by Reid, Penny
Looks like Jenn had repurposed an old true argument rather than creating a new fake drama. Good on her.
The woman waved away the blanket, perching herself on the edge of the swing. “And she said that she’d never set foot in the bakery again. She said she quit. She stormed out!”
“Is that right?” My heart made itself known with a tight squeeze. If Diane agonized, I couldn’t imagine how anxious Jenn must be right now. As soon as Diane left, I would call Jenn and check in.
“That’s right, she quit. And I—I don’t know what I’m going to do!”
I patted Diane’s hand. “Don’t fret. I’m sure you’ll be able to find a new pastry chef for the bakery.”
“What? No!” She ripped her hand away, stood, and paced the length of the porch. “I don’t care about that. I don’t care about the bakery. To hell with the bakery! I can’t get a new daughter, now can I?”
My lips parted, and I stared at Diane Donner. Those were not the words I’d expected.
She must’ve mistaken my stunned expression, because she hurried over to me, sitting down again on the bench swing. “Oh, Cletus. Sorry. I’m so sorry. I know you’re going through the same thing, the same difficulty, just a different kind of grief. Scotia Simmons stopped by the lodge this morning, told me all about what happened last night with Jackson.”
“With Jackson.” I attempted to appear ill at ease and didn’t need to work very hard.
“She did. I marched myself over to the bakery to talk some sense into Jennifer. Carrying on with Jackson? That’s so unlike her. And she—she—” Diane’s features crumpled. “She hates me!”
“She doesn’t hate you.” That, at least, was the truth.
“Losing Jennifer, I won’t survive it—” She clutched at her chest, an extraordinarily sad sounding sob leaving her lips. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. What are we going to do?”
“What are we going to do?” I parroted, endeavoring to wear an expression I hoped resembled miserable introspection.
Her hand dropped and she peered at me, another sob wrung out of her, her eyes glazed with sorrow. “Goodness, the way she looked at you. I never thought she’d do such a thing. Not ever. Not in a million years. She loves you. You have to believe she loves you.”
“Things aren’t always how they seem,” I hedged, studying my fingers.
“I guess not. I guess—” she pressed a fist to her mouth, closing her eyes “—I’ve lost everything, Cletus.”
“That’s not true, Ms. Donner.”
“What did I tell you? Call me Diane.”
“You’ll get through this. We both will.” I patted her shoulder, the movement allowing me to check the time on my watch.
“I don’t know if I want to get through this. First Isaac, now Jennifer. Part of me just wants to—I just want to escape, you know? Run away. I’ve never traveled, never seen the world, not really. And I have nothing here worth staying for.”
“Everything will work out in the end.”
“I don’t see how it can.” She shrugged helplessly, her voice small and distressed.
In a way, I felt for her. Diane Donner wasn’t a bad person, she was just a terribly flawed person. But then, weren’t we all?
Not knowing what to say in the face of her pain, I nodded somberly and went with an old standby statement. “I understand your perspective.”
“I think you really do.” Her gaze moved over me, both sad and sympathetic. “I know you loved her.”
“I love her,” I corrected automatically, grimacing at the slipup, squeezing my eyes shut. “Sorry, this is more difficult than I thought it would be.”
She made a soft noise, and I sensed her hesitate before her arm came around my shoulders. “Oh baby, you two belong together, and I’m sure she’ll come to her senses eventually.”
I nodded, fighting a wee twinge of guilt. I didn’t enjoy lying to my family, and I certainly wasn’t enjoying this conversation with Jenn’s mother. Instead of lying, or, technically, telling the truth, I said nothing and gave Diane another somber nod.
She took it as a prompt to continue. “You are such a special person, Cletus Winston. Your momma would be so proud of you, of the honorable, kind, generous man you’ve become.”
Yikes. The twinge of guilt stretched, reshaped itself into an uncomfortable ball sitting heavy on my diaphragm.
