As he pulled out a half-used yellow legal pad to note which supplies he still needed to add to their stock, the screen door slammed, then Addie’s and Walsh’s voices carried through the dark. He looked up to see Betsy following the girls to the barn.
“I thought y’all would be asleep by now,” he said as Walsh ran to him and hugged his leg. He looked up at Betsy and she shrugged.
“They weren’t even close to settling down. They begged to come see you, so here we are.”
He stood and pried Walsh’s arms from around his legs. He patted her on the back, and she ran off to the other side of the barn with Addie. “How are you?” he asked Betsy. He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Sorry I had to come back out here. I wanted to get this stuff put away before we need it.” He gestured to the pile of bags behind him.
“You getting ready for Dawn?”
“Well, not her necessarily. She won’t be too bad. But there’ll be more.”
“She’s in the sweet spot,” Betsy said.
Ty laughed, rubbed a hand over his eye. “That sweet-spot business is ridiculous. You know that, right?”
“No,” she said with a smile. “If Farmer Ty says it’s real, I believe it.”
She looked so beautiful in her black sleeveless top and white shorts. Her long legs had the first hints of a summer tan. Wisps of brown hair brushed her cheeks.
“What is it?” She looked down at her clothes, then back at him.
Why did he all of a sudden feel uncomfortable around his own wife, this woman he’d been married to for eight years, known for a decade? He was fidgety, nervous. Words bounced around in his mouth, but the right ones refused to come out.
“Have you talked to Jenna?” he finally asked, his voice quiet so the girls wouldn’t hear.
The smile that played at the corners of her mouth disappeared. She shook her head. “Texts mostly. Nothing substantial.”
“Nothing about when she’s coming back?”
Betsy shook her head.
“And you’re okay with that?”
“What can I do? She’s six hours away, at least. I can’t sit her down and force her to talk to me.”
“Did she tell you any more about this extension? Or what she thinks is going to happen when it’s over?”
“I don’t know any details. Just that she had a breakthrough and wasn’t ready to pack everything up and leave just yet. They gave her the chance to stay longer and she took it.”
Ty sat back down and picked up his legal pad again. Crossed out a few words, wrote them again. Pulled his cap off. “What are we supposed to do?”
“Nothing. We can’t kick them out. It’s not their fault.” She reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair into the knot at the back of her head. When it fell down into her eyes again, she swatted it away.
“That’s not what I mean. I know we need to take care of them. I want to do that. It’s just . . . It’s frustrating that she only thinks about herself. Not about how this affects anyone else.”
Their whispered conversation stopped when Addie ran back into the barn. “Can I feed one of the cows?”
Ty exhaled and stood. “I think I know of a girl who needs a late-night snack. Come on.” He glanced back at Betsy, then led the girls to Rosie’s stall along the back wall of the barn. Rosie stood facing out to the barn, as if she’d been expecting guests. Ty dipped a cup into a bag of oats hanging on the wall and handed it to Addie. “Here. Hold this up to her mouth.” Addie giggled when Rosie stuck her tongue down into the cup.
Ty tugged on Betsy’s arm and they moved a few steps away from the girls. “I know she’s your sister and we need to help,” he whispered. “There’s just got to be a limit to how much we can do.”
She took a deep breath and exhaled through puffed cheeks. “Fine. If you want them gone so bad, I’ll tell her she has to come back. Now. Tomorrow.”
Ty slapped his cap against the side of his leg. “That’s not— I don’t know what else to say, Bets. I’m not the bad guy here.”
“I know,” she said, her words clipped, her mouth tense.
He shoved his cap back on his head and pulled it down low. He was done trying to fix this tonight.
What he and Betsy had put back together in the months since they last left the clinic was like an eggshell. A fragment of what they used to have. He wanted his wife back—he wanted it all back—and he wasn’t sure they could continue to build it with the girls here. It had been hard enough with just the two of them. Well, the two of them, five farmhands, two hundred cows, and assorted knobby-kneed schoolkids darting around, making a mess of his barn.
