If Will Cassel’s life could be measured by his post-professional baseball achievements, every day he felt like more of a man. Where back in mid-summer Bethany looked no different than usual, now in early autumn, she was definitely pregnant.
He couldn’t keep his hands from her, not when alone in their house or anywhere else. The older relatives looked away, but Jenny teased, as did Rachel when she came home from Eugene on the weekends, Chelsea whenever Will saw her. He sent pictures to the rest, David not believing how quickly the baby had popped out, Eric asking if they were having twins.
It was a tonic, sufficing for two missing, even if Will and Bethany were only expecting a singleton. Mitch left right after Sam’s sixty-third birthday, after Chelsea turned thirty. Wedding plans were in full swing, but Mitch would enjoy the festivities vicariously through the rest, and no one mentioned Tanner. Fred had delivered Jackson’s message, telling Tommie that if they wanted to see Tanner alive again, it would cost them fifty grand.
Tommie slept on it, then met in town with Sam and Jacob; Tanner could be theirs at a price not that high, not really much at all. Was Tanner worth so little to Jackson, a young man’s life only a pittance?
But then, what was Tanner to his family? Jacob didn’t want to pay it. “He’d just come home and get into it again.”
“My feeling,” Tommie began, just as much Tanner’s grandpa as Jacob, “is to tell Fred we might just use that fifty K to take care of his nephew. See what he says to that.”
Sam nodded. “To tell you the truth I’ve been thinking the same.”
Jacob stared at them. “Are you two serious?”
“Just something to rattle his cage. He probably didn’t think about that. Not that I’d do it, but…” Tommie gave a tiny smile. “It’d sure as hell rock Fred’s boat.”
“I don’t care what we tell him,” Sam sighed. “We give him any amount of money and Tanner’s as good as dead.”
Unless Tanner wanted to end the cycle himself, the family could pay till the cows came home. The possible loss of a grandchild felt odd in Tommie’s head, but he hadn’t escaped that notion when saying goodbye to Mitch. Maybe there was no difference; just the luck of the draw. Alvin had died in a stupid, asinine manner. If the best man Tommie had ever known could be lost with so little meaning at the time, who did deserve to live?
Who made the choice, who gave the order? Tommie smiled, looking right at Sam. “I’ll tell Fred if that’s the way Jackson wants to play it, he better just watch his back. Payback’s a dangerous thing.”
“And Tanner?” Sam asked.
Tommie didn’t miss the fear in Sam’s eyes. “Well, he’s made his bed. We love him, hell I’m not saying we don’t, but everyone should have the right to make their own choices. He’s young, doesn’t have shit for brains, but what can we do? Some’re just luckier than others.”
Tommie wanted Eric home. He would never say it out loud to Sam, wouldn’t now. What he would offer was a small, veiled truth. From the way Sam studied the ground, Tommie wouldn’t need to say any more.
Tommie never brought up that subject again with Sam. Instead he told Fred that Jackson wouldn’t get a penny from them, and he had just better be careful; those fifty G’s might be put to a different use. Fred didn’t miss the message, but no one heard a peep from Scott’s son.
Wedding and baby showers were held on a Saturday in late September, good feelings running through all. Jenny had Chelsea and Andy’s afghan ready in addition to several blankets for her grandchild, the gender still a secret. Bethany’s mother had sent gifts to Jenny for the shower, would be flying out the first week of November, the baby due right around Will’s birthday. Bethany joked maybe she would go into labor early, preventing her mom from joining them in the delivery room. Will had confided to his parents they really wanted to be alone this first time. Jenny had smiled, keeping those sentiments to herself.
Upon other things she was vocal, foremost that Sam needed to give up his idea that Eric had to stay in school. Far-flung family members missed the double shower, but were all coming home for the weekend of Chelsea and Andy’s wedding, the twenty-first of October. Jenny hoped that good weather would permit that couple to marry under the beech tree, sanctifying that ground. Jenny had been thinking of Alvin lately, as Tommie was, both with the same thing on their minds: a wedding and a baby for Alvin’s children.
