Janelle left the main party site and went to the living room to see if she’d left her camera there. She picked it up, and when she turned, she was facing Kevin, Kory’s older brother.
“Hey,” she said, ready to move around him. She’d already made casual—and quick—conversation with him and his family.
“Janelle, can I talk to you a minute?” he said.
Her heart slipped into an erratic beat. Didn’t help that he and Kory favored one another. “Okay.”
“Kory told me what you did, and I wanted to tell you how much I admired that.”
“Okay.” She didn’t know what else to say.
“I hope you know how much he cared about you.”
Past tense. Nice. Thanks for clarifying that, Kevin. She had nothing to say to that either.
“Well. That’s all I wanted to say,” Kevin said. He turned to leave.
Don’t do it, Janelle. Do not ask him—“Kevin?”
He turned around.
“So . . . they’re together?”
“Shelley’s with him and Dee at the house, yes.”
“Okay.”
Instead of going back to the party, she went to her room, closed the door, and sat cross-legged on the bed. There was no other explanation for Kory not calling the last three weeks, but hearing it—knowing it . . .
In the morning she’d sort through her feelings in her journal. With God’s help she’d get to a place where she could pray for him and Shelley again—wasn’t this news an answer to her prayers? But right now, it hurt. And she only wanted to cry.
Janelle still had the camera in hand. She turned it on and pushed the button to view the pictures. She scrolled through ones just taken today, then back, back she went until she got to Todd’s reception at Calvary and the pictures she’d taken with Kory. The only ones they’d ever taken.
She stared at the two of them, his arm around her, her head tucked close to his chest. She remembered his words, his tone, his touch, his feel. She moved her finger to the button and clicked the picture into the trash. Then the next. And she had her cry.
Minutes later, she heard a quick knock at the door, and then it opened. Libby stuck her head in. “Janelle, there’s a taxi—what’s wrong?”
Janelle swiped her face. “Nothing.” She jumped up. “A taxi’s here?”
“It’s coming down the road, and it’s got to have Keisha in it at least. People are headed outside.”
Janelle followed. They took the side door near the kitchen, and indeed, most of the family stood in the dark to greet the yellow taxi. Looked like the driver had his high beams on, which wasn’t unusual around there if you didn’t know your way, but it prevented them from seeing who or even how many were in the car.
Several seconds passed, then a back door opened and a woman stepped out.
“Is that Keisha?” Libby said. “I can’t hardly tell with that stupid bright light in my eyes.”
“I don’t know if that’s Keisha, but whoever it is isn’t alone, because she’s helping somebody else out, an older woman. That must be Aunt Floretta.”
“I didn’t know she was coming,” Libby said.
“Me either.”
Janelle expected the door to close, but a third woman got out. Everything in her seemed to pause—she knew it must be Aunt Gwynn.
Libby knew too, because they were both struck silent.
The driver gave them their luggage, and the taxi with the bright lights pulled away. The three women stood in place, looking at the house, the family that had gathered outside, and each other.
Uncle Bruce, Aunt Gladys, Estelle, and Uncle Wood were the first to go to them. Seeing their parents move, Janelle and Libby were seconds behind. Faces were lost in hugs, questions lost in tears. Janelle hugged Aunt Floretta and then Aunt Gwynn, who was then corralled by her siblings to a separate powwow. She then hugged Keisha, who even in the dark looked pretty much the same—smooth café au lait skin, wavy hair layered short, maybe a little leftover baby weight.
“I’m so glad you came.” Janelle wished she could stay a week so they could talk all day and night.
“I honestly wasn’t sure until the last minute. I didn’t want to come without my mother, and the only way my mother would come was if Grandma came. I ended up charging a ticket for her.”
Janelle and Libby glanced at one another. It was strange hearing Keisha refer to Aunt Floretta as “Grandma.”
“Your very first time in Hope Springs,” Libby said. “This is truly a moment.”
