Summer Snow (14 page)

I retreated into my own world, where I could nurse my injuries and collect the sins that had been committed against me as proof of my persecution. Obviously any relationship at all with Michael was completely, indisputably over—not that I really expected anything from our flirtations. It just killed me to know that he probably cringed now when he thought of any attention he had directed at me. And the tenuous respect that bordered on friendship with Alicia was annihilated. Never mind that the entire store would most likely know by tomorrow and, consequently, the rest of the town within hours of that.

Janice sensed something dark and brooding in me and ushered Simon out the door not long after we walked in it. She claimed they had errands to run, a Wal-Mart stop to make, plus she wanted to drop off a few job applications around town. I almost made some snide comment about her qualifications or lack thereof but managed to bite my tongue before I said something we would all regret. It had been difficult for me to be mad at Simon, but with Janice in the room, my frustrations had an outlet. If I had felt beaten in the car, I felt ready to fight back when I had a worthy opponent in the house.

After they were gone, I was ready to talk—nearly bursting with pent-up disappointment and righteous condemnation—but Grandma chose to overlook the heaviness that clung to me and went about her routine as if by sheer will alone she could bring peace to our tumultuous home. I lingered wherever she was for most of the day, dropping hints and feeling sorry for myself. By the time
Jeopardy!
came on at four thirty, I was sullen and moody and well aware that Grandma was treating me as she would any petulant child: she was ignoring me.

I knew better than to talk during
Jeopardy!
but Janice and Simon had been gone for hours and my time was limited. They had been in our house for only a day, but time alone with Grandma already felt like a precious commodity, and I was conscious of every minute passing on the clock. I had no choice but to interrupt her favorite half hour of relaxation. Besides, she should have expected that I would need to get a few things off my chest. I couldn't hold it in a second longer.

“They know,” I said, studying Grandma from where I sat buried under an afghan on the couch. The words sounded fateful to me, but my grandmother didn't flinch.

Instead, Grandma looked up from her knitting to glance at the TV. “What is daylight savings time?” she asked, clasping the yarn in anticipation.

I followed her gaze and watched Alex Trebek smile right at her from the framed glow of the dusty screen.

Grandma grinned back. “I got one! I never get the questions right!” She laughed a little to herself and turned her attention back to the soft, nursery-green blanket. Though she hadn't said as much, I knew that the lovingly fashioned stitches were formed for my baby. I hadn't seen her use the delicate yarn intended for children since our neighbors had their last little boy. He was about Simon's age now.

I sighed, and when her head jerked up, I realized that I had done so out loud. It had been a private exhalation, though it got the desired effect.

“Oh, honey, I'm sorry. You said something.”

I bit my lip in self-pity and waited for Grandma to turn down the volume on the TV. She did, then watched me expectantly.

“At the store today, Simon told Alicia and Michael that I'm pregnant.” It was a grave proclamation, and I waited for shock to register on Grandma's sweet face.

She studied me for a moment and then pursed her lips and shrugged. “They were going to find out sooner or later. Maybe Simon simplified things.” She turned back to her blanket.

I realized that I was gaping at her and made a distinct effort to shut my mouth. She didn't understand. I closed my eyes to shut out the hum of the TV, the click of her oversize needles. There were too many feelings stirring just below the surface to single one out and offer it to her as evidence of how I had been wronged. I felt lost in a breeze of indefinable numbness—battered and spent.

A part of me wanted to cry at the injustice of it all, but I was too affronted.

Grandma moved to turn up the volume again, and I cut in quickly before Alex could take her attention away from me. “You know, I thought that I could do this, but I can't.”

“Can't do what?” Grandma asked absently, squinting at the TV before turning again to me.

“I don't think Janice and Simon should stay here.”

Grandma's smile was indulgent. “They've only been here for a day! I know it's not ideal, but we're going to work through this. You know that, don't you?”

