Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

I remembered how crazy he and his brother had been about Laura when they were children, and what short shrift she had given them. They had adored Glynn, too. The stupid tears were back, scalding and inexorable.

“They’re all right. They’re fine. I’m at a Red Cross station on the high school football field at a place called Boulder Creek, not far from the top of the ridge where Big Basin starts. Where the lodge…was. Tell him that; the National Guard will find us. They found us out in the middle of the woods this morning.”

I stopped, gulping and gasping, and he said, “Don’t cry, Met. It’s all over now. I promise he’ll be there in a little while. God, he’s been so upset; I’ve never seen him like that—”

Suddenly I was angry.

“Well, when you talk to him, you tell him something for me,” I said. “You tell him that Mommee is going to a nursing home and no two ways about it, and that—”

“Met, he took Mommee and clapped her in the Alzheimer’s unit at Sable not thirty minutes after that earthquake hit—”

“Well, then you tell him that black woman better be out of there and on the road to Morocco or wherever before I leave California airspace, or—”

“What black woman? You mean Ina? There’s no black woman here but Ina, and she’s been crying for a day and a half, she’s so worried about you—”

“Ina’s back?”

“Back? Where’s she been?”

I paused for a long moment, getting my breath.

“Then you tell him I’m bringing a pregnant woman,” I continued fiercely, “and a big dog, a great big dog, and I don’t want to hear one word—”

“Met, you could bring a T Rex home with you and Dad wouldn’t care. What’s the matter with you? Are you really all right?”

“I don’t know,” I wailed, and hung up, and went back to my cot and cried for at least an hour. After tentative efforts to pat me and soothe me and cosset me, Laura went for the nurse and sought help, and the nurse said just to let me cry.

“Post-traumatic shock syndrome,” she said. “You’ll all have it sooner or later. Let her get it out. The sooner she does, the better.”

So Laura let me cry, and I slid from the tears into a hot, restless, flailing sleep in which things roared and crashed and battered at me, and Curtis growled endlessly. I knew I was dreaming, but I could not wake, and when Laura finally shook me, and I woke to the cool gray of twilight, I still did not know where I was.

“I think he’s here,” Laura said, smiling. Tears ran down her face. “I keep hearing somebody yelling ‘Fowler, Goddamn it, Fowler’ and it sounds like Pom when he’s pissed. Go on out there. I’ll wait a little while before I wake Glynn.”

I got up stiffly and walked out of the tent, still dragging my army blanket, blinking in the last of the sunlight. My arm throbbed hideously, and my mouth was dry, and dried sweat stuck my unchic, flopping new clothes to my body. I stared, trying to focus. I saw him then. He stopped and looked at me from midway across the football field. He was as disheveled as I had ever seen him even for Pom; his black hair hung in his eyes, and he had a rime of black stubble on his jaw that was plain even at that distance. He lifted his head a little, and I saw the startling blue flash of his eyes. I had once described them to Crisscross, I remembered, as the blue of the light on the tops of police cars. He had been waving his arms at someone, but when he saw me he dropped them to his side and stood, simply staring at me.

I did not know him. I literally did not know this man. He was a collection of parts, each somehow significant, yet that added up to nothing, just as T.C. had seemed to me on the path down to the lodge that morning, a million years ago now—a heartbeat ago. Who was this man who had come for me across a continent, who stood looking at me now as if he, too, saw a stranger? What was expected of me; what came next?

T.C., who is that? I said in my head. I felt him close all of a sudden, so close that he might have stood just behind me. I almost leaned back so that his body could take my weight.

That’s Pom. That’s what comes next. Go on, Merritt. It’s what should happen now .

But I don’t know him…

Yeah, you do. Look, Merritt. Just look .

Pom stood still. He moved one of his hands as if to stretch it toward me, and then dropped it. I saw his mouth make my name: Merritt. But I heard no sound. Neither of us moved.

Pom began to cry. His face crumpled and tears ran down from his blue eyes and left clean tracks on his filthy face, and he did not move, just stood there with his arms hanging at his sides, crying. Something inside me gave a great, swooping slide, as if the earth had moved again, and then I knew him. Pom. Of course. Pom.

“Pom…” I said, in a small voice with no breath behind it.

Go ! T.C. said from his mountaintop. Go !

I dropped the blanket and began to run.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks are due, as always, to Ginger Barber and Larry Ashmead, agent and editor respectively, who are truly a dream team for any author. Martha Gray, who translated and processed, is invaluable and knows it—or should. Two writers to whom I owe much are John McPhee and Kenneth Brown, whose books informed and enchanted me. And Dr. Peter Ward of the U.S. Geological survey in Menlo Park was generous beyond expectation with his time and expertise. The facts are his, the errors mine. And thanks to Heyward, who loved Fault Lines unconditionally down to the last word—because someone’s got to.

About the Author

ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS’s bestselling novels include Nora, Nora; Low Country; Up Island; Fault Lines; Downtown; Hill Towns; Colony; Outer Banks; King’s Oak; Peachtree Road; Homeplace; Fox’s Earth; The House Next Door; and Heartbreak Hotel . She is also the author of a work of nonfiction, John Chancellor Makes Me Cry . She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

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C RITICAL A CCLAIM FOR A NNE R IVERS S IDDONS AND

FAULT LINES

“In the front ranks of Southern writers.”

Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Anne Rivers Siddons is one of the giants in contemporary Southern fiction, a storyteller who turns out bestseller after bestseller.…Her themes are universal, and the messages she delivers and the stories she tells are universal. Everyone can read and enjoy this story and learn from it.”

Chattanooga Times

“As [Siddons] has done in the past, [she] creates here a cast of strong, engaging women, emblematic of the contemporary South, and her writing—lush with compelling details—carries you along effortlessly. In short, Fault Lines is another Siddons success.”

Southern Living

“A wonderful novel…stunning…[Siddons] seems to know the Deep South like the back of her hand.…[She] plunges deep into the cold recesses of her characters’ psyches, with words as rich and warm as any in her previous novels.”

The State (Columbia, SC)

Books by

Anne Rivers Siddons

NORA, NORA

LOW COUNTRY

UP ISLAND

FAULT LINES

DOWNTOWN

HILL TOWNS

COLONY

OUTER BANKS

KING’S OAK

PEACHTREE ROAD

HOMEPLACE

FOX’S EARTH

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

HEARTBREAK HOTEL