Dress Me in Wildflowers

by Trish Milburn

  “What do you want?”

  Farrin looked up, not understanding the question. “Besides you to leave?”

  “You are the one who should leave. You’ve done nothing but turn our daughter and grandchildren against us.”

  Anger began to stew deep in Farrin. “You did a pretty good job of that all by yourselves.”

  “You know nothing about us other than you’ve always wanted to be Janie’s friend. And you weren’t friends, and you’re still not. You may have lots of money now, but you’re still the same little girl who wants desperately to be part of the popular crowd.”

  Farrin looked at the other woman, wondering what had made her into the person she was. “You’re pathetic.”

  “Stay away from my daughter.”

  “Janie is a grown woman. She can make her own decisions.”

  “No, she can’t. She’s done nothing but make one mistake after another.”

  “You think your grandchildren are a mistake?”

  “Don’t twist my words.”

  Farrin shook her head. “You know, it’s really very sad. You have one child and you’re going to lose her, and you still can’t let go of a mistake she made years ago. You can’t manage to love those kids because they’re the product of Janie’s error in judgement.”

  Jewel’s face reddened. “I don’t know what you think you can get from my daughter, but you’re not getting it.” She turned and stalked toward the front door, slamming it behind her.

  Farrin sat stunned. What was wrong with that woman? Did she honestly believe Farrin was up to something? Maybe she’d lived in Oak Valley, in the world of her own making, so long that she was delusional.

  Drew arrived only a couple of minutes after Jewel’s departure. “I just passed Jewel Carlisle, and she didn’t look happy.”

  “She’s under the impression that I’m up to no good, that I’m after the family fortune or something.”

  Dear Lord, those precious children were going to have to deal with their grandmother every day in the years to come. Would she turn them into what Janie had been?

  ****

  As Matthew predicted, the deepening days of winter saw Janie begin to decline. First, her appetite disappeared. Then her strength. And finally her enthusiasm for anything but her children.

  Farrin spent as much time as she could at Janie’s, helping her eat yogurt and move from the living room to the bedroom and back whenever she got tired of sitting in one place. The only time Farrin left was when someone else came to stay, particularly Jewel. That the older woman wasn’t screaming at her was evidence that Janie had evidently stood up to her mother in that respect.

  Snow was flying when Farrin picked the children up one afternoon in mid-January after an early dismissal. Dara watched the snowflakes out the side window. “We’ll probably get to stay home with Mom for a couple of days.”

  “Looks that way. I know she’ll like that.”

  Farrin hated the way the normally energetic twins had drawn inward, quieter and sad. She realized as she drove through downtown that if she were given the chance to offer her own life so that Janie might live and spare her children this pain, she’d do it.

  They stopped at the store and purchased some necessary groceries. It seemed the entire town was there stocking up on those staples of winter storms — bread, milk and batteries. When they reached the apartment, the kids took a couple of bags each and headed up while Farrin gathered the rest of the groceries and closed the trunk. She reached the doorway to the apartment in time to hear Dara’s cry of anguish.

  She dropped the bags and hurried to the bedroom door to the kids’ room. “What’s wrong?”

  Dara stared at her naked walls. Where maps and posters of wildflowers had once been taped, only faded squares on the paint now stared back.

  “Good Lord, who dropped these groceries in the middle of the floor?”

  Dara rushed past Farrin and confronted her grandmother. “Where are my maps?”

  Jewel dusted her hands together. “In the trash, where they belong. You don’t need maps unless you’re on your way to a place. And you’re not going to Ireland anytime soon.”

  “But they were mine. You had no right.”

  “Watch your tongue or you’ll be punished. We don’t have room for all that junk cluttering up our house. Whoever heard of a little girl wanting a bunch of dusty maps anyway?”

  “Go get them.”

  Everyone turned at the sound of Janie’s strained voice at her bedroom door.

  “What?” Jewel asked.

  “The maps. Bring them back up here.”

  “They’re at the bottom of the Dumpster.”

  “I don’t care. Dara’s right. It was not your place to throw away her things.”

  “That’s the appreciation I get for cleaning out that sty of a room.”

  “Leave.”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I want you to leave, Mom. I’m not dead yet, and I won’t have you treating the kids like I am.”

  Jewel shot Farrin a look that would have frozen the devil himself. Then she grabbed her coat and left without a backward look or another word.

  “I’m sorry,” Janie said.

  Farrin hurried to her and helped her back to bed before she collapsed.

  “I hate to ask you this—”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get the maps out.”

  Tears streaked down Janie’s face. “Why can’t my parents stop being so cold? Why can’t they feel?”

  Dara and Jason crawled up in bed on either side of their mother, and she wrapped them in her weak arms.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. I can get other maps someday.”

  Farrin sped from the room, about to break down in tears herself. She’d never seen the life slipping out of a person day by day, and it was excruciating to witness. She picked her way down the snow-covered stairway and headed for the Dumpster. When she peered inside, she saw a bag with a tear exposing the edge of a map.

  “Farrin?”

  She turned to see Drew.

