Healing Grace - June 2009

Chapter 1

Grace scrunched her eyes at the bright shaft of light that pierced her lids. She sat up, head reeling at the sight of the swirling, geometric tones of the ugliest aqua-and mudcolored drapes and bedspread she could ever remember seeing.

Her temples throbbed, and the curtains came in and out of focus. She blinked, hard.

She got out of the bed in the tiny room, reasonably sure it was morning. She searched her handbag for a remedy for her headache.

“More clues, that’s what we need,” she said out loud, just to test her hearing. “Where are we?”

The receipt for the motel room lay on the bedside table. Grace noticed with mild shock that the motel was in a generously sized community in northern Michigan—two states away from where she started. There was no clock in the room, and her watch had stopped. She pushed the television on with a shaky finger to find a local station that would indicate the time.

She peeked out the window at the parking lot then cautiously slipped out the door to retrieve the emergency bag she always kept in her car. Sometimes her patients lived far up in the hills in unsavory conditions, and an extra outfit was necessary when she had to stay overnight. Her work as a physician’s assistant demanded she always be prepared for anything.

Her former work.

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In the shower, she adjusted the nozzle so the spray wouldn’t hit her full in the face. Four days. She’d lost four days to her fear and compulsion to escape. Woodside was far away, and she would never go back to Tennessee. There wasn’t anything she could do for anyone there anymore. They didn’t need her.

The check-in slip indicated she had arrived here two days ago, two days of which she had absolutely no memory. She must have slept the entire time since.

Little sparks of flashback slowly came to her as she paced the four steps, forward and back, that was all the space available in the room. She ran a hand through her mink-brown hair as it dried in soft waves above her shoulders then stepped the mirror on the dresser. The little tear in her earlobe had healed already. She fingered it absentmindedly. If she wanted to continue to wear pierced earrings, she’d have to poke a new hole.

She sat back on the bed, thinking, remembering. The ceremony had been as dreadful as she’d imagined. Too soon after Sean’s. Anyone in her position would have lost her nerve and run, she reasoned. Stop it. No more funerals or thinking about death for a while.

The nightmare drive on the interstate. That trucker in Indiana trying to pick her up when she stopped for gas and food she wasn’t hungry for. She’d ended up leaving without eating anything.

Grace poked through the bag of clothes on the bed. She was pretty sure she had obeyed the driving rules, had gotten gas at the right moments, stopped at the right signs, taken the exit. How had she ended up here? Why here, in Michigan, near the lake?

“No, no longer home.” Grace fixed the thought firmly in her head. “I’ll find a new place.”

She looked around curiously, tallying what little she knew about the state—Great Lakes, fruit and automobiles. Not a lot to go on. No one she knew lived here. That was probably the best part. She didn’t have to be afraid if no one knew her,

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knew what she’d done. And not done. The parking lot was nearly empty and she crossed the twolane highway in the thin, sharp sunshine to a little mom-and pop diner overlooking Grand Traverse Bay.

Michigan, for whatever reason, was the place she was meant to be.

Grace took a breath and stopped upon entering the little house. She heard the realtor drive away with a little zip and crunch on the gravel driveway and felt a moment’s panic.

“Not buyer’s remorse at this stage of the game, my good woman,” she scolded and forced herself to take deep regular breaths.

She set down the sacks she’d toted in from her green Subaru on the dusty braided rug. The truth of real estate agent’s comment before handing over the key became painfully obvious.

“The place hasn’t been opened up in a number of months. The last occupant was ill. It will need a little TLC.”

Grace, after her brief, cursory tour before signing the papers, had asserted she could clean it up herself.

Maybe she’d been a little hasty.

She could smell it in the air—sickness and neglect. Grace shivered and turned a slow one-eighty, squinting through the twirling motes. She could see cobwebs, and didn’t want to pull the dangerously lopsided curtains open for the showers of dust she knew would follow. They looked fragile, and she was pretty sure they would need to be tossed out, anyway.

She noticed the pile of toys and the weight bench in the corner near the open stairway. Passing through the doorway on the far side of the long, narrow living room, she found the kitchen—the sad, neglected kitchen, definitely not the heart of this home.

