Catching Moondrops (25 page)

She let go of my hand, sat back in her chair, and changed the subject so fast I got whiplash. “Now, let me ask you one more thing. Do you want to see Luke?”

“I want to see him so bad it hurts, but he won't want to see me.”

“Funny, then, that he's pacin' out in the front lawn.”

I hopped up and peered out the window, and there he was, wearing a circle in the brown grass.

“But, Momma—”

“Jessie, love ain't so weak as you seem to think it is. He came over lookin' for you last night and asked if I'd call him the minute you woke up. So I did as soon as I heard your floorboards creak.”

I could have jumped out the window for all I felt inside. I ran past Momma, out the door, and into his arms.

I wanted to stay there forever.

Chapter 17

I watched Gemma in the mirror as she pinned the last piece of hair in place, and then I helped her fasten the veil on just so. Gemma's dress was simple, one that could be cut down later and worn to church, but that veil was a work of art. Momma had made it with more love and care than anyone else could have, sewing each bead on perfectly. I lifted the gauzy material over her head and let it flutter down across her face, and the second I did, all those pent-up tears started to flood my eyes. I looked away to keep her from seeing, but it was useless trying to hide anything from her.

She flipped the veil from her face and stood quickly, pulling me to her.

“Don't,” I said. “I'll cry on your dress.”

“Ain't no tears that ever stained anything.” She pulled me in so tight, I could barely breathe. “Besides, I got my own tears on here already.”

We were a tangle of brown and white, she and I, bonded together by love if not by blood, and the agony of losing her spilled out of the little box in my mind I'd put it in and dripped down over my heart.

As if she could read my mind, Gemma whispered, “I ain't never really leavin' you, Jessilyn. You know that.”

I nodded, but that was all I could do.

“I'll be just down the road, and anytime you need me—and I mean anytime—you just come on over, you hear? Or you call. Tal's havin' a phone put in at the new house. After all, a doctor's got to have some way of hearin' from people.”

I smiled over her shoulder. “You're ramblin'.”

“So what if I am.” She pulled away and swiped at the tears on her cheeks. “A girl's allowed to do whatever she wants on her weddin' day, ain't she?”

Momma came in and characteristically burst into tears the second she saw us standing there together, Gemma all in white, both of us tear-streaked.

“Don't you start too!” Gemma planted her hands on her hips. “I already done told her it ain't like I'm leavin' town or nothin'.”

“It ain't only that.” Momma walked over and grabbed Gemma's hands, holding them out so she could get a good look at her. “Just look at my girl. All grown-up and gettin' married. I never thought I'd see the day.”

“Why?” I gave Gemma a playful nudge. “You think she wouldn't never find someone that'd have her?”

“Jessilyn, I didn't mean any such thing.”

“Oh, she's only teasin',” Gemma said. “You ought to know her well enough for that.” She left us and went digging around in the chest of drawers she and I had shared up to this day. Then she turned and handed us both small packages. “These are for you.”

Momma shook her head. “It's the bride supposed to get gifts on her weddin' day, not the momma.”

“But I wouldn't have had no momma if it weren't for you.”

Gemma's words cut through the heavy atmosphere like a knife, and I thought my poor momma would burst out in a daylong cry any second. But she bolstered herself up stronger than I'd thought her capable, took a deep breath, and untied the bow. Inside was the prettiest little prayer book anybody'd ever seen. Each page was pressed with dried flowers and had a psalm written in Gemma's best handwriting. Momma turned the pages so carefully, you would have thought she was holding a baby in her palm, and by the time she got to the last page, all that valiant work she'd put in to keep from crying just a minute earlier went to waste.

Daddy heard her sob from the hallway and came into the room with a roll of his eyes. “Here she goes!” He put his arm around her like she was a mental patient. “Come on, Sadie, honey. Let's go get you some ice water.”

It didn't help much that he'd taken her away, though. Gemma and I were still left there together in a room that was permeated with sadness on a day that was supposed to be nothing but joyful. I fingered the bow on my package, and Gemma gave me a nudge.

“May as well get it over with,” she said with a sniff. “Let's get the cryin' all out before your daddy gives me away.”

