She hopped in Zoe’s car and settled herself in the front seat. “Thanks for the ride. I was dreading walking in this heat.”
It was the end of May, the last week of school for the children of Langley Park, and temperatures were already in the upper eighties.
“Heat? Just wait until July. And you’re welcome. I was surprised Ben didn’t offer to take you.”
“I didn’t want to bother him.” Jenna looked away. If she met Zoe’s gaze, her friend would see right through her.
Putting the car in gear, Zoe began the short drive to the hospital. “You sure have made an impression on Kate. She talked about you the entire time we were at my parents’ place on Sunday.”
Jenna smiled. Kate was a wonderful little girl. Then her thoughts slipped back to Ben. Did he like hearing his daughter talk about her? Could he remember what she tasted like, too?
She shook her head. She couldn’t let her mind go there. She folded her hands in her lap, trying to gain control. “Kate is one great kid,” she said, allowing herself to only focus on the little girl.
“You should come to my mom and dad’s place next Sunday. They’re just on the east side of Langley Park.”
That was not what she was hoping Zoe would say. After what had happened with Ben, she couldn’t imagine going to his childhood home.
“I really can’t. I have quite a bit of work.”
“You sound like Ben. You like to work, right?” she asked, pulling into the Midwest Psychiatric Center’s parking lot.
Jenna raised an eyebrow. “I guess you could say that.”
“Great! You can help me work the Park Tavern booth at the Langley Park Festival this Saturday.”
Jenna started to protest, but Zoe cut in. “All we do is give out popsicles and cookies. There’s live music, games for the kids, and then fireworks over the lake. You’d be doing Sam and me a giant favor.”
What could she say to that? Zoe and Sam had been more than kind to her since her arrival in Langley Park.
“Okay. Of course, I’d love to help,” she said, trying her best not to look too resigned.
“Excellent! Everything happens in the Langley Park Botanic Gardens and around Lake Boley. This is going to be so fun, you’ll see.”
Jenna waved as Zoe’s car pulled out of the parking lot. She stared at the psychiatric center’s entrance. A bead of sweat trickled down her back, not from the heat but from nerves. She took a deep breath and entered the building.
She signed in at the reception desk and was handed a visitor badge. She looked around the lobby and noticed a heavyset, middle-aged woman standing by the window and a younger man, maybe a college student, staring at his smartphone. They were wearing the same visitor badge as she was just given.
She finished fastening the badge to her top as Eric entered the lobby, and he gestured for her to join him. “Elaine, Dan! It’s good to see you. This is Jenna. She’ll be joining our group today.”
Elaine shook her hand, and Dan gave her a quick nod. Were they as nervous as she was? She tucked those thoughts away and smiled with what she hoped wasn’t a hollow expression as Eric led them back into a large room where several chairs were arranged in a circle.
Jenna glanced at her watch. It was five past one. She had fifty-five more minutes to go. Just as she was about to launch into a silent pep talk, she glanced up and saw her mother, an older gentleman, and a young girl walking into the room all smiling and chatting.
Should she hug her mother? Were they expected to sit next to each other?
Luckily, Eric addressed the group. “Welcome everyone. Let’s all find a seat in the circle.”
Judith walked over to Jenna, smiling in that same disconcerting way as she had during their last meeting.
“JJ, you look so pretty. Oh, my! Another pair of fancy shoes. How nice for you!”
Jenna glanced down at her Marc Jacobs ballet flats and felt a flash of anger. Judith rarely spent a dime on her growing up, choosing to spend lavishly on herself and Travis. Trips, luxury cars, and designer clothes were her mother’s staples.
Now a grown woman, Jenna knew there was no reason to feel guilty about purchasing nice things. She, unlike her mother, worked hard for the things she had. But her mother had a way of making her feel guilty about her very existence.
Judith smiled at the older gentleman settling in next to Elaine. “Bob, didn’t I tell you my JJ was a beauty?”
