Closing her eyes, she said a prayer for his healing. She’d look for other ways to help him when she left. Right now, though, he needed sleep more than he needed tutoring, so she didn’t stay. The instructions for her lesson were self-explanatory—if he felt well enough to read them. At the door, she paused and turned. Her emotions inched up from her heart toward her eyes once again.
Why did God let little boys get sick? And why did He let big boys drown?
As she exited the hospital, she didn’t fight the tears. If anyone saw her, so what?
She sat on a bench in the hospital’s courtyard and exhaled. There had to be more ways to help raise money for Ben’s care. Though she hadn’t been able to help her brother, she was determined that she’d work as hard as she could for the small boy she’d left in that sterile room.
After the tears subsided and the blurry world focused again, she checked the time on her cell. She had an appointment with Dr. Hacker, but she was going to be really early, so she took her time, walking to her car, tuning in a new radio station, and driving back to Summerbrook with the windows down. On the way, she hit the speed dial number to call April again. Still no answer. “Sweetie, call me. I’m getting really worried.” She hung up.
The fragrant spring air filled the car and swirled her hair about her. Though she tried to think of more ways to help Ben, her thoughts kept returning to Saturday night and her narrow escape from disaster—from Dudley and his fiancé who was every kind of fake there ever was—from Mr. Slithers, and from Hogan. She couldn’t help but wish things could have been a bit different with Hogan, but someone like him would never fit into her life. With his anti-establishment hair style, his can’t-take-them-to-the-ballet friends, and his inexperience with grand estates and the plantation crowd.
Inside Dr. Hacker’s office, she slipped her glasses on her face. It didn’t matter if he saw her in them. He knew all her secrets—her OCD, her fears about losing the plantation, her contrived image. In some ways, she was no better than Dudley’s fiancé.
She picked up the scissors from his pencil cup on his desk and walked around, tending to his plants—that hadn’t been pruned or looked after since she’d been there last. Which was last week. Thank goodness he allowed her to obsess over his plants because keeping her hands busy helped her to relax, to open up to him. As she cut away the dead leaves, she noticed how the blue skies were slowing turning gray.
As she snipped away, she said, “Your secretary lied to me.”
“About what?” Dr. Hacker said, eyeing her chart.
Last week, she said you didn’t have any appointments available this afternoon. So I told her I’d skip this week. Then she calls yesterday and magically had an appointment for me.” She turned and faced Dr. Hacker.
“I know how you hate liars, but people’s schedules change. That doesn’t make them a liar.” He continued reading the file in his hands.
Jenna nodded and resumed her pruning.
“What’s really bothering you, Jenna?” He crossed his leg over his knee and leaned back in his chair. “You haven’t lopped off that many leaves in months.”
So, Dr. Hacker was assessing her anxiety by the amount of plant material she butchered.
“I’ve been thinking.”
He just sat there and let her think. Good way to fill up the hour her dwindling trust fund paid for each week. To let her think and manicure his potted plants. She’d already had lots of practice with both on the plantation. Dr. Hacker was getting old. Literally and figuratively. Seeing him had made her mother feel less guilty about all the lies she’d told Jenna around her brother’s death, but her appointments with the esteemed doctor would end soon.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what about?”
“I assumed you’d tell me when you got ready.” He drew his fingers into a steeple.
“Well, I’m ready.” She clipped off a stray stem from a mother-in-law’s tongue plant. She didn’t know the real name. It was just what Jasper called it when he tended the houseplants in the main house. “I’ve been thinking. What would happen if I just abandoned the whole idea of saving the plantation? If I just looked out for me? I’d have a heck of a lot better chance of finding…peace.” Or maybe even love.
“How would that make you feel? If you just abandoned it all?”
There was the core. Exposed for the first time. Had he been waiting all these sessions just so that he could ask her that question? Just now.
“Well, I met someone the other night, and I started thinking.”
She knew how this was going to play out. He wasn’t going to give her any answers or suggestions. Just let her talk.
“Well, it got me to thinking about that. I mean. This guy was like…all wrong for me. And the plantation.” She castrated a fern. “But what if I didn’t have all that to consider? I mean. I could have ridden off into the night on his motorcycle if I would have wanted to, right?” She knew she was being ridiculous. And she knew she’d get a rise out of Dr. Hacker.
He sat up in his chair. “I don’t know, Jenna. Could you have?”
She didn’t know either. Could she have?
This was going nowhere. She got more help figuring out her life from Jasper and Amberlee than she did from Dr. Hacker. But they didn’t have degrees from the APA, now, did they? Everyone would freak if she took advice from them.
But what they did have was a lot of wisdom and common sense.
Exactly what she and Doctor…Slacker over there didn’t have.
Rain began to fall outside as she gazed past the plant hanging from the top of the window frame. An asparagus fern. Another air-cleaning plant. Slacker probably needed it from all the bull-lonie that he heard and regurgitated back in his office. She could simply get a recorder, speak into it, and then play it back to herself—for all the good Slacker had been doing lately—with her family’s money.
One side of the plant was shortly cropped, and the other side was long and wispy—kind of like a botanical mullet. She grabbed the longest tendrils and sheared them off.
