“Not much. How about you?”
She raised her shoulders in a small shrug. “Only that his name was Albert Gaither, that he was from a coal-mining town in West Virginia, that he was sent to Vietnam within weeks of his marriage to my mother, and that he stepped on a land mine and died months before I was born.”
“I didn’t even know where he came from,” Junior told her regretfully.
“When I got old enough, I thought about going to West Virginia and looking up his family, but I decided against it. They never made any attempt to contact me, so I felt it best to leave it alone. His remains were shipped to them and interred there. I’m not even certain if my mother attended his funeral.”
“She didn’t. She wanted to, but Mrs. Graham refused to give her the money to make the trip. Dad offered to pay her way, but Mrs. Graham wouldn’t hear of that, either.”
“She let Angus pay for Mother’s funeral.”
“I guess she thought that was different, somehow.”
“Al Gaither wasn’t any more to blame for the hasty marriage than Mother.”
“Maybe he was,” Junior argued. “A soldier going off to war, that kind of thing. Celina was a pretty girl out to prove her allure.”
“Because Reede wouldn’t sleep with her.”
“He told you about that, huh?”
Alex nodded.
“Yeah, well, some of the girls he did sleep with flaunted it in Celina’s face. She was out to prove she was woman enough to snare a man. Gaither no doubt took advantage of that.
“To your grandma, his name was a dirty word. Because of him, your mother missed her senior year of high school. That didn’t go down too well with your grandma, either. No, she had a real ax to grind with Mr. Gaither.”
“I wish she had at least saved a picture of him. She had thousands of pictures of Celina, but not a single one of my father.”
“To Mrs. Graham, he probably represented evil, you know, the thing that changed Celina’s life forever. And for the worse.”
“Yes,” she said, thinking that Junior’s words could apply to how her grandmother felt about her, too. “I don’t even have a face to associate with the name. Nothing.”
“Jesus, Alex, that must be rough.”
“Sometimes, I think I just sprang up out of the ground.” In an effort to lighten the mood, she said, “Maybe I was the first Cabbage Patch Kid.”
“No,” Junior said, reaching for her hand again, “you had a mother, and she was beautiful.”
“Was she?”
“Ask anybody.”
“Was she beautiful inside as well as out?”
His brows drew together slightly. “As much as anyone is. She was human. She had faults as well as virtues.”
“Did she love me, Junior?”
“Love you? Hell, yes. She thought you were the most terrific baby ever conceived.”
Basking in the glow of his words, Alex left the country club with him. As he held open the passenger door of his Jag, he stepped close to her and laid his hand along her cheek. “Do you have to go back to that stuffy old courthouse this afternoon?”
“I’m afraid so. I have work to do.”
“It’s a gorgeous day.”
She pointed at the sky. “You liar. It looks like it’s about to rain—or snow.”