Maybe that was the problem. Too much intrusion, not enough privacy. Maybe if things could just settle down for once—be calm and still and easy—they could get each other back.
But he was a smart enough man to know life wasn’t like that.
twenty-two
Betsy
Dawn rolled into Mobile Bay as a Category 1 hurricane, confirming Ty’s theory that the Gulf waters weren’t yet warm enough to sustain a strong storm. Despite the low rating, however, Dawn arrived at high tide, resulting in downtown Mobile covered in five feet of floodwaters. Thankfully, flooding wasn’t an issue in Elinore, twenty-five miles east of Mobile, but the gusty winds and heavy rainfall made for a rough night of sleep.
While the winds blew and rain pounded, Walsh slept and Addie cried. Ty spent the night downstairs, ready for action in case the house or barn sustained damage, and Betsy spent most of the overnight hours in and out of the girls’ room consoling Addie.
“When will it stop?” Addie sobbed as a strong gust of wind lashed the side of the house.
“Soon, soon,” Betsy murmured. She sat on the edge of the bed, rubbing what she hoped were comforting circles on Addie’s back. “Hurricanes blow hard for a few hours, but eventually they just run out of steam. Then morning will come and it’ll all be over.”
“What about the cows?” Addie sniffed. “Are they okay?”
“They’re just fine. Uncle Ty put them out in the back pasture so they’re away from trees or anything else that can hurt them.”
“I hope so. Oh, I hope Rosie isn’t scared.” Thoughts of Rosie caused a new gush of tears. Betsy grabbed a tissue from the dresser and wiped Addie’s nose. Just a few feet away, Walsh slept in peace, as if all was right with the world.
Did Addie always react like this to bad storms? Granted, this wasn’t an average thunderstorm, but Betsy and Ty had encountered much worse. Then again, Addie was only five, and hurricanes didn’t make it all the way up to Nashville. Still, Betsy wondered how often Jenna had sat up late at night with one of the girls, knowing she’d have to be at work early the next morning.
Finally, sometime after midnight, Addie lay still, exhausted by her tears and the late hour. When Betsy’s own eyes began to droop, she brushed Addie’s hair back from her face and stood to leave.
“Could you stay with me?” Addie’s voice was quiet but pleading. Betsy paused. The last time Addie had asked her to stay, she’d woken up with both girls tucked in next to her and her heart thumping.
“Please?”
Betsy sighed. “Of course I’ll stay.” But instead of lying down next to Addie, she sat on the floor next to the bed, one arm raised over her head to hold Addie’s hand. She could handle the floor, her arm falling asleep, her hand sandwiched between Addie’s small, warm ones. She woke the next morning with a crick in her neck and shoulder, but her heart felt okay.
Two days later, Betsy stood at the washing machine staring at a pile of small, damp, dirt-streaked clothes. As the wife of a farmer, Betsy had all kinds of stain-removal methods in her arsenal—Tide bleach pen, OxiClean, Fels-Naptha, vinegar and lemon juice, hair spray, salt crystals—but after stomping in puddles and exploring the rain-soaked farm for hours the previous day, the girls’ clothes were covered in mud and Betsy was at a loss. How in the world had Jenna kept their clothes so clean? Betsy made a mental note to ask if there was some miracle
stain-stick she’d yet to discover.
Behind her, Addie lay sprawled out on the floor coloring while Walsh explored the dark recesses under the couch. Betsy shut the door of the washing machine and turned it on. One more try wouldn’t hurt, but they needed new clothes.
“Hey, girls,” she called. “How about a trip to Target?”
Addie scrambled off the floor fast as lightning. “Mommy lets us pick something from the dollar bins.”
“Oh yeah?”
Addie nodded. “If our hands don’t get too grabby in the store.”
Betsy smiled. “I think we can make that happen.”
The rain had fizzled, so Betsy rolled down the windows in the car to take in the water-cleansed breeze. Dark clouds zipped across a mottled sky. No sunshine yet, but it would come soon, heating the moisture to a steamy wall of humid heat.
