Song of the Brokenhearted (23 page)

Ava swallowed back the words she wanted to say to Lars. She knew he used to beat Jessie and maybe even his girls. Yet he was going to play it like he was the victim.

“I heard something about her having a kid. Girls these days watch those reality TV shows and think it's all great and exciting having a baby until they have to change diapers and make bottles in the night. I was watching this one new program about where they have the most unwed mothers, and it's in a state that doles out the cash to these girls and their deadbeat boyfriends.”

“Do you have Jessie's number? I tried Grannie's old house, but the line was disconnected.”

“Yeah, they're all on cell phones now. Last I heard Jess was moving in with her mom—that's your aunt, right? None of them has talked to me ever since I put Jess's butt in jail, that's what I did. You know her temper, well, this time she had to receive some consequences. Spent the weekend in jail, she did, before posting bond. It didn't do much to clean her up, but I hope it might have helped anyway.”

“Jessie went to jail?”

“Wasn't the first time, doubt it'll be the last.”

Ava walked to the couch and knelt beside Emma sleeping on her back with her arms stretched over her head. This man was Emma's grandfather.

“Lars, it's really important that I reach Bethany.”

“Sorry, but I suspect she's been living with all the rest of them at your grannie's ole farm. What a rundown mess that place is. Best bet is drive on down there if you want to catch 'em.”

Ava hit End on her phone and chewed on the inside of her lip. She called Bethany's number again, but this time the line had been disconnected.

She glanced toward the couch and saw small arms and legs moving.

“Good morning,” she whispered.

Emma stared up at Ava. Her mouth broke into a wide smile with a happy coo.

Emotion welled tears into her eyes as she stared into deep brown eyes and thought of the world this sweet girl was born into—a horrible place where babies were abandoned and families deserted one another.

Emma wiggled her hands in the air erratically and glanced at the ceiling, then back to Ava's face. Then the baby sucked her lower lip in, exactly the way Sienna had when she was a baby. Ava had forgotten that.

As she changed the baby's diaper on a towel spread out on the floor, Ava marveled at the feel of her chubby legs.

“Your skin is so soft,” Ava muttered in amazement. Did all babies have such velvety skin? She couldn't remember. She touched the skin on her tummy and Emma arched her spine.

“Did that tickle?” Ava asked, amused by the frown that dropped Emma's thin dark eyebrows. The baby puckered her mouth again and Ava thought of a warm bottle by the sucking noise and way she rolled her tongue.

“I wonder if you were nursed at all.” Ava realized she knew nothing about this child. What if Emma had been born on drugs?

The baby started to fuss, and Ava finished dressing her in one of the new pajama sets.

“It's okay, it's okay,” she said in a singsong voice.

Emma mimicked her with a monotone hum that came from her chest.

“Are you singing?” Ava said with excitement, turning the baby's serious expression into a huge smile and squeal.

“So you like singing?”

The baby gave her an open-mouthed smile, revealing pink gums, and stuck her tongue out from her lips.

“You are the cutest thing I've ever seen,” she muttered as she lifted Emma and stood, then added, “The cutest baby I've seen in a long time, since your cousins Jason and Sienna.” The baby laughed as if she'd made a great joke.

“You like me talking to you, don't you?”

She'd made a breakthrough. Singing and talking. That's what every baby needed. She didn't have much else, but for now, she'd sing and talk and play music. It would soothe both of their hearts, the broken things that they were.

Ava went to the kitchen and placed the baby in the bouncer seat while she made a bottle, then brought her back to the living room and sat down to feed her.

Emma's eyes stayed locked into Ava's as her lips puckered with the suckling motion. She sighed and squirmed but drank heartily until the bottle was empty.

As Ava watched her, she suddenly knew what she had to do. But first she needed a few moments to talk to God.

Twenty-Five

A
VA STOOD BEFORE THE REMNANT OF THE WILLOW TREE
, E
MMA
cooing in her arms as she looked at the sky, the leaves, and the trees. There was more sky than usual and the emptiness around the willow made her shiver.

Ava picked up one weepy branch and a trail of leaves fell from it. The impulse came over her to pick them up and glue them back on, then to raise the tree up and glue the trunk back to the stump.

During her crafty stage when the kids were young, Ava had joked that everything could be fixed with a hot-glue gun.

A light breeze lifted some of the leaves from the ground.

Ava had the sudden impulse to cry or to beg the tree to come back to life. It was the strangest sensation, this panic over a tree.

She prayed then, feeling foolish even before God. “It was a tree. But, God, I feel like I needed it. And now it's gone.”

The tree had tied her to the good pieces of her childhood. Now it was dead and she was about to return to that place of childhood dread, to see the people who caused a lifetime of pain.

It seemed such a short time ago that the willow had been normal, healthy, full of life. She remembered that calm Sunday when Dane and Jason were both at home for breakfast. It had been a perfectly unspectacular morning, but it was the day she'd first noticed something was wrong with the tree. The beginning of autumn. Football season had just started.

September. Summer had just ended.

That reminded Ava of her niece's note. Emma had been born in the summer . . . when? June twenty-second, she recalled. Four months ago.

