Jan, I realize you didn’t want me to leave, but I had to. I need to figure out who I am and make my own way in life. I can’t grow roses anymore. I’m sorry, but I just can’t. I want to be different. I have to change. The only thing I wanted to stay the same in my life was you. I still love you, Jan. You’re the only girl I’ve ever loved this way. Please write back to me.
Love,
Thomas
Even now, after all this time, the words brought a lump to Jan’s throat. She had loved him, too. So much! So desperately! It had taken all her willpower not to pick up the phone and call Mr. Wood to ask him for Thomas’s money from the bank account. She would buy a ticket and fly off to Sri Lanka for the rest of the summer.
But she couldn’t do that, could she?
Laying her hand now on her softly rounded midriff that had borne three babies, Jan recalled so well that first insistent flutter—a reminder that her life was no longer her own. She shared it with the tiny heartbeat and miniature fishlike, alien creature that had appeared on the sonogram in her doctor’s office the week before Thomas’s letter arrived. A baby. His child.
“I wish you could get over it.” A girl didn’t just get over a baby growing inside her. Not unless she was willing to let some stranger tear that little beating heart out of her body. As much as Jan had hated her situation and regretted her carelessness, she wouldn’t do that.
“I need to figure out who I am and make my own way in life,” Thomas had written. “I want to be different. I have to change.”
Different? Well, Jan was already different. She would have to make her own way in life and figure out who she was. But she wasn’t selfish, like Thomas. Though the baby had made her sick, her whole family treated her like the black sheep sinner of the century and her friends never called to ask her to hang out with them anymore, Jan had remained stubbornly determined to have her baby. She was growing a life inside her. Somehow…somehow…she and the child both would survive.
Now, at forty-five, sitting out on her screened porch and listening to a cardinal sing for its mate, Jan let the tears fall. It had been hard, all of it. But she could sincerely thank God she hadn’t destroyed that unwanted, inopportune, little alien fish-baby who had made her heave over the toilet every morning. After all, that unrecognizable tadpole had been Beth. Her Beth! John’s Bethy-boo. Bobby and Billy’s big sister. “Beff,” the boys had called her. “Beff, tie my shoes…Beff, get me a cookie…I need a Band-Aid for my boo-boo, Beff.”
Jan folded the letter and slipped the photograph back inside it. She would give them to Beth when her daughter returned from India. Jan would read Thomas’s message out loud and explain how she had felt at the time. She would tell Beth everything she could remember about that awful year of losing a true love and welcoming a new life and becoming someone different.
She reached for the second letter. Inside this one, Thomas had enclosed a tea leaf. No doubt mailing a foreign country’s vegetation to the United States had been highly illegal. It was crisp and fragile now and had turned brown. But Jan recalled how she had held the green leaf up to the sunlight and marveled at the network of veins that transported life and flavor and nourishment. Her own body was functioning in much the same way, nurturing the baby who by that time had taken to performing somersaults in the middle of the night.
Dear Jan,
Did you get my letter? Why didn’t you write back? You can’t be that mad. Think of all the time we spent together. Think of how much we love each other. I still love you, Jan. I think about you every day, and I wish you would come and see me. I’ve added to my bank account in Tyler, and my dad will help you get whatever you need to buy a ticket.
I’m working in the tea factory now. It’s amazing. I enjoy the machinery more than I thought I would—me being an ag major and all. I have learned how to make some repairs, because things are always breaking down. Replacement parts are hard to get over here. It’s not like in Tyler.
My mom says she hasn’t seen you or talked to you. How are you? Please write to me. I miss you. I love you.
Love,
Thomas
She had loved him, too. But summer was passing, and she had stopped vomiting every morning. She still yelled at her family, but now that the baby was showing, they treated her better. Her mother cooked whatever Jan wanted. Her father kept asking if she was all right, did she need to sit down, was she feeling any funny twinges, could he help her with anything? Her brother stared at her every time he walked by the den where she was watching TV with her long bare legs stretched out on the ottoman and her stomach pooching up like a small hill under her T-shirt. That summer seemed to last forever.
And then the third letter came.
The cardinal flew past the screened porch as Jan now lifted the blue envelope and drew out the letter. The brilliant red bird had called and called, and finally his mate answered. They sang out, first one and then the other, fluttering closer and closer until they spotted each other.
Dear Jan,
Why don’t you ever write to me? I know you got my last two letters. My parents get every letter I send them. I would call you, but it’s too expensive and the time is backward. I would rather spend the money on your plane ticket. If you came over here, we could talk about everything. We could work things out. I know we could.
I got a promotion. I’m making more money now, and they’re talking about letting me move into one of the houses they provide for midlevel employees. The houses are small but nice. We could get married while you’re here. There’s a missionary in Nuwara Eliya, and I already talked to him about it. He said he would do the ceremony. I was planning to marry you all along anyway, but I wanted to wait until I was settled into my job.
Jan, don’t you love me anymore? I know you’re upset about what I did, but I also know you can’t turn off true feelings just like that. I will never stop loving you as long as I live. Please write to me.