“Who paints a kitchen puke green? And what’s up with the dancing hot peppers stencil? Honestly.”

She had painted her Tennessee kitchen a cheerful yellow and kept it spotless. Here, she wondered about bugs, and heard the rustling of mice in the cupboards. With a sigh, she began to pick up utensils from the kitchen table. Little bits of flotsam—napkin bits and nut shells of some kind—decorated the cracked and scorched ancient linoleum countertops.

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“God made trivets for a reason,” Grace said in exasperation.

She turned on the faucet, wiping away the attached spider webs. Warm orange gunk came out accompanied by gurgles and forceful interrupted spurts. The liquid spewed thickly around the stained sink. At least it didn’t smell bad. She cheered when it soon cleared up.

The real estate woman had checked the lights to make sure the electric company had “turned her on.” Grace tried to chuckle. It came out like a zebra snort, a zebra that smelled lion and was trying to warn the herd.

“You’ll be all right.” The plump, business-like agent had meant to reassure her. “It’s a ways out of town but not too far, and the neighbors are good people. In fact…” as she looked down at the drive and stirred some gravel with her brown patent pump “…ah, this used to belong to one of the brothers. The house is part of the original homestead. You’ll be okay.”

She pressed a card into Grace’s limp hand. “Now, here’s my card. You just call…” Conveniently forgetting Grace had not yet applied to the local cooperative for telephone service, “…if something isn’t right.”

Grace was tired of hearing about all the things she didn’t know so couldn’t bring herself to ask what the woman meant by “one of the brothers.” She figured she would find out in good time.

It was a risk, settling down and opening a new bank account— a whole new life—in East Bay, Michigan. Grace wasn’t exactly hiding, but neither did she care to let anyone she left behind know where to find her, now that…

She shook her head. No, there wasn’t anyone left who needed to know, who cared. She got out a pad of paper from her leather handbag and toured the little one-and-a-half-story cottage making notes of the supplies she would need. Cleaning first, then fixing. Definitely painting. And figuring out some furniture. Something to sleep on. Do I even have a hammer? Talk about starting from scratch.

By the third day and the fifth trip into town, Grace decided to treat herself. She had passed the cute little chaletstyle building that housed the local library often enough without stopping in. She could take the time today.

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“An afterthought—you know—a whad’ya call it, motherin-law’s cottage? Built on the edge of a big apple orchard,” Marie Richards, the town’s librarian, told Grace when she went to apply for a card. “The Marshalls, now, they did real well. Put this town on the map, you know. Keep us alive these days through the co-op.”

Most of the trees had been torn out and not replanted, she continued. Grace wondered how much of the original land was left in the family and what had happened to the orchards. She nodded and smiled as if she understood. She would have to plan on doing a little research.

Marie went on to tell her that the property edged East Bay, and was not actually within the village limits, but she would let Grace have a card, anyway.

The local resale shop proved to be a blessing for filling in her wardrobe, and no one there said a thing when she went back three days in a row, modeling the former day’s purchase. Maybe she could get a sofa and some chairs there, some dishes. Service for one. Grace smiled humorlessly. They didn’t even have to match.

Grace was so intent on cleaning she didn’t notice company coming until the pounding on the front door startled her. She let out a screech, nearly tumbling off the kitchen chair on which she had perched to brush cobwebs from the living room ceiling and walls with a broom. A peek through wavy glass at her visitors, revealed more than one—a delegation of two.

The man was very tall and terribly gaunt. He leaned on a crutch and stared at Grace with narrowed eyes, frowning as though he had not expected to see her. The black-haired little boy held a pillowcase with something lumpy inside in one hand and with the other held the man’s hand. She thought she recognized them from the other day at the bank when she went to sign the closing papers for the house.

She had been surprised to find no one besides the real estate agent and the bank’s vice president at the meeting. The former owners had not been able to stay and meet her, but

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everything was in order, she had been told. The man cleared his throat and spoke at last, breathlessly.

“I—we—wanted to see that you were all right,” he said, glancing down at the child then back at her face.