“Yes, you did, Judith. She takes after her mother.”
Jenna stood there looking at her mother, unsure of what to do. She didn’t recognize this woman. Judith was acting like a loving and attentive parent when she had been the polar opposite.
But fourteen years apart was a long time.
Maybe her mother wanted to heal those past wounds. Maybe commenting on her appearance and footwear was the only way Judith knew how to bridge the gap that existed between them.
Eric tapped on the back of two chairs and gestured to Jenna and Judith. Eric opened the meeting, and the young woman, Dan’s sister, Amber, addressed the group. Amber only had a few more days of treatment left, and much of the discussion revolved around her and her plans for the future.
Jenna couldn’t deny the group members were kind and seemed supportive of one another. Even her mother offered encouraging words, leaving Jenna dumbstruck.
“Let’s open this up to the group. Does anyone want to share any concerns they may be feeling about leaving treatment?” Eric asked.
The room was quiet for a moment, and just when Jenna thought she’d been able to make it out of the session without calling any attention to herself, her mother’s Alabama drawl filled the void.
“Well, yes, Eric. I have some worries.”
Everyone’s gaze fell on Judith.
“I’ve shared with you all that because of my addiction, I did not surround myself with the best people.”
The group nodded, listening intently to Judith’s every word.
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do after my treatment ends. I’m so afraid of being on my own. No one, not even my own family, wants me.”
The group’s focus shifted away from Judith and onto her.
Swallowing hard, Jenna turned to her mother. “Mom, I’m here. I can help you get back on your feet after treatment.”
“You are such a good girl. I can’t tell you how relieved that makes me feel.” Judith reached out and patted her knee.
The contact felt foreign and gave Jenna anything but relief.
Jenna met her mother’s gaze, and Judith’s gentle pat became a squeeze. The group moved on to another topic, but Judith leaned in close to her. “You know, you’re old enough now to do whatever you want with your trust.”
The comment caught Jenna off guard. But her mother was right. Shortly after her thirty-second birthday several weeks ago, she had received a notification from the trust attorney telling her exactly what her mother had just disclosed.
Before her thirty-second birthday, she could have taken a monthly stipend from the trust, like her mother did, which Jenna had vehemently declined. She didn’t want a single penny from a family who wanted to pretend she didn’t exist.
Jenna looked at Eric. He must have seen the uncertainty in her eyes.
“We need to be mindful of the time,” he said, glancing down at his watch. “I think this was a very productive session, and Jenna, we are so glad you were able to join us.”
Eric continued speaking, bringing the session to a close, but Jenna couldn’t concentrate on his words. She kept thinking about her mother’s comment. As the group members walked toward the exit, Judith held on to Jenna’s forearm.
“What is it, Mom?”
“You’ve been smart with your trust fund, right, sweet girl? You’d be willin’ to let me have a little bit, just to get goin’? I only have you now, JJ.”
Jenna’s mind was spinning. There was too much to think about, and she couldn’t get into a discussion about her trust today.
She took a ste
p back. “Mom, we don’t need to get into all that right now. I’m here, and I’m going to help you. Just work on getting better. I’m proud of you for leaving Travis. He wasn’t a good man. You know that now, don’t you?”
“I do,” Judith said, gifting her with a tight smile.
But there was something in her mother’s eyes that Jenna couldn’t read. Was it anger? Was it embarrassment? She couldn’t tell.
Jenna left the psychiatric center. She walked down to the Boley Lake trail then headed back toward the Langley Park town center. Anyone trying to throw a rock at her head now would have a difficult time escaping in the bright afternoon sunshine. She needed to think, and the tree-lined path dotted with mothers pushing strollers and midday joggers was the perfect place to try and piece out what had just happened in the group therapy session.
Jenna ran through the things her mother had said. Could it be possible Judith just needed money? Or was her mother just worried about trying to start a new life without Travis? As far as she knew, her mother never worked a day in her life. Maybe the thought of holding down a real job scared her. She wanted to be understanding of her mother’s situation, and then she remembered the quiet game.
