by Toler, B N
“So you took money from an eighteen-year-old girl?” Bailor scoffed.
“Fuck you, Bailor,” Joe yelled as he lurched out of his chair, grabbing Bailor’s mid-section and tackling him to the ground. Over the years, Joe had gained some ability to move his legs, and could even stand when he wanted to, but he couldn’t take more than a few steps. Bailor scrambled to move from under him, but Joe was too fast, and he quickly shimmied up Bailor’s body. Joe shoved Bailor down just as Bailor punched Joe in the jaw. Joe’s head snapped back before he returned the blow, hitting Bailor in the face.
“You asshole,” Bailor gritted, his face crimson with anger and the exertion from the fight. Joe punched him again, blood from Bailor’s lip splattering across the dirt. The whole thing shocked the hell out of me, leaving me staring dumbfounded as Joe reared his arm back to hit Bailor again. I was just about to move to stop him when Emalee flew in from out of nowhere and grabbed his wrist.
“Stop it, Joe!” she shrieked. Joe pushed her off, caught up in the heat of the moment, sending her stumbling back and landing on her ass.
“Emalee!” Pepper cried as she ran to her friend trying to help her stand. The whole thing had gotten completely out of hand.
“Knock it off!” I bellowed as I looped my arms around Joe and pulled him off of Bailor. “What the fuck, Joe?” The two were breathing heavily as they awkwardly sat up, both covered in dirt. Bailor’s lip was bleeding and Joe had scratches all over his arms from the gravel. Joe moved his jaw side to side while Bailor rubbed his cheek.
“I did what I had to do,” Joe rasped with a heavy breath. “You think I wanted to take money from her?” He pointed angrily at Em. “You think I’m proud of it?” Joe’s eyes welled with tears, but he held them back as he croaked, “This place was all we had left!”
Suddenly, Bea appeared beside him with his wheelchair. Joe looked up at her blankly, having never met her, but he didn’t bother to ask who she was or even say thanks as he pulled himself into his chair. Pepper rushed to Bailor, but he shooed her away as he stood and brushed off his clothing.
“I begged Joe to take the money,” Emalee’s voice trembled as she spoke, her face twisted with grief. “I couldn’t stand to see you lose anything else, Cole. You wouldn’t take the money when I offered it to you. I loved you so much I couldn’t bear it—you all…” she shuddered and wiped at her nose with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I loved Constance so much…I loved all of you.”
I glanced at Joe. “So is this why you’ve been so rude to her? You were scared she’d expose your little secret?”
“She wasn’t supposed to come back. That was the deal.”
I whirled on Emalee. “You told him you would never come back?”
She swallowed hard before nodding. “You’d already decided you were going to send me away because of my father.”
“You told her about that?” I asked Joe. “Why? Were you hoping she would offer it to you?”
Bailor closed his eyes. “What the hell happened? Just come out with it, for God’s sake, before we all kill each other.”
Joe shook his head, frustrated. “I wanted her to know the kind of man he really was. I was pissed that he’d showed up right after we lost Mama and tried to bribe you. He was an asshole.”
Emalee added, “I knew you were already going to end it for good, so I promised Joe I wouldn’t return if he took the money. Joe didn’t ask for it. You need to know that. I begged him to take it. I asked for your mother’s guitar in return.” Her face tightened as she fought the urge to sob and Pepper ran over to her and hugged her.
I ran a hand through my hair. “So it was your money, not his?” I looked at her then Joe. “What happened to the check her father wrote?”
Joe and Emalee exchanged glances before looking away from one another.
“What happened to her father’s check?” Bailor asked Joe.
“He cashed it,” Emalee finally answered, when Joe wouldn’t. Every muscle in my body tensed as anger gripped me. Joe took forty thousand dollars from Emalee and her father. I was flabbergasted.
Emalee rushed to add, “He donated the amount of my father’s check to an ALS charity.” She shot her gaze to Joe, who was staring at the ground. “When I’d picked up the guitar and gave him my check, we decided my father was an asshole, and since he could just toss that much money around, we shouldn’t let it go to waste. We agreed to give it to charity,” she finished.
