The young man took the phone over again. “Holy hell! What is up with you people?”
In the background David was saying, “Come here. Now. Today. I want to see you now.”
The young man said, “It looks like he wants you to come here. If you do, should I have a defibrillator on standby?”
“We may need one for both of them,” Luke said, then took the phone off speaker and quickly told the story of Miss Edi being pregnant and delivering the baby, but no one thought she’d live, so a man named Scovill adopted the baby.
“You mean Uncle Dave had a kid?”
“A daughter named Claire.”
“Claire Clare,” the young man said, amused.
“Yeah,” Luke said, looking at Joce, who was crying hard. “Claire Clare. Could we visit? Would that be all right?”
“What I’m wondering is why the hell you’re still on the telephone. Can you take a red-eye??
??
“I don’t know,” Luke said, looking at Joce. “Can we be there tomorrow?”
She nodded.
“Listen, uh…” He didn’t know the man’s name.
“Eddie,” the man said, then paused. “My name is Edward Harcourt Clare. I was the last of the litter, so they let Uncle Dave name me. If I’d been a girl I’d have been named Edilean.”
Luke looked at Jocelyn. “His name is Edward Harcourt Clare.”
Joce started laughing and crying at the same time.
“Okay,” Luke said, “let me check flights, and I’ll call you back in an hour and tell you when we’ll be there.”
“When you get here, we’ll never get the lot of them to stop crying.” Pausing, he lowered his voice. “I just want to say that this is great of you. Uncle Dave has been like a second father to all of us kids. I can’t begin to tell you all that he’s done in our little town. He’s not well and he doesn’t have long, but to get to see his own granddaughter…Well, thanks. All I can say is thanks a lot.”
27
IN THE END, after much discussion, David Clare decided that he’d rather go to Edilean than for them to come to him. “I don’t have much time,” he said, “and I want to at last see her home.” He told how he’d tried to force himself to go many times before, even once buying plane tickets, but he couldn’t do it. He knew he’d be reminded of her too strongly and the pain would be more than he could bear.
Luke and Jocelyn spent a frantic two days getting the house ready. The women of Edilean Baptist Church lent beds, linen, and even furniture, and Luke’s mother made all the complicated arrangements for transportation. She’d worked for her father off and on for most of her life, so she knew about medical transport. David Clare was driven from the airport in Richmond to Edilean in an ambulance, and he’d made the two EMTs in the back with him laugh through the entire journey.
“Your granddaughter is just like you,” Luke told him. “She makes the world’s worst jokes at every possible opportunity.”
“Go away,” Dr. Dave said, “or you’ll make them start crying again.”
The first meeting between Joce and her grandfather had been so fraught with emotion that neither could say a word. They’d just stared at each other, holding hands as he was lowered from the emergency vehicle and taken into Edilean Manor.
The downstairs parlor, where Joce had done all her research, had been made into a bedroom for Sergeant Clare. After he’d rested for twenty-four hours, he could walk about on two canes—just as Edi did at the end. And the first place he wanted to see was where she was resting.
“But before we go,” he said, “is there room beside her for me?”
“Yes,” Jocelyn said, holding his old hand on her arm.
Everyone—meaning most of the town—marveled at how much alike Joce and David looked. Their square chins with a dimple, their pale skin, their dark blue eyes. They were even built alike.
“More like me than Edi,” David said, looking with love at his granddaughter. “Too bad you didn’t get her legs.”
“That’s all right,” Luke said. “Anyway, I like the parts that stick out better.”