“I was willing to try—I even prayed about it last night—but now...” I pulled the end of my ponytail over my shoulder and curled my hair around my fingers. It was a childhood habit, and when I realized I was doing it, I quickly flicked the ponytail over my shoulder and dropped my hands.

“Is this all because Simon told your secret? Julia, you had to know that you couldn't keep it quiet much longer. People may have already guessed.”

The thought hit me like a splash of ice water. How delusional was I in my little house of glass? I glanced down at the growing roundness of my belly and knew that she was probably right. Surely some had at least speculated. Everyone knew that I had dropped out of college, and though the reason was a mystery, it wouldn't take much deductive power to assume that my expanding waist was why. I had tried hard to hide it, but the five-month mark was not far off, and when I wasn't consciously sucking in, there was a tight little arc that would be obvious to the keen eye.

I could have deflated right there. All the angst and sorrow could have melted into a wave of tears that left me tired and broken. But I wanted to be angry. Whether or not people already knew, whether or not they would have known sooner rather than later, it wasn't enough to excuse what had happened. I clung to the bitterness that rose thick and thorny around my heart.

“He ruined everything,” I muttered.

“This has nothing to do with Simon,” Grandma assured me quietly. She laid her knitting beside the rocking chair and got up to sit on the couch with me. “This is old anger. You're mad at Janice, and you're taking it out on Simon because he did a silly, childish thing. He
is
a child. Don't be upset with him.”

“I have every right to be mad at him! And Janice. I was right—I never should have trusted her.
Him
. Them. Whatever.”

Grandma reached out to touch my face but thought better of it and stopped. She clutched her hands in her lap, and my cheek ached where her fingers should have stroked it.

I felt so far from her. There should have been a chasm between us in the beginning, when my pregnancy was new and we had to learn how to deal with what I had done and the ensuing consequences. But Grandma had been gracious with me in ways I never imagined possible. We had been comfortable. We were dealing just fine with what had happened. It was
now
that things were starting to unravel; now nothing was as it should be. And the only difference was the arrival of Janice and Simon. They were the off frequency that filled our lives with static.

“I wanted to believe her. I wanted to see if there could be another chance for us, but it's been
one day
and already I've been hurt again!”

“Julia, it was an accident. Simon didn't mean—”

“They shouldn't be here. They're making a mess of everything,” I fumed. Angrily thrusting the blanket off me, I nearly jumped to my feet. There was resentment coursing through my veins, and when Grandma clutched my wrist, I almost shook her off. “I was right,” I repeated with venom in my voice.

“It's not about being right,” Grandma said suddenly. Her voice was a cool chip of chiseled stone. I looked down at her, and her eyes were as black as coal in the dimness—intense and unreadable. Her fingers trembled against my skin, and though I had seen the vibrations from time to time when she wrote out a check or lifted a pan from the stove, tonight the stirring in her bones had nothing to do with age.

My breath stayed locked in my chest.

Her fingers tightened. “Who cares if you're right, Julia Anne DeSmit? Maybe you shouldn't have trusted Janice and Simon. Maybe you should have left them in their car at Crescent Lake. Maybe if you guarded yourself more carefully, Simon would never have come along with you today and your secret would still be safe.” Grandma caught my other wrist in her free hand and pulled me down until I had no choice but to kneel in front of her. “But maybe you're wrong. Because this has nothing to do with being right. It's about being
free
.”

Immediately my eyes stung with hot tears and I frantically blinked them away. My throat closed. I wanted to be angry. I wanted to have a place to unleash the hurt that was inside me. I didn't want to cry. Twisting my arms, I made a little move to pull away.

Grandma hung on tight. “I didn't know you were still so wounded.” She was resolute, but she searched my face tenderly, and her eyes were as wide and wet as my own. “I'm so sorry. It's my fault for not realizing how hard this would be for you. We'll get through it together, okay? I'm here; I've always been here for you.”

I turned away from her.

“Do you want to be free, sweet girl? Do you want to let go of all this—” Grandma cast around for the right word—“all of these
shadows
inside you?”

