Secrets over Sweet Tea

by Denise Hildreth Jones

  “Jackson?” Zach’s voice was about the only sound other than the birds and squirrels in nearby trees.

  “Yeah?”

  “How’s Scarlett Jo?”

  “She’s doing all right. She made me come, you know.”

  “You needed it. Except for church Sunday, it’s the first time you’ve left her side since all this happened. I’m glad she made you.”

  They walked on for a bit before he continued. “Jackson, we’ve known each other now for close to two years. And I know a fair amount about you, especially stuff you’ve shared with us at church meetings and such. Your vision, how you got started pastoring, what brought you here. But after Saturday, it’s clear there’s something big I don’t know about. You don’t have to talk about it, but if you want to, I’m here to listen. You’ve done enough listening to me over these last few months. I’d be honored to return the favor.”

  Jackson laughed. “What? You think my wife having a breakdown is something peculiar?”

  Zach laughed too as he approached Jackson’s ball and put his bag down. “Well, that was a little dramatic even for Scarlett Jo.”

  Jackson set his bag down too and pulled out a club. “I’ve always been honest with you, Zach. Remember I said that I understand what you’ve been going through because I know what broken looks like?”

  Zach nodded. “I remember.”

  “Well, there was a time when Scarlett Jo and I were severely broken. It started when we were still in college and had just gotten engaged.”

  Scarlett Jo twisted slightly in the swing, causing it to move sideways. “It was the most beautiful ring you’d ever want to see. And I’d never been happier in my life because Jackson loved me for me. I mean, Mama and Daddy loved me to pieces, but it seemed like guys only ever wanted one thing from me.” She glanced down at her chest. “I had these in college too. And maybe my judgment wasn’t the best. But anyway, I just seemed to attract these horrible men.”

  “Until Jackson?”

  Scarlett Jo nodded. “Then Jackson came along, and he was a man.” Her voice went into that low throaty thing she did.

  Grace laughed. “Yes. Jackson is a fine specimen.”

  “You should have seen him back then. And that man loved me. I mean loved me like my mama and daddy did. I was so happy you could butter me and call me a biscuit.” She stopped for a minute and licked her lips.

  Grace covered her mouth to hide her smile.

  Scarlett Jo lowered her head, and her voice softened. “But about two weeks before graduation, I was hosting my last big hurrah with all my college friends. I’d agreed to host since my apartment complex had this party room by the pool. It was supposed to be all of us girls together for one last time, and it was supposed to be alcohol free. But we had a few boozers in the group, and they brought some bottles and invited some guys. Two of them we didn’t know—rough guys from across town. They didn’t go to the school or anything.

  “I got kind of frustrated with the girls for letting the guys come, so I told them they had to leave, that this was a girls-only party. Well, they acted all nice, like they were leaving. But a little while later, when I went up to my apartment to go to the bathroom—”

  Her voice broke, and Grace reached out instinctively for her arm. “Scarlett Jo, if it’s too much, it’s okay. You don’t have to say anything.”

  Scarlett Jo patted her hand, then pulled a tissue from the pocket of her robe. She blew hard and loud—freight-train loud. Grace felt her brow furrow. She had no idea how a sound like that could come out of a lady, even a lady with as big a personality as Scarlett Jo’s.

  “No. It’s okay,” Scarlett Jo said. “I know your stuff. You can know mine.” She stowed the tissue in her pocket again and continued. “Anyway, when I got to my room, I went to close the door, and one of those guys pushed it back open. I could smell the booze all over him. And he smelled like oil and gas, like he worked around cars or something. And he started calling me these horrible names. Telling me I thought I was better than him and he was going to show me who was better.

  “And then . . .” Her voice trailed off to a whisper. “Then he raped me.”

  “I wanted to kill him,” Jackson said, the emotion in his voice as rich and real as Zach had heard it on Sunday mornings time after time. “I looked for that guy everywhere. But I guess the Lord knew I’d ruin my life if I found him. Anyway, I never did.” Then Jackson looked up. “But I blamed her too, Zach.”

