by Lucy Score
It was a joy to be able to give that kind of support when it was most needed. And that’s what all these wonderful people were doing in her yard.
Elvira whistled from the front porch, two glasses of wine in her hands. She raised one in Phoebe’s direction, and Phoebe decided she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more in the moment.
She threaded her way through the growing throng, accepting hugs and condolences as she went. John’s middle school biology teacher, who gave him a C in ninth grade, was there as was the librarian who talked Jax into entering the poetry competition last year. Ernest Washington, the man who’d shown every one of her boys how to change the oil in their cars, was perched on a cooler, harmonica in hand.
Everyone was there.
Her boys found her on the porch, and there was something softer than the keen edge of grief in them all, she thought.
An impromptu wake with equal parts tears and laughter was good medicine. Her heart felt impossibly lighter as if she could feel John smiling down on her at the chaos that reigned in the yard.
Chapter Thirty
In the dark, Phoebe spotted a lone figure skulking up the steps of the side porch. She’d know that shadow anywhere.
She waited in the shadows of the porch until the figure had put down the parcel just outside the screen door.
“You leave that cake there, and some drunken mourner is going to step in it,” Phoebe said mildly, stepping into the moonlight.
“Shit. You scared the hell out of me, Phoebe.” Joey Greer didn’t look scared. She looked downright miserable. Phoebe held out her arms, and with the briefest of hesitations, Joey stepped into them. Still after all these years and so much heart ache, she counted this girl a daughter.
She’d been woven into the fabric of their family since the first day of kindergarten in Jax’s class. And once upon a time, she’d loved Jax with everything that an eighteen-year-old heart was capable of. An accident, a bad choice, and those days were over. Jax had picked up and left in the middle of the night, and Joey hadn’t seen him in the three years since. Phoebe knew coming here tonight knowing that Jax was here had cost the girl.
“What kind of cake is it?” Phoebe whispered into Joey’s chestnut hair.
“Pineapple upside down.”
Phoebe smiled. “My favorite. You’re a good girl, Joey.” She pulled back, brushing Joey’s hair away from her pretty face. Her brown eyes were rimmed red. The only truly girly thing Joey enjoyed was baking, and like everything else she did in her life, she was damn good at it.
“What the hell’s wrong with everyone?” Joey said, trying to pretend everything was normal.
“That lovable idiot Fitz brought the wrong brownies, and half the town is baked out of their minds on my front lawn right now.”
Joey surveyed the bodies upright and otherwise. “What about the other half?”
“Everyone brought casseroles and booze. Anyone who isn’t shit-faced is just too full to move.”
Joey snorted out a pained laugh. “Okay. Well, I just wanted to…” she gestured toward the cake and shoved her hands in the back pocket of her jeans. “And, uh, if you need anything, let me know.”
“I do need something, Joey.”
“Anything.”
“Take this cake and meet me in the barn in two minutes. I’m going to grab two forks and my emergency bottle of whiskey, and we’re going to eat until we’re sick.”
Tears glistened in Joey’s eyes. “But you have… company.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re family, Joey. Barn. Two minutes. And whatever you do. Do not let anyone near that cake. These people are one step away from pulling the roast from the freezer and licking it.”
Joey gave a brusque nod and grabbed the cake.
Phoebe snuck in the side door and had to step over Bruce Oakleigh’s legs to get to the utensil drawer. He was sitting against the kitchen island singing something that sounded like Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok.”
She grabbed two forks and, stepping over Bruce again, tip-toed to the pantry. Behind the flour and the box of wheat bran, which was a disguise for all her snacks that she hid from Jax, she produced a bottle of Jameson and headed for the door.
Amethyst Oakleigh met her on the porch. The woman leaned as if she were on the deck of ship going through rough water. Her brown eyes were bigger than dinner plates. “Es-cuse me, Phlebe. I was wondering if you’ve scheen my huschband?” She hiccupped and blinked as if surprised. Amethyst had never been a drinker in her younger years, and as a lifelong lightweight found herself snockered once a year, usually at a town function.
“Nearly passed out on the floor in there,” Phoebe said, pointing behind her.
“Thanks to yooou,” Amethyst nodded and walked into the screen door.
“You have to pull it open and then walk through,” Phoebe called over her shoulder.
“Hey, Mom!”
Jax’s voice froze her in her tracks. She hid the whiskey and forks behind her back. “Hi, honey. You doing okay?”
Jax kicked at the ground. “Yeah. Just wanted to see if you needed anything.”
Phoebe shoved the forks in her pocket and cupped his face. “Can you make sure no one drives home?”
He nodded morosely. “Yeah. Yeah. I can do that.”
“Good boy. Thank you,” she started to turn for the barn, but he stopped her.
“Mom, I didn’t see Joey here. Do you think she knows?”
“Yeah, honey. I think she knows.”
“I’d hate for her to think she couldn’t be here with…” he spread his arm wide to encompass the chaos. “Everyone because I’m here.”
“Sweetie. We’re all responsible for our own decisions. Got it?”
He gave a sullen one-shoulder shrug.