She was very young, maybe three years old, when her mother had come into the farmhouse while Aunt Ginny was asleep on the porch. Nestled in her favorite rocker overlooking the sunflowers in her front garden, Aunt Ginny could sleep soundly for hours. Jenna was supposed to be napping in her room, but she’d woken up early and gone to the kitchen for a drink.
She was surprised when she saw a pretty young woman opening and closing the tins and jars lining the shelves.
Jenna loved the sounds of jars popping open and the ping of the tin lids being placed quietly on the counter. She started to speak, but the young woman shushed her.
“I’m your mama, sweetheart. I brought you a lollipop. I’ll give it to you if you can be real quiet.”
It was like a game. She could still see her mother’s smiling face as she uncovered a wad of bills from behind a stack of cookbooks.
Her aunt never spoke of Judith. But after the kitchen was ransacked, Aunt Ginny added a line to their nightly prayers.
Dear Lord, we pray for our Judith Jo and ask You to help her find the righteous path.
Judith Jo Lewis had been the first and only child of Henry and Adele Lewis. Henry’s family had made a fortune in Alabama’s oil industry after World War II, and Adele was the lovely southern belle who had caught the young oil magnate’s eye. The pair, who started out as Mobile society’s most devoted couple, soon met with great tragedy.
Adele died only hours after giving birth to Judith, and Henry was left to raise a child he would never forgive for taking away the love of his life.
As Judith grew older, her beauty mimicked that of Adele’s. It was a constant reminder to Henry of his great loss, and as Judith grew, so did Henry’s disdain for her.
Rarely interacting with her father, Judith had been raised by a string of nannies. She was a willful child, desperate for attention, and it was rare for any caregiver to last more than a week.
Henry remarried when Judith was ten years old and built a new family with his second wife. By the time Judith was sixteen, her father had four children from his second marriage and no desire to acknowledge his oldest daughter from his first. The only way for Judith to gain her father’s attention was by embarrassing the family, and so began the drinking, the drug use, and running around with those her father deemed unsuitable.
At seventeen, an out of control Judith found herself pregnant. If an out of wedlock teen pregnancy wasn’t enough to upset Henry Lewis, the fact that his promiscuous daughter didn’t know who the father of her unborn child was, became the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Judith was sent to live with her mother’s aunt, Ginny Barker, on a small farm in Kansas. Aunt Ginny was a fair, no-nonsense woman who had continued working and managing her farm twenty years after her husband passed away. While Ginny didn’t condone Judith’s behavior, she had loved Adele and wanted to help her daughter.
A month after Judith’s arrival, Jenna Jo Lewis was born. A week later, Judith packed up in the night and left, unable to cope with the responsibility of having to care for a newborn. Judith only returned when she needed money, but soon she wanted more.
No longer satisfied with the small bills hidden away in Ginny’s tins, Judith contacted her father and demanded money. At first, Henry ignored his daughter’s calls and letters. But when she threatened to reveal her situation to his conservative business partners, he acquiesced to her demands.
Henry Lewis, wanting nothing to do with his daughter, created a trust fund from which Judith would receive a monthly allowance under the provision she would never contact him or his family again. Upon turning twenty-one, Jenna learned a trust had been created for her with the same conditions as her mother’s. No contact under any circumstances.
Jenna sat on a bench nestled near an old oak and watched the people passing by on the Boley Lake trail. Her gaze was drawn to a mother pushing a stroller. She listened as the woman spoke to the baby, pointing out this tree and that bird. Jenna smiled as she heard the child babbling back.
As the mother and child passed by, she thought about Judith and what it must have felt like to have her own father pay her to stay away. She let out an audible breath. She knew what she had to do. It was time to put aside the anger and disappointment. Maybe, just maybe, she and her mother could build something new that wasn’t marred by the past.
