Chapter NINE
Jamison begged his mom to let him miss school on Wednesday to unload boxes, even though he’d miss seeing Skye and wouldn’t be able to mess with Mr. Evans. He had to find that letter. He couldn’t sit through another day of classes while he could be helping his granddad. He would spend all day with the man if he were allowed to, but finding the letter would be better in the long run.
Because his mom stayed home too, he couldn’t tear the place apart and then put it back together again, so he searched in spurts, between unloading boxes. After only a couple of hours, Jamison was freaking. The house wasn’t large. He’d searched everywhere.
It was getting to be lunch time and his mom hadn’t been making any kitchen noises, so he went looking for her. He found her in the small room off the living room, the one she’d put her desk in. The carpet was orange and yellow retro shag and the light fixture was a milk-glass ball surrounded by white wrought-iron swirls. The walls were covered with small yellow and white squares that had always seemed cheerful; now it all looked like a Hippie hate-crime. It almost took away his appetite.
Almost.
“Hey, are we going to eat?” He stopped and stared.
Mom was crying. She never cried; she knew what it did to him.
“What’s going on? Don’t cry, Mom. What is it?” He hurried to her side, feeling his body gear up for horrible news. “Is something wrong with Granddad?”
“Sorry, honey. Everything’s fine. I’m just getting old. Old people cry over stupid stuff.”
Jamison looked at the papers in front of her. A pile of bills, a pile of stamped mail ready for the post office, and some legal documents.
“That Granddad’s will?”
“Yeah. I’m not ready to read it, though.” She shoved it all back in the fancy folder and tossed it in the top middle drawer. She might not be ready, but ready wasn’t far away.
Then he saw it. The letter. It had to be.
“What’s this?” He snatched it up before his mom could stop him. “It’s addressed to you, in Texas.” He moved to the other side of the desk and sat down, ignoring his mom’s outstretched hand, holding it easily out of her reach. “You wrote ‘return to sender’ on it? Why?”
“I was very angry with him, and you know it. It’s why we left.” She put her elbows on the desk and bracketed her face with her hands, pushing back her hair, but still hiding her face.
“This is dated—uh, that would be—six months after we left. I thought he didn’t know where we were. You said that’s why I never got any letters, because he couldn’t find us, because you didn’t want him to.”
“Yes. I didn’t want him to.” She slammed her hands down on the desk and reached again for the letter.
“And did he? Did he send letters to me?” He ignored her hand.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Yes.”
Jamison let the pain wash over him. Invisible. Invisible.
He couldn’t look at her.
“I’m sorry. At least I didn’t let you think it was because he didn’t care. I didn’t take that away from you. I just took you away from him.”
“I should have asked,” he muttered to himself. He hadn’t asked because he didn’t want to hear something he couldn’t handle. Now Jamison knew, no matter what his granddad had done, he wouldn’t love him any less. It wasn’t possible.
“You should have asked what, if he was sending letters?”
“No.” He looked at her then and had the same knowledge hit him again. No matter what she’d done, what poor choices she’d made, he wouldn’t love her any less.
Now the only thing to do was to get these two back together, the two people he loved, the two people he’d like to beat senseless.
“I should have asked what he’d done to make you angry enough to leave and never come back.” He leaned forward. “I’m asking you now.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re back. You can spend as much time with him as you can, as much time as he has left.” A tear ran down her cheek, but Jamison wasn’t dishing out pity.
“It does matter. I’m going to read this letter—”
“No—”
“—and you can’t stop me. So, would you like to explain before I do?”
His mom glared at him. He didn’t care.
She tipped back in her chair and he thought she wasn’t going to answer him, but she started playing with the stack of envelopes and talking in that odd voice a mother uses when reading a bedtime story, as if she hopes the kid would fall asleep before she had to read the whole thing.
“I got pregnant at seventeen. Before you were ever born, your dad left me. Actually he left two days after the wedding at the courthouse and never came back to Flat Springs. Your granddad took me back home, said at least Shaw had given my child a name and that any man who could leave a pregnant wife was doing her a favor by going.”
“You’ve told me this before.”
“Hush. You asked, now shut up until I’m through.”
Jamison sat back in his seat.
“We got along just fine. You were happy, so I was happy, and that was enough for me then. I believed I could find love after you were older, but I always hoped...I hoped that Mickey would have a life-altering experience and come running back. I suppose I hoped for that harder than I realized. I guess I was counting on it.
“So, eleven years went by and no Mickey. Momma died. So young—she was so young! A girl is never the same after her mother dies, you know?”
“Yeah. I know. I think a boy is never going to be the same when his grandfather dies. You know?”
“Yeah. I know.” She seemed to shrink a bit then, as if the guilt of that realization was more that she could face and still get the story out.
“Go on.”
“Momma died. Daddy was a mess. Momma had always done the bills and the legal stuff. I was a paralegal by then and offered to take care of things, and when I went through boxes of documents I found a letter, from Mickey, to me.
“Oh, God!” She started sobbing. “I did the same thing to you that they did to me! But at the time, it felt like I was doing it to him, you know? It didn’t occur to me I was hurting you. You were always so...fine. I never had to worry about you.”
Little did you know. So much he could tell her, but what good would it do?
“So, what did Mickey say?”
“He said he wanted to see his child—he didn’t even know you were a boy. He said since my dad had paid him to leave me, that maybe the old money-grubber would let him see his kid if he refunded some of his money.
“I don’t know why my mom kept the letter. If she was worried that she might need to contact him sometime, she could’ve just saved his address. But I felt like she was leaving it for me, so I’d know what really happened. I thought she was so devoted to Dad, but maybe she was just pretending to be.
“Anyway, I got all the paperwork done that needed doing, for her sake, then I packed up our stuff and we left. I left Mickey’s letter on the counter, so he’d know why.”
She sat there, her face moving while she stared off at a corner of the orange and yellow shag carpet, as if she were reviewing it all again, looking for some detail she might have missed.
Jamison’s stomach rumbled and she came back from wherever she’d been.
“Yes, we’re going to eat today. I’ll find us something.” She stood up.
“And I’ll read this while you’re looking.” He waved the blue envelope and she sat back down.
“It’s not yours to read, Jamison Shaw.”
“Oh? I think if you’ve disowned him, that makes him only my relative, and this is from my relative, not yours.”
“Damn it, Jamie. Hand me that letter!”
“No. Unless you agree to read it.”
She stood up and left the room. Soon she was slamming things around in the kitchen, and Jamison had been well-trained to come running, to help clean up or cook or whatever, any time he heard those noises. But not this time.
He used a small pair of scissors to slice open the seal. It was yellow and crusted with five-year-old spit and glue. Unfolding the blue stationary with lighthouses in the corners, Jamison was disappointed to find the letter very short with large letters taking up space.
Dear Lori,
I caught Mickey in Parker’s barn the day after your wedding, in the arms of Parker’s wife. He laughed and offered to leave Colorado for good if I’d loan him the money to do it. I gave him enough to see him to Hell.
I wanted to spare you a bad marriage, aye? Would you not have done the same?
I love you. I won’t last long without the sight of you.
Forgive me.
Da
In spite of all the letter said, of the questions answered not to mention the father issues, the letter raised one silly question in Jamison’s mind:
Where did Skye fit in?