so you know, we don’t ever let strangers hear these stories.”
“Never?”
She nodded, gestured at the room. “Not even the staff is allowed.”
“So this is—”
A recording whispered out at them from audio speakers. Everyone went silent as a soft female voice spoke.
You walk into the Red Cross tent with feet chalked white from the dust and dirt of the road.
Your head pulses with a thousand painful fires. Rejection. Regret. Injustice. Thirst.
Sliding onto the hot stool by the entrance, you wait to be noticed. It doesn’t take long. A woman gasps, grabbing at the loose-sleeved olive shirt of another woman. “Karen,” she says, forcing her to turn around.
Their colored eyes, specks of blue and green and yellow, float over you. Like flower petals adrift in a bowl of water. You can’t help but be drawn to them as they bloom with pity.
The second woman, Karen, comes to you without hesitation. She scoops you from the chair, murmuring words you cannot understand. And yet they comfort your ragged thoughts, tucking in grief with their plush softness as she places you upon a plain, narrow bed.
Her words seem kind, soothing. But under that softness rests a pallet of ripe anger, a frustration born of centuries. You recognize the sound. It has been with you since that far-off day, before your very first moments of true pain. That day, your mother whispered to you, “They will cut you here,” and placed her warm hand between your legs, “because we must pay the price of desire. No charm comes without a chain.”
“Who did this to your face?” Karen asks, speaking English now. Her oddly accented words sound clipped and tight.
You say, “A man.”
As the story continued, recounting Momma’s pain, humiliation, and being rejected by her family, Gracie watched every emotion that crossed Dusty’s face. She saw the sympathy, the disbelief, and anger. And then she saw him change, grow tense and uncomfortable.
The story finished up with Momma being adopted by the women in that tent—a lesbian couple, one of which happened to be the daughter of the wealthy Coleman Bell Parish.
It stopped there, with the happy ending.
Dusty’s face looked anything but happy. She had watched his darkening facial expressions like they were the most important thing she’d ever see. Maybe because it felt that way. She’d paid such close attention that when he stood from their cushions on the floor and said, “I’m gonna get going,” she knew.
He didn’t understand. He was going to leave, like John, and never come back.
With her heart aching, she got up from the floor too. Around them, her sisters cried and spoke and shared their own stories in the quiet aftermath. A wave of love for them enveloped her.
Did he see? Did he see how the story helped them share their own pain, how they felt less ashamed? Did he see how children from all over the world suddenly came together as one loving unit, a family? Momma’s story had become their story. Just as each of their stories became the family’s story.
His eyes were shocked and bothered. No, he didn’t see. Looking around, he’d taken in what she’d seen but reached a completely different conclusion.
She hardened her heart and her voice. “Can I walk you to your car?”
His eyes settled on her, on her tell-a-tale face. He opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed whatever he’d been about to say. “Sure.”
After saying good night to Momma and Leland, Dusty took her by the arm, and they walked in silence through the hallways until they came to the front doors.
Dusty turned to her. “Grace, I don’t actually have my car.”
She knew that. “You said good night to Momma, told her you weren’t staying. I’m sure she directed someone to bring a limo around for you.”
He looked toward the front doors. “Kind of her.”
“That’s Momma.”
He shifted. “Grace—”
“Don’t,” she said. “I can see it in your face. You don’t approve. Trust me, I’ve been here.”
That got a reaction. His eyes widened, he leaned closer. “No. You haven’t. That’s not this. Not me.”
“Yet you’re leaving. I saw your reaction during the reading. I saw it.”
“What you saw is complicated. Not so much disapproval as—” he ran a hand th
rough his hair. “It got me. I’ll admit that. Reminded me of my childhood, of the way my dad would manipulate people.”
“This isn’t like that. You’ve met my sisters, seen the tape of my mother. Why is it so wrong for us to talk about what we’ve been through, to share with other people? Why are you so bothered by our truth?”
“Fuck, no.” He shook his head. His honey eyes were angry, intense. “It’s not about that, about you. It’s about me. The fucked-up way I was raised. You get that? I just need time to process. Can you give me that?”
