Secrets over Sweet Tea

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  Scarlett Jo straightened the hem of her pink floral sundress and pulled it down as she sat across from Sylvia. “Now . . . talk.”

  Sylvia set her matching patent-leather handbag on the table in front of her. “It’s my granddaughter. You know, Mary Kate?”

  “I know. Keep talking. What about Mary Kate?”

  “She’s—she’s gone and gotten herself . . . pregnant.” She barely whispered the word.

  Scarlett Jo felt a twinge of heat rise in her face. She tried not to let Sylvia’s ignorance make her too angry. She leaned over and whispered back. “People say that out loud these days. It’s okay.”

  Sylvia humphed. “It isn’t okay. We don’t do such things in my family. And she knows better. She’s just sixteen years old, and she’s ruined her entire life, not to mention the whole family’s reputation. And she won’t even marry the boy. Says she doesn’t love him. Well, she should have thought of that before she went out and . . .” She didn’t finish the sentence. Apparently she couldn’t form the words.

  Scarlett Jo leaned back in her chair. “Well, you’re right. She should have thought first. But she didn’t.”

  Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. “People will think she’s white trash.”

  Scarlett Jo felt herself twitch. “Yep. And they may think awful things about you too.”

  Sylvia’s expression made it clear Scarlett Jo wasn’t helping. “People are nasty. Mean. I mean, her own father’s talking about kicking her out of the house, and he’d have the perfect right.” She fumbled with her purse. “Never did think much of that man, even if he is my own son-in-law.”

  Scarlett Jo crossed her legs and let her foot rhythmically dangle in front of her. “So let me ask you, then, what in the world can you do about it?”

  “We can hide it. Send her away.”

  Scarlett Jo rolled her eyes. “I guess you could, like they did in the Stone Age—although there is the question of where you’d send her. I don’t think they have homes for unwed mothers anymore. But come on, Sylvia, I’m asking a thoughtful question here. What can you really do about it?”

  That was when she saw Sylvia’s lip quiver. Or thought she did. But the woman got up so fast it was hard to tell. She snatched her purse and took off past Scarlett Jo’s still-sitting body. “I’ll tell you what I can do, Scarlett Jo Newberry. I can make sure I never tell you anything else again. As liberal as you are, you would probably want to take her in yourself.”

  Scarlett Jo stood. “No, I’m thinking that might be what God’s asking you to do. And I think that might be why you’re so angry—because you’re resisting his voice.”

  Sylvia turned on her one-inch square heels. “I can’t have that kind of . . . person in my home.” And she was gone.

  Scarlett Jo couldn’t help but wonder how long it had been since Jesus had been invited into Sylvia Malone’s house either.

  Zach’s talks with Jackson the last few weeks had created an awakening of sorts—an awakening to events from his past. The tragedy of his parents’ divorce. The performance-driven personality he had developed and the deep wounds that remained. The way he and Caroline had entered into marriage, vainly trying to complete one another in ways that left them both undeniably unfulfilled. How they had learned to cope. And how, little by little, they had both shut down their hearts.

  “Do you know what I mean when I talk about a shut-down heart?” Jackson had asked him one night as they strolled through downtown Franklin. With the cicadas finally gone, the sweet sounds of a Southern summer had returned.

  “Honestly, I don’t think I do.”

  “Think about our kids again. You know, like we talked about that first day in my office.”

  “I was kind of a wreck that day, remember?”

  Jackson clapped him lightly on the back. “How could I forget?”

  “So your point was?”

  “That our kids didn’t come into this life jaded. They started out with full hearts—fully alive and fully themselves.”

  Zach felt a stab of guilt as he thought about Joy and Lacy. They were the ones who suffered most in all of this. And he still wasn’t sure what he could do about it.

  “Think about when your girls were little,” Jackson was saying. “They probably danced with this reckless abandon when music would come on. They played dress up and had tea parties or did whatever girls like to do.”