And Phoebe gave his cheek a pinch. “You know Joey. Do you think she’d let anyone scare her off of anything?”
Jax gave her the tiniest of smiles. His handsome face softened for a moment and then tensed again. “Are we going to ever be okay again?”
Phoebe wrapped him in a one-armed hug. “I know we are.”
“How?”
“Your dad promised me we would.”
“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Jax whispered, his voice soft, strained. “I feel like I didn’t get to know him as anything but Dad.”
“Oh, baby.” Phoebe’s heart ached for her son. She’d known John inside and out, admirable traits and annoying quirks. But Jax was right. He’d only known John as the quiet, loving father, a sliver of the whole of the man. “He is so proud of you, Jackson Scott.”
“Was. Maybe,” Jax said bitterly.
“Is. Definitely,” Phoebe argued. “Trust me. If he’s proud of you, then he loves me, and I’m not ready for any of that to be past tense.”
Jax gave a tight nod and let out a breath. “Okay. Yeah. I get that.”
“Good. Now, do me a favor. Go find Beckett and make sure he’s not managing and orchestrating. Piss him off if you have to. But I want him to have a little room to feel tonight, okay?”
Jax gave her another hug. “It will give me great pleasure to piss him off.”
They broke apart, and Phoebe took a step backwards.
“Mom, you gonna tell me why you have two forks in your pocket and a bottle of booze in your hand?”
Guilty, Phoebe chewed on her lip. “Because...”
“Because what?”
“Because I said so?”
“That didn’t work when we were kids.”
“I was kind of hoping you’d cut me a break and let it work just for tonight.”
“What kind of cake did she bring?” Jax asked. Her youngest, with the barbed wit and mischievous nature, always managed to surprise her with his moments of quiet soulfulness. The longing in her son’s eyes had nothing to do with cake and everything to do with the woman who’d made it.
“Pineapple upside down.”
“Make sure she knows s
he’s welcome here, okay?”
“I will,” Phoebe promised, relieved.
He gave her a wink. “I’m gonna go spill something greasy on Beckett’s shirt.”
“Jax?”
He stopped, his hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched. “Yeah, Mom?”
“I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
--------
“Where’d you have to go for booze? Canada? I was getting ready to dig in with my hands,” Joey griped. She was sitting on a hay bale, her long legs swinging in time to the Wild Nigels’ thumping beat outside. The cake was uncovered and ready for consuming. Phoebe slid onto the bale on the other side of the cake plate and handed over a fork.
“I got waylaid by someone.”
Joey’s shoulders stiffened, and Phoebe guessed she knew who had done the waylaying.
Phoebe twisted open the bottle and took a deep drink. “Ah.” She wiped her mouth with her sleeve still damp from tears—so many tears—and handed the bottle to Joey. Phoebe plunged her fork into the yellow spongey cake.
“If you ever get tired of school and horses, I’ll set you up with a bakery,” Phoebe said with her mouth full of sugary perfection.
“Mmm,” Joey said, passing the bottle back and digging in. “Think I’ll stick with horses. I’d hate dealing with customers,” she shuddered.
“You know you’re welcome out there. I don’t want you to think that you can’t grieve with us because of what happened between you and Jax.”
Joey flinched at his name, and Phoebe, feeling like an asshole, took another drink.
“No,” Joey said, shaking her head. “I don’t want him or anybody to see me like… this.”
“Like what?” Phoebe prodded gently.
Joey’s eyes clouded. She bit her trembling lower lip. “He was a really good man,” she said finally, choking the words out.
They weren’t talking about Jax anymore.
“Oh, my sweet girl. John considered you family, and so do I,” Phoebe said. She wanted to reach out to the girl to hug her until the hurt went away. But Joey shifted as if reading her intentions.
“I loved him. A lot,” she said with a shuddering breath.
“We all love you, Joey. All of us. Don’t feel like you need to go through this alone, please. That will make this worse for me, worse for all of us.”
“I have something for you,” Joey said, letting out a shuddering breath.
“Besides cake?” Phoebe teased.
Joey leaned to the side and pulled an envelope from her back pocket. “Here.”
Phoebe caught her breath when she saw the handwriting on the back.
My Phoebe.
“Where did you get this?” Phoebe asked, her throat tight as she traced the letters of her name as written by her husband.
“Middle of the night last night. I knew you all were home, so I went in and sat with John for a while,” Joey confessed.
Phoebe squeezed Joey’s knee. “Thank you for that.”
“He made me promise to give it to you after… after. You’re not going to read it right now and go to pieces, are you?”
Phoebe stared at the envelope and then pressed it to her heart. “No, I think I’ll wait a little while.”
Joey nodded in relief. “He was a good man,” she said again, making a neat row of fork holes in the cake.
“He made three other really good men, too,” Phoebe said, reaching out and squeezing Joey’s hand.
Joey snorted. “Well, two out of three ain’t bad.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The wake was never going to end. It was already midnight, and someone had the brilliant idea to pull the hay wagon out to use as a makeshift stage. Neighbor after neighbor had taken the stage to share their favorite stories about John, and then the Wild Nigel’s had launched back into their playlist. The food had been replenished by dozens and dozens of pizzas and subs from town. She didn’t know how it was happening, but every time her glass was empty, someone filled it back up again.