Out of the blue, I felt her hands warm on my cheeks. She turned my face toward hers, and without my wrists shackled by her fingers, I was aware of how easy it would be to get up and walk out of the room, retreat somewhere that I could be alone to sob and sulk. I almost did. But I couldn't leave her.

“You have to forgive Janice.”

I wasn't ready for those words, and I recoiled from her expectations.

Grandma held me fast with her gaze. “You want to know why life has been so hard? It's not that you lost your dad or that you lost Thomas or even the fact that you're having a baby now. It's hard because you have spent more than a decade of your life clinging to a bitter root. Janice is here because you have to let it go. I invited her into our home because
you have to let it go
.”

“I think I've earned the right to hate her,” I said through clenched teeth.

Grandma let her hands drop as though I had hit them away. We stared at each other for a moment, and it felt as though I was looking at a stranger.

“Sweetheart, don't do this,” Grandma whispered. “Don't wall yourself behind some unquenchable hate. Don't you know that you're only building a stronghold around yourself? Janice and Simon may not be able to get in, but don't forget that when you build a fortress this impenetrable,
you
won't be able to get
out
.”

My legs shook when I stood up. Grandma watched me with something akin to fear in her eyes, but I disregarded it. What did she know about the depth of my misery? Who could understand the burden of pain that I had to carry? Forgiveness was for those who deserved it.

I gathered the walls of my stronghold around me as I walked away. At least in there I was protected. I was safe. And I had no intention of coming out.

Part 2

Quicken

I
FELT THE BABY
move for the first time on an unseasonably warm morning in the middle of April.

At first I didn't realize what was happening. There was a flutter in my abdomen, a feeling like falling from a great height. A dip and turn deep inside me that caused me to reach out and grab the porch railing as if Iowa had just experienced the tremors of some far-flung coastal earthquake and I needed to ground myself. I stayed there, splinters of peeling paint digging into the soft palms of my hands, and thought,
We really need to put a new coat on the porch this summer
.

And then it happened again. There was the faintest, cosmic beat of hummingbird wings at the very center of my being. This time, steadied by the thick cedar rail and quiet in my thoughts, I knew what it was.

I held my breath and waited to feel her once more. She didn't disappoint, and a grin burst across my face to match the sunrise I had witnessed only moments earlier. I laughed out loud and pressed my hands to my stomach, hoping to feel her there, awed that she had finally made herself known to me.

I was twenty-two weeks along, give or take, and Dr. Morales had expressed only mild concern that it seemed to be taking so long for me to become aware of the child growing inside. However, I wasn't worried. Grandma had bought me
What to Expect When You're Expecting
, and it suggested that eighteen to twenty-four weeks was a perfectly acceptable timeframe in which to experience “the quickening.”

The quickening
. I was dubious upon reading it, confused at first because I didn't know what it meant and then downright skeptical because it seemed such a portentous title for something that was surely rather small and routine. But when she first twirled circles inside me, I understood that her inaugural movements were anything but small and decidedly not routine. She introduced herself to me with all the eloquence of a rehearsed speech, all the passion of a lover's embrace. Surely the earth itself must have paused in its orbit to acknowledge the celestial movement at my core.

Suddenly, I very fully appreciated that there could not be a more perfect term for what I had just experienced than
quickening
. My breath quickened. My pulse quickened. My fingertips hummed with significance. Even the very life that coursed through me accelerated abruptly toward some distant goal and blurred forward with new meaning and purpose. It was indescribably exhilarating.

And it was the perfect morning for such a momentous event. The horizon was filled with the growing bands of a golden peach sunrise, like a slice of fresh nectarine with the honeyed sun a glistening pit at its center. The earth below was yielding and warm; a green tractor across the field from where I stood dug a silver disc across the fertile surface and made hillocks and furrows of the rich, soggy dirt. Best of all, the scent in the air was of spring and newness. Everything seemed crisp and clean, ready for renewal.