  “Well, one of them did. The other is more a soccer-playing tomboy kind of girl. And for the record, they still dance in the kitchen with the music turned up loud—I mean loud.”

  Jackson laughed. “My boys came out of the womb making truck noises and wanting to shoot something. And not much has changed with them either. Now it’s airsoft guns and video games where they’re virtual soldiers. Long way from our BB guns and Swiss Army knives, huh?”

  Zach laughed. “Yeah, a whole new world.”

  “But my guys still play outside until Scarlett Jo hollers for them to come in. And you know I mean it when I say she hollers.”

  Zach pretended shock. “No. Scarlett Jo?”

  Jackson chuckled. “I know—right? But my point is, those kids are alive. They’re here, present, in the moment. We throw them in the air, and they yell, ‘Do it again, Daddy!’ They cry when you take away their crayons or make them leave a friend’s house. They feel their feelings. They don’t try to be something they’re not.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with that,” Zach said. “My girls are trying so hard to be like everyone else. You know—skinny, popular, right clothes.”

  “And what are they, thirteen?”

  “Just turned fourteen.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. They’re starting to experience what can happen to us when we let life shut us down. We’re meant to stay connected to our hearts, you see. Feeling our feelings, present in the moments we’re given. But we don’t do that. And that’s when we get in trouble.”

  “But we’re not supposed to stay kids forever, are we? Shouldn’t we grow up? You know, put away childish things?”

  “Of course. We mature and take responsibility for ourselves and others, and that’s a good thing. But we’re never meant to lose that alive quality, to get cut off from our true hearts. Growing up isn’t the same thing as shutting down.”

  “But it happens. That’s what you’ve been telling me.”

  Jackson nodded. “It does happen, but it’s not inevitable. We can fight it. We have to fight it. Because when our hearts shut down, we become mere shells of who we once were. We don’t laugh—not honestly, not from the heart. We don’t dream. We don’t feel our feelings or use our gifts. We end up trying to just survive instead of live. It’s like we’ve handed our hearts over to the enemy of our souls and said, ‘Here, you can have it. I’m giving up.’”

  He stopped and looked at Zach. “Am I making any sense at all?”

  Zach gave a rueful smile. “Too much sense. That’s when we have affairs, right?”

  “Not all of us. The thing is, shut-down hearts don’t always look the same. I’ve seen this in my own life and when I’ve walked it out with others. Some people try to control everything in their life. Some fall into pointing out everyone else’s issues instead of dealing with their own. Some try to please everybody, make everyone happy, or play perpetual rescuer. And some people act out sexually.”

  “Like me.”

  Jackson nodded. “Like you. This thing has a thousand different faces, Zach.”

  “That makes sense too, I guess. But it doesn’t really tell me how to get, well, opened up again. I’ve lived this way for a long time, and I don’t have a clue how to be different. Where do you even start when everything around you looks broken?”

  Jackson stuck his hands in the pockets of his madras shorts. “Okay, this is the way I see it: you start with the lie.”

  “Come again?”

  “You have to ask yourself, what is the lie you’ve believed—about life, about yourself, about God?”

  Zach consider
ed this as they rounded a corner and started down yet another street. “I don’t know, Jackson,” he finally admitted. “I don’t know what lie I’ve believed.”

  “Then that is where you start. Ask him, Zach. Get curious with him. He’s a big God. He can handle your questions.”

  “I guess I never thought we could do that. Question God, I mean.”

  “Why not?” Jackson said. “Abraham asked God questions and was called a ‘friend of God.’ And Jesus was always asking questions. You ever wondered why?”

  “Probably not because he didn’t know the answers.”

  Jackson laughed. “No, probably not.” He stopped walking and faced Zach. “I believe it’s because he knew that if he asked questions, we’d start asking questions too—questions about our own hearts. Because that’s what Jesus was always concerned with—people’s hearts. Remember when he talked about adultery? He said if we even look at someone with lust, we’ve committed adultery in our hearts.”

