The Sweet By and By (31 page)
Beryl waited a few seconds. “Jade?” Okay . . .
Miss Linda waited at the head of the table, beautifully set with white-and-blue china and tall, tapered candles.
“One more and we can say grace.” Miss Linda motioned for Beryl to sit.
“I'm afraid my daughter isn't feeling well.”
“Should I set aside a plate for later?” Miss Linda crinkled her face with concern.
Then Jade appeared, pink and fragrant, her wet hair combed and tucked behind her ears. Beryl's gaze caught on the praying hands medallion lying against her soap-scented skin. She hadn't thought of that old thing in years.
“It smells delicious.” Jade spread her napkin over her lap with a smile for Miss Linda, but not so much as a glance toward Beryl.
After dessert on the patio, Miss Linda scrubbed her kitchen, refusing help, then bade Mama and Jade a smiling goodnight and dimmed the lights.
At eight thirty Jade paced over to the window. Stuck in this warm, still-air room with a woman looking to make God happy before she dies.
“All right, Jade, let's have it out,” Mama said, sitting on the foot of her bed.
“I'm not in the mood for your drama.” Had Miss Linda turned on the heat? So hot . . . Jade shoved aside the curtain to see if she could crack the window.
“Drama? I wasn't the one sitting in the tub crying.”
“Mind your own business.” Max was saluting his bachelorhood with his buddies while she was stuck in No Place, Tennessee, with a piece of her life she didn't treasure. Was there no justice? “I'm going for a walk.”
“Mind if I come along?”
Jade snatched up her jacket as she walked out, leaving the door ajar. “It's a free country. For now.”
The cold night air felt good. Mama hurried to keep up, but Jade didn't break stride, following the moon's pearly path down the dark, unfamiliar street.
A cranking, tired engine was the melody in the breeze.
“It's not healthy to keep things bottled up, Jade,” Mama said, winded.
“Oh really?” Jade stopped short, zipping up her jacket. “Want me to spew my emotional baggage? Because most of it has your name on it.”
She shivered from the inside out. Mama waited in front of her, huddled in her jacket, hands in her pockets, not flinching. The wind pushed and pulled the ends of her hair.
Did Jade want to go off on her? What was the point? Mama might be trying to get in good with God, but Jade didn't want to risk any more of His wrath. She'd tempted Him enough already. How many pardons does a girl get?
“Bad day, Mama.” She exhaled. “The truck breaking down was the last straw. In Wal-Mart, it all started to hit me. Getting married, you showing up, then Dustin, some issues with Max.”
The escalating anxiety attacks.
“But my presence is more than just a tipping point.”
“Are you surprised?” Jade started walking. “When have things been any different between us?”
“When you were a girl, you'd beg to ride the tractor with me.” Mama's laugh was low. “I can still see your little hands hanging onto that big wheel, so brown and strong from playing in the sun all summer.”
“It's been a long time since I was eight, Mama.” Jade remembered those days like an ancient, lost civilization that had somehow self-destructed. Once, she'd been the girl growing up on a farm with parents who loved each other. With parents who protected her. Loved her.
“True, but you grew into a strong, capable girl. I could trust you.”
“How convenient.” Jade skidded to a stop. “I grew into a strong, capable girl right when you wanted to be a wild and irresponsible woman.”
“I wasn't irresponsible.”
“Says you, Beryl Hill. Mama, why didn't we go with Daddy to Washington? Would it have killed you to think of someone else besides yourself?”
“Why don't you ask him?”
“I'd love to, if he ever bothered to call his own kid.”
“You could always callâ”
“Stop, Mama, just stop.” Jade sliced the cold with her hands. “I was eight when he left. Eight! My relationship with you two was not my responsibility. You were the parents, and you both left us.”
“I was around when you needed me.”
“Oh sure, to argue with Carla Colter, call her a few choice names.” Jade walked a few paces off. Mama waited on the edge of a moonlight shadow, half in, half out.
“You were the one who ran off and married that boy. You forged the signatures.”