“Don't say it like that.”

“That's the way they always say it.”

“We ain't never givin' you away, Gemma Teague.”

She crossed her arms and shook her head at me. “Then what exactly should we call it?”

“I don't know.” My knees were suddenly too shaky to hold me straight, and I slid down to my bed in a heap, sure to put a wrinkle in the dress Momma had finished making me only last night. “I mean, it ain't like we're givin' you up at all. It's more like we're loanin' you out.”

She stared at me for a second and then tipped her head back to laugh at me. “Okay, Jessie, I'll let the preacher know he's to ask, ‘Who loans this woman to be his wife?'” She must have found herself pretty funny then because she slid down next to me and laughed like she'd never be able to stop, and I couldn't help but join in. When Daddy came in a minute later, he stood at the doorway looking at us with wide eyes.

“You girls done lost your minds?”

I stopped giggling long enough to say, “Maybe.”

There's no way of keeping a straight face when you're around laughter like we were having just then, and Daddy was no exception to that rule. A smile raised one side of his mouth, making his dimple stand out. “Well, the preacher's here and guests are all spillin' in, so you best try and get yourselves ready so's you don't laugh yourselves down that aisle.”

“Yes'r.”

I lay back on the bed with the sort of long sigh that follows a good laugh and reached out to take Gemma's hand in my own, holding it up in the air. “Brown and white. We're two of the oddest sisters a body's ever seen.” I brought her hand down and rested it on my cheek. “Two of the best kind there ever was.”

She stared at me for a second with all kinds of emotions running through her eyes in ways that said everything words couldn't; then she stood and hauled me to my feet. “Just look at us. We're a mess. Your momma's gonna have a fit.”

“Oh, we're fine.” I gave the back of her dress a few swats with my hand to beat out the wrinkles and then straightened her veil. “You make a beautiful bride, Miss Gemma Teague.”

Gemma nodded at the bed, where her gift to me lay still untouched. “You didn't open yours.”

Momma stuck her head in, recovered from her crying jag. “Gemma, honey, I think we're about ready for you.”

“I'll open it later, okay?”

She nodded, then took one long look around our bedroom. “I spent a lot of good years here, Jessilyn.”

I swallowed hard, hoping those tears would stop tickling the back of my throat. “I know.”

“I sure have been blessed.”

“What God in all the world wouldn't bless someone like you, Gemma? There ain't nothin' about you ain't worth blessin'. Tal Pritchett's a lucky man.”

She waved me off with one hand. “Ain't nobody on this earth that's perfect. Sure enough, you ain't always felt like blessin' me. Maybe more like blessin' me out!”

“Well . . . you do snore like a band saw. I reckon maybe I should warn Tal about that.”

Gemma glared at me and tossed my pillow into my face.

“Momma's gonna get at you for messin' up my hair.”

“Oh no, she ain't. It's my weddin' day, after all.” She hooked her arm through mine and looked at our reflection in the mirror.

There had been a time not so long ago when our reflection would have shown two girls in pigtails and braids. I remembered the day we'd first moved her into my room, that day I'd given up my bed to her and slept next to hers, waking up every hour to check on my best friend, who had just lost her momma and daddy. And now here we were, grown women, facing a whole new life ahead. I wondered where it would take us.

She must have been thinking the same thing because she shook her head with a sigh. “Jessilyn, where'd the time go?”

I had nothing to say in response. I only turned to smile at her and squeezed her arm tight. “Guess we'd better get goin'.” After all, I figured if we didn't, we'd be a soggy mess before Gemma Teague ever had the chance to become Gemma Pritchett.

The second we walked outside and Tal caught sight of Gemma, his eyes lit up so bright, it was like his very soul was shining out through them, and I was glad to see it.

Gemma deserved to be loved that way.

As I stood in the front yard at Gemma's side, listening to her preacher talk about marriage and how God sees the vows two people make to each other, I looked around at those gathered at our home to witness the occasion.

