The Davis Years (Indigo)

by Green, Nicole

  “Had a boy over here last night, didn’t you,” Lynette said so close to her ear that Jemma jumped. There was no way that was a question, although it had been phrased as one.

  She gasped, putting her hand over her heart. “Mom, you startled me,” Jemma said, her mind racing, searching for an answer to give Lynette.

  “Thought you was slick.” Lynette sneered as if Jemma hadn’t said a word. She took a cigarette out of the pack and tossed the pack onto the kitchen table. Jemma hated cigarette smoke.

  “I want to know why there was a boy here last night. When you was s’posed to be watching ’Monte. What kind of example is that for him?”

  Hypocrite! Jemma screamed in her head. But she took a deep breath. That kind of attitude would get her nowhere good with Lynette.

  “Um, all I was doing was watching TV,” Jemma said.

  “With a boy all up on you.” Lynette blew cigarette smoke directly into Jemma’s face. “Don’t you lie to me. Junie saw him sneaking and creeping back and forth through the woods.” Lynette’s voice was calm. Too calm.

  Junie. One of Lynette’s friends. Of course, that woman hadn’t had anything better to do than spy on Jemma. She thought they’d been careful, but apparently they hadn’t been careful enough.

  Lynette was harder on Jemma about boys than anything else. The one time Jemma had asked Lynette about sex, Lynette had told her that she could catch AIDS just from kissing a boy and she didn’t want to know what could happen if she did more. Jemma vaguely remembered horror stories involving elements of leprosy and Ebola. Lynette had also told Jemma that she wasn’t getting an HPV shot “so she could go running around, lifting her skirt up all the time.” Whereas other parents might ask their children if they had a boyfriend or girlfriend, Lynette gave Jemma the evil eye and told her that “she better not be talking to none of that little trash out there.”

  “What you doing bringing boys in my house?” Lynette said. She had Jemma backed up against the sink.

  “We were watching TV. That’s it. I promise.” Jemma cringed as the glowing cigarette butt came near her arm. Lynette had never touched her in anger, but Jemma knew she was really pissed. Lynette ground the butt out on the side of the sink. She was afraid to bring up the fact that Emily Rose had been there, too. Lynette would have probably considered that back talking.

  “Hmph,” was all Lynette said. She then backed away, calling over her shoulder, “Come with me.”

  Jemma reluctantly followed Lynette into living room. Lynette sat on one end of the couch and she sat on the opposite end.

  “I know I don’t always do right by y’all, you, your sister, your brother. But I’ve been all alone and it’s hard.” Lynette’s tone changed. She was talking to Jemma for once and not talking at her or through her.

  “I know, Mom.”

  “No, you don’t, girl. These men out here ain’t after love. I figured that out too late. Things went real wrong for me real fast. And you know me and your grandmamma couldn’t get along. I didn’t know what else to do but get in more and more trouble, I guess. Never finished school. Never did anything. I don’t want that for y’all. Never did. And Jemma, you can be something more than what I was,” Lynette said. “What I am.”

  Jemma sat back on the couch, shocked at this rare glimpse of Lynette as a person. This person almost made her feel like she had a mother. She was caught off guard. If she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have been lulled into a false sense of security.

  “I’m not gonna do anything stupid. Wendell is just a friend. Really,” Jemma said, thinking her mom had no idea how true that was.

  “Wendell. Huh. What kind of name is that?” Her mom laughed. Jemma laughed, too, mainly because she was laughing. “Don’t you ever let that happen again,” her mom said, an edge coming back into her tone.

  “No, ma’am,” Jemma said.

  “I do try to do right by you girls.” Her mom sighed, dropping her head into her hands. “You and your sister. It’s different for girls, you know. Always will be.”

  “I just wish it didn’t have to be this hard. Sometimes—sometimes I feel like I have to be a mom to everyone here. Including you.” Jemma didn’t know what made her say that. Maybe she thought they were having a breakthrough moment. Like on the talk shows. She should have remembered that TV was a fantasy world.