“What are those birds, Aunt Betsy?”
Addie pointed out the window to three spindly legged, long-necked birds soaring over Highway 35.
“Those are blue herons. They fly over water looking for fish to eat.”
“But there’s no water here. It’s just a bunch of grass and cows.”
“Well, we’re not too far from the Gulf. And we have the creek. Remember where you and Uncle Ty threw sticks?”
“Yeah.”
“The creek is full of little minnows and fish, so the herons like to stick around. One time I found a mama heron sitting on a big nest down by the creek.”
“Did she have eggs?”
Betsy nodded. “She did. Pretty ones.”
Betsy had been cutting overgrown brush at the back of their property when she’d spotted a blue heron perched on a pile of sticks and leaves on the other side of the creek. It was nestled in the tree line next to the water, almost camouflaged. The heron’s head was turned to the side, but Betsy knew it was staring at her with that one tiny eye. When she took a careful step backward, away from the creek, she stumbled over her pile of brush. She caught herself before falling but the noise spooked the heron and it flew off, revealing eggs in the nest. Five blue ones about the size of a child’s fist.
Betsy came back every day after, hoping to see the heron on the nest, but the bird never returned. The eggs remained in the nest until one day, the only thing left was a mess of shells and wispy gray feathers stuck to the leaves. She read somewhere that once a heron has been disturbed while sitting on eggs, she will deem the area unsafe and abandon the nest and the eggs. When that happened, predators—dogs, alligators, hawks—would often get the eggs.
Betsy chose to believe the heron came back for her babies and Betsy just missed seeing her. She imagined five little baby herons poking along behind their mother down the creek, miles away from her meddling eyes.
Just before Betsy pulled onto Highway 59, the main thoroughfare through Baldwin County, her phone rang. Thinking Ty might be curious about where they’d gone, she grabbed it out of her purse.
“Betsy? Hi.” Her sister’s voice was quiet, a little cautious. “How are things going?”
“Well . . .” Betsy turned and glanced over her shoulder. Addie was airplaning her hand out the open window and Walsh was playing with Addie’s stuffed elephant. “The girls are fine. I wish you’d talked to me about all this first though. It’s . . . it’s a lot.” She tried to keep her voice low.
“I know. I’m so sorry to have dropped it on you like that. It’s just that I had to give a quick answer or they would have offered the extension to someone else.”
“Would that have been a bad thing? Don’t you need to get back to work?” Or see your kids?
Jenna paused a beat. “Well, technically I’m between jobs right now, so staying here a little longer won’t affect my work.”
“What do you mean, ‘between jobs’?” Betsy’s heart picked up speed in her chest.
“They could only hold my job for the two weeks I told them I’d be gone. I talked to my boss yesterday and he said since I couldn’t give him a firm answer of when I’d be back, he’s going to have to fill the position, which I totally understand.”
“Wait—but you . . .” So many questions bounced around in Betsy’s mind, she struggled to form words to ask any of them. She took a deep breath. “You don’t know when you’re coming back?”
“Not . . . specifically. They’ve left it up to me how long I stay. The whole thing wraps up August 15th, so I guess that’d be the very latest.”
“Jenna, this is . . . You can’t lose that job. You have insurance with it and they’ve been so good about giving you time off when you need to take care of the kids. How are you going to find something like that again? And what will you do for money while you’re looking?” She hated sounding like the mom, but someone had to ask the right questions.
“I have some money saved up, believe it or not. It won’t tide me over for too long, but it’s enough to cover rent and bills while I’m here. We’ll be fine. I’m very good at being frugal. And about the job, I have manager experience, so I should be able to pick up a job at another coffee shop with no problem. Anyway, I’m hoping I don’t have to go back to making coffee. That’s kind of the whole point of being here.”
Betsy recognized the familiar determination in Jenna’s voice, and she bit back the avalanche of words threatening to pour out.