Keisha looked around. “I’m looking forward to tomorrow when I can see the town better.” She looked to where her mother appeared to still be in deep conversation with her siblings. “It’s weird. My mother has her memories to contend with here; I have none.”
Cyd and Stephanie came over and hugged Keisha as well. As they all shared small talk, Janelle said, “Forgive me for staring. You and your brother have the same eyes.” She spun around. “Where is Todd?”
He was in the distance, giving the family space. Janelle waved him over.
“Todd, this is Keisha. Keisha, Todd.”
They took one another in, and the resemblance really was obvious.
“Can I . . . hug you?” Todd said.
Keisha seemed overwhelmed, perhaps more than she thought she’d be. She didn’t answer. She just reached for him and they embraced.
Janelle wanted to cry again, happy tears this time.
“You said you wouldn’t come unless you were open to building a relationship,” Todd said. “I’m hoping this means . . .”
Keisha nodded with a slight smile. “I’m open.”
Aunt Floretta had moved inside with other family members, to where Grandma Geri had remained in her wheelchair. More family came to greet Keisha, many for the first time. Keisha was a little guarded, not at all chatty, trying to feel her way in a new environment with a lot of new family.
“Should we go inside?” Janelle asked her.
Keisha looked back at her mom. No telling how long the five siblings would be in conference. “Might as well,” Keisha said.
But when Keisha began to move toward the house, Aunt Gwynn called to her. “We’ll go in together,” Aunt Gwynn said.
The rest of them walked on into the house. Family was still gathered around Grandma Geri, but much more somber, no one knowing what to expect. Grandma Geri looked more nervous than Janelle had ever seen her, fidgeting with a napkin, leaving it in shreds in her lap. Janelle grabbed one of her hands and held it. She prayed what she’d been praying for weeks.
Lord, please bring peace where there’s been strife. Bring healing where there’s been hurt. Bring forgiveness where there’s been bitterness. May Your love flow in our hearts.
Janelle tried to read her mom when she walked in, but she seemed lost in her own thoughts. Same with each one who entered after her. None of the usual banter. Almost a heaviness.
Aunt Gwynn walked in next with Keisha. In the light Grandma Geri’s youngest looked a lot like her older sisters, but with a leaner frame. She wore a sweater with matching cardigan and slacks, small pearl earrings in her ears. Her hair, layered short like her daughter’s, looked recently styled. Life appeared to be treating her well, at least on the surface.
With all the remodeling the house had to look vastly different. This family room didn’t exist when she left home. Aunt Gwynn didn’t look at anyone in particular, just at the room, the ceiling; then she disappeared down the hall, Keisha by her side, as they took in the rest of the house. Hardly anyone spoke. They waited until the two did what they needed to do and made their way back.
Janelle could hear them coming, and Aunt Floretta met them down the hall. They paused there in conversation, then continued on, only to the edge of the family room. There they stood.
Family members looked at one another. What now? The principle players were in the room, but they couldn’t be made to talk. Meanwhile, the party had come to a screeching halt.
Suddenly Keisha moved o
ut from her mom and “grandmom.” She walked over to the wheelchair and knelt in front of it. “I’m Keisha,” she said, extending her hand.
Grandma Geri’s eyes bubbled with tears. She stared at Keisha as if noting every aspect of her, then she ignored her hand, pulled her close, and hugged her. Keisha leaned in, returning the embrace.
Janelle had never heard her grandmother weep like that, not even when Grandpa Elwood died. Her upper frame shook as she held tight to her granddaughter. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I hate that I never knew you. Please, please forgive me.”
Libby looked at Janelle as if trying to hold back tears, but it was useless. There was hardly a dry eye in the family room.
Janelle was surprised to see that Keisha was crying too. She pulled back a little, looking Grandma Geri in the eye. “I spent a lot of my life being bitter about what happened, and I’ll bet you’ve spent a lot of your life regretting it. I don’t want to talk about that anymore.” Keisha wiped tears from her face. “I want to talk about you. I want to get to know . . . my Grandma Geri.”