  Zach shifted and leaned against his club. “You did? Why?”

  “I don’t know. I guess because I’m a man. And I’m an idiot. And I just wondered. Because you know Scarlett Jo. She can’t walk past you without touching you or calling you a pet name. She can be so sweet and warm and inviting, and she’s got this, this amazing figure, and part of me wondered if all of that had led him to believe she was available for something more.”

  “But she said she kicked him out.”

  Jackson shook his head. “I know she said it. But I still struggled with all this anger, and I didn’t know what to do with it. There we were, three months from getting married, and this happened. And I knew I needed to be there for her, to take care of her and love her. But I was just so angry, and some of it got aimed at her.”

  “How did she handle your anger?”

  “Not well. She cried all the time. She kept begging me to believe her.” He rubbed the top of his head. “She shouldn’t have had to ask me that, Zach. She is the most honest person I know, the most loyal. She would have never come on to that guy. And I know now that there is nothing a woman can do that makes it okay for a man to rape her.”

  Jackson lifted his head and stared off toward the next hole. “What I discovered as we went through counseling later was that I was really angry at myself. Angry that I hadn’t been there. That I hadn’t protected her. That someone had taken a piece of what I considered mine. Except she isn’t mine—I’ve had to learn that too. She is ultimately God’s, and I am simply a steward of her heart for a season. And I was angry at God too. I wanted to know where he was in all of this. Why hadn’t he stopped it? How could he let someone as kind and loving as Scarlett Jo be violated like that?”

  “I’m so sorry, Jackson. I’m so sorry you and Scarlett Jo ever had to go through this.”

  Jackson looked at Zach. “Well, there was more.”

  “His anger was bad enough. And I didn’t know what to do with that. I mean, here I had tried to get that scoundrel out of the house, and he had raped me, left me with what felt like a mark of shame, and now the man I loved could hardly look at me. I just couldn’t handle that. And then, two months later, I found out I was pregnant. I was going to have a baby. And it wasn’t Jackson’s, Grace. No, we’d been saving ourselves for marriage. I had been looking forward to my wedding night ever since I met Jackson Newberry. But some drunk had stolen that from me, and now I was pregnant one month shy of my wedding.”

  Grace tried to hide her shock, but Scarlett Jo noticed. “Don’t even act like this isn’t a horrible story. It’s as awful as it sounds.”

  “What did Jackson do?”

  Scarlett Jo scratched beneath her wild blonde curls. “You know, it was odd. When he found out I was pregnant, his whole attitude changed. Maybe it was because I was so freaked out. I all but had a nervous breakdown. I knew there was this life growing inside me, but I wanted it out. It wasn’t mine. It was some stranger’s. It was like someone was forcing me to take something I didn’t want. And I just collapsed in all that grief and pain and trauma.”

  Grace leaned back harder into the swing. In that moment, she had no words.

  “When I found out Scarlett Jo was pregnant, Zach, it was like something in me shifted. All that anger just kind of drained away. She was hurting so bad. And I knew that the God of the heavens was either God in the middle of all that pain or he wasn’t. Even at that young age, I knew deep down that if there was a life growing inside her and if God is the giver of all life, then he had a plan in all of thi
s. And even if I didn’t understand what it was, I was no longer going to question him.”

  Zach felt overwhelmed by all that he’d been hearing. “But what about Scarlett Jo?”

  “She was a wreck. She basically begged me to leave her. One minute she wanted to rip that baby out of her, and the next minute she grieved over the fact that she would even think such a thing. She was so confused, so sad. But I made the decision then and there that this was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and this was the baby we’d been given. However it got here, it was ours now. And we were going to fight our way through this.”

  “Where do you even start with something like that?”

  “For me it started with deciding to trust God in the middle of everything that was going on.”

  “And for Scarlett Jo?”

