ily jammed the spade into the soft earth, talking to Jeremiah as she worked. “I have no regrets,” she insisted as she lowered the handle of the spade and extracted a prickly weed. “There was no other choice.” She tossed the weed to the cobble path which bordered her bed of perennials and looked for others. There were none. Just one weed dared to destroy the harmony of her bed. “It was long ago, my friend. There is no reason to revisit it now.”

Jeremiah had listened intently to the modulations in Lily’s voice as she spoke. Through amber eyes he followed her every move. She was his only companion and, with rare exception, he was hers. Of late he had sensed unease and kept himself nearer to her side. Now, stepping on the warm, moist earth in order to close in on the hand that worked the soil, he allowed himself a soft mew and swept his tail twice through the air.

Lily rewarded Jeremiah with a gentle stroke before easing from her stooped position. She paused to admire the display bordering two sides of her deck. “This I do well,” she stated as a matter of fact.

She turned to retrieve the prickly weed. Already the edges of its leaves had begun to wilt. Had she left it to grow in the soft, nurtured earth, eventually it too would have flowered. She heaved her chest, picked up the thistle, and dropped it into a pail.

She found nothing left to do. The feeders were full of seed, fresh suet had been placed on wire skewers, peanuts were scattered about the yard. She would leave the last of the grapes for the fruit loving birds. She looked toward the brightly colored leaves almost willing them to fall so that she might fetch a rake and busy herself a while longer. But they would hang on for some time yet, as might she, and Jeremiah.

“Come on then,” she called to Jeremiah and headed into the house.

Jeremiah leaped to the bench of the upright piano. With silent stealth he stepped over the ivories and bounded to the scarfed surface of the piano, avoiding the framed pictures and curling into a ball in that spot reserved for him. He gave Lily a cursory glance, then closed his eyes.

Lily found her own comfy spot in a chair and closed her eyes for just a minute. On the table next to her chair was the letter. She read and reread the letter each evening before she retired. It’s presence in the house disturbed her but she couldn’t summon the will to destroy it or keep her hands from it. It had been years, twenty eight years, since anything she could put in her hand and hold had come by mail from a Grewe. But unlike the photographs, it made demands of her and frightened her.

There was nothing unusual in the manner in which Benjamin Grewe bounded into the house. Ben, at fifteen, had yet to make a quiet entrance. “Hey, Mom, I’m home,” he called out. “Where’re you at?”

Betty Grewe steeled herself in preparation for Ben’s greeting. She often thought she would have been better served with a quieter, less demonstrative child. “I’m here in the kitchen,” she answered.

But Ben had found her on his own and stood grinning at her for a moment before pulling her to himself and giving her a squeeze which caused her shoulder blades to touch each other another.

“Ben, please, must you be so rough.”

“Sorry, Mom. Did the mail come? Anything for me?”

“Now why would there be anything for you?”

“I’m expecting a letter. You’re sure you looked at everything?”

“It’s on the hall table. Look for yourself.”

But again Ben was ahead of his mother and already on his way. He returned a few minutes later, his brow twisted in mild concern. “How long would it take a letter to reach Freyburg? If I mailed it last week it would have been there awhile now, wouldn’t it?”

“It should have gotten there in a day or two. Whom did you write in Freyburg?” Betty studied her son’s mischievous grin. “Ben? You haven’t been writing to a girl?”

Ben tossed the apple he had grabbed from a wire basket into the air, snatched it, and took a deep bite. With the juice of the apple trickling down his chin, he winked at his mom. “Kinda.” he said.

It was later, after the two of them had eaten a supper and Ben had gone up to his room, that Betty Grewe connected an old memory to the town of Freyburg. “Surely not,” she whispered to herself. But the thought lingered and played with her mind. Eventually, there was nothing left to do but to find out for herself.

She nervously placed a hand on the study door. She steeled herself, then turned the knob and pushed the door open. She hadn’t been in the study in months. She knew the room for what it was - the place her late husband Lyle retreated to when he wanted to escape his disappointing wife and over-exuberant son. Never had she stood in its threshold and received a civil greeting from her husband. Always steely eyes stared up at her from across a mahogany desk challenging her intrusion. In a voice gruff and impatient, Lyle would say, “Yes, what is it?” Betty had always known nothing less then a message of death would ever justify an intrusion. After Lyle’s sudden and unexpected death, she had secretly dreamed of setting flame to the room. Instead, she had instructed the family attorney to place the urn with Lyle’s remains on the study’s mantle. This done, she had closed the door, interring the memory of Lyle along with his ashes.