What would he have thought, said, done, Jenny pondered as she crocheted in the mornings, hearing from Rachel a voice so wanting to be closer. She was in grad school in Eugene, but only with half her heart in it, like her younger brother in California. Eric spoke so movingly of being at the farm, giving his dad a hand; when he and Travis flew home for Chelsea’s wedding, might Sam have a change of heart? Eric said he would be coming alone, his girlfriend Dana not quite up to meeting all the family, but it wouldn’t be everybody. Mitch was missing, Tanner was too. Alana and Scott were holding their breaths; maybe Tanner was as cold as Alvin.
Jenny set sea green yarn on the rocker, in the middle of a shawl for Rae. Jenny had made as many baby afghans as Will and Bethany would ever need, Chelsea and Andy’s bed-sized blanket waiting until they were wed. Not that they would require another Jenny original, but she had done that for Will and Bethany when they married, would do the same for David, Rachel, and Eric when they got hitched. Something within Jenny created those pieces; was it continuing Sylvia Baxter’s legacy, was it part of Jenny’s past relived in colors like those of a sign still posted along the road, Alvin’s Farm in bright primary shades. Tommie retouched it every few years, but it was still red and blue, orange and yellow, green and white, with a small splash of violet. Right before Rachel was born, Chelsea had been mad about purple, pestering her uncle into adding it to the sign. It remained right along the edge, framing a notice that a man had lived. Now his two offspring were moving to new stages, no longer young people, but actual adults.
Marriage and children altered a person; Jenny was deeply aware of what motherhood and wedlock had done to her. Reaching the coffeemaker, she poured a cup, thinking about what sort of father Will would be; would that center him, might it remove baseball’s agony?
The phone rang and Jenny reached for the wall receiver near the doorway. “Hello?”
“Mom, oh God, can you, I mean, Jesus!”
“Chelse, you okay?”
Jenny knew her daughter had started her period by the halting words and choked tone. Equal parts of relief and sorrow tore at a mother. That it was now, before the wedding, was fortuitous. That Chelsea would never know the delight Will would soon enjoy made Jenny bite her lip. “Honey, I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Recently Chelsea had been looking after her mother. Every few months, those roles were reversed. While Jenny might harbor small sadness for her daughter’s aches, Chelsea was thrilled. The last thing she wanted was to be laid up on her honeymoon.
“God, that would’ve sucked,” she laughed in a weak voice. “But at least now I won’t have to worry about it until next year.”
The women rested in Chelsea’s bedroom, Jenny lying alongside her daughter. Andy had been informed, but was in the middle of an investigation. Chelsea had tried Alana, but she was busy. While she could have called Liz, Rae, or Debbie, it was really her mother Chelsea wanted.
“Honey, I love you. You’re right, at least the timing’s good.”
“Oh Mom, by now, who cares? Andy doesn’t give a shit, I mean, he hates seeing me like this, but otherwise, so what?”
Jenny stroked her daughter’s hair. “You have everything ready?”
They spoke of wedding plans, which were small compared to what Jenny and Sam had always dreamed for this child. But Chelsea would do it her way, and hadn’t even let her Aunt Rae make the dress. Rae had been slightly hurt, but Chelsea wanted Rae to save those aged hands for her own granddaughters. “I can’t think of any other details to stew over,” Chelsea laughed. They had a photographer arranged, flowers ordered, the caterer in line. Family was th
e biggest headache, organizing everyone’s plane tickets. Even Travis was flying from Los Angeles, and if there had been some way to pull Mitch from Iraq, Chelsea would have done it.
Jenny listened to the unmistakable thrill of a little girl planning her wedding. Sam would walk Chelsea from the house to the beech, and she had told everyone to bring umbrellas. Unless it was pouring rain, she was going to marry under that tree; Alvin had fallen from it, but to Chelsea, it was just a tree.
