Heaven Should Fall

Epilogue

Jill




Nobody had told me about the magic of a toddler’s first spring. Through the long months of winter TJ grew used to the skeletal trees, the fractured shapes they made against the sky, the clearness and plainness of looking up. And then all at once, in April, they burst out into a great banner of shimmering pale green, as suddenly as all the fans in a stadium rising to cheer. At first it frightened him. He stared up distrustfully at the new canopy, listened to the rustle of animals he could no longer see. When we stepped out the door of our little cabin at Southridge, even if only to walk the twenty feet to his grandmother’s cabin next door, he hid his face against my shoulder and muttered, over and over, his most powerful word: no. He was too young to remember that he had seen all this before, but old enough to feel unsettled by the realization that the world will change without warning.

On the morning I put Leela on a train back to New Hampshire—a week’s visit to see her grandsons at Randy’s, Eddy at the nursing home and possibly Candy, if she had earned visiting privileges—I decided it was time to take TJ on a hike. I tied his winter cap beneath his chin to block the April wind and strapped him into the backpack carrier Dave had given me as a welcome-home gift. Before Dave could see us, I hurried down the trail behind our cabin and into the woods. I knew he would insist on coming—fearing bears, twisted ankles and all sorts of hazards that might befall a lone hiker with a special burden. But the walk wasn’t far, and I wanted TJ to know I was not afraid.

Without a blanket of thick and heavy snow beneath my feet, the journey went much faster. Dry twigs cracked beneath my boots, and the last fall leaves, worn thin and lacy from the storms of winter, shuffled to the edges of the path. TJ chattered about the birds, piping his two-word sentences punctuated with mimicked animal sounds; his feet patted my sides as if coaxing a racehorse. Since his ear surgery the previous fall, he had begun imitating all the sounds around him with an enthusiasm that delighted me. To TJ, Frasier had been a quiet, muffled place, but all the music of this forest belonged to him now.

In a short time we arrived at the clearing, and I stopped near the campfire pit, turning to face the mountains whose ski trails the spring had reclaimed.

“You see that, buddy?” I said. I twisted my neck, looking up to catch a glimpse of my son. “It’s pretty, huh? You want to get down?”

I eased off the backpack and set TJ loose. For one long moment he stood and surveyed the land around him, taking in the breadth of the space and the height of the trees, cocking his ear toward the rush of the waterfall nearby. Sometimes I was certain he had Cade’s mind—analyzing everything he saw, planning his moves one by one, yet not immune to temper tantrums and petulance. I wished I could feel the pride of an ordinary mother who sees the best of her child’s father reflected in his spirit, but a bittersweet ambivalence was the best I could do.

From the direction of the trail came the sound of a bounding dog. I scooped up TJ, and a moment later Tess appeared, tail wagging and tongue lolling, with Dave following close behind with a walking stick in hand. “What are you doing?” he asked, but his tone was cheerful. “You know there’s bears here, right?”

“I have yet to see a bear. In ten years I have never once seen a bear.”

“That just means they’re good at hiding.”

I grinned. “Well, we’re fine. I’m trying to help TJ get over his new fear of trees.”

Dave nodded and looked out at the mountains. “He’s had a lot of change lately. Can’t blame the kid for wanting everything to just stand still for five minutes.”

TJ squirmed in my arms, and I set him down on the ground once again. As he toddled forward to pet the dog, I remembered the day Dave and I had hiked here—that Christmas afternoon two years or an eon ago—when I first knew of his little life. That day Dave had spoken of his doubts about Cade, and I had ignored him. But even now, after all my son and I had traveled through to return to this place, I wasn’t sorry for that. Cade had only been human, with a savage side and a pure-hearted one, the same as everybody else. The same as me, or Leela, or Elias. As good a man as Dave was, even the help he offered me had not been purely selfless. He welcomed the excuse to bring me back, and not just because I was a hard worker, either. I think I had known that, in the packed-away part of my heart, for a long time.

And I could find a way to make room for it. Because grief always gives way eventually and cracks open into something new, the way my mother had once stood beside a highway with me, looking out over a thunderstorm, knowing it was time to usher in a change that would make things better. It was my turn now, and I could do the same—for the sake of my child’s life, yes, but also for mine.

It’s not too much to ask of a person. It’s love, that’s all.