But now the door stood open. The last of the day’s rays filtered through the sheered windows and cast a glow at her feet. Her eyes went first to the desk where she half expected to find Lyle’s looming form, then to the fireplace. The urn sat on the mantle with a light coating of dust. Silent. Nonjudgmental. Her body relaxed. “Hello, Lyle,” she calmly stated. She flipped the light switch and lit the room. Her hand held a set of keys given to her at Lyle’s death. One would fit a locked box. She only needed to find it.

Lily pulled the chain cord and lit the closet under her stairway. “Just look at this mess.”

Jeremiah leaped ahead of Lily to a pile of boxes, disturbing a web and sending a spider scurrying. He batted at the web, entangling his paw and face with the spider’s labor.

“Look at you!” Lily laughed at Jeremiah. Already he was wetting his paw in preparation of a quick bath. “You silly cat. Now out of my way, I have to get to the back of this mess.” Jeremiah mewed in protest, rubbing his side against Lily’s legs and beginning a figure eight around her feet. This being a common occurrence, Lily easily stepped free of her feline friend.

“There it is! You see, I’m not so old as I can’t remember where things are. It’s been years, but there it is, just as I knew it was.” Lily reached to the back of the space, moving a couple of small boxes out of the way, and retrieved an old scrapbook.

The two companions settled around an old, oak table where light was good and the album could be laid out flat. Lily turned the pages slowly, savoring the memories of her childhood. It wasn’t until she came to the snapshot of herself, straddling a bicycle, that she again spoke to Jeremiah.

“Look at this,” she said to her companion. “I wasn’t a bad looking girl, do you think? People always said it was rare to see a brown-eyed blonde.” She stared for a moment at her image, the young girl forever lost to her. “I bought that outfit with money earned at the five and dime. I gave most of my money to Father, to help with my keep, but I saved some for myself. Once in a great while I’d splurge on some heart’s desire. These shorts and that little top were showcased in the window of Willman’s Department Store on a mannequin with flaming red hair and eyes that reached deep inside of me and said to me, ‘Buy this, Lily’ and so I did.” Lily laughed. “My father said the outfit made me look like a floozy.” She fell silent for a moment, reflecting on the stern father she would only allow herself to remember with love. “I respected my father. I did. But I wore this outfit when the opportunity presented itself. And when I did, I felt empowered. I felt one with the red-haired mannequin who knew just who she was and where she was going.” Lily sighed. “I was riding this very bike and wearing this outfit when I meet Steven Grewe. So much for mannequins and what they know.”

Jeremiah stretched his long body and leaped from the table, leaving Lily alone with her thoughts. There were many. When she came upon the few pictures, she had of Steven, she lingered over them, shedding old tears as memories happy and memories painful intermingled. She was suddenly caught in the whirlwind of emotion she had avoided for forty-one years. In the end, her conclusion was the same as it had been all those years before. Steven Grewe had loved her, he only hadn’t loved her well.

“Mom!”

Betty Grewe sat at the mahogany desk now buried in paper. She looked up at her son who had been startled to find her there. “Come on in, Ben. It’s okay. I’ve reclaimed the room.”

Ben stepped into the den, avoiding strewn papers. His surprised look had changed to one of approval. “You’ve turned this room inside out. What are you up to?”

“First, sit down and tell me what you’ve been up to, young man.”

“Homework, mostly,” Ben said as he continued into the room stepping over books and papers and general litter. “I was about to find some food. Is there pizza in the freezer?”

“That’s not what I meant. You said earlier that you had sent a letter to Freyburg. Whom did you write in Freyburg, Ben? Was it Lily Patterson?”

Ben looked injured. “You know about Lily?”

“Did you write to Lily?”

“Yes, but . . . you’ve known?”

Betty shook her head. “I never was privy to the story. But over the years things are overheard. I caught a bit here, a bit there. I began to get an idea, but no, I never knew.” Betty studied the face of her son. It was open and loving as it always was. Trusting. “How did you find her Ben? Better yet, how did you even know about her? Grandpa Steven? Your father? I can’t believe either of them would have told you.”

Ben sank into his father’s leather chair, legs so long his knees fell almost even with his face, and opened his mouth to answer his mother. Betty Grewe raised her hand to silence him momentarily. She punched familiar numbers into the handset of the phone and smiled at Ben. “Yes,” she spoke as the connection was made, “we’d like a large pizza with everything but . . . no, with everything! Yes, for delivery. Twenty-six, fifty-two, Honey Hedge Lane.” Betty grinned in private satisfaction as she replaced the handset. Anchovies. Lyle had never allowed anchovies.

Ben grinned in disbelief. His Mom had changed. She had lost her fear. It was written all over her face, a face free of tension. He felt compelled to hug her but decided to spare her this one time. He could see they were on the same team and he experienced the same freeing release Betty had felt when she first entered the den. They were a family with just one missing piece. With a nod from his mother, he began his story.

“It started as a project for English. A family tree. I went back five generations on your side, six on Dad’s.”