“Yes, thank you, I’m fine. Last occupants apparently left in a hurry,” Grace replied.

“Um, right. I guess the place is a mess. If you need some help with anything…” His voice fell away. Grace guessed the unspoken “you can call me” would be a meaningless phrase, and not just to her.

His sallow face turned even more pale. Perspiration trickled down his temple, even though the air was cool. His left arm and leg started to quiver. Sweat rolled past the startling white rictus of a scar on his temple, along the premature age line around his eyes and dripped down his jaw onto his faded navy T-shirt labeled “Sleeping Bear Dunes.”

They stared at each other on the porch until the silence became uncomfortable. The man’s eyes were the color of the Morning Glory pool at Yellowstone, Grace thought.

She looked down to the child. He stood behind the man’s legs, clutching the bag to his chin, and peered back at her, an anxious expression creasing his forehead.

“Eddy, give Mrs., ah, Mrs…”

“Runyon.”

“…Runyon the bread.”

The miniature grubby hand thrust the pillowcase in Grace’s direction.

“Thank you, Eddy. I’m Ted Marshall,” the man said, apparently

recalling they had not exchanged names. “And this is my son, Eddy.”

Eddy stuck his head sideways from around his father, eyed Grace solemnly then disappeared again.

Grace held the bundle. “Nice to meet you both. Grace Runyon.” She did not offer to shake hands. “Thank you for the gift.”

“I…can…work a bread…machine,” Ted Marshall gasped out. He wobbled and reached to steady himself against the

jamb, holding up a hand when Grace came through the door and reached for his arm. “I’m all right. Just give me a second.”

“Um, thank you, Mr. Marshall—and Eddy—for the

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bread. Would you like to come in and sit for a minute?” The case felt cozy in her hand, warm from the fresh-baked loaf and the child’s hand.

“Ted. Call me Ted. We have to get back.” He straightened and clenched the crutch. “I have an appointment, but thanks anyway. We’re just over there…” He indicated a hedge of tall scraggly bushes. “…on the other side.”

They turned and clumped across the gray-green warped porch boards. Eddy looked back through the open door.

Grace followed his gaze and realized she had the abandoned toys piled in the middle of the room. He turned and bent to grasp his father’s crutch to help him manipulate down the steps.

Grace watched, her mouth pursed. How old was he? Maybe four? Too young to have to help a parent just get around.

She looked up at the ceiling, free of webs but showing cracks in the white paint.

“I will not, Lord! No! You brought me here for a reason, but not that. Please, not yet. I just want to be free for awhile! Away from sickness, and everyone else’s hurt. Let me heal myself, first.”

She sank down on the empty floor and watched an ant carry a load that should have weighed it down. She slapped the T-shirt against the smooth floorboards and hunched up her knees. Staring at nothing, she let her forehead rest against her wrists.

Later, Grace ate her dinner, butter melting on the rewarmed loaf of bread, sitting at the now-immaculate chrome kitchen table. She thought about her visitors. Ted was obviously the former occupant; she wondered about the nature of his illness. He had received some terrible injury, evident by the scar on his head, but was it related to his need for a crutch?

Usually, a head injury wasn’t referred to as an “illness.” Well, her neighbors were none of her business. Not that sweet little boy with the poignant eyes. Certainly not his enigmatic father. And no way was she interested in knowing where Eddy’s mother was.

She cleaned up after her solitary meal and started scraping off layers of old paint. Underneath a bubbling cowboy-hatted

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jalapeno dancing alongside the back door, she leaned closer— the walls had once been sunny yellow.

to know her? How did she feel about and use her gifts?

their actions?

Grace’s life?

you think Grace agreed?

where you just wanted to run away? Why do you think

Grace took all the blame for her husband’s death?

she meet their needs? How or how not?

ways did they support her or not support her? Is your

community similar or different to East Bay?

with her? Was her reaction a surprise? Did she need to go

through that experience in order to reach out to Ted?

compare to other books you or your group has read?

✤ How was the Petoskey stone significant to the story?

story?

✤ How did the title serve the book’s theme?