  “Well, then—” Zach stuck out his hand—“meet Mr. Perpetual Adulterer.”

  Jackson laughed. “It’s in all of us, Zach. That’s part of Jesus’ point, that we all have sin in us. But he was also saying that sin begins and ends with the heart. Actually, that idea runs through the entire Bible. As a man ‘thinks in his heart, so is he.’ ‘Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.’ In other words, what is in us is going to come out of us. And ‘above all else, guard your heart.’ Do you hear that, Zach? Out of everything we do, protecting our hearts is the most important thing.

  “We’ve got to guard them especially from anything that could come in and set up a lie about our God. Anything. I mean, even doing my work—and I’m a pastor—could convince me that God needs me in some way. That would be the perfect way for the enemy to set me up to wear myself out and shut myself down. And it would all start with a lie. The devil will try to convince us of anything—he’s the father of lies, remember. And that is why we have to guard our hearts so carefully.”

  Jackson put a hand on Zach’s shoulder. “So maybe that’s a place to start. Ask yourself what lies you’ve been believing.”

  Zach had dug into that conversation for weeks. And he had asked. He had asked God, “What are the lies I’ve believed about you that got me here?”

  Possibilities came in flashes. With his parents’ divorce during his teenage years, he had shut down. He had convinced himself that if he’d been a better athlete, a better student—just better—then maybe that wouldn’t have happened. So he’d thrown all his energy into becoming the best at everything he did. That had led to top honors in academics and athletics. And he’d learned to perform his way through conversations with adults, convincing them of his deep reservoirs of understanding. He’d been one impressive kid, even though his heart wasn’t in any of it. Then, when he met Caroline, he had performed for her too. She was beautiful. Smart. Came from a family that he wanted to validate him. Her parents were still married. He hadn’t really offered her his real heart. He’d given her what he thought would impress her and make her love him.

  The truth was, he’d believed God hadn’t written his story well enough, so he needed to write it himself. He needed to write a story that would make other people respect him, that would attract a Caroline and a perfect family. He needed to be the best so people wouldn’t discover all his flaws—because, deep inside, he thought God had made a mistake with him. That was another lie he’d swallowed—another lie that had gotten him into this mess.

  Zach sat at a four-seat table in Saffire Restaurant. He looked into the faces of his teenage daughters and, at that moment, saw them differently than he had before. He saw them through the lens of all he was discovering about himself—and he was asking questions about issues he’d never even noticed.

  Why, for example, did Lacy eat as if she were desperate? Where did that come from?

  “Lacy, hon, the food isn’t going to run off the plate. You don’t have to eat like it will. Slow down.”

  Lacy looked surprised at his comment, but she slowed her chewing .

  But then Joy weighed in. “Close your mouth too. It’s gross. The way you chew is disgusting.”

  And why was Joy always bossing her sister around like that? Did her life feel so out of control that she tried to control everything else around her? Was it anger at him and Caroline that made her so hard on Lacy?

  Zach put down his fork. “Joy, I’m looking around, and I only see one parent here at the table. Want to point him out to me?”

  Joy rolled her eyes and took a small leaf from her salad.

  Lacy stabbed at the fried fish on top of grits. “She always acts like that. I swear, she thinks she’s thirty years old or something.”

  He decided to distract them. “Why don’t you tell me how school’s going so far?” He put another piece of pork chop in his mouth. It tasted so moist and delicious, he found himself making an appreciative noise as he chewed. When was the last time he had really tasted food?

  Joy sipped water. “Fine.”

  “Good,” Lacy added.

  “So how about if we go away for the weekend?”

  Joy’s eyes widened. “Dad, no. We’re supposed to go to Abby’s church tomorrow for their cookout, and I promised Jenna we’d go to the mall.”

  “Yeah—” Lacy spoke through a mouthful of food—“and I have to meet Sarah at the library to study for a test.”

  “But this is your weekend with me. I don’t mind if you do one thing with a friend, but we’re going to spend the rest of the time together.”