Betty had a momentary stab of pain at Ben’s term of endearment. Lyle always insisted on being addressed as Father or Sir. The word “Dad” had no more been allowed than anchovies on pizza.

“I figured that would probably get me an A. Five and six generations is very good. But I needed some extra credit. I thought if I could find pictures, old pictures, of my ancestors, I’d bump up the grade. I searched old albums and boxes of pictures and scanned what I found into my computer. I didn’t find any usable pictures of Grandma Grewe. Not from when she was younger. So, I went to the library . . . ”

Betty interrupted her son. “The library? For pictures of your Grandmother?”

Excited to share his ingenuity, Ben sat on the edge of the chair. “You see, Mom, Grandma used to tell me about her role in High Society. Bout the only time you’d see a spark in her eye was when she was talking about that high brow stuff. So I thought, the society columns! Sure enough I found loads of pictures of Grandma doing her thing in the archives of the newspaper.”

Betty nodded, acknowledging her son’s cleverness, but still puzzled over the connection. “Ben, I’m not following you. I understand what you are saying but how would a picture of your Grandmother Grewe lead you to Lily Patterson?”

Ben blushed. “One of the pictures was especially good. Grandma was hosting a charity ball. I didn’t realize she had been pretty when she was young. But in this photo she was very pretty and very, very thin. The paper was dated November 25, 1958.” Ben waited for his mother to catch on, which, after prolonged suspense, she did.

“One month, almost to the day, before your father was born.”

“Exactly! That dress wasn’t hiding a pregnancy that was for sure. I didn’t catch it right away. I copied the clipping and brought it home. One day when I was working on the genealogy I got this funny feeling. I didn’t know what it was. I did, but I didn’t. You know? It was in my head, but not really. Then I started rummaging and found the scrap paper I had cut Grandma’s picture from. And there it was, November 25, 1958.

“At first I thought maybe Grandma and Grandpa had adopted Dad and I wasn’t really a Grewe after all. But then I remember Dad’s eyes, and my eyes. Ours eyes were just like Grandpa’s. Everyone always say so. Even you.”

Betty nodded. It was true. Steven, Lyle, and Ben had eyes that were nearly liquid in their depth of color, lush straight lashes, and a prominent brow.

“I always thought there must have been someone in Grandpa’s life before Grandma, someone fun. It wasn’t too hard to find out her name. There were only three baby boys born at Saint Anne’s that day. Only one’s birth weight matched Father’s.”

“Which you knew because . . . ?”

“I had his birth certificate. Which, by the way, showed Grandma as his mother. That must have cost somebody some money.”

And someone else much more than that, Betty thought. She also realized Ben’s boyish charm would not have netted this wealth of information, information available only in hospital records. She opted not to know what her son had been up to or whose chains had been tugged. She also realized Ben was cutting to the chase in order to hear her part of the equation. She wished the pizza had arrived. She would have liked to have filled his belly before she broke his heart.

“You’re a smart one, Ben. I have to assume that in writing Lily Patterson you have announced your existence as her grandson.”

Ben turned solemn. “Yeah. I was going to tell you, Mom. I was waiting for her to write me back. Why hasn’t she answered me? You’re not mad, are you?”

Betty drew a breath. She wanted to be gentle. “Ben, honey, I understand why you would think this woman would welcome you with open arms. But you don’t know the whole story. She doesn’t know you. She was never allowed to know your father. He was taken from her on New Year’s Day, 1959. Taken, Ben. . . do you understand? Don’t let your hopes get high.”

Betty gestured at the pile of paper covering the desk. “All of this deals with it. And, judging from what I’ve learned, it’s unlikely Lily Patterson will want anything do with us Grewe’s.”

With Jeremiah curled into a ball at her feet, Lily raised the lid o f the stationery box. The edges of the pale pink paper had discolored with time. The paper band which held the stationery in place within the box remained unbroken. Lily ran a light fingertip over the deeper pink embossing which printed out the name Lily Katherine Patterson. She recalled the day Steven had presented it to her. It had been gayly wrapped in glimmering foil with a pink satin ribbon bow beckoning to her. Forever after she would fear pretty packages.

The ability to conjure Steven’s imagine in her mind had long been lost, but now, without warning, her mind’s eye presented him to her. So clear was his image she almost wanted to lift the strands of dark hair that had fallen to his forehead. She was mesmerized by steel blue of his eyes. She couldn’t hear his voice but she could remember, would always remember, the words.

It’s so that you may write me. Let me know how you are doing, how things are going. Of course I don’t want it this way. You know that, Lily. I want to marry you. But you know that I can’t. I couldn’t live your life. I want to. Believe me, Lily, I do want to. But I could never punch a clock for a wage. If I marry Helen, as I am expected to do, I’ll never know a day of worry. I understand how cowardly that sounds, it is cowardly, but it’s honest. I’m trying to be honest, Lily. Why don’t you say something? Please don’t cry.