  Together, they managed to salvage the maps and posters and put them in a clean bag. Dara thanked them with so much enthusiasm, she almost seemed like her old self again.

  “I don’t understand that woman,” Farrin said when Dara had retreated to her room.

  “Sometimes people get set in a pattern and they don’t know how to break it.”

  Farrin thought back to how her own unyielding bitterness had alienated her from her mother until it was too late. Would Jewel Carlisle make the same mistake?

  ****

  One of those wonderfully abnormal days when the temperature rose to nearly sixty degrees and the sky was a cloudless blue arrived in late January. Farrin thought there couldn’t be a better day to take Janie to the inn for what might be her last visit. They wrapped her in so many layers she could barely move. Then Drew carried her down the steps and placed her in the front seat of his SUV.

  When they arrived at the inn, he carried her inside. Farrin watched him and loved him all the more for his kind heart. He caught her watching him and smiled the smile of a man who just might love her back.

  It took a long time because of her weakness and need to rest often, but they eventually toured the entire first floor. Completed wedding gowns were already on display in the bridal salon, even more artists had contributed to the gift shop, and Faye’s restaurant and Sweet Everythings were on the verge of opening.

  “I never thought I’d be so excited about having to work so much,” Faye said, her eyes as bright as sparklers on the Fourth of July.

  “And we convinced Farrin to open the rooms to overnight guests,” Opal said. “Juanita Taylor is going to run it. She said she’d always wanted to have a B&B, but after her husband died she just couldn’t afford it.”

  “This place has some magic in it,” Janie said.

  Yes it did, and Farrin was about to pull out the grand finale.

  “I’ve got one other thing I wanted to ask your opinio
n about,” Farrin said as she walked across the hall to a closed room they’d used for storage while Janie was still working. An easel sat next to the door with a cloth draped over it. “Dara, would you do the honors?”

  With great flourish, Dara scooped off the cloth to reveal a sign adorned with “Janie Carlisle Photography” in a script that matched Janie’s signature. In the next moment, Farrin opened the door and revealed the hundreds of framed prints of Janie’s photographs.

  Janie covered her mouth, and tears popped into her tired eyes. “Oh, my God.” She walked toward the door then over the threshold, surveying the depictions of Oak Valley’s and the Appalachians’ natural beauty. “I can’t believe it. I’d dreamed it, but never really thought it would come true. How?”

  “Dara knew where you kept all your images, and we, well, borrowed them,” Farrin said.

  “Do you like it, Mom?” Dara asked.

  “Oh, baby, I love it.”

  Janie was exhausted, but she didn’t want to leave. They brought the soft chair from Farrin’s office and let Janie sit in the midst of the new shop.

  “Who wants some pound cake?” Faye asked.

  A chorus of positive responses followed everyone as they filed out of the room. Everyone except Farrin and Janie.

  “I’m glad you like it.”

  “It’s so much more than love I can’t describe it.” Janie took a deep, rattly breath. “I think God must have decided I needed a guardian angel while I was still on Earth and sent you.”

  “I’m no angel.”

  “To me, you are. To my children. To Faye and Opal and everyone who now has a job because of you. To everyone who loved this building and felt helpless to save it. And to Drew. I’ve never seen him look so happy. He loves you.”

  Farrin paced the length of the room, swallowing against the growing constriction in her throat. “I don’t know.”

  “Sometimes guys don’t think they have to say the words, but they’re feeling it just the same.” She uttered a little laugh. “If you don’t get with it, I’m going to have to do long-distance matchmaking from Heaven.”

  “Janie.” Farrin still couldn’t talk about her friend’s impending death.

  “I’m dying, Farrin. There’s no getting around that.”

  “I . . . I know.”

  “I see how happy you and Drew are together, and I don’t want you to let the little things stand in the way.”

  Farrin didn’t think the distance from Tennessee to New York was a little thing, but she wouldn’t want to give Janie anything else to worry about. “Okay.”

  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about something. I hate to ask you for anything after all you’ve done for me and the kids, but I have one final favor.”

  “Name it.”

  Janie looked up at her with what looked like a mixture of hope and fear. “I want you to adopt the children when I’m gone.”

  Farrin’s head swam. “What?”

  “I can’t stand the thought of Dara and Jason having to grow up like I did, not being able to be who they are and follow their own dreams. I mean, it’s already started. The map episode is just the beginning.”

  “I can’t take your children.” Farrin’s pulse roared in her ears.

  “Why?”

  “I . . . I don’t know anything about kids. I have no experience.”

  “What do you call the past four months?”

  “Yeah, I pick them up at school, give them gifts, watch movies. That’s not being a parent.”

  “Then what is? Farrin, you’ve done more for my kids in the past couple of months than my parents ever have. And Dara and Jason love you. Dara even asked me if they could live with you instead of my parents.”

  Farrin stalked the room, feeling the walls close in and a migraine building with blinding speed.

  “Just think about it.”

  Dara ran in with two pieces of cake. “Here you go,” she said as she handed one to her mother and placed the other on a counter.