One from which Grant had raked endless leaves, ones she played under as a child, tea parties with her dolls or a base for hide and seek with her siblings, and then cousins. Sometimes Grant would be it, but Chelsea would always let him find her, not wishing to make him hunt day and night. She sniffled with that story, wishing out loud he could see her and Andy say their vows.
She didn’t mention Alvin, didn’t need to. Grant had been brought to them by providence, how Jenny had arrived in Alvin’s life, in this very house, the first place she was welcomed. Sylvia had orchestrated Jenny’s appearance in Arkendale, and it was more than fitting that Chelsea now called Sylvia and Keith’s house her home.
“Mom, whatcha thinking?”
Jenny smiled. “Oh, just how your grandparents would’ve loved to see you get married.”
“Yeah, I think about that too. Mom, you stayed here that first night, right?”
“Not in this room, but…”
“In the one on the left, Grandma told me. She really loved you.”
Jenny blinked tears. “Oh Chelse, she loved you too.”
Mother and daughter snuggled against each other, Chelsea setting Jenny’s hands on her cramping abdomen. “After I was at Mills, Grandma wrote me weekly letters, God, I loved getting those, hated it when she was gone and I didn’t hear about Grandpa and home anymore. But she told me something and I never forgot it.”
“What honey?”
“She said one of the most meaningful days of her life was meeting you in that bus station in Las Cruces, then bringing you home. Mom, she said home like she’d been off looking for you instead of visiting her sister. That’s why I wanted to come back, ’cause Grandma always made this place feel so much like home. I don’t just mean this house, but this town, the farm, the family. That’s why Eric wants to come back so badly, why we all did. Yeah, I mean, we went away for a while, maybe kids need to do that, but this place, God, it’s like some haven, what she said, I mean, maybe she didn’t actually say it. But that’s what she meant. Not like she just did you some big service, but for her and Grandpa too. Or maybe I don’t know what I mean.”
Jenny let small tears escape, not the flood she felt was waiting. That would be for later, with Sam. And, she sniffed, gripping her daughter in a place silent and barren, maybe he would finally open his heart and let their youngest come home.
After Andy arrived, Jenny left her daughter in the best hands. A mother had taken that spot for years, but a few weeks out from a wedding, Jenny relished Andy’s role in Chelsea’s life. Not only that of a lover, but a caretaker, more than a spouse. Maybe it wasn’t more; perhaps Jenny was as scattered as that child, Chelsea ragged the first few days of her cycle. She had talked all afternoon about the past, the future too. She was so excited for Will and Bethany, couldn’t wait to be an auntie. She had felt like one since Janessa was born, but this would be her real niece or nephew. A nephew, Chelsea laughed, only because Bethany was so damned big.
As Jenny drove home, that last sentence kept tears at bay. She had spoken to Sam, also to Rachel, who was coming for the weekend as she usually did. Sam wondered how she managed to get any school work done, but Jenny never answered his queries. Rachel was making noises her father wouldn’t like, that school could take a flying leap. A new baby, an occasional aching sister, and of course a fragile mother usurped Rachel’s thoughts. Jenny didn’t imagine her youngest daughter would be living in Eugene for much past the next term.
When Jenny reached their lane, she noted extra vehicles at Tommie’s. All the Smiths were having dinner together, but Jenny had begged off with Chelsea’s woes. Jenny passed that farm’s sign, in the shape of a cow, then saw her own placard ahead. The purple edge called to her, vivid colors bordered by that deep hue.
Chelsea had wanted purple and Tommie hadn’t cared. It was something to placate her, Jenny ready to pop with Rachel. A daughter for Sam, one healthy and whole, a girl who now rumbled about where she needed to be, and it wasn’t in graduate school. Sam wouldn’t be pleased, but these children didn’t need their father’s nose, as loving and concerned as it was, in their business. Eric would be home next summer, Jenny was certain, and Sam would just have to accept it.