  “What did you say?” Lynette stood.

  “I just meant—”

  “Don’t you ever sass me.” And quick, before Jemma ever saw the hand coming, she was slapped across the mouth. Jemma’s hands flew to her face. Tears filled her eyes. The fact that Lynette hit her hurt her much more than the stinging of the slap. She ran out of the room. Lynette followed, cussing her the whole way. Jemma tried to shut her bedroom door and Lynette shoved it open.

  “Mo—”

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately. Disrespecting me. Lying all the time. Think you grown, huh? Who keeps this roof over your head?”

  Uncle Sam and myself, she thought. Aloud she screeched, “I’m sorry!”

  “You don’t know sorry yet.” Lynette threw things around the room as she spoke. “And clean this room up sometime.”

  Jemma’s hand strayed to the spot near her mouth where Lynette had hit her and she thought about something her aunt—with whom she’d lived in South Carolina—had once said during one of the few conversations she and Jemma had about Lynette.

  “Lynette? Well, I think the bitterness ate that woman right on up,” her aunt had said. Was that what had made Lynette so awful? Jemma didn’t want to end up like that. That was another reason why she had to be over it. She wouldn’t let the bitterness swallow her whole. No bitterness, no fear, none of it would be allowed to hold her back.

  Jemma thought back to the night when she told Davis about Lynette hitting her. How his hands had felt over hers. The comfort in his voice. Then, the way he’d shared his own secret with her—that sometimes his dad had knocked him around when he was drunk before Davis got old enough to hit back. And after that, his dad only messed with him occasionally and only then until he was reminded that Davis was stronger, faster, and his youth had grown from a disadvantage into a weapon.

  That night, she’d thought something would change between them. That there would be a bond between them that wouldn’t allow Davis to pull away from her anymore. But she’d been wrong. Davis had gone right back to ignoring her whenever it wasn’t just the two of them. And her heart had continued breaking for him. Best to let that memory and everything associated with it go. Too bad she wasn’t as sure she could do that as she’d been a few days ago.

  Chapter 6

  Thursday morning, Jemma decided to break in her newest pair of running shoes some more. She tried to be careful with her money most of the time, especially since she was used to not having much of it—she could almost hear Lynette’s voice snapping in her ear and demanding her paycheck—but new running gear was her weakness. Especially shoes. She often broke down and bought new ones whenever she ran across a pair she liked even if she hadn’t run out of mileage on her current ones.

  Later that day, she would meet Emily Rose at the party store in Fredericksburg to pick up some last-minute things for the reception. But she didn’t have to be there until noon. So early that morning she decided to go for a run and then make Mary breakfast. She wanted it to be ready when Mary got home from her shift at the Gas and Go. Since there were no running trails nearby, she’d run a few miles down the road from Mary’s house and turned back.

  Jemma stared at the endless expanse of trees on either side of the road. She concentrated on the sound of her even breathing and the soles of her shoes hitting the gravel that covered the road’s shoulder. Those simple rhythms always comforted her, and she needed to be soothed at the moment.

  Unfortunately, thoughts of Davis crept up on her yet again. He’d been her entire world, and then he’d made her universe black. She’d given him the power to do that, that was her fault, but she’d never give it to him again.
That didn’t change the fact that she could still feel his pulse under her fingertips from when she’d grabbed his wrist in the parking lot. She glanced down at her fingers. She half expected them to be glowing red where they’d touched his skin.

  The time they’d been almost friends in high school had started up because of Davis’s idiot clique. They’d pulled a particularly horrible prank on her one day at lunch. It ended with gravy on the seat of Jemma’s jeans. Out of the group, Davis had always been nicest to her. After school that day, Davis had come to the gas station during her shift to apologize for what his friends had done. They’d talked more than they ever had before. Everybody knew about Lynette, and eventually the conversation had made its way there. He knew enough even if he didn’t know the whole story. He’d told her that they had more in common than she thought.