  He saw a quiver start in Joy’s jaw. She cried when she got mad. “I have plans with my friends, and I’m not changing them.”

  They sat there looking at each other while Zach pondered the best response. “Joy, let me ask you a question. At what age does a daughter no longer need her father?”

  “Twelve,” Lacy answered as if she had read it on a fortune cookie. Then laughed.

  “I’m being serious, Lacy. So I’ll ask both of you—when do you think a daughter no longer needs her father?”

  Joy caught on quickly. She stiffened her jaw. “It’s not that we don’t need you. We’ll always need you.” He heard the manipulation in her words as soon as they came from her lips, and his heart cringed at how quickly kids took on the traits of their parents. He wasn’t going to let her get away with it. A couple months ago he would have. No, he had done it. But now that he was beginning to see—really see—what was going on in his life, in their lives, he knew he had to start making changes somewhere, if only incrementally. And this was where he chose to begin.

  “That’s not what I asked you. At what age?”

  Joy stiffened her back and put down her fork. “There isn’t any age. A girl always needs her father.” Her words were laced with frustration.

  “Yes, she does. I just read recently that it is scientifically proven that a father emits chemical signals that can actually delay you from maturing too fast sexually. They are called pheromones. They’re basically hormones that I give off and you pick up somehow. You don’t know you’re doing it, and I don’t know I’m doing it. But just by walking in the room, I affect your growth and maturing process. Did you know that?”

  “Okay.” Lacy’s face indicated she found this fact rather interesting. “That’s a little weird and a little cool.”

  “And did you know that if I wasn’t present in your life or didn’t care about what was going on with you, you would mature more quickly sexually?”

  Joy’s face reddened. “Tell me we’re not going to talk about this.”

  “Well, you’ve been acting all grown up, like you can make all the decisions and tell your sister what to do and inform me how we’re going to spend our time together. So if you’re that mature, we do need to talk about things like this.”

  Lacy stuffed another piece of fish in her mouth. “Mom says we’re supposed to talk about sex with her, not you.”

  That was news to him. Apparently he and Caroline neede
d to do some talking too. “This is what I will tell you. No two girls are loved by their father more than you two. I won’t always get it right. In fact, I’ve made a lot of mistakes already.” He knew that was true. “But I will always be your father. I will be present in your life, and I will be a voice in your ear. So—”

  “How will you do that when you’re living somewhere else?” The emotion in Joy’s voice surprised him. Until this moment the girls had said nothing about his being gone. It had seemed the girls had hardly noticed his absence, and the few times he’d tried to bring it up, they had avoided the topic. This moment made him very aware that his girls did miss him. And it made sense. He had been a stable presence for them. Many nights it had just been the three of them eating dinner together. He should have pressed in harder. Quicker.

  “Do you want to talk about me not being home?”

  Lacy put her fork down and stopped chewing.

  Joy bit her lip, clearly refusing the tears that were desperately trying to make their way down her cheeks. Just like her mother. “I don’t want to talk.”

  “Honey, you need to talk. It’s okay to talk. I’m a grown man. I can handle anything you want to say to me.”

  “Mom talks about it all the time.”

  “Shut up, Lacy,” Joy scolded. “Don’t talk about Mom.”

  “Well, she does. She says you hurt her, Dad.”

  “I’m afraid she’s right.”

  “What did you do?”

  He looked into Lacy’s innocent and searching green eyes. How should he handle this? He and Caroline hadn’t discussed how they would talk with the girls, and they definitely needed to have that discussion. At least Caroline hadn’t told them about his infidelity, and they didn’t seem to have heard the gossip. That was something to be thankful for.

  “I just didn’t treasure your mother like I should,” he answered carefully. “Sometimes married people forget how they need to take care of and protect each other. Mom and I forgot that.”

  “Mom didn’t do anything,” Joy snapped. “It’s all your fault.” Angry tears raged to the surface.