“I wouldn’t call me honorable—”
“Oh, but you are. You are.” She patted my shoulder, her tone tremendously maternal. “Your mother was the sweetest woman on the face of the earth. She was basically that tree in that book. You know, the one that gave and gave and gave, not asking for anything in return.”
“You mean The Giving Tree?”
“That’s the one. And I see a lot of her in you. The honesty, the righteousness, the sweetness.”
I opened one eye, still grimacing, because now I felt guilty. I hated feeling guilty. I hated feeling anything I didn’t actively decide to feel, and no one would purposefully decide to feel guilty.
But Diane wasn’t finished. “Your momma forgave everybody for everything, unless they hurt her children. That’s why she could never forgive your daddy. Just like I know you’ll forgive Jenn when she comes to her senses.”
Seeing an opportunity to reroute the runaway locomotive of our conversation, I asked, “What are you talking about? My mother took Darrell back over and over again, even after he hurt us kids.” Maybe my momma was the giving tree with us, but she was also the giving tree with my father, and that was the problem. She didn’t know how to shut off the generosity and forgiveness. Sometimes we’d needed a warrior tree, a momma-bear tree, a vengeful tree, not just a giving one.
“But she didn’t forgive him, and she left him when it came right down to it. At first, your momma thought taking him back was the only way to keep the peace and keep you kids out of serious harm. But when he stepped over the line, she was done. Everything she did from that point forward was to try and keep y’all safe, including—uh, well now, I’ll leave that in the past.”
My other eye flew open, and I examined her profile. “What? Keep what in the past?”
“I’d like to think I’m the same,” she said wistfully, gazing at the horizon like it was the most interesting horizon that ever horizoned. In other words, she pretended to not hear my question. “Both your momma and me, we did our best with manipulative husbands. Mind, Kip never raised a hand to me or the children.”
I thought about contradicting her, reminding the woman that he’d used a belt on Jenn and Isaac when they were kids. Jenn had also said Kip never hit her. Perhaps neither of them considered a belt hitting or raising a hand. Nevertheless, I did. As a child who’d been on the receiving end of a belt many times, I knew all it did was create resentment, a short temper, and inspired subversion.
“I guess he didn’t have to. He’s just as skilled at emotional manipulation as your father, though a sight less handsome.”
Handsome? “Excuse me?”
“I understood why your mother stayed with him at first, when I was younger.” She chuckled bitterly, shaking her head—obviously at herself. “You know, I was kind of jealous. We all were.”
“Jealous?” I choked. Jealous of what? Bruises?
“Darrell Winston has more charm in his pinky finger than most men have in their entire persons.”
“He’s also—you know—super evil.”
“Exactly. Once that became clear, no one was jealous anymore.” She sniffed, nodding at her own assertion and pressing her lips together, like the discussion was over.
Except, a thought occurred to me, a sudden bee in my britches that chased away any guilt I might’ve felt, and I leaned away, forcing her hand to drop. “If you knew what kind of man Darrell was, why didn’t you do anything to help her?”
Diane sputtered, rearing back, her eyes wide. “Cletus, I—”
“Did you know he hit her?”
Her mouth snapped shut and her eyes moved between mine
, searching.
We sat still for several seconds, not quite a minute, until finally she breathed out and her shoulders slumped. “I suspected. Yes. And when I asked her about it, she said he didn’t. But anyone could see she was lying.”
“You asked her?” For some reason, my voice cracked.
She nodded, her gaze falling. “We weren’t friendly. I suppose she probably thought I was only asking to get the gossip, but I wasn’t.”
“Why did you ask? What prompted you to do it?”
Diane folded and then refolded her hands on her lap, her gaze once more on the horizon. “You just don’t know what goes on in a person’s marriage. Behind those closed doors, minutes turn to hours, hours turn into days, days into weeks, weeks into years, and your life becomes a giant garbage heap with all the trash that’s built up over time. But—and this might not make sense to you yet—it’s your garbage heap. And so you both hate it and love it, because when the garbage is cleared away, it leaves nothing but a huge crater in the ground. A wound that you’ll never recover from or fill. Despite the stink and mess and smell, you miss the garbage.”