  “Well, you know my wife.” Jackson laughed. “She’s not the type to give up easily. But it took her a long time to get to a better place. She never enjoyed one moment of her pregnancy. We got married on our scheduled day, and she’ll tell you to this day if it weren’t for the pictures, she wouldn’t even remember it. Then when Jack was born, she could barely look at him. Her face in those pictures, Zach—her face tells the whole story. She’d completely lost her heart.”

  “But you didn’t feel that way?”

  “Oh no.” Jackson shook his head and smiled, remembering. “When I saw my son’s face for the first time, I knew I wanted him to have my name. He looked nothing like me. But he’s so much my son, Zach—so much inside him is mine. Scarlett Jo pretty much let me care for him for the first year. She could barely take care of herself. She didn’t laugh. She barely smiled. She didn’t do any of the wild and irreverent things that made me fall in love with her. She just did stuff.”

  “What do you mean, ‘did stuff’?”

  “Well, she’d clean the house. She’d do the laundry. She’d go to the grocery store. She volunteered at the library and the hospital. She didn’t care what she did as long as it wasn’t with Jack. But all the time, she was running from her pain.”

  “Then one day I came home and saw Jack in Jackson’s arms, and I heard that baby say da-da. And something about hearing that word come out of his little mouth was like a sword to my gut. I looked at my Jackson and saw how great he was with the baby. I mean, here was a man who wasn’t even related by blood, and he’d loved Jack from the moment he saw him.”

  “Oh my.”

  “And I thought, that child is part of me. And I have done everything imaginable to avoid dealing with this pain that I’ve gone through, and it has stolen so much from me. My wedding. The birth of my first child. The first year of my boy. It took so much . . .” Her voice trailed off, and now her tears were falling. “And I let it.”

  “But you fought through that, Scarlett Jo. That’s so apparent.”

  “I did fight. Hard. And I vowed that I would never let anyone steal from me like that again. That once I’d reclaimed my heart, no one would take one more day from me. No one would keep me from enjoying my family and enjoying my life.”

  “What happened to the guy who raped her?” Zach asked.

  “They caught him. He was a kid from town who had way too much to drink and a crummy enough life not to care. But Scarlett Jo faced him head-on at the trial, and they sentenced him to twenty years in prison.”

  “I didn’t think I’d ever have to see him again. But then—”

  Grace’s hand shot over her mouth as it all came together for her. “Oh, Scarlett Jo! Fred?”

  Scarlett Jo nodded. “I’ll never forget that face.”

  “Oh no. I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  Scarlett Jo stood quickly, and the swing wobbled again. Grace went to plant her tennis shoes on the ground, but one of the wooden slats caught the cuff of her jeans and jerked her leg. She pulled it free before she could fall off.

  “Well, you couldn’t have known,” Scarlett Jo said. “But what’s done is done. And now I need to go make dinner.”

  Grace grabbed her robe. “Wait, Scarlett Jo. Wait. You can’t go back to hiding.”

  When Scarlett Jo turned, tears had left wet streaks down her face. “I don’t want to go through any of that again, Grace. I’m too old for that.”

  “Scarlett Jo, you’re forty.”

  “That’s halfway to death. I don’t want to go through another court case. And I don’t want Jack to know anything about that man being around here.”

  “Jack doesn’t know?”

  “Yes, he knows how he was conceived. He even knows his biological father’s name. But he has never tried to contact him. And I don’t want him to.”

  “You can’t protect Jack from this forever.”

  Scarlett Jo’s face reddened. “Well, I sure can protect him from this for now.” With that she walked into the house and closed the door. Hard.

  Jackson hit the white ball into the hole on the seventh green, then pulled it out. He and Zach picked up their bags and began to walk again.

  “But she’s bad right now, Zach. I think it’s mostly about Jack. She had thought we’d be able to protect him from that man for at least twenty years; then suddenly he was right here in town. I don’t think Jack has any desire to talk to him. We’ve been very honest with him, and he’s never shown the slightest interest in meeting his biological father. But something about seeing him made all of it real again for Scarlett Jo, and now she’s just . . . scared. Seems like she’s scared of everything.”