Now. If she could only do that to Hogan’s hair.
Then who knew what could happen between them? A girl could fantasize, right?
⸙
Jenna drove through Summerbrook, down Ashley River Road, under the looming limbs of the giant oaks that crisscrossed the road, and finally through the gates at DeBordieu Plantation. The road was littered with debris from the short storm that had passed earlier.
She had to slow down to a crawl when she made it through the tabby and brick gates. Limbs from mega-tall loblolly pine trees lay all over the long dirt and gravel drive as she zigzagged her way home. Spring storms had a way of cleaning out all that was unnecessary. So did she when the going got tough.
When she could drive no farther, she had to get out the car and move the limbs to get by.
Every time she got back in her car, she checked her phone. They were playing phone tag now. She dialed her voicemail.
“Hey, Jenna, just calling you back. Bye.”
Well, she sounded okay, but what kind of check in was that? Jenna hit redial, and she immediately got April’s voicemail. “Tag. You’re it. I really am worried about you. Call me.” She ended the message and call. This has got to end. She continued on her way.
Finally, when she reached the plantation house, she gazed at the white beast with the broad piazza that traversed all four sides of the building. She’d spent so many years of her childhood on that wide porch, rocking, sipping sweet tea and lemonade, talking with her brother, watching long, lazy summer days swelter under the green canopy overhead.
She’d been schooled by her grandmother and mother on that old porch…and by Amberlee. She simply couldn’t imagine ever losing the ancient family home. Yes, Amberlee and Jasper were family, too. Though not by blood, by love. If only what Amberlee had told her the other night about that will was true. But it couldn’t be or someone would have surely found proof by now.
She got out of her car and breat
hed in the green of the plantation. She just couldn’t lose it because she’d need it one day, too—to raise her own family. When she would have been married and ready for babies, that house would have been hers, and her parents would have taken the efficient carriage house. There was no way she could lose the plantation for all her future heirs, as well.
She turned and headed for her small sanctuary, still decorated by the old iron hinges on the former carriage accesses. Just as she pushed through the unlocked door, her phone rang. She looked at it or a moment, then swiped to answer.
“Well,” Jenna said in a huff. “It’s about time. You’ve got to know how worried I’ve been about you. Or does that even matter now that you’ve met yourself a…a…Bull?”
“That’s not fair, and you know it.” An odd pause passed between the two best friends. “I’m sorry I haven’t tried harder to connect, but this whole biker thing has had me tied up in knots,” April said.
“Had?” Jenna asked, as she exchanged a water from the pantry for one in the refrigerator. She closed the door and stared at Hogan’s card on the front. She let out a breath.
“Yep. Had. Things are different now. I’ve got to step things up for Ben. Have you seen him lately?”
“Yeah. Today.”
“Then you know. If we’re going to save him, we have to do it now.” She paused. “And you have to help.”
“I want to. I really want to. When I saw him earlier—” She paused with a lump in her throat. “Boy.” Jenna took a long gulp of water from her bottle. “But how?”
“For starters, you’re going with me on Saturday.”
“Where?” Jenna ran her finger over the raised letters on Hogan’s business card.
“The country club again. To a golf tournament.”
Jenna looked out the front window at Jasper, pulling away the freshly fallen limbs and raking around a cluster of giant camellias. She needed to do that in her life—get rid of the old so there’d be room for new growth.
Of course she’d go to help Ben, but she kind of liked stringing April along, playing with her as they’d done since kindergarten—except for those middle school years she’d spent in France.
“So, is this going to be worth my while?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean. Will there be time for us to talk?”
“Oh, there’ll be time to talk all right.”
Jenna had an agenda that needed to be addressed. “I mean…alone…not with guys like the last time.”
“Oh, Jenna. No guy will ever come between the two of us. You know that.”
“I know, sweetie.” The conversation turned to men in general, and the golfers in particular, and they joked back and forth about cute guys like they had since fifth grade. She loved the playful banter of their close friendship.
She thought for a moment. About men. About putting herself out there—even when it wasn’t comfortable. About having a real Southern gentleman come along who would help her figure out a way to save the plantation—if it wasn’t too late. Her future flashed briefly before her eyes. Perhaps it would be with a guy in a golf shirt.
Why did Jenna just get a feeling of déjà vu?“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Lots. But they are just minor details.”
Jenna had been by April’s side since kindergarten and knew somehow she wasn’t getting the whole story from her friend.
April went through particulars for the tournament, time and circumstances.
It was a way that Jenna could help even more with the fundraising—the only thing she could do to help Ben—other than tutoring him.
She pulled out the current book she was reading to see if there were enough pages left to keep her busy at the country club when she wasn’t sizing up April’s anxiety and life. She wanted nothing but the best for her best friend.
April paused again on the other end of the phone. “And anyway, I need you there because I miss my best friend.”
Awww. She knew exactly when to play the “best friend” card.
“Well… Okay. See you at ten on Saturday then,” Jenna said and shelved the book. It had been her plan from the beginning to help, but she liked chatting with April and needed to make sure she was okay. The two had always protected one another. Because the two of them knew what it was like to have childhood trauma sideline their lives.