  Soon after that, he started visiting the store at least once a week. Then, he gave her rides home from work some nights. She made him stop at the gate to the apartment complex so Lynette wouldn’t know. Lynette was usually passed out by the time she got home, but she could never be too careful when it came to that woman. Jemma wasn’t in the business of poking angry bears with sharpened sticks.

  Over the weeks they spent together, he told her about his alcoholic dad and how his mother had left town when he was four. Soon after, the rides home started including detours to the parking lot of an abandoned building on the edge of town. And then talking turned into kissing. Before she knew it, she was in love, although she knew such a thing could only end badly. And it had. With him dating Tara.

  Right when Smooth wrecked everything, Davis told her they could never be together. And she was supposed to forget that later when he allegedly changed his mind and said he loved her? She’d been a fool, but not a big enough one to buy that story. He’d probably done it out of pity for her after her mom and brother died. Not that it mattered anymore. Whatever she and Davis had done, whatever quasi-friendship they’d shared, that was the past. She’d moved on to South Carolina where she’d had school and work and an okay sort of life.

  She was supposed to be renewed. Successful. She needed to start acting like it again. It was as if she’d forgotten how as soon as she’d gotten back to Derring. Enough of that.

  But there was another problem with being back in Derring. That problem was the other reason she’d come home.

  She slowed to a walk as she entered Mary’s driveway.

  Jemma had bought her train ticket to Jacksonville at the same time she bought one to Derring. She’d scheduled her departure date for the day after her interview with the parole board. She wanted to be out of town before Smooth’s interview with the parole examiner.

  The parole board had notified her of his upcoming hearing because she’d signed up to receive notice of changes in his parole status. Any concerned citizen could do it, and she’d felt she qualified since she was the daughter of his dead girlfriend. She’d seen and heard a lot of things back then and felt like she definitely had something to say that the board needed to hear. In fact, she’d been called to testify against him at his trial based on things she’d seen and some of the things he’d said to her. She hadn’t seen him since the day of his sentencing hearing.

  She remembered the day she’d gone to the mail room near her dorm and found the other letter in her mailbox. Every time she thought of that day, she went cold all over again, but it was especially bad now that she was back in Derring, so close to that apartment and the graves she hadn’t visited since the funeral.

  Smooth had sent the letter to her aunt’s house and her aunt had forwarded it to her at school. He knew that she’d gone to South Carolina to live with Lynette’s sister after Lynette and Demonte died. The letter had been short and to the point. He’d told her he assumed she’d been notified about his parole hearing, and asked her to come visit him at the prison before her interview with the parole board if she was going to set one up. Or to come visit even if she didn’t set one up. Of course she was going to do an interview with the parole board. What she didn’t know was whether she ever wanted to come face-to-face again with the man who’d taken her family away.

  Out of all the mistakes Lynette had dated, Smooth had been the worst. He’d taken sub-par Lynette down even lower by introducing her to crack. Jemma had wanted out, but she had to stay for her little brother. If not for him, she would have emancipated herself and left. None of that had mattered in the end. An apartment fire took Demonte away from her. He was only four. Just a scared four-year-old boy and she hadn’t been there to help him—to save him.

  Jemma had shouldered all the responsibility while Lynette drank, went out with her friends, and spent way too much time with her boyfriends. This had been especially true after Jemma’s sister, Patrice, had run away from home. Lynnette took every cent Jemma earned. She claimed the money belonged to her until Jemma turned eighteen. At least Lynette left her enough most of the time to do groceries and take care of the most important bills so they’d had light and heat. But all that changed in the time it took an unconscious Lynette to drop a lit cigarette from her fingers into a pool of spilled bourbon on the carpet.

  She didn’t know if she was going to see Smooth or not. Part of her wanted to go and show him that he hadn’t destroyed her after all he’d done to her family. The other part of her was sick at the thought of him.

  She had some time to think about it, though. Her interview was almost two weeks away. She had a full day of wedding prep ahead of her, she had to find something to like about Carolina, and she had a bachelorette party to attend that night.