  Farrin looked at the cake and felt her throat close. “Excuse me.” She ran into the garden, needing fresh air before she passed out. Though the garden was still in its mid-winter sleep, the invisible ivy that had been gradually growing around her ankles since returning to Oak Valley surged up her legs, wrapped itself around her arms, wound around her neck like a living noose, suffocating her.

  She had to break free.

  ****

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  “You going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

  Farrin looked up from where she’d been scooting her pasta around her plate without eating any. Drew sat leaning back in the chair across from her in his kitchen. They were supposed to be enjoying a rare night alone since Faye and Opal were staying with Janie.

  She released her fork, letting it clink against her plate. “Rough day.”

  “Rougher than the others?”

  “Janie asked a favor of me, one I wasn’t expecting.”

  “I think you’ve taken two bites of your dinner max, so it must have been a big favor.”

  “She wants me to adopt Jason and Dara.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. She’s not thinking straight. I can’t raise two kids. I have no experience, I’m too busy.”

  “Not to mention that the law will side with the next of kin unless there is some special circumstance like abuse.”

  “I think my idea of abuse and the law’s are probably going to be different. To me, trying to make a child perfect and stripping away who they are is abuse. Not showing affection is abuse. But I don’t think that counts in the eyes of the law.”

  “Does she know how to contact the twins’ father? He’s the next of kin, even though he hasn’t been in their lives.”

  Drew’s question surprised Farrin. “I can’t believe there’s a secret in this town that’s lasted this long.”

  “What?”

  “Janie doesn’t know who the father is. She has no recollection of who she was with the night she got pregnant because she was drunk.”

  “And no one ever told her?”

  “Not a peep.”

  Drew ran his hand over his face. “Then the Carlisles are the next of kin.”

  That thought depressed Farrin. If only there were some other option.

  ****

  Farrin was showing a bride-to-be several styles in the showroom when her phone rang. She left the young woman and her mother, who’d driven the considerable distance from Kingsport, to browse while she answered it.

  “Have you changed your mind about adopting the kids?” Drew asked.

  “No, why?”

  “Because I just heard that the Carlisles have retained Frank Jillian to fight you.”

  “What!? There’s been some mistake.”

  “I think you better talk to Janie before this gets ugly.”

  Farrin had never had so much trouble concentrating on catering to a bride, but the moment the young woman placed her order and left with her beaming mother, Farrin raced to Janie’s apartment. But when she tried the door, it was locked. And her key didn’t work.

  “Go away,” came Jewel’s cool voice from the opposite side of the door.

  “Let me in. I need to talk to Janie.”

  “You have done quite enough damage to our family. Either leave or I’ll call the police.”

  “And tell them what?”

  “That you’re harassing us.”

  “That’s not true. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not taking the kids.”

  “You’re right, you’re not.”

  “Listen, there’s been a misunderstanding. There is no need for an attorney.”

  The only reply Farrin got was the sound of Jewel’s retreating footsteps. The woman was stark raving mad! Could Janie hear all this craziness or was she somehow sleeping through it?

  At a loss for what to do, Farrin stalked down the steps and sank onto the bottom one. Frigid air slapped her cheeks, but she didn’t move. She tried to figure
out how the situation had spun out of control. How could she live knowing Dara and Jason were going to have to put up with that crazy woman?

  A silver Cadillac pulled into a space in the parking lot, and Dara jumped out of the back door and raced toward her. Farrin hugged the child close and realized how much she’d miss being able to do so. Jason walked up more slowly but sank down close to her.

  “Come on, kids, let’s go upstairs,” Mr. Carlisle said.

  “I want to talk to Farrin,” Dara said.

  “You know your grandmother won’t like that.”

  The granddragon opened the door at the top of the landing. “Get in here now before you catch your death of cold.”

  “No,” Dara said.

  “What did you say, young lady?”

  “I said, ‘No’!”

  The outburst was so uncharacteristic that Farrin jumped. And then she saw the pain in Dara’s eyes. What the hell was going on?

  “You will not talk to me that way. You will respect me and not talk back, and you’d best remember that.”

  It wasn’t so much what Jewel said but how she said it that pissed Farrin off. A young girl with the kindest heart she’d ever known did not need a Marine drill sergeant screaming at her. But Farrin bit her tongue. It was best for the kids if they didn’t anger their grandparents.

  “It’s okay,” she said to Dara and smoothed her hair. “Go on in and see your mom.”

  Dara hugged her as if she knew she might never see her again. She wouldn’t if Jewel Carlisle had anything to do with it.

  ****

  Farrin threw herself into work, even helping Faye and Opal prepare for the coming opening of the restaurant. If she stopped for anything other than to drop into an exhausted sleep, reality caught up to her and made her heart ache. She’d not seen the twins in nearly a week, and she had no idea how Janie was doing, guarded as she was by her mother.

  She’d passed Mr. Carlisle on the street this morning and before he’d looked away, she’d almost swear she saw an apology on his face. Surely it was her lack of rest making her manufacture expressions.

  “Are you ready to brave Oak Valley’s finest and break down that apartment door?” Tammie asked from the doorway.

  Farrin looked up from where she’d been staring at the same half-filled-out check for the past ten minutes. “I didn’t know you were here.”