“For the first time since I could remember, I felt loved and wanted. Safe. Dustin was my whole world. I could breathe when he was around; I could see beyond the boundaries of Prairie City and imagine a life for myself. Outside of Granny and Paps, no one ever really loved and cared for me.”
“I always loved you, Jade. Aiden and Willow too.”
“Don't tell me of love, Mama. Show me.” The lid on her emotions rattled.
“Watch it, Jade. Who turned things upside down to come home and take care of the mess you created with Dustin?”
“You want a medal?” Jade clapped her hands, the popping echoing through the trees, and walked over to Mama. “Well, thank you, Beryl Hill, for cutting your husband's two-bit, roadside tavern rock-n-roll tour a few days short. Has the music world recovered?”
“You'd not be standing here, Jade, mocking me, if I'd not taken care of things. Do you think Dustin would've stayed with you if he knew you were pregnant?”
“Yes, he said so. When he was here.”
“Oh, Jadeâyou believed him? And what was his response when you told him that you were?”
“I didn't tell him.”
“Because you know it wouldn't have made a difference, Jade. Maybe he would've been the one driving you to the clinic. He would've left you, Jade, sooner or later. Fine for him to sound heroic with nothing on the line. Did he tell you what he's been up to?”
“Actually, no.”
“Nothing. He moved to St. Louis last year and still doesn't have a steady job. His great college education, the one he had to leave you for, going to no use.” Mama swerved into a little neighborhood park, taking a bench.
Jade sat on the opposite end, inhaling cold air that tingled her lungs but boiled in her middle. “You want to know why?”
The slice across her heart was sharp and quick, surprising. Jade balled her fists, battling tears and anger, lightly pounding her thighs. She'd carried the pain alone, through panic and depression, shame and guilt, talking to no one.
Jade shot to her feet, her tone sharp and boisterous. “You drove me to the clinic, waited while they scraped my womb, then drove me home and went on your merry way. I had nightmares. I was cramping and bleeding, with no one to talk to, no one to help me. I felt completely and utterly alone.”
Her confession hung in the air like crystals, falling slowly to the ground, pulling a curtain of silence behind them. Jade walked to the two-seat swing set, leaning against the cold metal pole. For a blip of a second, fear trickled over her as she remembered the angst of feeling so abandoned.
“I didn't know it was so hard for you,” Mama said finally, low and slow. “I thought you were mad at Dustin, thus the rest of the world, me included.”
“You never bothered to ask.”
“You were sixteen. What sixteen-year-old doesn't hate her parents from time to time?”
Jade turned around. Mama sat gathered to herself, shivering. “I didn't want to hate you. But I'd lie in bed at night . . . hurting. I just hurt, Mama. All over and inside out. Every time I closed my eyes, I was in the clinic, the doctor asking me if I was numb. Then my heart would race and I'd bolt out of bed, fussing around, going for long walks at one or two a.m.”
“What do you want me to say, Jade?”
Tears spilled down the curve of her nose. “If I have to tell you . . .” She walked back to the street. “It's getting too cold.”
“Why did you come to me instead of Granny?” The words followed Jade as Mama hurried to catch up. “You knew what I would say, what my advice would be.”
“You're my mother. Why wouldn't I come to you? But you didn't even ask me if I was sure. Talk about options.”
“Neither did you. You were sixteen, old enough to find options if you wanted.”
Sobs rolled up from her chest. “Because . . .” She shook her shoulders. “I wanted you to help me, Mama. Despite everything, I thought you were so worldly and wise. I wanted your attention. I believed you'd know the right thing to do.”
“And I did.”
Jade covered her face with her hands, shaking her head. “No, Mama. No.”
The memory contained hurt. The knowing contained slicing pain. She'd agreed with her mama to abort her child. To remove what remained of her life with Dustin.
Jade lived with the cement-feeling of regret every day. And the heart-blinding shame.
Jade knelt on the pavement, chilled and shivering, sobbing. Her emotions swelled; her breathing felt constricted. “I just want the hurt to end.”
Mama rested her hand on her head. “I'm sorry you hurt.”
Jade dropped the rest of the way to the street, wiping her face. Miss Linda lived near the end of a quiet neighborhood with small houses and large yards. But if a car came along . . .