She wanted them close, which felt strange. When learning the truth of her health, Jenny hadn’t wished for their presence, hadn’t assumed they would all be so determined to flock back to a world she had never wanted to leave. Maybe they were like her, all needing a base. Even David visited when he could, loving his job but wishing to be close to those who knew him best. Jenny hadn’t known Sylvia from Adam when stepping on that bus for Oregon. By the end of their travels, she had been taught one simple crochet stitch, but it hadn’t needed to be difficult. Only small steps at first.
Now she couldn’t imagine Chelsea living in California, and Jenny laughed, would tell that daughter the truth. Jenny’s pride was in retreat. She had permitted a few joints to be rolled in addition to Rae’s baking wonders; even Sam joined her. He had only taken a few hits, sympathy tokes he had smiled. Their love life had improved; while she still hurt, the pain wasn’t crippling.
But it wasn’t only pot that relieved. It was her children, and with some absences since summer, Jenny’s back and legs throbbed in ways she hadn’t noticed before. When Rachel and David managed to come home on the same weekends, it was alleviated, and how might she feel at Thanksgiving and Christmas? Not only all her kids, but by then a grandchild. Jenny couldn’t wait to be someone’s grandmother.
If Bethany’s mom insisted on being with that couple, Jenny was fine to sit in the lobby. She had waited for good things before and not even known they were coming. How much better was this? She smiled, ignoring those small hurts along her body. Not out of denial, but in the weight of time. She had an illness, but it wasn’t fatal. More she considered were her loved ones, a few absent, but most close, or wishing to be so. Then Jenny heard Sam’s voice.
“That you?” he called as she opened their front door.
“None other,” she said, setting her purse on the small table by the door.
Sam met her in the entryway, taking her jacket. “How’s Chelse?” he asked out of habit. He knew how their daughter truly was.
“Okay. Andy got home, my time to go. What’s for dinner?”
Sam spoke of eggs and bacon and Jenny’s stomach rumbled. Then he talked of his afternoon, simpler times like when their kids were young, then further back to their earliest days, when making those offspring. Jenny easily recalled how each of those children were conceived, ones with Alvin, ones with Sam. Now they were moving on.
Not until after dinner did she begin to release, in small bits, what Chelsea had said, what Jenny had been considering. How important that they were together, for these days were limited. Look at Alana and Scott, Jenny noted, wondering where Tanner was.
Sam grunted, reading something on his laptop.
Jenny set down her crocheting. “I can’t wait for the wedding. You know why?”
“Why?” he sighed.
“Because everyone will be here, all but Tanner and Mitch. All our kids.” She kissed his face. “Chelsea won’t have any, but I can’t imagine anything better than all my grandchildren living in this town. Yeah it’s small, God, it’ll be full of us, but honey, Sylvia brought me here for a reason. I remember how much she loved seeing our kids, the only grandchildren she had all the time. She let her girls go, never whined about it, but when they came home, my God, she lit like there was no tomorrow.”
Like Tommie, Jenny wouldn’t hit Sam over
the head. She never mentioned Eric, didn’t breathe Rachel’s name. She held her husband’s hands, running her fingertips over his palms.
“Jenny, you feeling okay?”
She nodded, his words asking about more than her weak legs or sore back.
“Yeah, I’m feeling pretty good. How about you?”
She giggled, her lower body wanting him. Thinking of making her children did it.
In her head she was still a young woman so in love with a man who hadn’t died, never hurt her. Sam had placed within Jenny Cope such love and passion, as if he’d chosen her out of a million others. It had been here, in this small, quiet town, but still a random act, an unplanned occurrence. Jenny had met Sylvia Baxter in a bus station and all of their lives were never the same.
“You ready for bed?” Sam’s voice was changed, also unable to fight that bliss.
“Uh-huh. You lock up. I’ll be waiting.”
He helped her off the couch, then pulled her close, nearly making Jenny melt there in the living room. Instead she walked to their door, only a few steps away. By the time Sam reached their bed, she was naked, calling his name.
Chapter 3