“And I want to get to know my Keisha.”
Grandma Geri embraced her again, then Keisha sat on a chair next to the wheelchair, holding her grandmother’s hand—mostly because Grandma Geri wouldn’t let her go.
An awkward silence seeped in again. Did they resume mingling and chatting? Wait to see if Aunt Gwynn would come forward?
She did finally, slowly. She sat on the sofa a few feet from the wheelchair, though it wasn’t clear if she was making herself comfortable or opening up dialogue.
“This is very difficult, being here,” she said finally, seemingly to everyone. “I’ve been gone almost forty years, and though from time to time I’ve seen my sisters and brothers and their kids, and a few others of you who’ve come to Jersey, most of you are practically strangers.” She looked out among them. “It cost me a lot, staying away. But neither could I come for many reasons. So I buried the past. Ran from it mostly. Who knows what the right thing was to do? Maybe I should’ve shown up at a family reunion one year with my daughter and faced my mother, Jim, and all my demons.” She shrugged. “Who knows?”
Aunt Gwynn took her time, almost emotionless. “So now I’m supposed to make my appearance in Hope Springs after all these decades, rush to my ailing mother’s side, and say all is forgiven so she can feel . . . oh, I don’t know . . . freer as her life nears an end. Is that what we’re doing here?”
Grandma Geri had a tissue Aunt Gladys had slipped her. She clutched it in her lap, looking at the floor.
“See, it’s real nice,” Aunt Gwynn said, “that my daughter can say she doesn’t want to talk about the past, because she didn’t live that past. I did.” Emotion was entering into her voice. “I was the one who was told not to bring my baby back here if I chose to keep her. I was the one made to feel like I’d done something horribly wrong because I’d fallen in love with a white man. Do you know I’ve never fallen in love with anyone else my entire life?”
She took a breath, looked at no one in particular.
“So maybe you’re wondering why I came.” She was back to her collected self. “I came for my daughter, because she asked me. She wants to get to know her grandmother, and I will not discourage her. That’s her choice. As for me, I still cannot think about my mother—my churchgoing, Bible-reading, always-telling-me-right-from-wrong mother—without seeing her face as she sent me from home and handed me an ultimatum about my baby. God help me, but I’m not ready to forgive her.”
She stood. “Wood, you said you’d take me to my hotel?” She headed for the door.
“Gwynn, don’t leave like this.” Aunt Gladys stood as well. “What happened was terrible, but you’ve got to put it behind you for your own good. You’ve got to make peace.”
“Gladys, I told you outside. This is where I am and I’m not going to pretend.” She looked at her brother. “Wood, will you take me or not?”
The pain was evident in Uncle Wood’s eyes. “’Course I’ll take you, Gwynn.”
He picked up her luggage near the door and they walked out.
Keisha spoke with Grandma Geri in low tones. Janelle’s mom, Aunt Gladys, and Aunt Denise went to the kitchen, where they would begin cleaning and dissecting everything about the night. The rest seemed to grope for what to do next.
Libby needed air. She walked out of the house a few seconds after her dad and watched him and Aunt Gwynn pull away. The entire episode had shaken her. She wished they hadn’t had the party, not when it only gave Aunt Gwynn a forum to voice decades of bitterness. Grandma Geri would never forget the things she said, and in front of everybody. As sick as she was, to have to endure that kind of pain . . .
But Libby knew it was more than that. She took a few steps in the gravel, looking into the night sky, the silver moon. She’d seen in her aunt Gwynn a glimpse of herself—the running, the rebellion. Would Libby find herself in that same spot twenty years from now, alone, hardened . . . sad? That’s what struck her the most, that Aunt Gwynn was sad, whether she realized it or not. She’d locked herself in a prison and didn’t know how to get out. And hadn’t Libby? Hadn’t she locked up her heart, not knowing how to—
She turned when she heard footsteps coming toward her.
