One More Knight

watching dust motes dance in the afternoon’s last sunlight where it slanted through the trees. The ache in her throat felt like a betrayal.

Oh, God, I hate this place.

She opened the car door and stepped out, then closed it carefully behind her. Had she ever done anything more difficult?

Oh, yes, once. Twenty years ago.

But this was only one step…still so many more to go.

Her heart pounded and her breath came in soft, quick snatches as she mounted the steps between two concrete urns filled with bright red impatiens and yellow day lilies. She crossed the wood plank porch where white wicker armchairs and rockers sat empty, reminiscent of long, hot summer evenings, tall glasses of cold, sweet tea, and lightnin’ bugs blinking on and off in the twilight.

On the doormat she paused, looked down, and from a habit she’d thought long forgotten, carefully wiped her feet. She wiped her hands on the sides of her expensive gray gabardine slacks, wrinkled and creased now from the flight and the long drive from Atlanta. Then she took a deep breath, held it and firmly pressed the doorbell. She could hear the old-fashioned chimes go echoing through the great, high-ceilinged rooms. She bowed her head and waited, counting her own heartbeats.

The door opened without warning, thrown wide to frame the figure of the woman who stood there. She was as straight and regal as in Charly’s memory, though she seemed perhaps a little smaller. Her close-cropped hair, once pepper black with only the lightest sprinkle of salt, was snowy white now, but her mahogany skin was still without a wrinkle, stretched taut over the bones of a face that might have graced the walls of an Egyptian pharaoh’s tomb.

Her deep-set eyes seemed equally ancient in that eternally young face, missing nothing. They skewered Charly where she stood, narrowed, then went wide with shock. She lifted her hands, sucked in air and whispered, “Oh, my sweet Jesus…”

It was in no way a blasphemy, but a heartfelt prayer.

Chapter 2

June 10, 1977

Dear Diary,

This is just so unfair! The judge found out about my platform shoes, and did he throw a fit! He says no daughter of his is going to show her face in something so trashy, and besides, I’d probably fall off of them and break an ankle, which is the most ridiculous thing I ever heard of. They’re not trashy. Everybody’s wearing them but me. Colin even says they’re bitchin’, and he’s got the best taste of anybody I know. The judge says they’re just a fad, and a waste of money, but I bought them with my birthday money, so I don’t see how it’s any of his business!

Thought for the Day: It’s the absolute pits, having a judge for a father.

Charly lifted her hands, tried a smile that didn’t work and finally just said, “Hi.”

“Sweet Jesus…sweet Jesus…” Tears had begun to trickle down the woman’s cheeks.

In about another second they were going to be flooding down Charly’s, too. Desperate not to let that happen, she laughed instead, and said in a shaking voice, “Yes, it’s me, Aunt Dobie. It’s me, Charlene. How are you?”

One hand rose slowly to touch Charly’s cheek. “Charlene Elizabeth… is that you?”

Then the same hand hauled off and smacked her hard on the arm. “That is you! Wicked, wicked girl! Never called, nor wrote…I thought you was dead.”

Trembly with relief, Charly rubbed her arm and said, “Ow!”

Aunt Dobie whacked her again for good measure. “I thought you was dead, and here you stand. Come here and let me look at you. Oh, praise the Lord, praise Jesus. My baby’s come home. My baby’s come home.”

And with that, Charly found herself enveloped in loving arms, familiar arms, and in old, familiar scents-Ivory soap and starched cotton clothes, oil of wintergreen and strong coffee laced with a splash, just a splash, of bourbon whiskey-and in the time and place those scents evoked. Just like that, she was a child again, seeking solace and protection in those same strong arms, while inside, her heart quaked with dread.

Because, of course, she wasn’t a child, and had not been in more than twenty years. And not even Dobrina Ralston, the only mother Charly had ever known, was going to make what she’d come to do easier.

“Aunt Dobie,” she began, “is he…is my…?” But her voice was betraying her. She drew herself up straight and tall to give it support, and with a good strong breath behind it, tried again. “Is he here?”

“He is. Yes, he is,” Dobrina crooned, wiping her face with the big wraparound apron she’d worn for all the years Charly could remember. “You just come in here, child. Come in.”

Dobrina backed up into the house, keeping a good firm grip on the arm she was holding as if she thought Charly might be about to bolt and disappear on her for another twenty years. Once she had the door shut solid behind them, she plunged her hand into an apron pocket and pulled out a tissue. She swiped it hastily across her cheeks and nose and then waved it at Charly.

“Stay here, child, you hear me? Stay right here. Don’t you move a muscle, now. I’ll go fetch the judge.” And off she went toward the back of the house, her flat summer shoes slap-slapping down the long hallway. From far away Charly could still hear her muttering “Praise the Lord!” and “Thank you, Jesus!”

In the distance a door closed and the silence settled around her, and suddenly Charly was overwhelmed by feelings, most of which she didn’t understand. How, she wondered, could it all seem so familiar, and yet so strange? Everything was exactly as she remembered, including the smells-a mix of lemon furniture polish and old wood and dusty draperies and pipe tobacco. She felt as if she’d been caught up in a time warp and hurled back into her own childhood. Except that, since she was no longer a child, she didn’t belong in this time, in this place. She was a stranger here. And standing in the house she’d grown up in, she knew a terrible sense of alienation, and loss.

Panic seized her. Lord, she couldn’t face him like this! Not in so vulnerable a state, standing here in the entry hall like a charity case-like somebody come collecting for the heart fund or the March of Dimes!

On the verge of flight, she was suddenly aware of warmth on her cheek, like a kind and comforting touch. Turning, she saw through the open arched doorway on her left that the formal living room-the “front room,” Aunt Dobie had always called it, though the judge preferred “the parlor”-was awash with the last golden light from the setting sun. It was that light, slanting into the hallway, that had reached out to Charly where she stood. Like an omen, perhaps? If she believed in such things.

But maybe, she thought, her panicked heartbeat slowing and her breathing becoming calmer, that would be better. She could confront him there, with her back to the windows so her face would be in shadow, his in the light. Basic interviewer’s strategy. That way he’d be the one at a disadvantage.

She walked through the archway and instantly felt a sense of safety, inspired, perhaps, by the almost awesome gentility of the room. This was too lovely and formal a setting for angry words and recriminations. No memories here of emotional scenes and bitter confrontations.

She turned slowly, taking in the elegance of the high ceilings and wood moldings, the warmth of the beautiful old mantelpiece and hardwood floors, the graciousness of stunning antiques perfectly set against a backdrop of soft spring colors, cream and green and mauve. Here, too, it seemed that nothing had changed, except that maybe now she had a better appreciation for the beauty of it.

But then the arrangement of photographs on the mantelpiece caught her eye. At last here was something that was different. She remembered the candles in their silver candlesticks, and the clock that used to mark the quarter hours with advancing phrases of the Westminster chimes, with the complete chime on each hour following by the tolling. And fresh flowers in the cut crystal vase, picked by Aunt Dobie from whatever the yard and the season had to offer. But in Charly’s memory there had been only one photograph there, the formal portrait, framed in silver and