“That’s a fascinating analogy for marriage, Diane. But you didn’t answer my question.”
“Sheriff James asked me to approach her.”
I flinched, uncertain I’d heard her correctly. “What?”
Diane squinted at the setting sun. “It happened when your brother Billy was put in the hospital, he was twelve or thirteen, I believe. The sheriff asked me to approach her, and so I did. I’m ashamed to say, it likely wouldn’t have occurred to me if he hadn’t asked. I was, like most folks, afraid of your daddy by then, and his association with the Wraiths. And Kip told me to steer clear of y’all. He didn’t want me getting involved. He told me doing so would be putting us all in danger, and I—” she seemed to swallow with difficulty “—I believed him.”
I wasn’t surprised about Kip’s warnings, but this information about the sheriff was news to me. “What happened?”
“Bethany wouldn’t talk to me, or Scotia Simmons. I guess I know why. But when I told Bethany that the sheriff asked us to reach out, she went directly to him while Billy was still recovering.”
“And?” I was on the edge of my seat. I’d never heard any of this.
“As I understand it, your momma asked the sheriff to intervene with your father, threaten him in some way, I suspect. So Sheriff James brought Darrell in on a charge of some sort. And then the sheriff, Trevor Payton, and Judge Payton met with your father. After that, I believe your father allowed your mother to legally separate, but not divorce, and he mostly kept away.”
“For the most part,” I whispered, several puzzle pieces from my family’s past clicking together. “But with Billy, it wasn’t the first time he . . .” I glanced down at my hands. “But it was one of the worst times. If she’d left him earlier, Billy wouldn’t have ended up in the hospital at twelve.”
“Don’t judge your mother too harshly, Cletus.” Her arm came back around my shoulders. “It’s not like this country makes it easy for women to leave abusive relationships. No matter what, she was going to be judged. And it’s not just the prejudice of the community, there’s also the sense of failure in yourself, the question of your own judgment. If I was dumb enough to marry this person, can I be trusted to do anything right? Leaving is hard, admitting failure is also hard.”
I didn’t look at Diane because, in an extremely twisted way, her words made sense, and thus I simmered in discomfort. Then I also gazed at the horizon like it was the most interesting horizon that ever horizoned.
Eventually, she broke the silence. “And that’s what I mean by a garbage heap. A marriage can be a mountain shrine, or it can be a garbage heap. At the end of the day, garbage or shrine, it’s still yours. And nothing is quite as difficult as letting go of what’s yours.”
* * *
Minutes turned to hours, hours to days, days to weeks—almost two, to be exact—and Kip Sylvester made no attempt to approach Jennifer. I spent much of the time ensconced in learning and applying the finer details of being a dairy farmer and would’ve been enjoying myself if not for the critical dearth of my Jenn.
Her father, the slippery bastard, had all but disappeared from Green Valley. Or rather, I hadn’t seen him, and neither had Jenn. But I knew he lurked around town because Deveron Stokes told me so at Genie’s.
I’d allowed Roscoe and Billy to talk me into a night of beer and brotherhood that quickly devolved into an evening of shots and self-pity.
“The worst part is, it just never goes away.” Smelling of whiskey and misery, Billy stared forward at nothing. “That sense of loss, like part of your soul is missing, and no matter what, you’re never getting it back. It’s been taken, and the person who has it doesn’t even want it.”
I grimaced at the raw scrape laced with pain in Billy’s tenor, the hollow shine of vulnerability in his eyes. This was why Billy never drank. If he did imbibe, he held himself to one glass of scotch after dinner, and that's it.
Instinct had me looking to Roscoe for help, but to my immense irritation, my baby brother nodded along. “That’s exactly what it’s like.”
“How would you know, dummy?” I scrunched my face at him.
His whole life, Roscoe had one job. One. Job. Cheer up Billy. He didn’t know this was his job because I hadn’t told him, but he still had just the one job.