“Travis, I can’t. Not now.” She turned back around, her heart beating through her chest.
“Just wanted to see if you were okay.” He stopped in front of her, his presence causing her to shiver. “You looked upset in there.”
Her feelings were a contradiction. She wanted him to go. She wanted him to hold her. “Hard not to be upset.” She couldn’t look at him. “But I’ll be all right.”
“Okay.”
He started back to the house.
“Travis . . .”
He paused. “Yes?”
She closed her eyes, not wanting to reveal her thoughts. But she wanted to know. “Am I a project to you?”
He walked back to her. “What do you mean?”
“Do you feel like you hurt me in the past, so you have an obligation to act like you care, invite me to church, and all that?”
“It’s no obligation. I do care about you, Libby.”
“As a pastor?”
“As a friend.”
Quiet engulfed them for a few moments.
“So I see you and Omar are hanging in there.”
“Yeah. Things are going well.”
“Seems like a nice guy.”
“He is.”
They both stared into the night sky.
“Libby, I . . .” He turned to her, and his brown eyes spoke in earnest, looking deep into hers, grappling. He sighed. “I’d better go.”
She watched him walk back into the house, sure of what he’d said. He could see her as a friend but nothing more. He knew the life she’d been leading, the kind of life that disqualified her from his.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Monday, May 3
They’d been told “any day now” a week ago, and family and friends had been squeezing in moments with Grandma Geri.
A hospice nurse had been coming regularly to the house for the past month—Dr. Reynolds too—but Janelle didn’t need either to tell her that her grandmother was fading. Every day Grandma Geri appeared a little more shrunken, like the air in her earthly body was being let out. Today her breathing was more labored than ever, as if her spirit were giving a gracious warning that it was heading home.
They all seemed to sense it. Aunt Gladys, Estelle, and Uncle Wood were in the room. Libby had come from Raleigh last night after an event and was lingering this morning. Todd and Becca had made their usual morning visit but hadn’t yet left. Same with Travis. He’d stopped by for a “quick hello” on the way to run an errand, and more than an hour later he hadn’t left the room.
The older generation was telling funny stories from their growing-up years, and Grandma Geri listened, smiling, saying little. Though it was a beautiful warm, sunny day, she had two blankets ato
p her regular comforter, pulled to her neck. Her arms lay outside the blankets. Janelle held one hand, Libby the other.
Grandma Geri opened her mouth to say something, and everyone quieted. She spoke so softly it was hard to hear.
“Church,” she said. “Yes-ter-day.”
“Oh, the combined service.” Todd nodded his head. “It was beautiful, Grandma Geri. We’d been planning it for two months, but it was better than we hoped and prayed for.”
“Starting it on the first Sunday in May was perfect,” Janelle said. “The weather was gorgeous. Seemed like it spurred people to come out.”
There were people who stayed home too, and had been vocal about opposing it. But no point dampening Grandma Geri’s spirits with that.
“Location was perfect,” Todd said.
“I wondered what it would be like, having it in the high school,” Aunt Gladys said, “but it was really nice.”
“Yeah,” Todd said. “But it was kind of funny seeing all those spring hats against the backdrop of the basketball nets.”
Grandma Geri’s eyes smiled.
“And you should’ve heard Travis’s sermon, Grandma,” Janelle said.
“I’m telling you,” Estelle said. “Resurrection Day might’ve been last month, but you got people fired up talking about what it means for our lives today, knowing Jesus is risen.”
Libby cast a downward glance. She hadn’t been to church in Hope Springs since the one service when Stephanie was there.
Travis acknowledged their words with a thin smile. He’d been quiet, standing against the dresser.
They heard the side screen door open and bang close. Sara Ann came to the doorway, Ethan on her hip. She’d stopped by to see Grandma Geri and ended up hanging around to help with the kids.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Is it okay to take Ethan to the little park up the street? Claire and Tiffany want to go.”
“Sure,” Todd said, “but you’ve got to keep a close eye on that one.”
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