Jenna sighed. “I know it seems like a spontaneous, flaky thing to do, but trust me when I say I’ve put a lot of thought into this. I’ve worked hard to take care of my girls, and there’s no way I’d leave a steady job if I didn’t think what’s happening here could put me in the position to make a better life for them. For us.”
“You’re putting a lot of stock in this place. Are you sure it’s going to be able to give you what you want?”
“Am I sure? No, I’m not. But I’ve been given a shot—maybe my only shot—at providing something good, something meaningful for me and the girls. For them to see me pursuing a dream for myself. Shouldn’t I take it?”
The haze of anger and frustration that had clouded Betsy’s brain since the Sunday-morning phone call cleared for a minute, providing space to breathe and think. On the surface, giving up her job seemed crazy, staying at this artists’ retreat all summer seemed crazy, but knowing Jenna and her fierce determination to forge her own path, it made a strange sort of sense.
“Gregory—he’s my mentor—he’s helping me with contacts and building up my portfolio of work so I can use it as a résumé. Lots of artists leave this place and land jobs because of their time here. It could happen for me too.”
Betsy nodded slowly. “So August 15th. That’s, what, a little over a month away?”
“It could be less than that, but I don’t want to leave until I’ve squeezed everything out of this place that I can.”
“I hope you get what you want. I really do. I . . . can’t say I totally agree with all this, but I know you, and I know you put your heart into whatever you’re doing. If anyone could squeeze something meaningful and life-changing out of all this, it’d probably be you.”
Jenna exhaled. “Thanks.”
Betsy glanced in the rearview mirror. Addie was watching her. “Addie wants to talk to you. I’m going to hand the phone over. Check in again soon, okay?” She reached behind her seat and passed the phone into Addie’s waiting hands.
Addie wasted no time when she put the phone to her ear. “Mommy? When are you coming home?” After a pause, she gave a small, “Okay.” Betsy waited for the tears, the pleas for her mother to come back, but instead, Addie smiled. It was small, but it was there. Then she launched into an explanation of the new hen Linda Daily had brought by for them.
Betsy rested her elbow on the window ledge and ran her hand through her hair. How was it that Jenna was allowed to slide her responsibilities onto Betsy—again, as Ty had reminded her—yet Betsy was the one feeling like she’d done something wrong?
“Her feathers are all different colors and we named her Rainbow Shine. Do you like that name? She’s going to lay some egg
s soon. Maybe you can meet her when you come back.”
At Target the girls spotted a red shopping cart the size of a small bus and scrambled up into it. Betsy was used to seeing women pushing these carts through the store, expertly angling them around displays and racks without incident, even with children crawling in, around, and all over the carts. Today, Betsy learned that kind of maneuvering took skills she didn’t possess.
She wheeled between racks of kids’ clothes, bumping here and there, drawing raised eyebrows and sighs from other shoppers until she finally abandoned the cart behind a wall of Disney princess pajamas. She was pulling Walsh out of the seat when she heard a deep rumble of laughter behind her.
“I don’t envy you, having to push that thing through the store,” a man said.
Betsy set Walsh down and turned. Mr. Burgess, the new principal, smiled back at her. His gently lined face and kind eyes soothed a bit of the tension in her shoulders. She kept a hand on Walsh while Addie looked through a rack of Little Mermaid bathing suits. She smiled back at him. “That was a first for me, and I don’t plan to try it again.”
He laughed. “I’m Duncan Burgess.” He reached out his hand. “And you’re Mrs. Franklin, right?”
“I am, but it’s just Betsy.”
Walsh pulled out of Betsy’s grip and raced to where Addie stood in front of a floor-length mirror trying on sun hats.
“I’ve been hoping I’d run into you, actually. You do the field trips, right? To your farm?”
Betsy nodded. “Fewer in the summer, but we still have them.”
“I think it’s a great program and I want to try to send a few more classes this next school year. I’d love your input on how to coordinate the trips with lessons on healthy eating, maybe community support. You can probably give the teachers some pointers for lessons that’ll tie in well.”
Hurricane Season Page 18