Most of the people that stood on the front lawn of this white folks' home were much darker than those who lived here. Outside of us Lassiters, the only white people were Luke, Miss Cleta, Buddy and Dolly, Mrs. Tinker and her children, Mr. Poppleberry from the pharmacy, and Mr. Hanley, the grocer, with his wife.

Fact was, we hadn't made too many friends in this town by taking Gemma in. Oh, some folks didn't mind so much as others, but then it takes a strong constitution to actually admit it to other white folks, so most of them never did. Plenty of the colored folk kept away too. It was no secret we had our detractors on both sides of the rainbow, but just now I didn't care so much. We had those nearest and dearest on hand to watch Gemma wed, and that was all we'd ever needed.

Luke was standing up for Tal. I glanced at him only to find him staring at me. He smiled in such a way as to say,
Don't worry, Jessilyn. It'll all come out right.

I wasn't so sure I agreed, but I smiled back at him anyway. I couldn't help but think that maybe someday soon I'd be standing up in front of a preacher with him again. There was no restraining a smile from my face with a thought like that lighting up my heart.

By the time Gemma had been renamed Gemma Pritchett and every stomach had been filled up by Momma's food and Miss Cleta's wedding cake, I was worn to a frazzle. And the way those women at the wedding rushed the newlyweds off, you'd have thought they had only two days to be married. I barely had more than two seconds to tell Gemma good-bye, and to make matters worse, it felt like I was saying good-bye forever, even though she was just going down the road a few miles.

The women started cleaning up outside the second the bride and groom drove off. Whenever women clean together, they chatter, and I was in no mood for woman talk after I watched my best friend ride away from our home. I went inside to the kitchen and drowned my sorrows in a sink full of dirty dishes.

Luke came in midway through and put his hand on the small of my back. “You okay?”

“I'm fine,” I lied. “It's only part of life, after all. She couldn't stay here forever.”

His hand dropped from my back. “No. Ain't many people that can stay in the same place forever.”

His words hung in the air during the silence that followed. Our relationship had been full of silent moments, but they'd always been comfortable ones, nothing like what we were having now. He might have forgiven me for my outburst the day of Noah's funeral, but I still carried the bitterness that had erected a barrier between us, and things just hadn't been the same since.

He stood behind me for a few somber moments. All I could hear was his breathing. Then he ran his hand down the side of my arm in a way that left a chill behind. “If you're sure you're okay, I'll be goin', Jessie. I got mounds of work to do.”

“I'll be fine.”

He kissed my hair and then left me alone with an ache in the pit of my stomach. I washed every spoon and fork that had fed the mouths of all those people who had celebrated Gemma's marriage without having any idea the hole her going away would leave behind, and I did it all with a lump in my throat the size of a watermelon. After rinsing, I had put each dish on the kitchen table to air-dry, and by the time I placed the last serving bowl there, I was a weary mess of self-pity. The voices outside the window had subsided to only a few, and I could hear my momma giving Mrs. Tinker her recipe for bean salad.

But I didn't care a bit about bean salad. I only wanted to be alone. I slid my apron off and headed on upstairs to my room. I unbuttoned my dress and let it slide to the floor, standing there in my slip while I pulled the pins from my hair. My shoes were next to hit the floor, doing so with a thud, and then I slid down onto my bed with a long sigh.

And there was Gemma's gift, wrapped all tidy and neat.

I toyed with it awhile, uneager to open it. It was as though that gift were the last thing that held her here and opening it would take her away again. But I couldn't resist the temptation to see what was inside, so I undid the bow, letting it slither down my hand onto my lap. Carefully, I pried the top off the box to find her ragged old Bible staring at me. It was in the worst shape you've ever seen, all ripped and creased so that the covering broke off into tiny crumbles when you held it. Inside, she'd written all sorts of things in the margins, thoughts that must have come to her right off when she was reading.

I'd always thought the Bible was supposed to be the kind of sacred book that you didn't put pen to, like God would send a bolt of lightning down on you if you put a crease or dent in it. But there was nothing disrespectful about the way Gemma had eaten up every word she'd seen in this book. It may have been well-worn, but it was well-loved. I flipped through the pages and then let it flutter shut in my hands, as I sat on the bed my best friend had once slept in beside mine.