  After coming in from her run, Jemma showered, put her hair up, and pulled on slacks and a bright blue T-shirt. Then, she started cooking. By the time Mary got home from work, Jemma had the table loaded down with scrambled eggs, sausage, pancakes, freshly squeezed orange juice, and grapefruit halves. There was bread stacked by the toaster just in case Mary wanted toast instead of the pancakes.

  When Mary saw what waited for her in the kitchen, she clapped her hands. “Oh. Jemma. You didn’t have to go to all of this trouble.”

  “Just a small way of showing my appreciation of you letting me stay here while I’m in town.”

  Mary crushed Jemma to her chest. “I wouldn’t have you stay anywhere else. You don’t know how happy I am to have you here again, do you?”

  Jemma smiled. “Let’s dig in before it gets cold.”

  Once they had food on their plates, they started talking about the store and how things had changed since Jemma had worked there.

  Mary wiped her mouth on a napkin and then set it aside. “Jemma, there’s one thing I always wanted to ask you, but I never wanted to get in your business. When you went with that boy, when I covered for you with Lynette and told her you were at the store those times, was he part of why you left? I knew where you were going, but I didn’t want to meddle and I certainly never went to Lynette, but I hate the thought of anyone hurting you. But if I thought he hurt you . . .”

  Jemma pushed her plate away. “You know what, Mary, looking back on it, I think we hurt each other. All I know is we were never any good for each other. I don’t know if I could ever be good for anyone. But us two? We could only cause disasters to happen.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Jemma twisted her right-hand diamond ring around her finger. She’d bought it on the day she’d turned down a marriage proposal from her on-again, off-again college boyfriend. It’d seemed appropriate at the time. “I never really told you what it was like living with Lynette. I don’t like to talk about it.” The only person she’d ever talked about it with was Davis.

  “All I know is it must have been a burden for you. A terrible, terrible burden.” Mary reached across the table for her hand. She gave it.

  “It still is.”

  “You shouldn’t let it be. You owe it to yourself to let go.”

  Tears spilled over Jemma’s cheeks. She could only bear to see it in bits and pieces, so that was how she told Mary a
bout what it was like living with Lynette for the first seventeen years of her life. Starting small was better than not starting at all.

  “Oh, you poor baby. You never had anybody to love you, did you?” Mary came around the table to stand behind Jemma’s chair.

  “I had Emily Rose and Wendell.”

  “You had good friends, yes. But that can’t take the place of a mother’s warmth, a mother’s comfort—you were robbed of that, Jemma.” Tears stood in Mary’s eyes as she spoke. “I never had a daughter, Jemma. I never had anybody to give those things to.”

  “I never had a mom.” Jemma turned around in her chair and looked up at Mary. “You can have a daughter now. If you want me.”

  “Of course I want you, Jemma.” Mary pulled Jemma up out of her chair and hugged her close.

  Chapter 7

  It was one thing to know better and another one altogether to do better. Thursday night, Davis leaned against his car, toying with a pack of cigarettes although he’d quit for what must have been the fortieth time that morning. It was too hot to quit smoking. Derring was in the middle of a heat wave, and if he was going to be that uncomfortable, he at least ought to be able to have a smoke when he wanted it.

  His shift had ended a few minutes earlier. He didn’t want to go home and he didn’t want to stay at the restaurant—they might put him back to work if he hung around. He didn’t know where he wanted to go or what he wanted to do.

  Seth had called again. Left a message that it was urgent for Davis to get back to him. Davis didn’t want to hear anything Seth had to say. He probably wanted to tell Davis to pack his bags—that his brothers had found a way to sell the house out from under him.

  Davis tapped his fingers against the cellophane, thinking about Jemma and how dumb he’d been and how stupid it was to let himself think about something starting between them. Jemma would be gone soon. To Florida. And that was a good thing. He’d screwed up enough lives. He’d almost screwed up hers. They’d go to the wedding together and that would be it. So why was he allowing himself to get wrapped up in some fantasy of them having everything that had been missing in high school?