“So your father thinks I cashed his check?”
Emalee’s tortured gaze met mine. “He’d made the check out to the farm, not you personally,” she explained. I could see the regret in her eyes, but I was too angry to care. She’d overstepped when she’d offered me money years ago, and I’d explained that it hadn’t been okay. I’d thought she’d understood but apparently, I’d been wrong. After I’d told her not to interfere again, not only had she gone behind my back and made a deal with my brother, but they’d also taken her father’s money, too.
I held my head in my hand, unsure what to do or say. “You let that man believe I chose money over you?”
“I knew you didn’t, Cole,” Emalee cried.
“But he didn’t!” I shouted as I stepped toward her, causing her to cower. “That was my fucking choice!” I was livid, my eyes tearing up with the torrent of emotions. “I sent you away because I loved you. I wanted you to have everything I could never give you. And all this time he’s believed he won, that I’d taken his money in exchange for you?”
She shook her head, understanding why I was upset, but still she attempted to defend herself. “We thought giving the money to charity was a good thing.”
“Why?” I scoffed as I turned my rage-filled gaze on Joe. “So you guys could feel better about yourselves when you knew you were betraying me?”
“Damn it, Cole, she did it to help you!” Pepper attempted to reason as she stepped toward me, her face twisted in frustration. “They both did.”
“Pepper,” Bailor growled. “Stay out of it.”
“You guys are overreacting. It’s just money; Em has a ton of it. So does her father. Why wouldn’t she want to give it to the people she loved most to help them?” she asked.
Bailor laughed, his eyes wide like she was insane. “Twenty thousand is nothing…right.” He bobbed his head. “Or forty thousand, I mean,” he corrected himself.
“That’s not what I meant,” Pepper huffed. “It is a lot. I just—”
“It wasn’t her place, or anyone else’s for that matter, to save this farm. It was ours,” Bailor growled, his posture tensing. He let out a disdainful chuckle as he put his hands on his hips and looked heavenward. “I didn’t even have a GED. I quit high school to work,” he mumbled to himself.
“We all lost,” Joe added. “You’re not the only one.”
“Cole and I busted our asses that summer to save…” Bailor’s eyes welled with tears and he stepped back as if it would help him reign it in. “We thought we’d done it,” he said, defeated. “I thought everything I’d given up was worth it because we’d managed to keep this place.” He turned his gaze to Joe. “It was the last thing I thought we’d done for her—save this place. And to find out you took money from a kid…” he trailed off and turned to Pepper. “He took twenty thousand dollars from a naïve rich kid while we were over here killing ourselves.”
“And, he took money from her father and let him believe I was bribed to break up with her,” I added.
Pepper’s shoulders sagged in exasperation. “How do you know Em wasn’t the miracle you boys needed?” she asked. “Why that summer—when your mother was dying, and you were losing everything—did she show up?”
“Pepper, don’t,” Emalee pleaded.
“No.” She held her hand up to silence Emalee and looked directly at me. “I’m sorry if my comment about the money insulted you, but my point was Emalee had been blessed with the means to help, and she shared that with you. And now, all these years later, the two of you,” she pointed t
o Bailor and me, “want to get butt hurt because Joe swallowed his pride and let her help you and didn’t tell you. You seem to have forgotten the bigger picture here.” She raised her arms and shouted, “You saved your farm!”
“Pepper!” Emalee begged. “Stop!”
Pepper dropped her gaze and set it on Bailor, but he wouldn’t look at her. Shaking her head, she gave him a pitied look that he didn’t see. “I’ll be in the car waiting.”
Bea, who had stood quietly behind Joe the entire time, followed after her.
I let out a huff, blown away by everything. I had to get away. I stalked toward the house, but just as I reached the first step, Emalee grabbed my arm.