  Zach readjusted his bag. “And what about you, Jackson? How are you in all of this?”

  “I want to know why he’s here. That’s all. I don’t need to kill him anymore, if you’re concerned about that.”

  Zach laughed. “I guess that’s a relief. I don’t usually do criminal law, and I’d rather not change over because of you.”

  Jackson clapped him on the back. “No, all I’m really concerned about is that Scarlett Jo might let this take her down another horrible path. I’ve been there, done that. And we worked too hard to come back to life.”

  “She’s an amazing woman, Jackson. I didn’t fully appreciate her for a long time.”

  Jackson’s chuckle came out in a burst. “Scarlett Jo can definitely be an acquired taste.”

  “Well, the more I’ve seen of how, um, vibrant she is and how great you two are together . . . it makes me see how messed up Caroline and I are.” Zach stopped. “I just brought this right back to me, didn’t I?”

  Jackson shoved him. “Shut up.”

  Zach sidled up to the tee box of the next hole. He took a tee from his bag and pulled out his driver. “Grace Shepherd is that way now, Jackson. She’s so brave and authentic and passionate about life. It’s beautiful to look back to where she was and see where she is now. Such a contrast to Caroline.”

  Jackson tilted his head and looked at him through narrowed eyes. “You been thinking about Grace a lot?”

  The words held no accusation. They simply asked a question. But Zach still felt convicted. “Too much,” he answered.

  “How is Caroline these days?”

  “She’s like a brick wall wrapped in barbed wire.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, right. But Grace—” Zach heard the shift in his own voice—“Grace listens. She laughs. She wiggles her toes like this young girl who’s open to life. And I have to admit, I love being around her.”

  “You’ve been around her a lot?”

  Zach shook his head. “Not so much lately. I’ve been trying to avoid her—honest. And I’ve been pursuing Caroline, trying to connect with her. It’s just . . . Caroline doesn’t offer me much to want to pursue. I’ll catch this brief glimpse of openness or warmth, and I’ll think maybe there’s hope. But then she pulls it back with everything she has.”

  Jackson took out his own club. “You can’t make Caroline find her heart, you know. You’ll just have to wait and see what she does with it. She may do nothing. She may walk away from you and this marriage. And honestly, if she is
n’t willing to confront her own issues, I don’t know if you’d even want to go back. But—” he stopped and looked Zach square in the face—“you are still married to Caroline. Whatever interaction you’re having with Grace needs to stop.”

  Zach let out a heavy breath of air. He pulled at the collar of the black V-neck sweater that fell loosely over his white polo. “I know. You’re right.”

  Jackson laid a hand on his shoulder. “I am so right.”

  “What I really want is for Caroline to be that way too, Jackson. I mean, she’s never been what I’d call a free spirit, but when we first got married, she wasn’t nearly so rigid. She could be spontaneous, even laugh at herself, and the way she looked at me in those early years—” he exhaled a sigh—“I wish she could be that way again.”

  Jackson took a practice swing. “The thing is, that may never happen. She may choose to live the rest of her life the way she’s living it now. But you can’t let that stop you from doing what you need to find your own healing. And who knows? Maybe watching you heal and change and discover your heart in an entirely new way will be enough to make her go looking for hers. Now can we please finish this game? If we don’t get going, we’re going to be playing in the—”

  They were interrupted by Jackson’s buzzing phone. It was the church secretary. Fred Parton had just entered the church building.

  Zach climbed into bed exhausted from the round of golf, his mind still pondering all he had heard and felt throughout the day. The ceiling fan swirled above him, blowing cool air across his face. He pulled the sheets over his chest and placed his hands behind his head.

  He wasn’t sure he could ever do what Jackson Newberry had done. Raise a boy who wasn’t his. Love his wife through all that depression. Care for a baby more or less by himself in that season when a child needed his mother so much.

  Not kill Fred Parton.

  Without a doubt, Jackson was a good man. Grace had called Zach a good man too. But she didn’t know he felt things for her he shouldn’t feel. That he thought about her more than he should.