There were eleven children sound asleep in her living room while their parents continued to “mourn” in spectacular Blue Moon fashion.
The entire municipality was just going to party itself to death, and at this point, Phoebe was okay with that. And just when she thought things couldn’t get weirder, someone brought her a goat.
“This yours?”
Ellery, a sweetheart of a teenager who was going through an unfortunate goth phase, clomped over in her knee-high platform boots. The goat chewed at the party streamer someone had tied loosely around its neck.
Phoebe had no idea where the goat or the party streamer came from. She shook her head. “I’ve never seen that goat before in my life.”
The goat bleated and dug at the ground with one dainty foot.
Ellery pressed her lips together, her black lipstick forming a dash on her pale face. “What should we do with her? I think it’s a her. She has long lashes and little feet.”
The goat’s yellow eyes fixed on Jax as he wandered by, a slice of pizza in his hand. Before anyone could react, the goat snatched the pizza out of his grip, her ears and tail twitching as she devoured the pineapple and olive.
“What the—” Jax peered at the goat. “Did we get a goat?”
Phoebe shrugged. “I guess so. Ellery, can you put her in with Leopold at the front of the barn before she eats everyone else’s pizza? He’ll probably like the company.”
“Sure!” Ellery clomped off with the goat in tow.
Only in Blue Moon would a goat crash a party, Phoebe thought.
The Wild Nigels ended their song to tremendous applause from the nowhere near sober audience.
Fran, the twenty-year-old band leader with a purple Mohawk that matched the flames on her wheelchair, leaned into her microphone. “This next one’s before our time, but it’s a little something we’ve been working on for John for his wedding anniversary. This one’s for you, Phoebe.” Fran pointed pistol fingers at Phoebe. “Guys, I’m gonna need your help with this one.”
Phoebe’s sons, all three of them, a little the worse the wear due to whatever alcohol had been flowing like Niagara Falls took the stage. Well, Carter staggered onto it. Beckett tripped over it, and Jax climbed him like a mountain goat before dragging his inebriated brother onto the stage.
Phoebe’s shoulders shook with suppressed laughter. She pulled Mrs. Nordemann’s cloak of mourning—a gift along with the woman’s special tofu kale casserole—a little tighter around her shoulders. And as the first strains of “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?” poured out, she hooted. A thousand memories of that first summer flooding through her.
It was a beginning in the end, and it was beautiful.
Her boys crowded around the microphone for the chorus, and Phoebe grinned up into the dark sky where the stars twinkled just as they always had and the navy blue of night clung like a soft blanket.
She brought her fingertips to her lips and blew a kiss heavenward.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Present Day
Lovingly, Phoebe tucked John’s essay back into the envelope. She’d read John’s goodbye at least a thousand times in the first year without him. And every year since then, she revisited it, remembering the unforgettable man.
She dabbed at her eyes with another tissue and gulped down some wine to ease the tightness in her throat. It was amazing, the things the human heart could contain, she mused. The joy, the grief, the peace, and the strife. The shelves above her were a testament to that. Loosely organized in chronological order, the mismatched frames and their images told the story of a life full of love and loss, joy, and the underlying satisfaction that carried through it all.
Her first wedding day picture, in a whitewashed wood frame, showed her standing hand in hand with John saying their vows against a backdrop of sunflowers that went on forever. There were baby pictures of the boys, kindergarten and Cub Scouts, prom and
sports. John and the boys. The farm as it had been back on the day she’d arrived. There were her sons’ weddings and the babies and not-so babies.
Her second wedding picture resided in a lovely filigree frame, one of her in Franklin’s arms on the dance floor, laughing at something wonderful. Deliriously happy again. Wasn’t it strange that she could remember both wedding days so perfectly in high-definition detail? She felt like the same person who stepped foot on this farm in 1985, yet so much had changed within and without.
Her sons had deemed Franklin a man among men—at least after their initial shock that Phoebe was indeed dating. Together, she and Franklin had taken their two families and joined them in ways that could never be undone.
Franklin supported and encouraged her to remember John, to keep him an integral part of their blended family. And she loved him all the more for it. He made her laugh every single day with his wicked sense of humor, and Phoebe knew John would approve of her choice. And through Franklin, Phoebe finally got the girls she’d wished for. Her step-daughters were smart, sweet, and strong, and she loved them as fiercely as she did her own sons.
It was a beautiful life so far, and she couldn’t wait to see what was next.
Phoebe counted her lucky stars every damn day that she got to love the two best men in the world and raise three more. The tears were dry, and her smile wide. Somedays, the gratitude she felt for her life overwhelmed her.
Life was hard, but that’s what made it so incredibly good. That’s what made her appreciate every second that she had on this earth. Even on the darkest day, there was still beauty to see, still love to find. There was still a beginning to find in every end. She knew that now and hoped that her family knew it, too.
She heard the screen door swing open at the front of the house and a chorus of “Mom!”