“Please,” she begged, her face tight with despair. “Please let me explain…”
I yanked her hand from my arm, effectively cutting her off. “I’ve spent a decade kicking myself for telling you to go and never come back, and now I find out you’d already known. You planned it, and you let me believe I was the one at fault.”
Her features relaxed as she stepped back. “I’m sorry I hurt you, but I’d do it again, a million times over, if it meant you guys got to keep this place.” Her gaze drifted over the house. “That day at the field line, when you showed me how to tell if the wheat was ready for harvest…the way you talked about your father…” She looked down at her knotted hands. “I’d do it again.” She stepped back and looked up at me. “Yes, I betrayed you, but I did it because I love you.” Her head hanging, she turned and walked to the car. I watched her climb in and take off, thrown by how she’d gone from hysterics to calm.
I made Bea and Pepper promise they wouldn’t tell Mama any of what they’d heard, or the fallout between the Kepner brothers. When we got back to the house, she was in bed resting and hadn’t been down after her shower. After I calmed down, I went in to check on her a few times, but she was sleeping. A little after midnight I crawled under the covers and lay on my side, facing her, and gently stroked her hair.
The next morning, neither of us able to sleep, Pepper and I perched on the front porch swing sipping coffee. Not surprisingly, Cole hadn’t attempted to contact me, and Bailor hadn’t reached out to Pepper.
“I don’t know how to fix this,” I told her.
She patted my leg. “You were eighteen. For them to be this upset about you doing something out of love…” she shook her head.
“I never thought about it the way Bailor did—that they’d thought they had accomplished the impossible in the name of their mother. I never thought about that.” The anguish on Bailor’s face had haunted me all night. I’d played a role in hurting the Kepner brothers and pitting them against one another. That was the last thing in the world I’d wanted.
Bea had a duffle bag strapped over her shoulder when she slipped out the screen door, closing it quietly. Pepper and I glanced at one another, then back to her. Was she leaving?
She leaned her bag against the banister and approached. Pepper stood and said, “You’re heading off, huh?”
Bea shrugged. “Gypsy soul, ya know.”
They hugged and Pepper said, “I’ll give you two some privacy.”
Bea inhaled deeply as she looked down at me then sat next to me. “I’m no good with goodbyes. Especially ones so final.” She was talking about Mama; she didn’t want to watch her die. I couldn’t blame her; I didn’t want to say the final goodbye either. “I said goodbye to Betty. Gave her a little toke before I left.
I rolled my eyes. “You’re turning my mother into a pot head?” I joked.
“I left her a bit, too. It helps her.” Her tone serious she said, “It’s very close for her, Em. Stay strong just a little longer.”
“Daddy is shit,” I admitted. “But I can’t deny knowing you exist makes me feel a lot better.”
“Yeah, I think so too.”
“Where will you go? When will I see you again?”
She frowned. “There’s someone I…want to spend some time with. It just depends on them.”
Her answer was vague and open-ended, but I didn’t push her. “Do you think we’ll ever hear from Daddy again?”
Bea let her gaze drop. “I don’t know. What would you say to him if he showed up right now?”
I sipped my coffee, giving myself a moment to consider. “I have no idea.” A quiet moment fell between us as we rolled over the idea of never speaking to our father again. “Promise we’ll keep in touch.”
“Pfft.” Her blue eyes glinted. “You’ll see me again. I’m like a fungus that goes away but always comes back.”
I laughed. “If you ever use a dating app that should totally be your bio line.”
We stood and hugged then I walked her to the steps where she hoisted her bag on her shoulder. She was going off to who knows where on her own.
“You know this is your home, too. You’re always welcome here.”
Her gaze softened. “Thank you.”
“You’re the brave one, Bea.”
She grinned. “I know. Who do you think you got your bravery from, little sis?”
I smiled as she climbed in her retro RV and drove away.
In the days that followed Bea’s departure, my mother slept more and more. I’d spent every moment she was awake with her and climbed into bed with her each night when I couldn’t sleep, just wanting to be close to her as much as I could before she left us.
Connie and Pepper had been silent soldiers, always close by to help with anything they could, but allowing me time with her on my own.