“Oh, I know,” Roscoe said sloppily, reaching as though to pour himself another shot but stopping when he found the bottle drained. “I know exactly what it’s like. I haven’t taken a deep breath in years.”
My attention moved between the two drunkards who looked like twins rather than youngest and second oldest in a brood of seven, gripping their foreheads, staring at empty glasses like the void within was an allegory for their barren souls.
“This is fun,” I said, catching our bartender’s eye and signaling for the check. “I can’t wait to carry you two idiots upstairs. That’s going to be great.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Billy tried to smile, but his lips only managed a sad smirk. “But it’s been a while.”
“Don’t regurgitate or otherwise expectorate on the stairs, Jethro just refinished them. No tattoo this time either.” I lifted a warning finger at him, then—for good measure—I pointed at Roscoe. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Is that how Billy got his tattoo?” Roscoe’s sluggish gaze moved between us. “He was drunk?”
“Drunk as a skunk who didn’t give a fu—”
“Hey now.” I lifted my hand to stop Billy. “That doesn’t even rhyme. Put your head down, both of you. Make no eye contact with anyone—especially not with women—I’ll be right back after I pay the bill.”
“I should get this.” Billy sat up, his honorable nature rearing its pretty head, as though remembering where we were and why we were here (i.e. my presumably broken heart).
“Nope.” I slid out of the booth and walked backward, not willing to wait for Patty to come by with the bill. “Heads down. No eye contact. One look at either of you and a woman with self-worth issues and more grit than sense will endeavor to make a project out of your broken heart. I mean it.”
Not waiting to see if they complied, I stepped up to the bar and intercepted Patty, quickly handing over my credit card. “Here you go.”
She surprised me by clasping my hand with hers and squeezing, sending my gaze straight to hers.
“How you doing, Cletus? You hanging in there?”
Caught, I eventually decided nodding was safe. I nodded.
She made a tutting sound with her tongue. “Oh, you sweet, lovely man. I heard about what happened.” She leaned closer, up and over the bar, her gaze full of compassion until it became a blur and she kissed me square on the lips.
I flinched back, doubly startled, a shock of disquiet reverberating along my nerves.
Patty’s smile was soft as she leaned away, her gentle eyes sweeping over my face. “Time heals
all wounds, Cletus. Just you remember that.”
“It’s been two weeks, Patty.”
“You’ll have to start seeing people again eventually, get right back on that horse.”
“Kinda hard when the mare has bolted,” I said on autopilot. I didn’t know what I was saying, the entire situation struck me as entirely bizarre, like one of those Twilight Zone episodes where folks die because someone wanted a hundred dollars. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth, wishing I’d asked for another shot instead of the check.
Her smile grew, and she laughed lightly. “Seriously, Jenn’s loss. I think you’re great. Don’t let anyone tell you any different.”
“So noted. May I pay now?” Patty was nice, a good person, and I knew she meant well, but I did not wish to kiss Patty. I only wished to kiss Jenn, forever and ever, amen.
“Sure thing, love.” She took my card and skipped to the register, leaving me with the sense of being slathered in a sticky film of deceit and disorder. I didn’t usually mind the deceit, likely because my deceit wasn’t typically of the public spectacle sort, but disorder had never been a comfortable state.
“Hey there, buddy.”
I slid my eyes to the side, recognizing Deveron Stokes’s hoarse voice anywhere. He, too, looked at me as though I was to be pitied.
Deveron. Stokes.
Pitied. Me.
Lies and their webs and the strange realities they spun.
“We are not buddies.”
“How you doing, pal?”
“We are not pals.”
“Oh now, don’t be like that, Cletus. I know it’s a hard time for you. Jennifer is a fine woman—and I do mean fine.” He snort-laughed, hitting me with the back of his hand square in the chest like, you know what I mean.
“Do not say her name.”
“But, come on man, no need to mope. There’s plenty of fish in the sea.”
“I do not enjoy fishing.”
“What? Fishing is the best part.”