Love,
Thomas
Jan had gotten out paper and a pen a hundred times. She had started countless letters. But she always threw them away. How could she live in a place where time was backward? How could she marry Thomas without her father to walk her down the aisle and her mother to sit crying on the front pew of their church in Tyler? What would she ever do with herself in a small, midlevel employee’s house on a tea plantation in Sri Lanka? No matter how much she loved Thomas—and she still loved him to the very core of her being—she could never change that much. More important, she couldn’t bring a baby into the world and expect the child to live that kind of nomadic, insecure existence.
Jan had to smile now as she put the letter away, and she leaned back in her chair to gaze through the screen at the lake. How hard she had worked to protect her baby from the life Thomas Wood offered. And look what had happened! Beth grew up to be a globe-trotting nomad herself!
Not only did Thomas’s daughter love to travel, but even at this moment, she was headed straight toward a tea plantation in some foreign country where people spoke strange languages and ate strange foods and had strange customs. Beth had no qualms. No hesitation. Her only worry had been her mother’s reaction.
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!”
Jan shook her head at the truth in Sir Walter Scott’s verse as she opened the fourth and final letter. She had worked so hard to keep her big secret. She had spun her web and laid out each thread in perfect order. But what a tangled mess she had created.
“Jan,” the black ink stated matter-of-factly.
My mother told me that you got married two weeks ago. She said he’s a history teacher at the college. How could you do that? Didn’t you love me? Was I nothing to you? I thought you really cared about me, but I can see now I was wrong. You just wanted to stay in Tyler and have everything your way. Well, you got your wish, and now I know exactly what kind of a person you are. I’m glad I found out before it was too late. I was planning to buy a ticket and come home for
Thanksgiving to see you and try to work things out, but forget it. Have a nice life.
Thomas
Her heart slamming against her ribs, Jan put the letter aside quickly and stacked the other three on top of it. Oh, the hurt and accusations! But Thomas was right in many ways. She had just wanted to stay in Tyler and have everything her way. While accusing Thomas of caring only for himself, she had managed to behave in the most self-centered manner imaginable.
How could she never have written the man even a single letter? Why hadn’t she given him at least one kernel of truth? Instead, she had allowed him to feel betrayed, cut off, abandoned, as she wove her web of deceit. She could argue that she had done everything in order to protect her baby. But that wasn’t completely true.
Jan thought about Beth, how much she loved her daughter and how poorly they communicated. But Beth’s life was turning out all right despite the conflicts with her mother. In fact, Jan had to acknowledge that somehow the little pigtailed girl who hated pink had become an amazing woman. Beth had chosen a job her mother would never have considered, a city her mother dreaded to set foot in and a young man who wasn’t even from America, much less Texas. Beth’s was a strange, unexpected life, but for the first time, Jan felt truly proud of her daughter. And the main reason had little to do with her choice of job or city or boyfriend. Jan was proud of Beth for herself. For her straight, square shoulders. For her determination. For her spirit.
Miles had called Beth willful. But whose will was she doing? Certainly not her mother’s. Probably not her boyfriend’s. And really…not even her own. The best thing about Beth Lowell had turned out to be her faith in God. She was trying to do God’s will, and somehow the truth of that simply astonished and humbled her mother.
“Satisfactory?” Miles asked as Beth walked around the guest bungalow situated in the central compound of Wilson Teas, Ltd.’s vast Darjeeling estate. The small house’s concrete floor coated in red wax supported nothing more substantial than a single bed and an unadorned wooden wardrobe. A woven brown rug covered part of the floor, a painting of a yellow orchid hung on the whitewashed wall and a door led to a small bathroom with a white ceramic toilet, sink and shower stall.
“It’s perfect,” she replied. She set her black leather travel bag on the red-and-brown batik coverlet that draped the bed. “Exactly what I need.”
“Not quite as opulent as Wilson House, but one has to think of the intangibles.”
“Oh?”
“While London has its charms, Darjeeling has the Himalayas just outside the window.” He pulled open the curtain, and a wide vista of towering, snow-covered peaks filled the glass pane.
“Darjeeling wins by a mile.”
He smiled. “I think so, myself, actually, but it’s not the popular opinion. I’m glad you’re pleased with your quarters.” His eyebrows lifted. “Well, then. Shall we go and meet your father?”
Beth sucked down a gasp. “Wait, now. I just got here.”
“Not going to change your mind, are you?”
She stepped past Miles onto the veranda and sank into a bamboo chair upholstered with utilitarian tan canvas. “My mother’s phone call in the car ride up here…She reminded me that he doesn’t know. No one ever told Thomas Wood about me.”
“He’ll be delighted.” Miles took the chair beside her. “Look at what he produced. A beautiful daughter—intelligent, resourceful, successful. It will be like finding a brilliant jewel that he had no idea he possessed.”
“That’s the problem. How will he react to the realization that he has been kept in the dark about me for twenty-five years? He could feel cheated.”