“Perfect. It’ll do you good to venture from your safe zones,” April said.
“Safe zones?” Jenna had thought that April was the one with ‘safe zones’. But her best friend was right. Jenna realized that though she did various things, she was really operating in safe zones, just like April, and nothing different was ever going to happen to either of them in the protected circles they had created.
She said goodbye to her girlfriend, then turned to the refrigerator and took Hogan’s business card off the door.
Look how that had turned out last time. The last time she had left her “safe zone.” Jenna had felt…exposed.
Anson’s death had left a void, but she had pushed down all the feelings so that she didn’t have to deal with them. Everything had resurfaced now that time was ticking away. Somehow, without her realizing, Jenna had been morphing into the protector that Anson had been. For herself. And others. Like April. Like Ben. She simply had to sort it all out.
She sat down at the desk again and checked her email. Two of the emails she’d sent were answered. The first one was from a dairy farmer. That was a dead end like she thought it would be. Not enough capital to buy enough animals and equipment to make a difference. The second one was more promising. She’d enquired about turning some of the land into a winery. But there was a lot more to investigate before she’d know everything.
She startled at a knock at the front door.
“Jasper? What’s going on?
“It’s your momma. She’s down at that old cemetery again. Amberlee saw her go there hours ago and ain’t seen her come back.” He stepped aside like he was about to head there. “I can go if you want, but I thought you might want to go yourself, seeing how it’s your momma, and seeing how she’s been so sad lately. I’m just not one to go fixin’ a woman’s feelings. Heck, I’ve always had a hard enough time with Amberlee.”
She nodded. “You’re right, Jasper. I’m the one who needs to go. That’s only right.” She eyed the sweet man. “Why don’t you go home, take it easy, and grab a glass of iced tea?”
He brushed at some dirt on his jeans. “I’ll take a little break. My old back isn’t what it used to be, but I hate sitting around, too. Amberlee’s not used to me being under foot anyway.”
They both laughed.
“Was a time I could keep up this whole place.” He gestured toward the land beyond them. “None of this is gonna be like it used to.” He shook his head. “We had us some good times here, didn’t we, honey?”
“Yes, we did, Jasper. Yes, we did.” She wanted to tell him not to give up completely on her yet, but she didn’t.
He nodded.
“Oh, if you feel like it and go down to the dock later, check the crab trap. I set it this morning before I left for the boutique. You and Amberlee might have a mess of crabs for dinner.”
“Oh, Amberlee sure would love to have fried crabs for dinner. I’ll do that after I’ve rested. It’ll give me a good excuse for a walk later.”
“Good. I’m going to change and go get Momma. Thanks for telling me, Jasper.” She closed the door softly, leaned against it and closed her eyes, as well.
She dressed in some cut offs and an old T-shirt of her brothers. After he’d died, she’d confiscated everything she could that might fit her. Which wasn’t much. Some old T-shirts, a couple of pairs of socks, his sweatshirt, and Polo hat. And his mud boots. That was when she figured her mother had decided to pack her up and cart her off to France—when she came slogging up the road in her brother’s boots and shirt in the middle of a rainstorm with her hair all slicked back under Anson’s ball cap. It must ha
ve been a sight for her poor mother. Because they looked similar at each age, her mother must have thought she’d seen Anson’s ghost. She didn’t blame her mother for her decision. She did blame her, however, for the lies about the family vacation in France.
Anyway, when she got back to start high school, most of his stuff had been taken out of her room. Just a couple of T-shirts remained. She was never going to fill his boots anyway.
She slipped on her Rainbow flops by the door and out she went. Though she loved skating barefoot down the sandy roads on the property, she’d need the protection in the graveyard with all the sticks and bricks and rocks.
A bird sang a melancholy song in the top of an old magnolia tree as she passed. Squirrels argued overhead in the branches of an ancient live oak, and she caught sight of a curious red fox as it mirrored her steps in the thick woods as she made her way toward the graveyard. She wondered if the animals could somehow know it was she who was losing their land—if something didn’t change. The land belonged to the creatures really. It probably didn’t matter to them who owned it. They would still be here long after all the papers were signed. If Dudley didn’t sell off all the trees to make his tourist trap. So, yeah, she was going to let down the creatures that called this place home, as well—if she didn’t get moving on a plan.
She stopped at the crooked tabby column that still managed to hold up the old iron gate. The arched sign overhead read DeBordieu. More than DeBordieus were buried there. From the very beginning, slave and master, cook and overseer, mothers and fathers and daughters and sons had been buried here. No distinctions other than the names. All side by side as equal keepers and dwellers of this land.
This plot was sacred. To them all. She recalled a favorite quote by Chief Joseph from her book of quotes. “I pressed my father's hand and told him I would protect his grave with my life. My father smiled and passed away to the spirit land.” Each person buried here had placed that sacred trust in someone’s hand. And all those hands had placed their trust in hers. Her heart sank. She couldn’t let them all down—all these people who’d gone before she’d even been born. She surveyed the old plot, then closed her eyes.
Fireflies and Lies (A Summerbrook Novel Book 4) Page 8