At age forty-eight, four months earlier was nothing. But that was the entirety of this little being's life. Ava tried to remember what they were doing in June. Jason had gone to football camp, or was that July?

Bethany had been in the maternity ward, seeing her daughter for the first time. Ava didn't know any details of the birth, what Emma had weighed, how long the labor was, whether it was natural or Caesarean.

No one in the family had contacted her, and why would they? Years ago, when her children were born, Ava might have included her aunts and cousins in the birth announcements, but she couldn't be sure. She had taken them off her Christmas card list after a cousin calling for a “loan” accused her of bragging by including their family photos.

Oh, little one. You have so much living to do
.

A longing washed over her to protect this innocent little being from all that living she had ahead of her. It was a living full of pain and disappointment, especially in their family. Maybe she could find Emma a good home. Just a few months earlier, she might have thought a good home was their home. But now their future was clouded.

Have faith in me
.

Even after all those years, Ava had an immediate “was that God, or was that me?” debate whenever such words whispered through her heart. With the doubts she constantly contended with, it couldn't be her.

Have faith in what I am doing
.

Ava looked down at Emma, resting her head on Ava's shoulder. Content, at ease, trusting that she was safe. Her cheeks had the lightest hue of pink and her long, dark eyelashes touched her cheeks. One fist gripped Ava's hair.

An old tree dying. A baby being born.

She stared at Emma, who had arrived on her doorstep the very morning after she'd chopped down the dead weeping willow.

“What does this mean?” she whispered with her eyes inclined toward heaven.

Believe
was the lone word whispered back to her heart.

Twenty-Six

A
VA STARED AT HER
M
ERCEDES SEDAN SHINING BENEATH THE FLO
-rescent lights. Dane had washed and cleaned it inside and out since he'd been off work. Usually he hired people to do it. In the past months, he'd neglected their vehicles like everything else. But one of his first projects since the company closed was to detail the cars.

So there it sat, ready for a road trip all glimmering and clean, except Ava had received a text from Dane that morning.

Aves, real sorry about this. E-mail from lawyer today—keep your car locked in garage, don't drive it. I'm torn between coming home to work this out or being with Jason—he's really different since we've been here
.

Ava's first reaction was anger—was he saying her car was in danger of being repossessed? Then she wanted to burst into tears. But after facing her self-pity again as Emma cooed and kicked her feet happily, Ava laughed at the added challenge. She also realized her plush Mercedes wasn't the best vehicle to drive up to her grandmother's farm. It might disappear into a local chop shop.

Ava typed back:
Stay there. Jason needs you, and I'm fine. Guess we have Old Dutch for something
.

Now she stared across the far end of the garage to where the old VW was hidden beneath a car cover.

“Old Dutch, don't fail me now,” she muttered.

By the time Ava had loaded everything into the car, taking breaks every so often to check the baby in the portable crib, change her, feed her, and give her a pacifier, Ava was exhausted.

“How did I ever raise two children?” she muttered. Emma smiled, and Ava saw a tiny lone tooth just barely protruding from her bottom gum.

“And now the car seat,” she said with a sigh.

Getting the base properly secured by the seat belt was an even bigger challenge. She'd never been good at assembling things or figuring them out—another one of Dane's jobs. She got it strapped in, but then something niggled at her. Wasn't the baby supposed to be rear-facing? She took out the base and started over. After some trial and error, Ava was confident she had a safe ride for Emma.

Ava ran back in the house and rifled through the baby things Kayanne had bought. There! A mirror she could attach to the backseat so she could see Emma's little face while she was driving. She sent God a silent thank-you for Kayanne and ran back out to attach the mirror.

It was late Saturday afternoon, but the road beckoned. She locked the house, strapped Emma into her seat, and turned the key, hoping it would start.

The engine rumbled and sputtered, then sprang to life. Ava checked the gauges, trying to figure them out, found the lights for when it became dark and the wipers in case of rain, then she backed out of the driveway.

Emma started crying.

“Oh no, not one of those,” she said, remembering how Sienna had hated the car, crying every moment they were driving. Jason, on the other hand, seemed to fall asleep on cue in the car, except he'd become carsick on winding roads. It had taken several excursions to figure out that he didn't have the flu every time they went on a trip. Emma cried louder.

The late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the driveway, making Ava wonder how late it had become.

“Oh, you must be hungry!” she exclaimed to the screaming baby. Ava pulled back inside the garage, then hurried to get Emma free from the car seat. The baby let out a few remaining protests and babbled as if trying to chastise her for forgetting such essential needs. She scooped up the baby bag and headed inside.

The call of the road—thwarted by the hunger of a baby.

An hour later, Ava was back in the VW, Emma safely strapped in once again.

I'm going on my own little adventure. I'll be home before you and Jason are,
she typed into her phone before heading off.

Old Dutch rolled along nicely—not quite the ride she'd become accustomed to, but Ava found the high humming of the VW engine to be like a soundtrack to her adventure. She and a baby in a VW were heading south out of Dallas toward her hometown—it sounded like a Lifetime movie, which amused her to no end. Emma chewed on her teething ring in the middle seat behind her.