Jade took a long, weepy breath.
No
. She hadn't thought of death in a long time. She had so much life ahead of her. Brushing her hair back, she gazed toward the orange line of the horizon.
“After Dustin walked out on me, I felt so numb, so unworthy. I hated myself. I hated him, hated you.”
“I didn't make you go, Jade.” Mama's hand pressed against Jade's shoulder as she knelt next to her in the street. “But it's done. Why dwell on it? We can't change anything. Don't bring this into your life with Max.”
“You don't think I've tried to forget?” Brushing the pavement with her fingertips, Jade picked up pebbles and tossed them to the curb. “Every once in a while, out of the blue, I'll catch my reflection in a window and wonder, Is my life worth sacrificing a baby? Who would she be now? How would her life enrich mine?”
“Jade, that kind of thought process is fruitless.”
“The answer is no, always no. Nothing I am or will be is worth my child's life. If I live to be a hundred, find the cure for cancer, and save all the starving children in Africa, the answer will still be no.” Jade stood, knocking the dirt from her jeans, feeling stiff from the cold. “You'd think an avid war protestor like you would've thought of that, Mama.”
Mama lifted her hand for help getting up. “If only life's questions and answers were so straightforward.”
“People like you make them hard because the answer always has to be what's best for you.” Jade pulled Mama to her feet, then started for Miss Linda's. “How do you do it, Mama? You don't seem to struggle with any of your life choicesâbeing divorced, leaving your kids for your mother to raise, having an abortion. Why does my body, my soul remind me from time to time, but you don't seem to struggle at all?”
Mama peered at Jade, then looked toward the street. “I never had an abortion, Jade.”
“Excuse me?” A trembling sensation crept from Jade's middle to her arms and legs. The confession couldn't find a soft place to light. “You told me you did.”
“When we came home from the clinic, you looked so lost and broken, so sad.”
“So you lied to me? Oh, why am I surprised? What kind of mother does that! You're a horrible, horrible woman.” Jade spun around, pointing behind her, keeping Mama at bay. “Don't follow me.”
Jade vanished into the darkness of the trees, her heels crunching the street pebbles.
Sitting in her truck cab, in Wayne's garage, Jade auto-dialed Max and blew her nose into a McDonald's napkin.
“Answer your phone, Max. Answer.” On the third call, his voice mail picked up again. She clapped the phone shut without leaving a message. “Where are you?”
Jade dropped her head against the seat. How could Mama do such a thing? Could she be more cruel? Lying about an abortion. Not that she didn't have one, but that she did. Who does that? The woman is certifiable.
She caught the trail of her tears with the back of her hand. Tired. She was so tired. Of lies, of hurting, of being alone. Of fear. Once in a while, in the late hours of the night, she'd wake up with a sense of loneliness, as if her life was going nowhere, feeling like she'd be in her bed, in her loft, alone, for the rest of her life.
Even rolling onto her side and dreaming of Max didn't comfort her.
She dialed him again, but his voice mail answered.
Where are you?
She pressed auto-dial for Aiden.
“The bride-to-be.” Aiden's cheery voice settled her agitation. “Can't wait until Wednesday to see me?”
“Your mother is a freak, freak, freakity-freak.”
Silence. Jade felt like a mini freakity-freak as her exclamation echoed in her mind. Aiden doesn't even know what happened during the fall of '96. “Aiden, forgetâ”
“She's sick, you know.” His voice was tender. Even.
“How did you know?”
“Dr. Meadows called me. He didn't think Mom was letting anyone know and wanted to make sure her affairs were in order. I was going to talk to her after the wedding.”
“She asked me to be executor since you travel so much.”
“That's fine, at least she's thinking ahead.” Aiden had a Bing Crosby quality to his voice. Yeah, everything was going to be all right.
“She came to Whisper Hollow to right all of her wrongs before she meets the Big Guy.”
“Anything in particular, Jade?”
The cab of the truck was claustrophobic and airless, and the windows were completely fogged. Jade cranked down her window. “Dustin came to see me.”
“What'd he want? Tell you he was stupid to leave you?”