Lily wiped her eyes and pulled a tissue out of her sweater pocket and blew her nose. She cried not for the loss of Steven but for the years wasted while she came to the very gradual conclusion that Steven had been unworthy of the love she had wanted to give. She cried over the realization that her child, not unlike the weed in her flowerbed, might have flourished in the fatherless, impoverished, home she would have provided. A child whose life had been followed through annual reports and photographs forwarded by a faceless attorney. And each year she banked the accompanying check to pay the unyielding bills for her father’s long term care, until he was gone and she was alone. And after that, she burned the checks as a matter of ritual each New Years Day, until the twenty first year after they had taken Lyle from her at which time reports, photos, and checks ceased coming to her door.

Lily dried the final tear and broke the paper band, lifting out a single sheet of paper. She began:

Dearest Benjamin,

I have been in receipt of your letter for a week. My busy life has prevented me from responding sooner. Though your letter was heartfelt, I must disappoint you by saying that you are mistaken in your assumption. I have never married and therefore could not be the Grandmother you are looking for. I wish you the very best of luck in your endeavor. Yours truly, Lily Patterson.

Lily very carefully folded the letter in thirds and creased the folds sharply with the edge of her finger. As she placed the letter into an envelope, Jeremiah leaped to her lapped. He stretched his small mouth and cried to Lily with plaintive mews. “Oh sweet Jeremiah,” Lily soothed him, “what makes you cry? You have everything. Do you know this? You know nothing of pain and loss. You have never made a mistake which cannot be undone.”

Betty Grewe had a tight grip on the steering wheel, unable to make herself relax. She had intercepted the letter Lily had posted to Ben. Despite the knot in the pit of her stomach which told her she was doing wrong, she held the envelope over steam and read the words meant for her son. Unable to break his heart with Lily’s cold reply, Betty had told Ben there had been a call in leu of a letter. An invitation to visit.

And so they were on their way. Ben sat unknowing next to her, anxious to met his grandmother, totally unprepared should Lily reject him once more. Betty was playing Russian Roulette with the gods of fate and that knowledge was defeating her.

Her mind went over the conversation she’d had with Ben concerning the Grewe family and Lily Patterson. She hadn’t completely dishonored her late husband’s family. She had softened their story as she related it to Ben. But he had a right to some of it. He had a right to know that his Grandmother Lily had not freely delivered her newborn son to the Grewe family. She helped him to understand that in giving up her son, Lily saved her father from a sure and sudden death. She explained how wealth is power which can be used for either good or evil, power that can twist and shape lives into what was never intended. He needed to understand that she expected better from him. She had taken the Grewe name for herself and she would be damned if she couldn’t make one thing good come from that. Ben was that good thing, that good heart. She prayed that Lily was one as well.

“Are we lost, Mom?”

Ben’s voice had broken through Betty’s litany of thoughts. Her heart skipped a beat.

“Mom?”

“Lost? Why would you say that?”

“You look worried.”

“Sorry. I guess my mind has been a little busy.”

“Want me to drive?”

Betty smiled. What was there to fear, really? How could Lily refuse to meet this child?

“One more year, then you can drive.”

“No, Mom, six months. They changed the law. I can drive at fifteen and a half.”

It’s a conspiracy then, Betty thought. The other mothers had more time. Just ahead was a sign.

Ben also saw the sign. “Nine miles. I hope Grandma Lily has some food in the house. I’m hungry.”

Ben’s simple statement, his belief that Lily Patterson would be happy to feed them, caused a sudden panic within Betty. Her fantasy of Lily rushing to greet the child was just that. A foolish fantasy. I can’t do this, not like this, she thought. She turned into a filling station at the edge of town. Telling Ben she needed to cancel a forgotten appointment; she dialed Lily Patterson’s home from a pay booth. She briefly introduced herself. There was no response from Lily. Shaken, Betty advised Lily that she was on her way over with Ben. The line went dead in her hand.

As Ben’s finger pushed Lily’s doorbell and chimes rang through her home, Lily stood frozen near the entryway. Jeremiah padded ahead of her holding sentry at the door. He rubbed his jaw against the doorframe and encouraged Lily with plaintive mews, but Lily did not move. In refuge, she turned to her image in the entryway mirror. She arranged a fallen strand of hair and peered into the eyes that stared back at her through an aging and saddened face. Lyle was gone but his son, her grandson, lived. Again the chimes rang. Again the knowing cat pleaded to its mistress. A vision of a redheaded mannequin in jaunty shorts and a swirly top flashed in the mirror of Lily’s mind and whispered, “Open your heart, Lily”.