Four days after Bea left, Mama fell asleep and didn’t wake up. She had signed all the papers indicating she did not want feeding tubes and ventilators, so we called hospice and they sent a lovely man named Charles out to be with us until the end. Then, we waited.
I brought Constance’s guitar to her room and sang all of Mama’s favorite songs. I sang the little ditties she’d sung to me when I was a kid, hoping it made her feel loved if she could hear me.
I don’t know why I bothered, but I’d called Daddy, again, and left him a voicemail, letting him know she was at the end. He didn’t return my call. He was such a coward, hiding from his own humiliation.
On her last night, I opened the window. The moon was bright, and the evening was warm with a perfect light breeze. I lay down beside her, nestling my head as close to her as I could.
“It’s okay, Mama. I’m going to be okay. I promise, I’m going to be happy.”
I told her every wonderful and lovely thing I could think of about her. I told her how much I loved her laugh, and how honored I was to be her daughter. I told her that all the good in me was from her; that she’d taught me to stay grounded. I told her that her love and faith were both things I aspired to match in my time. I kept talking, words of love that seemed endless until I fell asleep beside her.
The sounds of birds chirping eventually roused me, the eyelet curtains drifting in the breeze as the morning sun leaked into the room. I knew the moment I sat up and looked down at her.
Mama was gone.
I hoped more than anything that she took my love with her.
Pepper had left me a voicemail letting us know Betty had passed, and that they were having a wake for her at the house before returning to Texas to have the memorial for her friends and family. Betty, like our mother, had requested to be cremated.
The interview with the asshole reporter aired the same day as Betty’s wake, and I doubted it was a coincidence. Though it revealed her personal life—parts she’d wanted kept between her and her family—at least it had been done tastefully. No doubt it was more about making the asshole reporter look more caring and professional versus being sympathetic to Emalee.
Joe had disappeared days ago without explanation, leaving only a note saying he needed to be away for a while. He left his passwords to the computer so we could access the accounts and see his bookkeeping. The days since discovering the truth had been awful as I was constantly torn between seeing the love in what Emalee and Joe had done and feeling bet
rayed.
Despite the turmoil we were trying to work through, Betty had always been good to us and at the very least, Bailor and I needed to pay our respects. So we dressed in our rarely-worn suits and drove to Emalee’s house.
A large photo of Betty rested on a stand in the living room surrounded by floral arrangements and wreaths. Pepper was zipping around in the kitchen, a red apron covering her sedate black dress as she arranged platters of ham biscuits and deviled eggs. When she finally noticed Bailor and I enter, she smiled sadly.
“I’m glad you guys came.”
“Betty was a good woman. She was good to us,” Bailor said.
Pepper nodded as she licked her lips. “She really was,” her voice cracked with emotion before she cleared her throat.
She and Bailor locked eyes for a moment before she moved her gaze to me. “Emalee is upstairs. I can’t seem to get her to come down.”
Bailor glanced pointedly at me, his look clearly indicating I should check on her, then returned his focus to Pepper and asked, “What can I help you with?” He slipped off his jacket and hung it on one of the chairs before unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling his sleeves up.
He was right, of course. If both sides were able to lay down their arms on Christmas day back in World War II, Emalee and I could find a temporary truce at her mother’s wake. Reaching her door, I took in a deep breath and softly knocked on her door.
“Just a few more minutes, Pepper. I promise,” she called but her voice sounded odd.
I opened the door and found her leaning into the closet, her head wedged between dresses on hangers she was holding with both arms, almost like she was hugging them.
“Time’s up,” I said, startling her. She whipped around, revealing eyes puffy and red from crying. Her hair was twisted up elegantly, and despite her eyes she looked okay, tired but okay.
“You came?”
“Of course I came. Betty was good to us.”
She blinked a few times before looking down at herself. “Sorry,” she mumbled as she grabbed a thin throw blanket from a chair and wrapped it around herself. “Thank you for coming. It would’ve meant a lot to her.”