14
Ben walked back to his office pushing Jenna’s mountain bike outfitted with two new tires. Jenna would probably be angry and tell him he had overstepped his boundaries by taking it upon himself to have her bike fixed, but he needed to do it. He knew she wouldn’t ask him for help, and he couldn’t overcome this primal need to keep her safe.
As he wheeled the bicycle inside, his office manager raised an eyebrow.
“It’s not mine, Mrs. G,” Ben said, giving the gray-haired woman a look that said drop it.
“Is that so?” Mrs. G said, raising an eyebrow.
Ben pushed the bike into the small conference room and rested it against the wall. She knew him too well. That was the curse and the blessing of having your teacher become your office manager.
Rosemary Giacopazzi was Ben’s beloved third-grade teacher. When his business started growing, he couldn’t manage both the design and day-to-day business side of things. A chance encounter with the retired “Mrs. G” seven years ago, started a conversation that ended with her working in his office. And to this day, decades after leaving third grade, Ben still couldn’t call her Rosemary; to him, she’d always be Mrs. G.
Ben walked out of the conference room and over to Mrs. G’s desk. Two young architects worked diligently as the sound of keyboards clicking and blueprints rustling filled the workspace.
“I’m guessing you haven’t eaten,” Mrs. G said, setting a takeout bag from Park Tavern on her desk and nudging it toward him.
“I was going to scarf down some Pop Tarts Kate left in my bag.”
“Benjamin! What am I going to do with you?”
Ben gave her an appreciative smile and took a bite of the chicken club sandwich, but he stopped eating when he saw Jenna walking across the street.
At first glance, all he saw was a beautiful woman. But then he noticed she was wringing her hands as she walked. She was upset. That was her tell, her hands, just like back in high school.
“That one’s hard to miss,” Mrs. G said, nodding toward Jenna.
Ben put down the sandwich, unable to pull his gaze away from her when he caught a glimpse of a white truck driving down the street. The vehicle stayed just out of Jenna’s line of sight, but close enough to watch her every move.
“What in the world is that truck doing?” Mrs. G asked. “I thought he was just looking for parking, but look, Benjamin, he’s already passed two good spots.”
Something was off. Ben opened the
door and stood outside his office trying to get a better look at the driver. Jenna and the truck were now almost half a block past him. He walked up the street, keeping both Jenna and the truck in sight.
She was almost to Baneberry Drive where he was certain she would turn right and head north toward the Tudor. He picked up his pace. The truck sped up and signaled to turn right even before Jenna had made it to Baneberry.
Now he knew something strange was going on. The driver seemed to anticipate Jenna’s every move. The vehicle’s tinted driver side window was cracked about an inch, allowing a steady stream of cigarette smoke to escape. Ben couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman driving. His walk changed to a jog. He had to get her attention. “Jenna! Stop!”
As if awoken from a dream, Jenna stopped and looked toward him and the white truck. In a clumsy maneuver, the truck overcorrected to the left, abandoning the right turn, and swerved haphazardly back into traffic.
A gray sedan slammed on its brakes, screeching and swerving to stop from rear-ending the erratic truck. With a loud honk, the sedan allowed the reckless vehicle back into traffic. Back in control, the truck gunned its engine, tearing down the road and away from Jenna and Langley Park.
Ben ran across the street. “Are you all right?”
“What was that?” she asked, her worried brown eyes looking to Ben for answers. She’d gone pale and was wringing her hands furiously.
“The truck, Jenna,” Ben said, taking her trembling hands into his. “It looked like it was following you. Did you see who was driving it?”
She shook her head. “No, I was looking at you and then, all of a sudden, those two cars almost crashed. It happened so fast.”
They stood together, neither seeming to know what to say next, as an elderly couple came out of a nearby shop. Hand in hand, the couple gave them a knowing smile. They hadn’t witnessed the near accident and only saw Ben and Jenna, her hands clasped tightly in his.
“You hold on to that one,” the elderly woman said, giving him a wink as the couple shuffled down the street.
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 11