“Perhaps. But I predict he’ll mostly be glad you turned out so well.”
“Or extremely upset that a total stranger claiming to be his child has stepped into his otherwise comfortable life.”
“You have no idea what his life is like. Perhaps it’s deadly dull, and he’s just hoping something will come along to liven it up. What better than you?”
Beth threaded her fingers back through her long hair, pushing it off her forehead and encountering tangles on the way down. She should take a shower, wash and brush out her hair, put on fresh makeup, dress in something that hadn’t traveled half the globe on her. Anything to avoid the inevitable.
“He may not like me, Miles,” she told him. “Just because you’re so quick with compliments doesn’t mean Thomas Wood is going to think I’m God’s gift to Darjeeling.”
“We’ll never know until we meet him.” He stood and held out his hand. “Shall we?”
“Do you know anything about his personality? Is he quiet? Or gregarious? Or what?”
“I’ve only met the bloke once or twice, and I hardly remember him. I’m sure he’s amiable enough. One can’t succeed in the job he has without an even temperament and a confident disposition. In dealing with the labor and the factory, he’s bound to face surprises all day long.”
“Well, he’s going to face a big one today.”
“He will love you. Now get up so we can go and have a chat with Mr. Wood.”
Beth set her hands on the chair’s bamboo arms and pushed herself to her feet. “Don’t say a word about me being his daughter, Miles. I’ll tell him when the time is right. Do you promise?”
“Absolutely. This is entirely your affair. I’m merely here to facilitate.”
As they walked down the path toward a row of small trucks the estate used to haul workers and tea, Beth glanced at Miles. “Why are you doing this, really? You’ve come all this way, and—”
“For you, my dear lady.”
“Don’t be sarcastic.”
“Sarcastic? I’m astonished that you would say such a thing.”
“You hardly know me, and you certainly don’t owe me anything.”
“Wrong on both counts. I know you very well. I read your Bible, remember? You underlined so many passages and wrote such personal information in its margins that I feel as if I know everything about you. You struggle to keep your tongue under good regulation. You’re not fond of proud people. You have very little patience—you’ve begged God urgently to give you more of it.”
“Okay, stop.”
“You’re passionate about caring for the poor, widows, orphans, the hungry, the thirsty, the sick. Enough exclamation marks alongside those verses to populate two or three complete novels.”
He opened the passenger side of one of the trucks, and Beth climbed in. She couldn’t believe she was actually going to do this. They would drive out onto the estate, and she would see him. It was a mistake. She should have listened to her mother and chosen safety and sense and stability.
“And as for my not owing you anything,” Miles went on as he turned the key and the truck jumped to life, “the fact is I owe you everything.”
“I haven’t done a thing for you.”
“Wrong again.” The truck pulled out of the parking lot onto a narrow road, dry now but rutted by years of tire tracks through the rain and mud of the monsoon season. “It was your mention of the race, you see. And then the Bible you left on the table at The Running Footman. And your phone call telling me you were coming back to London. I never expected any of those things. Nor did I deserve them. I am, in reality, quite unworthy of you.”
“Don’t be silly, Miles. I’m not going to fall for that kind of flattery, so you can just give it a rest. I know who I am and who you are, and neither one of us is perfect. Don’t try to sweet-talk me, especially right now when I’m so tense.” She eyed him. “I might be unable to keep my tongue under good regulation.”
He laughed. “Say whatever you like. I require a good tongue-lashing now and again.”
“Hang around with me very long, and you’ll get one.”
“I’m terrified.” He rolled down a window and pointed at a long, low building in the distance. “That’s the factory where we process the tea leaves for shipping. Mr. Wood might be inside, but as it’s a clear afternoon and the sun’s out, I imagine we’ll fin
d him in one of the fields.”
Beth tried without success to think of ways to still her heartbeat and calmly draw air into her lungs. But the altitude, the curving road and the prospect of actually meeting Thomas Wood defied all her efforts. Unlike photographs she had seen of tea fields spread across flat expanses, the Wilson estate covered a series of steep rolling hills. Pluckers with baskets on their backs labored up and down the tidy rows. Mist rose from the damp ground as the sun beat down. Somewhere a bird cried out with a squawk that jangled Beth’s nerves.
“There.” Miles slowed the truck. “Near that tree. I believe we’ve found our man. He’s too tall for an Indian or a Nepali, though he’s certainly brown enough. Looks like he’s spotted us, as well.”
Beth focused on the angular, broad-shouldered man in the distance. Halfway down a precipitous slope, he was speaking to a group of women. He wore a green shirt with some kind of logo, and his dark brown hair hung in shaggy, uneven lengths down the back of his neck.
“It’s him,” Beth whispered. She grabbed Miles’s hand and squeezed it hard. “Let’s go back. Take me to the bungalow.”
“I’m afraid he’s seen us.”
“We’ll talk to him later. Now I know what he looks like, and that’s enough. Let’s go.”
Leaves of Hope Page 19
