His voice is hoarse, barely a whisper. “Is she going to be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
He looks down like he is tossing away the thought and then lifts his gaze to her again. “You okay?” he asks.
And all is forgiven for the share of worry that is for her. She ruffles his hair and says, “Go! Stop being such a drudge! Your friends are calling you.” His smile returns, and he runs back to the games and worries of being dunked. It is all he has ever known. To move on, because Zoe has made it so. For him. She rubs it out of his hair, out of his life, because she can.
The laughter and splashing resume with a dash and a jump, pushing her back into the world she came from. Alone. The dampness at her breast fades to dryness, and in seconds, Kyle’s touch is gone. She smooths out the wrinkles left across her crisp white cotton blouse and sees she forgot to do her nails. Shit. She forgot to do her nails. A wrinkled blouse, ragged nails, and alone.
She looks back at the house, but Aunt Patsy has gone inside. Uncle Clint, his neighbor Odell, and Aunt Patsy’s older brother Evan, hover over a barbecue near the storage shed. Evan’s wife, Norma, is clucking and playing lifeguard near the pool. And then there are the disapproving backs of Grandma and Mama ready to swallow her up.
“Hello!”
She turns. Out of nowhere, Quentin Hale has descended like an angel to save her from a lawn that pins her to its middle.
“Hello,” she says. His ponytail is a full six inches longer than the last time she saw him. A mere nub before, it is now long enough to swing right into Grandma’s disapproval. It warms Zoe. Wrinkles have grown out from his eyes, and stubble on his chin glistens in the sun.
“Been a while,” he says. She is thankful for his presence, but his voice chills her. It is forever stamped with the nauseating scent of sweet mixed bouquets, carnations and amaryllis wilting in afternoon heat, forever married with the sound of whimpers and echoes and a spade turning over soil. His voice, genuine, warm, but now tainted by a day he had nothing to do with, except for the exchange of a few words.
“Yeah,” she says. “Two years, almost. Not since…” She doesn’t finish.
He nods. “Yeah. Not since.” He takes her cue, and she is more grateful now than she has been in the last two years that he is the one who preached at Daddy’s funeral. Grandma had howled. “He ain’t nothin but a pot-smokin’ hippie. Never even seen this side of a seminary. What will folks think? It ain’t decent.” But Mama had nodded approval. Daddy had always liked Quentin. Said he was the real deal. And Mama couldn’t be swayed. Aunt Patsy’s baby brother would see Daddy off to the Great Beyond. “If that’s where he’s going,” Grandma grumbled.
Zoe looks into Quentin’s face. She reads it, or tries. She doesn’t know about real deals, but if a face can be true, Quentin’s is. He may not be a real preacher with a fancy seminary degree or proper pastor clothes, but he is real enough that Ruby First Baptist hired him on as an assistant pastor. He lives in a tiny travel trailer in the parking lot and serves as a pastor on call. He was on call the night they found Daddy.
“You’re lookin’ good, Zoe. Life treatin’ you well?”
Her fingers curl into a fist to hide her nails. “Well, enough,” she says. The words sound whiny, and she tries to lighten them with a smile that comes too late.
“Considering?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve had a hard time of it, is all. Lots of growing up for your years.”
There has been no growing up, she thinks. “I’ve always been grown up.”
He nods. “Yeah. Guess you have. But you’ve done good.” Good. The words feel like a warm bath on a cold day. She remembers he was kind with Daddy, too. He said nice things he didn’t have to say. Words rolled from his lips and hemmed in her tears as she sat in the first pew. Kind words that wrapped her up warm and hopeful and made her think on the good. But why?
“Two years too late to ask a question, you think?” she asks.
“Nothing’s ever too late.”
Really. In what world? She looks away and squints at the pool in the distance. She shades her eyes like she is more interested in splashing and boys’ belly flops, like her question is an idle thought that is casually slipping out. “You really think he’s in heaven—Daddy, that is—or was that just preacher talk for a grieving family? He never went to church, you know, and he died dead drunk. Doesn’t sound like heaven material to me. And besides that, he—” And it has all run out and doesn’t sound casual at all.
“You just now getting around to critiquing my sermon, Zoe, or you got something else on your mind?”
“Nothing else,” she says. Nothing else except Mama.
Quentin eases her hand down and swings her gently to face him. “We don’t know nothin’ about that moment he went to meet his maker, Zoe. Nothin’, you hear me? No one was there. I think when we get to heaven there’s goin’ to be a whole lot of gasps and whoops over who’s there and who’s not. Lots of surprises. I always think on that poor bastard hangin’ up ’side Jesus. One minute a sinner and the next walkin’ in Paradise. Bet none of them Pharisees could’ve guessed it. Yep. A whole lot of surprises, ’cause only the Lord knows the heart of a man. Ain’t our job to be second-guessin’.”
He talked a good talk. She knew at least he believed it, and maybe that was all she needed to hear. Possibility. Someone’s possibility. Someone believing in someone else. Quentin believing in Daddy. Daddy who was dead. Daddy who had believed in her. Daddy who talked a good talk, too. Special, Zoe. Stars, Zoe. Talk. Only talk and nothing more.
But it was enough. At least, then it had seemed enough.
“Gifts!” Aunt Patsy calls. She unloads armfuls of offerings for Kyle onto the picnic table. “Gifts!” she calls again like she is ringing a bell. Other activities are pushed aside, and feet move, gather up like a magnet slowly toward the patio. Norma relays the call, “Gifts,” and claps her hands, and the boys are bounding out of the pool and the sky is a quilted flash of towels and hoots.
Zoe turns obediently with Quentin and moves toward the patio, knowing it will bring her elbow to elbow with days of worry and years of wanting.